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On the other hand, it signals that this assumption is not shared by everyone, espe-

cially if these individuals engage in what is assumed to be normal practice in their

cultural or situational contexts. This paper will address this and related issues of

opposition in Modern Greek discourse by investigating three different contexts:Tape-recorded conversations in Greek among (a) family members and (b) friends,

and tape-recorded classroom discourse in English among (c) Greek and Greek-

American students. It will use a qualitative analysis based on an interactional

sociolinguistic framework of discourse analysisin other words, the goal is to pro-

vide a better understanding of how negotiation of disagreement is accomplished

through some disagreement strategies. More specifically, it will address the following

questions:

What are some of the forms of opposition that Modern Greek speakers use?

Do different contexts shape these oppositional strategies differently? And if

so, what are the specific differences?

What is the meaning of opposition in Modern Greek discourse?

In Kakava (1993a), I proposed a continuum of different types of disagreements

ranging from strong to mitigated, using multi-levels of analysis. In this paper, I will

discuss strategies that fall in the middle of the continuum, what I refer to as strong

yet mitigated. I will demonstrate how context at the macro- and micro-level shapes

and reflects the various strategies found in the data, and then move to the second

objective, which is to argue that, in Modern Greek discourse, disagreement serves asa ritualized form of opposition. I will suggest that disagreement constitutes a social

practice that is pervasive and preferred because it is expected and allowed. In

other words, this paper echoes Schiffrins (1984) claim for the positive value of dis-

agreement in the East-European Jewish community, and aligns with other studies

such as Katriel (1986), and Kotthoff (1993), among others, which also report similar

positive evaluations of disagreement. The paper starts with working definitions of

various types of opposition (Section 2) and describes the theoretical framework used

(Section 3). It then discusses the notion of the dispreferred status of disagreement,

along with both cultural and contextual constraints that have been noted in the lit-

erature and some existing evidence of the status of disagreement in Modern Greek(Section 4). Next, it describes its data and methodology (Section 5). It then proceeds

to the description of some representative examples of strong yet mitigated disagree-

ment strategies (Section 6) and provides evidence for the preferred status of dis-

agreement in Modern Greek discourse (Section 7). Finally, it draws its conclusions

(Section 8).

2. Opposition

I use the term opposition to refer to an oppositional stance (verbal or non-verbal)issued to an antecedent verbal (or non-verbal) action (Kakava, 1993a: 36). Oppo-

sition can take different forms, from a mild disagreement to an aggravated form of

1538 C. Kakava / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 15371568

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verbal and/or non-verbal opposition (with gestures and/or physical violence). In

addition, silence can serve as a form of opposition, albeit through the absence of

speech. Disagreement falls under the general category of opposition, and involves

the negation of a stated or implied proposition; in other words, it will always occupythe second conversational turn of an adjacency pair (which provides some metho-

dological problems regarding the potential locus of disagreement in interaction, and

its quantification). I consider the exchange of more than two oppositional turns an

argument or dispute; that is, I define argument as the activity in which the partici-

pants engage when they exchange oppositional moves to challenge and/or offer

support for a position. This working definition is similar to Schiffrins (1987: 18),

which defines argument as discourse through which speakers support disputable

positions.

3. Theoretical framework

The analysis in this paper is informed by the theoretical framework of interac-

tional sociolinguistics (Tannen, 1989; Schiffrin, 1994), which views discourse as

interaction. It also marries two notions of context, what I refer to as macro- and

micro-levels of context. The macro-level furnishes information based on Hymes

(1972) components of SPEAKING (e.g., scene, situation, participants, etc.), while

the micro-level centers on the emergent nature of talk as framed by the participants

(Bateson, 1972; Goffman, 1981). This level is informed by the close examination ofthe sequential organization of talk and the way it leads to conversational inferencing

through contextualization cues (Gumperz, 1982). More specifically, it will furnish us

with information about the alignments we take up to ourselves and the others

present as expressed in the way we manage the production or reception of an utter-

ance (Goffman, 1981: 128), what is commonly referred to as footing. This will be

important in the analysis of examples, since a change in footing often signals a

change in the way a speaker positions himself or herself vis-a` -vis the interlocutor(s)

and what is being discussed. Changes in footing also, at times, indicate a change in

the overall frame (Goffman, 1974) or the definition of a situation (e.g., whether it is

friendly bantering or serious argument).Let us now examine both theoretical claims and empirical findings pertinent to

disagreement that inform the current study.

4. Disagreement as a dispreferred action

The notion of disagreement as a dispreferred action is based on the concept of

preference as evolved since Sacks (1973) introduced it. Sacks claimed that the pref-

erence for agreement should be seen as part of the structural organization of talk, as

a formal apparatus, instead of a matter of individual preferences (1973: 65). Inhis words, people may not like to disagree because they are supposed to not like to

disagree (1973: 69), not because they psychologically do not like to disagree.

C. Kakava / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 15371568 1539

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Sacks implied that it is societal expectations and not individual choice that govern

disagreement. To support his claim, he pointed out that when a question invites an

agreement, the agreement response will occur contiguously, whereas a disagree-

ment will be pushed rather deep into the turn that it occupies (1973: 58).Pomerantz (1975, 1984) introduced the term dispreferred-action turn shape to

refer to second assessments that display features such as silence or delays after an

assessment has been introduced. Building on the notion of preference, as introduced

by Sacks, she defines an action as dispreferred if it is not oriented to the talk as it

was invited. These dispreferred actions are structurally marked, displaying what

she calls dispreference features such as delays, requests for clarification, partial

repeats, and other repair initiators, and turn prefaces (1984: 70), a list that Levin-

son (1983) later expanded.

While some scholars working within the notion of preference do not openly admit

a direct connection between preference and a speakers motivations, others use the

structurally marked second turns to suggest a link between what speakers say and

their consideration for face (Brown and Levinson, 1987; Goffman, 1967), which is

congruent with the principles of politeness as delineated by Brown and Levinson

and by Leech (1983).

Goffmans (1967) analysis of face-to-face interaction was based on the assumption

that, in conversations, adults tend to avoid discord and pay deference to their

interlocutors face. A similar evaluation of contentiousness is found in the work of

Brown and Levinson (1987), who include the principles of Seek Agreement and

Avoid Disagreement as positive politeness strategies. Selecting safe topics that willnot raise disagreement or using token agreements are some of the means by which

these principles operate. Leech (1983: 132), moreover, includes an Agreement

Maxim in his Politeness Principle, according to which one needs to minimize

disagreement between self and other and maximize agreement between self

and other. Even though he proposes that his principles have more or less universal

power, he nevertheless admits that intercultural differences may be present and

the weighting of the principles may vary in different cultural, social, or linguistic

milieus.

Heritage (1984: 269) argues that the preferred format responses to requests,

offers, invitations and assessments, namely acceptance and agreement, are uni-formly affiliative actions which are supportive of social solidarity, while dispreferred

format responsesthat is, refusal and disagreementare largely destructive of

social solidarity. Taylor and Cameron (1987), echoing Heritage, make a similar

point. They argue that ethnomethodologists do not state the obvious, that a clear

connection exists between the dispreference format of a turn and considerations of

face, and as a result, a hiatus exists between the structure of an utterance and its

interactional interpretation. This hiatus, they suggest, needs to be filled.

As discussed, these previous studies argue that disagreement is a disaffiliative

action that threatens solidarity and therefore it displays a dispreferred turn format.

However, other studies have shown that, in some cultures, disagreement can beconsidered as a form of sociability that reflects solidarity, while others have pointed

to contextual parameters that may affect how disagreement is assessed.


