topics in linguistics analysis supersedes other approaches to linguistics ... about the nature of...

Topics in Linguistics - Issue 1 - October 2007 – Politeness and Interaction

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TOPICS IN LINGUISTICS Issue 1 – October 2007

Politeness and Interaction

Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra Faculty of Arts


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Názov/Title TOPICS IN LINGUISTICS Politeness and Interaction Vydavateľ/Publisher Univerzita Konštantína Filozofa v Nitre Filozofická fakulta Štefánikova 67, 949 74 Nitra tel. + 421 37 77 54 209 fax. + 421 37 77 54 261 email [email protected] Adresa redakcie/Office Address Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Konštantína Filozofa v Nitre Dekanát FF UKF Štefánikova 67, 949 74 Nitra Tel.: +421 37 7754 201 Fax: +421 37 6512 570 E-mail: [email protected] Šéfredaktor/Editor in Chief Doc. PhDr. Gabriela Miššíková, PhD. Redakčná rada/Board of Reviewers Prof. Richard Repka, CSc. (SR) Prof. Ales Svoboda, CSc. (CR) Prof. Mark Lencho (USA) Redakčná úprava /Editor Mgr. Martin Mačura Názov a sídlo tlačiarne/Printing House Vydavateľstvo Michala Vaška, Kráľovnej pokoja 3, 080 01 Prešov Náklad/Copies 100 Počet strán/Pages 87 ISSN: 3836/2007 (c) 2007 Univerzita Konštantína Filozofa v Nitre Filozofická fakulta


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Table of Contents H.G. Widdowson Text and Real Language..................................................................................................................................4 Mark W. Lencho (Im)politeness in an American and Slovak Context: Constructing Identities and Calibrating to them in the Course of Simple Conversations...........................................................................................8 Piotr Cap Proximization: A Methodological Account of Legitimization Strategies in the Post-9/11 US Political Discourse...........................................................................................................................................13 Martin Adam The Dynamic-Semantic Scales within the Framework of Functional Sentence Perspective.....18 Magdaléna Bilá Structural and Cohesive Devices in Business Letters...........................................................................23 Jan Comorek E-mail: A Bridge between Written and Spoken Mode & Strategy of Beginnings..........................26 Olga Dontcheva-Navratilova Some Aspects of Politeness in Public Speaking.....................................................................................30 Milan Ferenčík Politeness Aspects of Question-Answer Sequences in Mediated Talk-in-Interaction (Radio Phone-ins).........................................................................................................................................................36 Christoph Haase Subjectivity and Vagueness in Academic Texts: Scientific vs. Popular-Scientific English..........45 Adriana Halušková Some Pragmatic Aspects of the Process of Communication and their Relevance to Language Pedagogy..........................................................................................................................................................53 Juraj Horváth Pre 9/11 Inaugural Address of President George W. Bush: Critical Discourse Analysis............58 Petra Jesenská EUROSPEAK and ELF – English as a Current Global Lingua Franca..................................................62 Monika Gyuró, László I. Komlósi The Janus-face of Politeness: Hidden Strategies Revealed in Problem Interviews in Health Communication..............................................................................................................................................68 Gabriela Miššíková Maxim Hedges in Political Discourse: A Contrastive Perspective.....................................................76 Renata Povolná Some Means of Politeness in English Face-to-face Conversation.....................................................80 Reviews 85


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Text and Real Language

H.G. Widdowson University of Vienna, Austria Introduction Developments in corpus linguistics over recent years have resulted in a shift of emphasis in language study from the abstract representation of knowledge of the code, what Hymes refers to as the ‘possible’, to

descriptions of attested language behaviour, the texts that users have actually produced, what Hymes refers to as the ‘performed’. Claims have been made that such text analysis supersedes other approaches to linguistics in that it captures the facts of language as it really is. How far are such claims valid? A consideration of this question raises a number of problematic issues about the nature of text and its relationship with discourse, and generally with how far any linguistic analysis can account for the reality of language as it is actually experienced by its users. Text, context, discourse, real language, communicative competence, corpus analysis. The theme of this conference, as indicated in its title, is ‘Politeness and Interaction’. These terms refer to the discourse that is enacted in the use of language, and discourse, as Labov points out (Labov 1969 54-5), is a matter of saying something in order to do something, of producing a linguistic expression to achieve some kind of social action. But the relationship between what is said and what is done is far from straightforward, of course. What I should like to do in my contribution is to consider this relationship in general terms.1 What is said, either in speech or writing, takes the form of text. So what is the nature of text, and how far does it correspond with the experience of language of its users? It is widely claimed that the analysis of text in corpus linguistics represents real language as distinct from formal model of linguistic description which dealt only with abstractions like sentences in isolation which are remote from the reality of language as it is actually used. How valid is this claim? What, then, is text? The term is frequently used in free variation with the term discourse – both, it is said, refer to language in use. Here is a definition from the Oxford International Encylopedia of Linguistics: The term 'discourse' is used in somewhat different ways by different scholars, but underlying the differences is a common concern for language beyond the boundaries of isolated sentences. The term TEXT is used in similar ways. Both terms may refer to a unit of language larger than the sentence: one may speak of a 'discourse' or a 'text'.

