Umpukan: A critical analysis of the spoken discourse of selected urban poor women in Manila, Philippines

• Main Author: Ardales, Alona Jumanquio
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2008
• Subjects: Urban poor—Philippines—Manila; Women—Philippines—Manila; Discourse analysis; Social and Cultural Anthropology
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/12578
• Institution: De La Salle University

The study used the CDA framework (Fairclough, 1995) in the analysis of spoken discourse of selected urban poor women in Manila, Philippines. The objectives of the research were: (a) description of the strategies used in opening, developing and closing a conversation including the language functions; (b) interpretation of the roles of participants as producer, co-worker and consumer; and (c) explanation of the relevance of topics discussed by urban poor women in the context of their situation, institution and society.The ethnographic-immersion method was utilized to gather data. It was participated in by 28 individuals, 20 of them were urban poor women and majority were mothers. The researchers immersed in the target community for almost a month and gathered seven (7) transcripts which were used as the basis for analysis.Based on the data, conversational strategies in opening the spoken discourse were asking about person's immediate concerns, social greetings, vocative technique and cracking jokes. In topic nomination, the strategies used were sharing one's feelings, asking information, giving commands, sharing of personal stories and telling news about their neighbor. The spoken discourse was developed by suing the strategies of repetition, sentence completion, verbal expressions and giving comments. It was discovered that leaving the group in silence was commonly used by the selected urban poor women in the Philippines in closing the spoken discourse. Language functions were also included in the analysis. Results showed that participant" language was mostly used in expressing ideas rather than sharing emotions and maintaining social rapport.The discourse identities of the participants were also identified. The three roles were the main speaker or the producer, the autonomous and controlled speaker or the co-workers and the passive receiver or the consumer (Langford, 1994). It was confirmed that age, position and wealth were used as instruments of power in order to manipulate and control the whole process of spoken discourse. The main speakers in this study were the oldest among the participants and the mother. Quantitative date showed that the main speakers used more words and performed more linguistics acts than the other participants. The main speakers' perspective and given information were considered by the group as their standard of truthfulness and correctness respectively. Furhermore, the controlled speaker produced linguistic acts which were merely "shadow" and "echoes" of the main speaker while the autonomous speaker was very participative in terms of initiative to nominate new topics and to give comments and reactions. Lastly, the passive receiver was a full-time listener due to her complete silence during the entire conversation. It was the teenage girl who was identified as a passive receiver.The topics discussed by the urban poor women in their umpukan (local term for informal face-to-face conversation) were not limited to their traditional role of reproduction and domestic duties. Most of the matters discussed were about their personal experiences in earning money for the family as sales vendor, wah lady and house helper. They also talked about the housing project of the local government , their neighbor who was killed and the legal case against them filed by a government agency. Thus, it served as clear indicators of cultural, economical and political problems of Filipino society.