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4.1. Cultural constraints

A positive attitude towards arguing, in private and in public domains, is reported

by the anthropologist Fox (1974) for the inhabitants of Roti island in eastern Indo-nesia, where he did his ethnographic fieldwork. However, he notes there are some

social constraints on the right to speak, such as class, gender, and age, since Rotinese

society is very hierarchical. Israelis are also reported to engage in confrontation and

express their disagreement directly. Exploring this type of forthrightness among

Israelis, Katriel (1986) takes an ethnographic approach and focuses on a speech style

called dugri (straight) talk among Sabra Israelis. She maintains that direct con-

frontation is a positive norm (see also Blum-Kulka and Olshtain, 1984). Dugri

speech style is characterized by particular speech elements that Katriel identifies as

directness, simplicity, and brevity. Intentions are expressed as clearly as possible,

with the use of simple, laconic types of utterances. Goffmans (1967) rule of con-

siderateness, Katriel claims, is not commensurate withdugrispeech. Her explanation

is that Sabra Israelis place more emphasis on true respectrather than considera-

tion (Katriel, 1986: 177). The speakers assumption is that a listener has the strength

and integrity required to take the speakers direct talk as sincere and natural.

In a similar vein but from a sociolinguistic perspective, Schiffrin (1984) focuses on

one form of confrontation, that of disagreement among American Jews of East

European descent. She finds linguistic evidence showing that disagreement is not an

action that threatens social interaction, but instead is a form of sociability. Building

on Simmels (1961) notion of sociability, she defines sociable argument as a speechactivity in which a polarizing form has a ratificatory meaning (Schiffrin, 1984: 331).

The features that she used to identify these kinds of arguments were the following:

sustained disagreement, participation framework of talk, and competition for inter-

actionally negotiable goods (1984: 316). Schiffrin found that the participants were

constantly nonaligned with each other, yet managed to maintain their intimate

relationships. This shows, she claims, the cultural relativity of a notion such as dis-

agreement. Blondheim et al. (2002, this issue) trace this pattern to a cultural pattern

developed almost two millennia ago.

In her study of conflict in Japanese conversations, Jones (1990) shows that the

commonly cited harmony in Japanese interactions is a myth, which, however, doesact as a constraint on the emotional expression of conflict in conversations. She

analyzed three different types of discourse: a television debate show, a casual con-

versation in a private home, and three teachers discussing job issues. She found that

the participants in all three conversations discussed controversial topics, used expli-

cit expressions of conflict, sustained their conflict by focusing on the issues, and very

rarely compromised. However, seldom did participants express anger, Jones notes,

and when the topic became too hot, participants either reframed it as play or chose

another topic. When the interaction was framed as play, the confrontation was

allowed to continue because then it was not seen as overt confrontation.

Kakava (1993a) and Kotthoff (1993) also provide counter-evidence to the view ofdisagreement as a dispreferred action. Kakava finds that, in casual conversations

among Greeks, disagreements do not often display dispreference markers, a finding


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that is echoed in Kotthoffs study on conversations among Chinese and German

speakers. Moreover, Kotthoff found that within the context of an argument, con-

cessions displayed the dispreference markers that Pomerantz had identified, once a

dissent-turn sequence was established. Thus, these two empirical studies confirmed aclaim that Bilmes (1988) had earlier made about the preferred status of disagree-

ment, especially within the context of an argument.

Let us now turn to some representative studies that have reported different types

of disagreement based on contextual parameters such as different situations, age,

gender, and interactive goals.

4.2. Contextual constraints

Several studies have examined specific contexts in which disagreements occur and

have reported findings that contradict Pomerantzs claims. In their study of judicial

discourse, Atkinson and Drew (1979) found that after accusations, the preferred

response is an unmitigated disagreement. This is consonant with Bayraktarog lus

(1992) finding in Turkish troubles talk. Bayraktarog lu reports that during troubles

talk, the weakness displayed by the disclosing party is met with disagreement to

repair the interactional equilibrium. Similarly, in psychotherapy groups, Krainer

(1988) posits that the expression of discord is expected, since disagreement, com-

plaints, and dissatisfactions should be discussed in the open. She found both strong

and mitigated challenges in her data. The strong challenges were intensified by pro-

sodic emphasis and other intonational features and included overt features of nega-tion, negative evaluative lexical items, etc. Pauses, requests for clarifications, and

discord particles such as wellmarked mitigated challenges.

Furthermore, Greatbatch (1992) argues that in the context of British television

news interviews, the notion of preference is suspended due to the positioning and

design of the turn allocation. Since the moderator controls the turn-taking, inter-

viewees never address each other directly, which, Greatbatch posits, allows unmiti-

gated disagreement to occur. Myers (1998), however, finds that participants in focus

groups issued unprefaced disagreement when disagreeing with the moderator, but

not when they disagreed directly with another participant, in part because the

moderator encouraged disagreement. Yet, in another public discoursethe televisednews showCrossfireScott (1998) reports that participants engaged in two types of

disagreements: backgrounded (lengthy, less explicit, calm disagreements) and fore-

grounded (direct), which ranged from collegial to openly hostile.

A range of disagreement and agreement strategies are reported in another study,

which addresses the concept of preference and the shape that oppositional turns

take, but in a different medium: computer-mediated communication. Baym (1996)

investigates agreement and disagreement patterns in a mostly female newsgroup.

The disagreement patterns she discovered matched those suggested by Pomerantz,

but some major differences emerged due to the medium, gender, context, and inter-

active goals: disagreements included quoting, were linked to previous discourse, andhad pervasive elaboration. Interestingly, accounts and justifications emerged with

agreements, and not just disagreements, as the notion of preference predicts.


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To summarize the main points of my discussion so far, I have presented claims

being made about the status of disagreement as a turn and as a social action. Dis-

agreement as a response to an assessment, within the framework of ethnometho-

dology (and later in conversation analysis), is viewed initially as a structurallydispreferred turn and action, and it emerges as a dispreferred or disaffiliative action

that may affect an individuals wants not to be liked. The underlying principle of the

framework is that, since disagreement is an act that creates conflict, it may not be

expressed, or when expressed, it is mitigated. I should note here that all theorists do

not share this view. Simmel (1955), for example, believes that the expression of

conflict is a means of avoiding major communication breakdowns which may

otherwise occur because of suppressed cases of conflict, to preserve superficial har-

mony. In addition, other scholars, without necessarily referring to the dispreferred

status of disagreement per se, have claimed that ones attitude towards disagreement

and its means may vary by age (Goodwin, 1983, 1990a, b; Goodwin et al., this

issue), by gender (Eckert, 1990; Makri-Tsilipakou, 1991; Sheldon, 1990; Tannen,

1990, 1994), and by other contextual parameters such as cultural norms (Johnstone,

1986, 1989; Kochman, 1981; Modan, 1994; Tannen, 1990, 1998), and situational

constraints (Brown, 1990; Kakava, 1994a, b; Song, 1993; Yaeger-Dror, this issue).

4.3. Disagreement and Modern Greek discourse

In a chapter of the book The analysis of subjective culture, Vassiliou et al. (1972)

report results from attitude questionnaires and interviews that they conductedamong Greeks and Americans regarding autostereotypes and heterostereotypes.

Certain heterostereotypes reported by each group seemed to vary according to the

amount of contact a person had with members of the other group. The Americans

considered the Greeks competitive, emotionally uncontrolled, and egotistic before

even having any contact with them. These conceptions seemed to be intensified when

they actually did have contact with them. However, they characterized Greeks as

witty and charming, a characterization that was also strengthened when actual

contact had taken place. In contrast, Greeks considered Americans to be competi-

tive and emotionally controlled but also systematic when they had no contact with

them; the negative stereotyping decreased in strength when they actually did havecontact. In addition, responses to questionnaires confirmed Greeks love for discus-

sions and arguments, when the Greek respondents showed extreme agreement with

statements such as I enjoy a good rousing argument and I like arguing with an

instructor or supervisor (Vassiliou et al., 1972: 323); this may have led to their

characterization as emotionally active and competitive.