(Chafe 1992: 356, 2003 439-410)2

1 A more detailed discussion of the points I make here about the nature of text and discourse is to be found in Widdowson 2004, and a more general and simple account in Widdowson 2007. 2 The second date applies to a revised edition of the encyclopedia. The Chafe entry, however, remains unchanged.

Text, or equivalently discourse, refers to units of language larger than the sentence i.e. units of the same formal kind as the sentence but bigger. Whenever you get bits of language bigger than a sentence ‘one may speak of a ‘discourse’ or a ‘text’’. Well of course you can, but is it valid so to speak? One might note that there are uses of language, self-contained texts, that take the form of single sentences: Beware of the dog. Trespassers will be prosecuted. Keep off the grass. Or sentence constituents: noun phrases like Guard Dogs. Wet Paint. One Way, Silence, Toilets. Adjectives like Private, Open, Closed. Etc. On the Chafe definition these are not texts. But what else can they be? Although we can describe them formally as grammatical units, that is not how they are experienced by users. We do not decode them semantically as constituents, we recognise that they are intended to communicate a message and interpret them pragmatically by referring them to a context of one kind or another. We do not ponder on the semantics of Wet Paint as a noun phrase to establish what it denotes: we consider what it might refer to and what its intended purpose is as a notice, drawing on our knowledge of how meanings of this kind are conventionally signalled. In other words, we derive a discourse from the text. And this is the case for all texts – not just these minimal ones. Texts are not extensions above or beyond the sentence – they are not units of linguistic form at all, but units of language use. And as such they are of their nature contextually dependent and so pragmatically incomplete. They provide clues, indications of the intended discourse the text producer had in mind – directions for engaging the appropriate features of context So for me, text and discourse are distinct, but interdependent, phenomena. Discourse is the message, what the first person text producer, P1 for short, intended to mean and the text is its conveyance, the linguistic means used by P1 to get the message across to P2. P2 then interprets the text as discourse by keying it into some context or other. In this view, it makes no sense to ask what a text means, but only what P1 means by the text, or what the text means to the P2. And the context that P2 invokes in interpretation may well be different in certain respects from the context presupposed by P1 in composing the text. The discourse derived from a text by interpretation only partially corresponds with the discourse that P1 intended to textualize. An illustration –The P1 text producer in this case is the novelist Doris Lessing. In a preface to a reprint of her novel The Golden Notebook she wrote as follows: Ten years after I wrote it I can get, in one week, three letters about it….One letter is entirely about the sex war, about man’s inhumanity to woman, and woman’s inhumanity to man, and the writer has produced pages and pages all about nothing else, for she – but not always a she – can’t see anything else in the book. The second is about politics, probably from an old Red like myself, and he or she writes many pages about politics, and never mentions any other theme. These two letters used, when the book was, as it were, young, to be the most common.


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The third letter, once rare but now catching up on the others, is written by a man or woman who can see nothing in it but the theme of mental illness. But it is the same book. And naturally these incidents bring up again questions of what people see when they read a book, and why one person sees one pattern and nothing at all of another pattern, how how odd it is to have, as author, such a clear picture of a book, that is seen so differently by its readers.

