Sociolinguistics Symposium 19
Freie Universität Berlin | August 21-24, 2012
Programme: accepted abstracts
Abstract ID: 402
Part of General Paper Session (Other abstracts in this session)
Slow on the Outbound und Stau in Richtung Wedding: Construing Metropolitan Traffic Reports
Authors: Macdonald, Doris M.; Barbe, Katharina
Submitted by: Macdonald, Doris M. (Northern Illinois University, United States of America)
Many of us have experienced the confusion and disorientation of driving --- or being stuck in traffic --- in an unfamiliar urban area. Seeking information via broadcast traffic reports can as easily add to this bewilderment as resolve it. Regularly broadcast traffic reports (e.g., “On the hour, every hour,” “Traffic on the eights,” “All Traffic All the Time,” “Inforadio Verkehr”) must assume an audience familiar with the area and with the local ways of presenting information. But what are the features of these oral reports that allow them to be easily and quickly interpreted by some listeners while being fairly cryptic to others? We examine broadcast reports from various cities within the frameworks of cognitive reference point and landmark models (Rosch, 1975; Langacker, 1991; Sorrows & Hirtle, 1999) and wayfinding behaviors (Golledge, 1999; Raubal & Winter 2002). As Rosch (1975: 546) has noted, “a landmark is an obvious example of a reference point which people use to navigate through the environment, particularly through cities”. Golledge (1999: 36) observes that “landmarks … act as origin and destination points and occur either on a route or as an off-route referent point that helps in orientation and decision making”.
Our initial examination of radio presentations of real-time traffic conditions suggests that traffic reports are typically oriented toward landmarks
1. Chicago: “Extra travel time to the Tri-state alone forty five minutes, out to three fifty-five fifty six”
2. Berlin: “Zwischen Glockenturmstraße und Alt- Pichelsdorf an einer Baustelle Sperrung der rechten Spur stadtauswärts“ [Between Glockenturmstraße and Alt-Pichelsdorf blocking of the right lane outbound]
Variation also appears in the nature of the information given. Some utterances are strictly transactional, focusing on the effect on the driver:
3. Vancouver: “Ironworkers, not too bad on or off the North Shore”
while others provide rationales or explanations of a state of affairs rather than an assessment of the effect:
4. “In Vancouver, a stalled van eastbound on first before Nanaimo in the right lane”
In our examples, traffic information is linguistically characterized by a dearth of active verbs and subjects, and only occasionally do traffic reporters address their audiences directly.
Despite characteristic differences in these reports and their local lexicons, we find that the analysis of the language of traffic reports supports the central tenet of Grice’s Cooperative Principle, especially with respect to the maxims of relation and quantity, in making relevant, truthful, and complete contributions to a discourse. However, adherence to the provision of this principle may well be at odds with real language understanding outside a local level and suggests that more general processes of landmarking and/or cognitive mapping must be applied. While landmarking is one feature of broadcast traffic reports we discuss in our paper, we further hypothesize that, despite the use of localized referents and reliance on presupposition and implied meanings, these reports are representative of efficient, comprehensible discourse. In addition, whereas the analytical models employed have been typically applied to geography, psychology, and computer science, we present new and useful applications for linguistic analysis.