Attitudinal studies are useful in offering some insights about peoples conceptions and

misconceptions, yet they are only self-reported generalizations about a group rather

than individuals. Nevertheless, anthropologists who have done ethnographic work

in Greece report a positive attitude towards engagement in argumentation, similar

to the ones reported by the Greeks in the questionnaires of the study by Vassiliou etal. Aschenbrenner, an anthropologist, who conducted fieldwork in a village in the

Peloponnesos, in southwestern Greece, observes (Aschenbrenner, 1986: 42):


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The nearly universal trait of free expression of emotion, opinion, and disagree-

ment lends village life a particular ethos, but it also sometimes threatens the

facade. Parents reinforce this trait in children and they consider it normal in

adults of both sexes. Not only do villagers freely vent feelings and opinionsthemselves, but also they delight in others doing so. They expect social inter-

action to often exceed relatively calm verbal exchange. One hears not only

chatter and idle gossip but also moments of keen debate, heated argument, and

occasional frenzied verbal duels (emphasis added).

Friedl, an anthropologist who did her fieldwork in a village in Boeotia (central

Greece), also reports that argumentative skills in discussions were highly valued, but

the aim of the discussion usually is not to arrive at a rationally based conclusion or

to exchange information, but to display skill at allusions, verbal quips and niceties

of expression (Friedl, 1962: 83). In addition, she reports that the Greek villagers

associated Greek ethnicity with the love of freedom in all spheres to the point of

unwillingness to take orders from anyone, or as the common saying represents it:

Twelve Greeks, thirteen Captains (Friedl, 1962: 106).

Anthropologists are not the only ones who have observed a positive attitude

towards forms of argumentation in Greek culture. Mackridge (1992: 114), a British

linguist who has written about Modern Greek, describes street arguments that seem

serious and turn out to be amicable conversations, and pigadaki, a knot of peo-

ple discussing issues of the day in a public place, during which they engage in

impassioned and agonistic public debate. His remark about foreigners being per-ceived as cold, haughty, and secretive because they refuse to engage in an argu-

ment and thereby fail to enter into expected relations of solidarity, is consonant

with Tannens remarks (in Tannen and Kakava, 1992: 23) about her interactions

with Greeks. Tannen reports that her effort to sound agreeable in conversations led

her to use markers of agreement which, however, often reaped a harvest of dis-

agreement.

Makri-Tsilipakou (1994) also shows how Greek women engage in the public

destruction of the face of their male spouses, partners, friends, or relatives to pro-

test their discontent with them through scorn, ridicule, or disapproval, which pro-

vides additional linguistic evidence to ethnographic claims about the freeexpression of emotion, opinion, and disagreement (Aschenbrenner, 1986: 42).

5. Data and methodology

This study bases its analysis on the examination of three types of discourse col-

lected by the author from three different contexts: family talk, conversation among

friends, and classroom discourse. The participants I will concentrate on in all types

of discourse belong to a Greek speech community. By Greek speech community, I

refer to a group of people who share, in various degrees, Greek communicativenorms for speaking either because they were born Greeks in Greece or they are

Greek-Americans and bilingual in Greek and English. This does not mean, of


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course, that the speakers do not belong to any other speech community that over-

laps with some other (Saville-Troike, 1982), or that a speech community may not be

included within superordinate ones. What I examine, then, are different parts of a

general Greek community that contains Greeks who have never been outsideGreece, Greeks who have been, and Greek-Americans who were born in the US

Although I use an external criterion to group the participants in the study, I inves-

tigate whether the mechanisms these participants employ to engage in opposition are

indeed similar.1

5.1. Family conversation

The family data consist of a 25-min-long segment of an after-dinner conversation

among my family, which took place in my home, in Greece. There are four family

members present: my mother, my father, my youngest sister Fonithen a 16-year-

old high school studentand myself.2 The dinner took place during my visit to

Greece for Christmas. Having been away for 4 months, I lacked information on

several issues brought up during the family conversation. However, I did engage in

several discussions with my family. Even though the participants were aware that

they were being tape-recorded, they did not know specifically the area in which I was

interested (at that time, neither did I) except that I had to tape-record our con-

versation for my homework. Because I used to tape-record my familys conversa-

tions, they felt accustomed to being tape-recorded. So the participants did not seem

to be affected by the presence of the Sony TCM-14 tape-recorder on the table. Once,though, my mother scolded my father for using a form of slang which she did not

consider appropriate. Interestingly, my father responded that since it was in Greek,

nobody would understand!

5.2. Friends conversation

The friends data come from a two and a half-hour long conversation among four

friends, one of whom is the author. This conversation was recorded during another

Christmas break 2 years later than the previous one. The participants are: Alkisa

24-year-old physical education student, GiorgosAlkis brothera 27-year-oldorthopedist, who was doing his residency at a hospital in Athens, and Petraa

1 Obviously the assumption taken here is in line with the community of practice model (Wenger, 1998;

Holmes and Meyerhoff, 1999). In this paper, however, I do not explore the implications of applying this

model, due to space limitations.2 Another issue that needs to be addressed is my role as participant and later on as analyst for this and

the second data set, talk among friends. As Tannen (1984) and Schiffrin (1984) also point out, there are

advantages and disadvantages to this dual role. However, whatever I lost in objectivity and possible bias,

I gained by being able to provide insights of the interaction that would not be otherwise available to a

conversation analyst. This is why I have chosen to refer to myself in the first person, as previous discourse

analysts have done, to indicate that the analysis represents my insights and of course my subjectivity. In

other work (Kakava, 1994b, 2000), I analyze extensively the extent to which my own ideology affected the

stances I took.


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21-year-old student of Greek literature. At that time, Petra and Alkis had been

going out for 3 years. I had known Giorgos and Alkis for almost 5 years, and Petra

for 3 years. However, I had a much closer relationship with Petra than with the

other two. We all lived in the same neighborhood and we had spent a lot of timetogether. The segment on which I am basing my analysis comes from the last hour of

our conversation, when all participants were present. I chose the last hour because it

had a balance of serious and non-serious talk, and because the participants seemed

much more comfortable being tape-recorded. In addition, the segment of serious

talk that I transcribed is an excellent sample of candid talk, because of the intensity

of the topics discussed and the participants involvement in them. As Labov (1972:

209210) found in formal interviews, an interviewer can divert attention from the

tape-recording by engaging his or her subjects in topics or questions that can create

strong emotions. In my case, the intensity of the topics, which arose spontaneously,

made the participants forget that they were being tape-recorded. For instance, one

of them once saw the recorder and, surprised, commented, This is still recording us.

5.3. Classroom discourse

The third type of data is from a corpus of 40 h of audio-taped classroom discourse

of an undergraduate course on the history of Southern Europe in an American

university. From the 40 recorded hours, I extracted and transcribed 2 h, which were

composed of different excerpts containing opposition.3 I chose this class because it

had students from different kinds of ethnic backgrounds, including Greeks, andbecause the class had a high degree of discussion as opposed to just lecture by the

professor. Obviously, this is a completely different type of discourse than the other

two. It takes place in a university class, a rather formal setting, in which most of the

discussions are regulated by the professor, who mostly controls the turns of talk and

the change of topics, thus making the participant structure (Philips, 1972) different

from the other two, and obviously, the language in these data is English.