(Lessing : 1972: xix-xx) It is the same book. It is the same text. But readers derive different discourses from it by relating it to the contexts of their own customary ways of thinking, their own values and beliefs, and these do not correspond with those presupposed by Doris Lessing in producing her text. So it is not surprising that readers read something into the book that Lessing did not intend in writing it. What is surprising is that she should be surprised. For this lack of correspondence is particularly evident in literature – Readers may agree about what a novel, or a poem, is about at the superficial level of plot, may differ widely in their assignment of significance – what the novel or poem means to them, how they realize, or make real, the text for themselves. But this lack of correspondence, this disparity of realities, is evident in all communication and not only literature. Intended meaning can only be partially textualized, and P1 will always make assumptions about a shared contextual reality that needs only to be indicated and not made textually explicit. Although a text can be called genuine in the sense that it is actually attested as having been produced, it can only be made real if it is realized as discourse. Consider another example – a genuine text from a British periodical. We fashionable people began to see them differently in, oh, the early 1990s: those postwar pre.1980s buildings, mostly mid-century modernism –curtain walls, shuttered concrete, all that. We began thinking about the joy of stressed horizontal, with the steel beams blocked up ever so smartly in plasterboard, or the recurrent pleasure of a bit of 1950s mosaic. (New Statesman 30.6.03) To realize the significance of this text, to make it real as discourse, you need to know what P1 is referring to, in other words you need to be able to refer the language to some text-external context or state of affairs. But not only that, you have to ratify the assumptions about shared values – you have to be able to adopt the role that P1 has assigned to you as readers- the role of somebody in the know, and sympathetic to the attitudes expressed. You may know the semantic signification of the words, but not be able to realize their pragmatic significance. If you cannot assume the role of the intended reader, the text is not real for you. It is likely to be baffling . Language use is only real to its users as discourse. Text has no independent reality for language users. They never just produce text, and never just process it as such, but only as motivated by a discourse purpose. This means that if you detach text from its contextual connections, you are bound to misrepresent its function and indeed make it unreal. But this is precisely what corpus linguistics does. According to one applied linguist: The language of the corpus is, above all, real.

(McCarthy 2001: 128) On the contrary, I would argue, the language of the corpus is above all unreal. Formal linguists have been criticised because they deal with isolated sentences, abstractions from the actuality of language use. But corpus linguists in isolating the text from its contextual

dependencies also presents an abstraction from the actuality of language use. This is not to criticise the kind of textual analysis that has been carried out so extensively in corpus linguistics over recent year. It has revealed textual facts of great interest – patterns of usage that prompt a reconsideration of the relationship between grammar and lexis, and have considerable implications, therefore, for linguistic theory. But it is text that is being analysed, not discourse. How the particular textual patterns key in with contexts in the achievement of pragmatic meaning, what their discourse significance might be, is not revealed – indeed cannot be revealed by such analysis. And this is acknowledged by Douglas Biber and his colleagues in their introduction to their corpus based grammar of spoken and written English: Under natural circumstances, texts occur and are understood in their discourse settings, which comprise all of the linguistic, situational, social, psychological, and pragmatic factors that influence the interpretation of any instance of language use.

(Biber et al. 1999: 4) A corpus cannot, of course, replicate these natural conditions, they cannot account for what Biber et al refer to as discourse settings, that is to say contexts, as Biber et al readily recognize, and so they cannot capture the reality of language use. And yet claims are made that the language of the corpus is above all real. Whereas with Biber et al there is a clear disclaimer that context is left out of account. Elsewhere there is certain equivocation about the notion of context. John Sinclair3, for example, has proposed a number of precepts for language teachers, the first of which is: Present real examples only. Real examples of what? This would seem to be clarified by the second precept: Inspect contexts. So the proposal seems to be that teachers should discover real examples by inspecting contexts. But since a corpus analysis provides no contexts to inspect, it cannot by definition provide real examples. But it turns out that Sinclair does not mean contexts. He goes on: Strictly speaking, I should write ‘inspect co-texts’, because ‘context’ often has a wider meaning than the surrounding text … I would advocate a much closer inspection of the verbal environment of a word or phrase than is usual in language teaching. A great deal is to be learned from this exercise.

(Sinclair 1997: 34) As we have seen, the term ‘context’ does indeed have a wider meaning – it concerns the external discourse settings that Biber et al refer to and you cannot inspect contexts in corpus data because they are not there to inspect. What you can inspect is the internal co-textual relations that words contract with other words, and no doubt you will learn a great deal from such an exercise, but what you will learn about is text, not discourse. The examples you find, therefore, will only be real in this very limited sense (For further discussion of the pedagogic relevance of corpus findings see Widdowson 2003). But perhaps we should anyway only talk of things being real in a limited sense. Reality, we can argue, is relative, and it would be better to talk about whether and to what degree, an instance of language is real. And here

3 Just before the Nitra seminar, I heard of the death of John Sinclair and I should like to put on record here much I admired him. We had our differences of opinion but this does not at all prevent me from recognizing his immense and innovative contribution to linguistics.


