Name: Madonna Abdalla

Date: November 17, 2015

Observing speech event

A. Introduction:
The speech event I observed on Saturday October 31, 2015 is a Coptic orthodox scout team
weekly meeting at Saint George church at bellflower city in California. According to the
anthropology lectures speech event is any activity which organized around talk and has rules
(norms) for conducting the talk. This scout team meeting is definitely a speech activity that has
rules and the participant of this speech event have to follow the norms assigned to it. This
meeting last three hours from 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm. The number of participants of this speech
event was twenty five that are Egyptian and speak both English and Arabic.
B. Body:
I analyzed this speech event using the S-P-E-A-K-I-N-G model. This model is basically a tool to
assist the classification and labeling of sections of linguistic, in order to speak a language
correctly, one need not only to learn its vocabulary and grammar, but also the situation in which
words are used.

This model stands for (Setting, Participants, End, Act sequence, Key,

Instrument, Norms, and Genre).

The (S) in this model means the physical or physiological setting. The setting of the scout
meeting speech activity is in two places. The first Half of the meetings time was spent in a small
room in the churchs main building. This room is located in the second floor and it had many
chairs inside it. The second half was spent in the churchs backyard and it is large empty yard
that has nothing in it. The (P) in this model stands for participants and as I mentioned before
there were twenty five participants, twenty are students of ages between fifteen to eighteen years
old. The other five participants were the captains. Thirteen participants were males and twelve
were females. I was the only guest attending the scout meeting. The (E) in the model stands for

ends meaning what is the goal or the purpose of this speech activity and as I observed this
speech activity I realized that there were many purposes of this event. First, I will discuss the
purposes that made students attend this meeting. They came to this scout meeting to learn about
the history of fingerprint, fundamental principles of finger print, and the main types of finger
prints. Students also participate in this scout meeting to hear Gods word from the bible and have
the captains explain some complicated parts from the bible to them such as Reflections on
Christmas. It is a weekly event and every week they discuss a different part of the bible as well
as different materials for the scout. For the captains their purpose for participating in this event is
to make students wants to come to their church and help them as much as they can to understand
their religion. I saw some of the captains after the meeting help students with their school
materials such as math and biology. The captains mentioned during the lecture that they
participate in this event to prepare young high school students to be captains and take care of
their church later in the future. The (A) stands for act sequence. The order of the event was
that all the participants said the scout songs and followed their captain in a row to the meeting
setting, in a small room inside the church. All the participants of the meeting prayed together and
after they finished praying they waited in silent for their captain to begin the class. The captain
lectured them on the purposes of fingerprints and why it was invented. Later after the lecture
they went again in a row to the back area where the captain had the students to tie the ropes in
many shapes and show it him. The captain had the students exercise and ran in the backyard in
rows. The students informed me that captains usually take them hiking to practice how to make
fires and tying different shapes of robe knobs. The whole group went back to church prayed
again and the captain discussed the born of the Christ in the bible. At the end of the lecture the
captain dismissed the class. Before they dismiss the class some of the captains ask students if

they are facing any problems with school materials to wait after session is done. The (K) in the
model Stands for key or mood. There were two keys in which most conversation was
conducted. The lecturing key was official and by the rules. The joking parts were light and
friendly. Mainly the spirit of this event was peaceful. The students were joking with the captains
if they were allowed to talk. Captains asked many questions and let the students answer it by
raising their hands. So the overall mood was joyful and supportive to all participants. The (I) in
the model stands for instruments which means the forms and the styles of speech. Meaning
how the language used. The language of this speech event was mainly casual and
multilingualism but with many rules that made it sound formal. The participants spoke in both
Arabic and English language equally for the whole three hours. Captains of the scout spoke in
formal Arabic when reading the bible and formal English while lecturing the fingerprint lesson.
The spoke casually in both languages to students while doing the activities in the backyard of the
church. The participants of this event also spoke in a special scout dialect, and even though I
speak both languages I didnt understand some words of this specific dialect. These scout related
words only participants of this event understand. The (N) in the model Stands for Norms or the
rules. There were many norms within these scout meetings. First, all the participants have to be
on time and the wear the uniform which is dark green shirt, black pants, and dark blue scarf that
has saint George churchs logo on it. Every participant have to remain silent while the captain is
talking and lecturing .All the participants of the scout speech event have to know those scout
songs that they say while walking in a row. Also all participants have to lower their voices
because they are in a church. None of the participants can leave until the captain dismisses the
class or can ask a permission to leave. The (G) in the model stands for genre which means
what type of event is this. According to the material that the captains handed down to the

students , this is a religious speech event that happen to be also specify in teaching people how to
survive in many critical conditions such as teaching students how to make fire out of nothing and
how to tie robes into different knobs.
C. Conclusion:
What I can conclude about the rules that being used to organize this activity is that observing
speech activity made me think of how the discourse system work and how the special ideas are
selected and put together into an argument. I realized the Egyptian discourse is quite similar as
the Athabaskans discourse that we have discussed in lecture. This Egyptians scout team meeting
observation had me think of how the presentation of self theory applies here in this situation. For
instance, the dominance display and how the person in the dominance position such as the
captain or the leader, is the one that does the talking and the subordinates such as the students are
the observers and do not talk until they have permission to do so. Similar in Athabaskans
Culture the dominant person are the one that do the talking while the subordinate are the ones
that do the listening. I realized the seriousness of understanding each other discourse differences
to avoid stereotyping. By observing the Egyptians discourse closely, I realized that even though
they speak in American English they still follow the Egyptians rules of the dominance and
subordinates role in the speech event. As of distribution of talk I noticed that the pausing time is
short and less frequent which is similar to the American discourse.
Those rules affect the organization of this speech event extremely, those rules made the key of
the event mainly formal, and because that the meeting require the silence of the participants, the
setting of the meeting had to be in a quiet room that far from all the loudness outside in the
church. Also it affected the goals of the meeting, since it is a religious event that took place

inside the church, it had to discuss the bible somehow and that made the goal of the meeting is
hearing Gods word. It is not a regular scout meeting, it is a religious Coptic orthodox scout
meeting which was conducted by those rules to specialize it from other meetings. It also had
affected that the participants have to be Christians that there to here Gods word from the bible
and also have to speak and understand Arabic in English languages. This rules that have applied
to organize the scout meeting have affected the setting, goals, key, instruments, and participants
of the event in whole.