I participated in class as an observer after I was granted permission by the pro-

fessor. The class sessions (held twice a week for an hour and a half) were a good

forum for the examination of opposition, since except for some lecture-type seg-

ments, students discussed assigned readings and expressed their often opposingviews with their fellow students and their male professor.

The class had 18 graduating seniors from different cultural backgrounds, includ-

ing Americans, Greeks, Italians, and Spanish, and most of them came from the

upper-middle class. There were two Greek students who were born in Greece, who I

refer to as Amalia and Minas; one who was Finnish-Greek, who I call Petros, born

in Greece but who spent most of his time overseas and attended an American high

school, and a Greek-American named Andy, whose parents were Greek, but who

3 My initial goal was to use this corpus for a study of academic discourse but I then decided to use

some of its data for an across-contexts study of opposition, struck by the similarities I observed with the

Modern Greek data I had already collected.


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was born in the US and was bilingual in Greek and English. All of the Greek

students and the student of Greek origin used to sit together on the same side of the

class with the Italian students. In fact, Minas and Petros were housemates with one

of the Italian students. At the end of the semester, I gave a small questionnaire to allstudents so that I could get information regarding their age, ethnic background,

religion, and parents socioeconomic status (see detailed information on data and

procedures in Kakava, 1993a).

The excerpts which I focused on include discussions about issues concerning Italy

and Greece, since these proved to be the most argumentative topics and had many

students participating in them. Nevertheless, when Greek political issues were dis-

cussed, the professor really had to prompt other students besides the Greek con-

tingent (as he referred to them) to participate. The Greeks seemed to know many

facts about the period of Greek history they were discussing (post-World War II),

which seemed to make many students reluctant to provide information and/or pre-

sent their opinions. The professor actually said at times that students shouldnt be

afraid of expressing their opinion about Greek political issues because there were

Greeks in class. In contrast, the Greek students were not shy in expressing their

opinion about any topic.

As one can infer from the description of the data, some common aspects exist in

the first two types of conversation (the talk is among familiar and intimate people,

the language spoken is Modern Greek). The third type of data differs in many

respects from the other two, as discussed above, and it also differs in its overall

focus. Unlike the first two, the primary goal of the conversations in the classroomdiscourse was exchanging information rather than being supportive. However, in

this context, certain topics generated supportive stances among the participants

(e.g., a group of students aligned with the professor against some students; a student

who had been supportive of a group of students formed an alliance with another,

and so on), which demonstrates that the alignments (Goffman, 1981) that partici-

pants took were emergent and not given and were contingent upon the topic dis-

cussed and how the participants decided to position themselves.

Despite the overall differences of the three contexts, the purpose of the study was

to examine how different speakers who share a common origin and language tend to

disagree in different circumstances. If one discovers similar patterns of argumenta-tion despite the different factors shaping each context, then one can present an

argument that the observed similarities can be indexical of the shared cultural com-

municative norms to which all of them had been exposed in various degrees.

6. Strong yet mitigated strategies

Although mitigated disagreements were discussed by Pomerantz (1975, 1984) in

terms of their structural markedness, Goodwin (1983) was the first to use para-

linguistic criteria in determining aggravated corrections and disagreements versusmitigated ones (see also Goodwin, 1990a, and Kuo, 1991 for Taiwanese discourse).

Goodwin demonstrated that children in her data used both aggravated corrections


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and disagreements in addition to mitigated ones, based on intonation contours, turn

shapes, and patterns of sequences of talk. In Kakava (1993a), I proposed a con-

tinuum of responses to an assessment ranging from enthusiastic agreement to strong

disagreement. I showed that, in contrast to the binarity found in earlier studies, theforce of an utterance varies along the dimension of mitigation and aggravation.

Based on the disagreement data analyzed, and following both linguistic and para-

linguistic criteria, I grouped the disagreement strategies as mitigated, strong yet

mitigated, and strong. In this paper, I will discuss some representative examples

from the three situations focusing on the strong yet mitigated strategies, which I

placed in the middle of the continuum (to various degrees). These strategies did not

have an aggravated type of disagreement or just explicit and strong disagreement

(e.g., You are wrong), nor were they produced in a mitigated manner either lin-

guistically or paralinguistically (e.g.,we need to look into this more carefully). In

addition, they often occurred at disagreement relevant points (Gruber, 1998:

481)in other words, participants issued them as latches or overlaps, rather than at

transition relevant places. Furthermore, these turns nested within an adversative

round (Kakava, 1993a)that is, the exchange of at least two consecutive exchanges

of oppositions in which the participants, rather than retreat, escalate their disagree-

ment. They were also found to initiate or conclude an adversative round. I will start

with some representative strategies that were found only in the family and friends

data and then provide some examples from strategies that were found in all three

contexts.

6.1. Friends and family conversations

6.1.1. Partial or total repetition marked by negative affect

This type of strategy on the surface level seems to be an agreement. (It involves

partial or total repetition4 of a prior utterance at the lexical and syntactic level.)

However, it functions as opposition because it is reframed as a disagreement with

the stated proposition through sarcasm (that indicates the presence of high affect).

The following example illustrates this kind of strategy from the friends data. Alkis

was presenting his priorities before he decides to get engaged. Petra repeats two of

his utterances with sarcasm, conveying her disagreement with his propositions. Allthe examples from Greek are presented first in transliteration, followed by a word-

by-word gloss, and then in translation.5 (For transcription conventions, see the

Appendix).

4 Tannen (1989) calls this allo-repetition, that is, the repetition of another speakers words.5 In Kakava (1993a), I discuss at length the advantages and disadvantages of transliteration vs. pho-

netic trascription when providing the text in its original orthography is not possible, as it was the case in

this paper. In brief, I decided to use transliteration because as Catford (1965: 70) puts it, Transcription is

a representation of phonological units:transliteration, however, gives a one-to-one representation of gra-

phological units, and consequently can represent precisely the. . .orthography, and preserve the visual

relatedness between forms, which a phonemic transcription tends to obscure.


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(1) 544 Alkis Vasika proexei to ptuxio

basically comes first the degree

545 Christina Nai, kala to ptuxio =yes well the degree

546 Alkis =O strato:s,

the army

547 kai eidomen.=

and see

> 548 Petra =Kai eidomen. [sarcastically]

and see

549 Christina Kai eidomen?

and see

> 550 Petra Ti tha pei o aderfo:s. [sarcastically]

what will say the brother

Translation

544 Alkis Basically, the degree comes first.

545 Christina Yes, all right about the degree=

546 Alkis =The a:rmy, [falling int.]

547 and well see.=

> 548 Petra =And well see.

[sarcastically]

549 Christina And well see?

> 550 Petra What the bro:ther will say. [sarcastically]

[falling int.]

Alkis lists his priorities, first the ptuxiodegree and then the stratosarmy, i.e., hisgraduation from college and his required 2-year military service, and on line 547, he

finishes with a noncommittal eidomen well see6 which is an expression commonly

used by Greeks who do not want to commit themselves when they refer to future

plans. Petra echoes his utterance (kai eidomen well see) with sarcasm, thus

6 Modern Greek had diglossia, which ended officially in 1976 (see Mackridge, 1985, and Frangoudaki,

1992, for discussion of diglossia in Greece). The high form was called katharevousa the purifying lan-

guage (Mackridge, 1985: 7), while the low was called dimotiki the peoples language (7). Occasional

katharevousa forms are still used today by speakers of Standard Modern Greek for various stylistic pur-

poses. In this example, the verb eidomen we see that Alkis uses is the katharevousa form of the verb oro

see, which is in sharp contrast with the overall dimotikilanguage that he uses (the equivalent dimotiki

form would have been vlepoume we see from the dimotikiverb vlepo see). His switch to a katharevousa

form may have resulted from his desire to sound serious about his priorities.


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reframing it into a move of opposition. Her disapprobation of Alkiss priorities and

his evasiveness regarding their relationship is further underscored when she con-

tinues Alkiss list adding the brothers opinion to it (line 550: what the bro:ther will

say). Note that her contribution aderfo:sbrother matches Alkiss prior word stra-to:s army (line 546) both morphologically (both end in the nominative singular

masculine suffix-os in Greek) and phonologically (both have the same gradually

falling intonation and the stressed vowel in the suffix is elongaged [o:s]). But it is

the sarcastic tone that indicates a challenging rather than supportive alignment.

In this case, Petra conveys her opposition indirectly by not openly challenging

Alkis.7

6.1.2. Aggravated questions with or without endearment terms

These are questions issued with high pitch and contrastive intonation, which

Goodwin (1983) calls aggravated correction (a participant repeats the element that

she or he does not agree with and corrects it herself or himself). In my data, these

questions were not always followed by the correction part. Another difference from

Goodwins examples was that these questions were at times accompanied by a miti-

gating device (either by a first name or an endearment term).

Tannen and Kakava (1992) explore the paradox of addressing someone by his or

her first name or figurative kinship term while disagreeing, and interpret it as an

expression of both power and solidarity (Tannen, 1986, 1990). Since a frame of

familiarity is invoked by either the use of a first name or an endearment term, the

interactional force of the otherwise strong disagreement is mitigated. Please notethat these types of address terms were issued without a sarcastic tone but rather with

soft volume and with pitch falling at midrange and staying high, rather than having

a sharp fall, which would have indicated aggravation. The following is an example

of a question indicating disagreement followed by the figurative kinship termpaidaki

moumy little child which is used by younger speakers to adults and vice versa and

it does not connote patronization although it may (if used with a sarcastic tone). The

suffix-akiis a diminutive marker in Greek which usually refers to something small

and which functions as a marker of solidarity and affection (Sifianou, 1992).8

After I told my family about a woman whom I had not seen for a year until we

met by chance on the street, my mother still could not remember who that womanwas, despite my fathers and my sisters prompting. My mother, still puzzled, seemed

to think that I was talking about Kiki, another friend of mine. I disagreed with my

mother and so did my father:

7 In Kakava (1994b), I demonstrate how this particular strategy was used by both females and males to

mark opposition.8 Daltas (1985) examined the use of diminutives and augmentatives (D/A) in Modern Greek and found

that the frequency of D/A decreases as the formality of the situation increases. He also found that females

used more diminutive and augmentative suffixes than males. However, he notes that the womens inter-

action was mostly with children, which could have had an effect on the greater number of diminutive and

augmentative suffixes observed. Overall, adults used more D/A suffixes when they addressed children.


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(2) 871 Mother Auti, auti i periptosi,

this this the case

872 oxi i- i Kiki?no the the Kik

873 Christina Oxi: =

No

874 Father =Oxi more, ti Kiki more?

No interj. the Kikinterj.

[high rise]

> 875 Christina Ti Kiki, paidaki mou?

the Kikchild my

[high rise] [pitch falling at midrange]

876 Milame gia-

we are talking for-

877 Auti pou eixe tis asfaleies. . .

this who had the insurances

Translation

871 Mother [Youre referring to] this, this situation,

872 not to Kiki?

873 Christina No: =

874 Father =No more9 what Kiki [are you talking about] more?

[high rise] > 875 Christina What Kiki [are you talking about], my little child?

[high rise] [pitch falling at midrange]

9 According to Andriotiss ([1983] 1988) etymological dictionary of Modern Greek, vre and re ulti-

mately come from the ancient Greek more meaning stupid. In Modern Greek, though, more has under-

gone semantic shift and it does have not this kind of connotation. Mackridge (1985: 56) refers to re or vre

as an unceremonious term of exclamation or address, used on its own or in front of a noun, adjective, or

pronoun. Holton et al. (1997) refer to all three of them as exclamatory words that are associated with

informal registers. They indicate familiarity if used among intimates but they are considered rude if used

to a stranger. Unfortunately no English equivalent exists, so the words are left untranslated. (No Greek or

Greek-American speaker consulted from the Modern Greek Studies Association listserve could come up

with an English equivalent and examples found in the above mentioned grammars omit the exclamations

in English.)


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876 Were talking about-

877 The woman who had the insurance company. . .

While I contest my mothers interpretation of the identity of the woman with the

contrastive oxi no, my father latches to my talk and responds to my mothers

question with the contrastive oxi no and the interjection more, which he accom-

panies with an elliptical wh-question. I then take a turn and address my mother,

marking my disagreement with the figurative kinship term paidaki mou my little

child. Thus, even though I disagree with her interpretation of the person I was

referring to, the endearment form which is issued with soft volume functions as the

contextualization cue that my challenging stance is mitigated.

6.2. Strategies found in all contexts

6.2.1. Initial disagreements followed by accounts

First, let me point out that although the same strategy was observed in all con-

texts, the classroom discourse favored this type of strategy more than the familiar

contexts, because of its participation structure and expectations about justifying

ones claims in the classroom context. However, what is notable about this strategy

is the choice the speaker makes to frame the upcoming talk as disagreement and

then proceed with accounts and other mitigating strategies rather than the reverse.

This was the strategy that only the Greek and the Greek-American students used inthe classroom discourse, unlike the rest of the class that followed an account-posi-

tion sequence (see Kakava, 1995 for a qualitative comparative/contrastive analysis

of these differences, as well as intra-speaker variation).10

The following example is a representative one of explicit disagreement followed by

accounts. The discussion was about two authors, Carlo Levi and Edward Banfield,

who had written books about Southern Italy. The professor had claimed that the

two authors were very similar in their portrait of Southern Italians, a claim which

Minas, a Greek student, disagreed with. (Due to its length47 intonation units, I

only include an excerpt of his turn).

(3) 470 Professor Minas (calling on Minas)

> 471 Minas I disagree. [staccato rhythm]

> 472 I agree that the- that they both-

473 they both have similarities,

10 I am not claiming here that it is not possible to find American students who will explicitly frame their talk

as disagreement before they provide accounts, or for that matter Greek students who may not do that. What I

simply report is my finding based on the data I collected in this American undergraduate classroom.


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474 and they both have similar ob-

475 actually they both have similar observations.

> 476 I disagree in how each one views

477 the effectiveness of a solution to the problem.

478 Or that- or something alleviating the problem.

. . . [lines omitted]

> 513 But the fact that he does not claim,

514 specifically, and Banfield does,

515 that- that any type of solution, any type of

investment,

516 or economic. . .effort,

517 to economically develop the south will be

doomed,

> 518 it might be their difference.

Minas explicitly frames his oncoming talk as disagreement: I disagree (line 471).

Notice, however, that he subsequently ratifies the professors argument, actually

they both have similar observations (line 475), but then he frames his ensuing talk

with another explicit form of disagreement, I disagree in how each one views the

effectiveness of a solution to the problem (lines 476477). Note that Minas indicates

his disagreement with the professor even before he justifies his point. For Minas,

explicitly framing what follows as a disagreement takes precedence over the reasonwhy it is a disagreement. Also, recall that Minas provides a point of dispute which

undermines the professors different position. However, towards the end of his turn

(line 518), Minas mitigates his observation with a hedge (the modal might), when

he acknowledges that his interpretation of the texts might be their difference.

What is also interesting to note here is that, in this case, for different reasons, Minas

aligns with Andy, the Greek-American, who had previously claimed that Banfield,

an American, did not represent the Italian case accurately and that he would not

have appreciated it if a foreign scholar did the same thing to his country.

6.2.2. Personal analogiesThese strategies involve personal deictic shifts or changes in the participation fra-

mework of talk (Goffman, 1981), since interlocutors change their alignment either


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with their talk or with their discussants and create a situation analogous to the one

under discussion. A personal analogy involves metaphorical shifts in both the local

and the temporal level, thus generating immediacy and involvement, which trans-

forms the stance to a strong one.11 Kakava (1994a) describes two patterns of per-sonal analogy observed: positioning an interlocutor in an analogical situation or

positioning oneself. Both types were found in the familiar contexts but only the lat-

ter was observed in the classroom discourse. An example of positioning the inter-

locutor in an analogical situation is found in the following excerpt from the friends

data. I was engaged in a dispute with Alkis about young Greek womens restrictions to

visit their boyfriends who are serving in the army unless they are engaged (the scenario

that Alkis and Petra would face if they did not get engaged). Since Alkis denies that

such restrictions still exist in Greece, I change footing and cast him in a similar scenario.

(4) 764 Christina Den mu les,

not me tell

> 765 ama itan i aderfi su afti,

if were the sister your this

766 Tha s arese afto, e?

will you like this interj. [sarcastically]

767 Alkis Dikeoma =tis, afto.right her this

768 Petra =A:, Den to [vlepo afto.

interj. not it [see this

769 Christina =A bravo.

Interj. bravo[sarcastically]

Translation

764 Christina Tell me this,

> 765 if she were your sister,

11 This finding (a tendency to personalize an argument) is in line with Tannens (1980) observations in

her study of Greek and American female participants comments on the pear film. (The pear film was a 16

mm color and sound film that was produced by a professional filmmaker, commissioned to provide the

data for a collaborative effort led by Wallace Chafe, to conduct research on Language and Experience).

Tannen found that Greek female participants personalized and philosophized, making value judgments

about the characters of a film rather than focusing on talking about the film as a film (65). Additionally,

when I presented my findings to an International Greek Conference held at Reading, UK (see written

version in Kakava, 1994a), Greek linguists in the audience not only agreed with me but they also provided

me with numerous anecdotes that supported my finding.


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766 youd have liked that, eh? [sarcastically]

767 Alkis (Its) her =right.

768 Petra =A:h, [I dont see that.

769 Christina =Ah, bravo. [sarcastically]

Instead of openly disagreeing with Alkiss assessment, I change the deictic center

and ask him to position himself in a similar situation (if she were your sister . . .).

The participant is driven into a different frame and he is asked to personalize the

point and to take the role of a brother whose sister is going out with someone. This

move tests the commitment of Alkis to his prior position that if Petra is not

engaged to him, it wont be a problem for her family to visit him in the army. The

ironic/sarcastic yes/no question on line 766 youd have liked that, eh forces Alkis to

either accept the proposition or reject it. Alkis avoids going on record whether he

would have liked it or not, and he opts instead to characterize the scenario as his

hypothetical sisters right to do what she wanted. Petras disagreement with his point

(line 768) and my ironic/sarcastic A bravo (line 769) indicate that none of us

believes that he is telling us the truth. The strategy is less direct than openly dis-

agreeing with someone but yet is strong enough, since it widens the base of an

argument and makes it more personal and harder to attack ones claim.12

Now that I have illustrated some representative examples of different strategiesused in the middle of the continuum, I will turn to discuss evidence of the preferred

status of disagreement in Greek discourse.

7. Preference for disagreement

In this section, I will show (1) that, in many cases, disagreement came as a first

response to an assessment and was not pushed further down the turn, nor was it

prefaced with dispreference markers as the preference for agreement theory predicts;

and (2) that disagreement was sustained but did not threaten the interpersonal rela-tionship of the participantsa characteristic feature of sociable arguments as

Schiffrin (1984) describes.

7.1. Unprefaced disagreement as a second turn

An example from the family conversation illustrates this type of disagreement. My

mother was describing to me how the appearance of an old acquaintance of the

family had changed since the last time she and my father met her.

12 In this case I am adopting a claim that Schiffrin (1990) made about how stories broaden the base of

support in the context of an argument.


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(5) 256 Mother Xalia, xalia exei ginei =

mess mess has become

257 Father =Exei paxinei,has put on weight

258 ap auti tin ennoia. =

from this the sense

> 259 Mother =A mpa, den exei

paxinei,

Interj. Interj.not has

put on weight

260 exei kati pragmata edo, kati. . .

has some things here some

261 Christina Den einai san tin Mairi Xronopoulou.

Not is like the Mairi Xronopoulou [a Greek actress

and singer]

262 All Laugh

Translation

256 Mother She looks awful, awful=

257 Father =She has put on weight,

258 in that sense. =

> 259 Mother =No way, she hasnt put

on weight,

260 she has some things

here, some. . .

[my mother illustrates through gestures of puffy

cheeks and a double chin]

261 Christina Shes not like Mary Xronopoulou. [a Greek actress

and singer].

262 All [Laugh]


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My mothers description of the woman as looking awful is altered when my father

explains to me what my mother really meant, by claiming that the woman has put

on weight (line 258). Note, though, that his alignment is rather supportive; he didnt

disagree with her assessment, but rather upgraded her assessment. My mother dis-agrees with his assessment in the form of a latch (line 259). Her disagreement is in

the form of contrastive repetition prefaced by an interjection A and the negative

interjection mpa no way that are stressed. My mother rejects my fathers assess-

ment without mitigating it. Instead, initially, she accentuates her disagreement (both

linguistically and paralinguistically) and, then, she explains what she really means.

What is interesting here is that from my mothers non-verbal description, I perceived

the woman as looking overweight (she used to be very thin), which prompts me to

refer to a Greek actress (line 261) who seemed to have had cosmetic surgery (we had

just seen that actress on TV the previous night).13 After everybody laughed, the

argument shifted to whether the actress indeed had cosmetic surgery or not.

7.2. Sustained disagreement

Although I have several examples that display sustained disagreement in my data

(in the friends data, in particular, several examples had 40 turns of consecutive

disagreement on different topics), I will discuss an example from the classroom dis-

course because one can posit that arguments in intimate settings that do not jeo-

pardize interpersonal relationships can be observed in other communities than

Greek.

14

I therefore turn to an example of sustained opposition between two Greekstudents from the classroom data that illustrates features observed in the intimate

conversations: Participants retain their position and keep firing arguments at each

other, sustaining their opposing stances over several adversative rounds. The

example also illustrates competition for interactionally negotiable goods (Schif-

frin, 1984), including the floor, in that there are competitive overlaps and latches.

Paralinguistic features such as accelerated tempo, high pitch, contrastive stress,

etc., serve as the contextualization cues for the argumentativeness of the exchan-

ges. The students were asked to evaluate Karamanlis, a former prominent Greek

political figure.15 Amalia claimed that Karamanlis had different political ideas

before he left Greece for his self-exile in Paris and after he came back to restoredemocracy in Greece in 1974. Minas disagrees with her claim, while the professor

13 This was not the only case where this kind of disagreement took place, although the participants

should have been in agreement. Similar disagreements emerged concerning locations of shops, directions

to streets, etc. In addition, the example cited here is in some ways similar to an example found in data

collected by Tannen in Greece and discussed in Tannen and Kakava (1992). In that example, although

Tannen agreed with a Greek female friends point, the woman framed her subsequent response as a dis-

agreement, prefacing it with the conjuction allabut.14 This is a point that was raised, justifiably so, by one of the anonymous reviewers, whom I thank.15 Karamanlis, a conservative politician, was the prime minister of Greece from 1956 to 1963, when he

was obliged to resign over mounting opposition led by a coalition of liberal and conservative forces.

Karamanlis exiled himself to Paris and came back after the fall of the junta (1974). He was elected prime

minister of Greece, leading his New Democracy party to power.


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sides with Amalia, disagreeing with Minas. The example is rather lengthy but I

provide it in its entirety so that features of sustained disagreement and lexical and

structural repetitions of the adversative rounds can be illustrated.

(6) 842 Amalia Like even if you speak to the

mostly leftist politician,

843 he would say that there is a

Karamanlis before,

844 uh, yes, whatever, when he left,

845 and after 74.

846 Theres a big.. split.

847 I dont know.

> 848 He really changed.

849 In the years that he was.. in Paris. =

850 Minas =I think its >

the same Karamanlis.

851 He just=went with a

852 Amalia =Yeah, so=

853 Minas =In fifty fi=ve

acc

> 854 Professor =Its the devious

Karamanlis.855 Students [laugh]

856 Minas He had to-

857 he had to play again,

858 he had to play the anticommunist game.

859 And he played it.

860 And thats why the Americans loved him,


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861 thats why Greece was able to rebuild in the sixties.

862 After- after 63, I mean, he saw where it was going.

863 After 67 he saw where it was going.

864 Karamanlis is for Karamanlis.

865 And uh and- and he knew what to do

866 to become what he became.

867 And hes a great statesman.

868 I mean, I wont argue about his morality,

869 cause its something different =but,

870 Students =[laugh]

871 Minas But I dont think that its different ideologies,

f

> 872 he didnt change.

873 He was alwaysthe =same.

> 874 Amalia =No, he=adapts.

875 Professor =Hes always an opportunist.

> 877 Minas He adapts,

f878 and he knows when to =move /?/ /?/

acc

879 Amalia =Hes in politics again,

880 can you believe it? [ironically]

881 He adapts=to make the cake.

acc

882 Minas =Hes the president of Greece now.

acc


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883 Professor [laughs]

884 All right. Last word before we start

885 u:h characterizing Mr. Karamanlis.

Amalia describes Karamanlis as someone who changed after he came back from his

exile (line 848) He really changed, adding the intensifier reallyto her assessment. In

line 850, Minas assesses Karamanlis differently: I think its the same Karamanlis.

Notice that his statement is accompanied by the beginning of an explanation.

However, it is anchored to a clause that contains the verb I think, a belief state-

ment (Chafe, 1986). According to Brown and Levinson (1987), I think acts as a

hedge that mitigates the force of an utterance. Schiffrin (1987), however, refers to it

as bracketing and argues that it can either intensify or mitigate a statement. I

consider the use of I think an intensifier here because the whole utterance is pro-

nounced with one breath, in one intonation contour, and there is stress on the I,

which gives the utterance a rather assertive tone.

It is important to note that the professor sides with Amalia on line 854, when he

describes Karamanlis as devious (Its the devious Karamanlis). His utterance has

structural and lexical repetition with Minass earlier utterance: (line 850) I think its

the same Karamanlis. So Minas finds himself in opposition not only to Amalia, but

also to the professor. Minas takes the turn and gives an account about the general

political situation in Greece during that period, defending Karamanliss politicalmoves and supporting his point of view. After his long account in lines 856869,

Minas returns to the disputable point, i.e., whether Karamanlis changed or not, and

he reiterates his disagreement with Amalias point: he didnt change (line 872). His

point is further underscored by the paraphrase of his position he was always the

same (line 873) that has focal stress on the intensifier always. Amalia issues a

competitive overlap disagreeing with his opinion marked with a contrastive no:

No, he adapts (line 874). Her disagreement is contrastive at the propositional and

structural level. Amalia insists on her earlier point that Karamanlis changes, while

she makes it even more general by shifting the tense to simple present. She seems to

convey the idea that, Not only did he change that time, but he adapts all the time.As we have seen, her disagreement was not followed by any accounts, nor was it

prefaced with any pauses or hesitations. The focal stress on the verb adapts renders

a challenging tone to her point.

Let us now examine the use of repetition to sustain disagreement. Despite the

structural cohesion that the use of repetition creates, polarity is retained, since par-

ticipants use repetition not to support each others point, but rather to anchor their

disagreement. The professor overlaps with Amalia and issues another negative

assessment of Karamanlis on line 875: Hes always an opportunist, that also shows

structural repetition and substitution with Minass previous utterance on line 873

(He was always the same), while Minas tries to regain the floor (see his competitiveoverlap on line 876). When he takes his turn, he seems to respond to Amalias

comment rather than to the professors, since he repeats her utterance. Minas uses


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repetition to anchor his counter-challenge, since he presents Karamanliss adapt-

ability as an advantage rather than a disadvantage (lines 877878): He adapts and

he knows when to move. For him, the adaptability of Karamanlis is a virtue, but

not for Amalia. Minas accepts that Karamanlis adapts (that could have been theend of their argument), but then, by evaluating his adaptability as a positive char-

acteristic, he remains in non-alignment with Amalia, who views it as negative.

Amalia overlaps with his talk, turns to the students and poses a rhetorical question

full of irony (can you believe it?) that functions as further support for Karamanliss

adaptability. She then issues a negative assessment of his adaptability that elabo-

rates on her previous position. Amalia portrays Karamanlis as someone who adapts

to make the cake (line 881).16 Thus the key notion adapt, even though it is issued

as an allo-repetition (for Minas) and self-repetition (for Amalia), weaves structural

and semantic coherence,17 yet it displays what R. Lakoff and Tannen (1984) call

pragmatic homonymy,18 since it calls for different interpretations based on who the

speaker is.

The Greek students in the above example engaged in adversative rounds, dis-

agreeing with prior assessments either in the form of competitive overlaps or latches,

using structural repetition to anchor their disagreement with a prior speakers

assessment. Their contest was not only reflected in their exchange of opposing pro-

positions, but also in their effort to be heard. Minass voice overlapped with Ama-

lias; Amalias overlapped with Minass. Neither of them, however, retreated when

she or he was overlapped, and both managed to convey their opposing messages by

either accelerating their tempo or raising their tone of voice. Even though the debateis conducted between Amalia and Minas, they seem to turn their debate into a per-

formance, both trying to outperform each other in front of their audience. For

example, note Amalias ironic rhetorical question addressing the class Hes in politics

again, can you believe it?. Their efforts may be seen as an attempt to outthink,

outtalk, and outstyle, to cite Kochman (1981: 24).

Political discussions very often generate disputes and heated discussions among

Greeks in both private and public settings similar to the one presented above. It is

no surprise that Amalia and Minas engage in a dispute over a political figure. What

is interesting, however, is that they were the only ones in the classroom to engage in

that type of dialogic debate in front of the whole class during the entire semester.We also saw some paralinguistic features such as accelerated tempo, high pitch,

contrastive stress, and quickness to respond to propositions with which the partici-

pants did not agree. As a result, these elements rendered the opposition rather intense.

Note, for example, that the professor laughs after the last exchange between Amalia

and Minas, as if he is amused (maybe even amazed) by their sustained opposition.

These representative examples illustrate not just the often unprefaced disagree-

ment found in my data but also its naturehow sustained it was. Despite the fact

16 Most likely, the use of make instead of get is a slip of the tongue.17 See Tannen (1989) for a discussion of the use of repetition in discourse.18 According to Lakoff and Tannen (1984: 330) pragmatic homonymy or ambiguity is the strategy in

which similar linguistic devices are used to achieve different ends.


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that the participants remain non-aligned over several turns, this did not jeopardize

their interpersonal relationship, which indicates that disagreement is expected and

allowed in Greek discourse and does not threaten the participants solidarity. Actu-

ally, when, at the end of the class, I said how interesting the class was, Minas saidwe just had a kouvendoula (little informal talk).

8. Conclusion

This study has presented examples, based on linguistic and paralinguistic criteria,

of opposition strategies found in the middle of the continuum that ranged from

aggravation to mitigation. It is important to note that all types of strategies were

found in the three contexts, but in this paper, I focused on the strong yet mitigated

ones and showed how they patterned across contexts and how they were used. The

three contexts shared some but not all of the strategies. The most striking differences

between the intimate contexts (family and friends) and the classroom discourse were

twofold: the intimate contexts in Greek displayed language-specific endearment

address terms and exclamatory particles that counter-acted the force of an aggra-

vated opposition;19 In addition, they included negative affect in the form of sarcasm

(less for the family and more for the friends conversations). Some of the similarities

were the foregrounding of disagreement followed by accounts or other mitigators,

and the personalization of the argument.

However, even the similarities observed had qualitative differences. For example,in the classroom discourse, disagreement followed by some kind of justification was

expected since the students had to buttress their points and counter-points with

accounts; for example, they could not say: Youre wrong without explaining why

they believed that to be the case. That was not required in the intimate contexts,

although participants either volunteered accounts or were asked to provide the rea-

sons they disagreed. Secondly, the participants in the classroom discourse mostly

developed lengthy, monologic types of arguments, as opposed to the polyphonic

ones found in the intimate conversations. (Schiffrin, 1985 defines these as rhetorical

and oppositional arguments respectively). Monologic types of argument were

rather rare in the intimate conversations, since the floor was more collaborative withmultiple contributions, and with rather short turns. At times, the collaborative floor

was suspended during stories told to support or challenge positions, but even then,

participants had to strive to maintain a single-voiced floor. As a result, we cannot

view the same strategy as operating in exactly the same way in the intimate con-

versations and classroom discourse. Even in the personalization of a situation, in the

classroom discourse, speakers personalized a situation to support their position (see

Kakava, 1994a). In contrast, in the intimate conversations, participants did not only

personalize a situation to support and/or defend a position, they also asked others

19 This finding actually correlates with Pavlidou (2001). Pavlidou studied non-compliance in a Greek

high school class. She reports that the nature of classroom interactions was characterized by minimal

politeness investment (130), mostly by the students, who issued unredressed face-threatening acts.


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to use personalization so that they could challenge their position (see example 4).

This difference corresponds to the type of arguments present in each context

(monologic vs. polyphonic respectively) and the dynamic nature of a polyphonic

floor.Moreover, a preference for disagreement was observed in all contexts studied;

most of the time disagreement was foregrounded rather than prefaced with dis-

preference markers or postponed. This finding is interesting because it contrasts with

Kotthoffs findings (1993); Kotthoff found that in similar situations among German

students, disagreement was prefaced with dispreference markers, but as the argu-

ment became more intense, disagreement was unprefaced. However, both Kotthoffs

and my findings support Bilmes (1988) claim that, in the context of an argument,

agreement is dispreferred.

The other characteristic of these disagreements was that they were more likely to

be sustained than carefully curtailed. In the intimate settings, disagreement was

sustained over the course of various topics, both serious and non-serious. In the

classroom discourse, it was hard to judge how sustained the disagreement was, since

the professor orchestrated the turns. However, as I have shown elsewhere (Kakava,

1993b), the Greek and the Greek-American students had the highest number of

turns, had some of the highest number of disagreement turns, and were the only

ones that engaged in several disagreement exchanges among themselves (see example

6 above) or with the professor for more than one turn (Only Minas and the Italians

had extended disagreement segments with the professor, and 89% of Minas dis-

agreement turns were actually with the professor!)Based on these findings and other scholars observations about Greek interac-

tional patterns, I want to suggest that, for the Greek participants in this study, and

probably for many other Greeks, disagreement is an interactional ritual that does

not necessarily threaten solidarity and is preferred.

This agonistic type of discourse represents an interactional practice in which

participants engage to match their wits, compete for ideas, yet do not necessarily

resolve their differences. While agreement can enhance solidarity and present

speakers as supportive and like-minded, in intimate contexts, Greek participants

were cooperative by agreeing to disagree. Compare them with the Canadian French

conversationalists who agree not to argue even in very intimate couples talk (Lafor-est, this issue), or with the speech analyzed by Muntigl and Turnbull (1998).

In the classroom discourse, I found a similar orientation to opposition by the

Greek-origin students. This context is more on the informative end of the con-

tinuum rather than the interactive (Biber and Finnegan, 1994) and one can argue

that being supportive is of secondary importance. However, supportive alignments

or stances were also present in this context: For example, in example 3, we saw how

Minas argued against the professors assessment of the Italian and American

authors who had written books about Italy and aligned with the Greek-American stu-

dent. The Greek and Italian students talking next aligned with Minas against the pro-

fessor, whereas the American students aligned with the professor (see Kakava, 1993b).In addition, the intimate context showed a greater variance in terms of the force of

disagreement within the category of strong yet mitigated strategies. For instance,


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participants in the intimate conversations appeared to be interested in maintaining a

supportive alignment through figurative kinship terms and first names to cushion

their opposition. Yet they also displayed negative affect in the form of sarcasm,

which has been considered an indirect means of expressing disagreement, although itis interactionally powerful, since it can hurt more (Tannen, 1986; see also Yaeger-

Dror, this issue, on the preferred interactive stance in intimate situations). On the

other hand, disagreements in the classroom discourse were for the most part rather

direct but collegial and not openly hostile.

Having discussed the most important contextual differences and similarities, I

should also point out that both inter- and intra-speaker variation was observed

(Kakava, 1995). This variation warrants further investigation. Although I have

argued for the positive value of opposition in Modern Greek discourse, I am not

suggesting that all Greek speakers will display similar tendencies or that real oppo-

sition never exists in the Greek cultural context. Instead, following Johnstones

(1989) argument for the correspondence between strategies, styles, and culture, I

suggest that Greek culture may predispose its people towards the open expression of

opposition. However, how people actually engage in this kind of practice does not

depend only on culture. We saw that, at times, disagreement was expressed more

openly, at times, it was not. This variance seemed to reflect both macro- and micro-

contextual parameters such as the specific participant structure as well as partici-

pants emergent alignments vis-a` -vis their talk and their interlocutors. It is hoped

that future research on additional situations at the informative end of the con-

tinuum, and on inter- and intra-speaker variation, will provide us with a muchbroader picture of how disagreement is negotiated in Modern Greek discourse, and

how this culture of discourse differs from that of other societies.

Acknowledgements

I want to acknowledge Deborah Tannens support of the original work (Kakava,

1993a) on which this study builds and elaborates on. I also want to thank the

anonymous reviewers for their comments and the editor of this issue, Malcah Yae-

ger-Dror, for her careful reading and suggestions. I also thank Paul Fallon for hiseditorial assistance. Any infelicities are my own responsibility.

Appendix. Transcription symbols (modified from Tannen, 1984)

The following transcription conventions apply:

a. Punctuation reflects intonation, not grammar.

b. =Equal sign shows latching (second voice begins without perceptible pause)

and overlap (two voices heard at the same time)c. >Arrow to the left highlights lines relevant to analysis

d. Arrow to the right indicates the speaker continues>


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e. [??] Indicates inaudible utterance

f. Underline indicates emphatic stress

g. Bold indicates very emphatic stress

h. Accindicates the speaker is acceleratingi. fforte (spoken loudly)

j. /words/ in slashes show uncertain transcription

k. : colon following a vowel indicates elongated vowel sound

l. [comments added for clarity]

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