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we can relate our discussion to Dell Hymes’ well-known formulation of communicative competence. Hymes pointed out, as others have done, that competence as formal linguists have defined it, notably, of course, Chomsky, as a knowledge of the sentences of a language, is narrowly conceived, based on a very reductive abstraction from the reality of language as it is experienced by its users. This is, of course, one kind of knowledge that is brought to bear in using language. Given a particular instance of English, for example, somebody competent in the language will recognise Whether (and to what degree) it is formally possible that is to say, the extent to which it corresponds with a well-formed sentence and generally how far it is possible in the sense of being in conformity with the established encoding conventions of the language. So if I were to come out with the expression ‘I in English competent am’ or ‘English in am competent I’ you would recognize that I am not actually competent in the language. I may be saying something that in some way is in English – it is not after all in German, or Slovak or Chinese or any other language. But it is not English – not proper English , not really English . So how can something be in English without being English? What is formally possible in a language relates to all levels of encoding, and not only to grammar. Thus the phonological rules of a language will determine which sounds and which combinations are recognised as possible and which are not. So if I were to invent a word – clide, for example, it is a word in English. Although not ( currently at least) a real lexical item as attested by a dictionary, it is nevertheless real in that it conforms to the phonological rules of English in just the same way as, for example, glide and cline, which are lexically real English words. Similarly, at the morphological level, there are constraints on word formation, so that words like ‘lesscare’or ‘easyun’, though they are in English and so perfectly possible phonologically, they are (unlike ‘careless’ and ‘uneasy’) morphologically impossible. Again, it is easy to think of words which are real in that they impeccably well formed at the phonological and morphological levels, but which are lexically impossible – like ‘beautiless’ ( as distinct from ‘beautiful’) or ‘unsad’ (as distinct from ‘unhappy’). And of course, a sentence can be grammatically possible even if its constituents consist of impossible lexical items, as is regularly illustrated by the citing of nonsense verse like: Twas brillig and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.

These are real English sentences – and are often used to demonstrate this reality – and the constituent words are real in the sense that they are phonologically and morphologically well formed, even though they are not real lexical items in English. So we can assign degrees of reality to the formal properties of the possible. And we do the same with the other dimensions of communicative competence that Hymes proposes:

1. Whether (and to what degree) something is feasible in virtue of the means of implementation available;

2. Whether (and to what degree) something is appropriate (adequate, happy, successful) in relation to the context in which it used and evaluated;

3. Whether (and to what degree) something is in fact done, actually performed, and what its doing entails.

But we need to note that although we can make judgements about the degree to which a particular instance of language is feasible, appropriate, actually performed, to do so is to adopt an essentially analytic perspective, and this, of course, is precisely what linguists do. But it is not what language users do. They do not experience language in four separate ways, but as the function of the relationship between them, of how these factors of the possible, the feasible, the appropriate and the actually performed interact with each other to achieve a communicative purpose. Reality for them does not inhere in any one of these factors, nor indeed in all of them taken in isolation. Now if you focus on the first factor, the possible, your units of analysis will be such things as sentences. If you focus on the third factor, the contextually appropriate, your units of analysis might be such things as speech acts. If you focus on the fourth factor, the actually performed or attested, your units of analysis will be texts. My point is that there is no reason for saying that any unit is more real than another – identifying the relative frequency of textual features is no more real than identifying the relative well-formedness of sentences. Corpus linguistics makes a fascinating and highly significant contribution to linguistic description. But it is very misleading to claim that its description of text uniquely captures the reality of language as experienced by its users.


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Bibliography and references Chafe, W. 1992/2003. Discourse: Overview. In Bright, W. (ed 1992), Frawley, W.(ed 2003) International encyclopedia of linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press. Hymes,D.H 1972 ‘On communicative competence.’ In Pride, J & J. Holmes (eds)1972 Sociolinguistics: Selected Readings. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. 269-293 Labov, W. 1969. The Study of Non-standard English. Champaign, Ill.: National Council of Teachers of English. McCarthy, M. 2001. Issues in Applied Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sinclair, J.M. 1997. ‘Corpus evidence in language description.’ In Wichmann, A., S.Fligelstone T.McEnery, & G.Knowles (eds) Teaching and Language Corpora. London: Longman.27-39 Widdowson, H.G. 2003. Defining issues in English language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press Widdowson, H.G. 2004. Text, context, pretext. Critical issues in discourse analysis. Oxford: Blackwell Widdowson, H.G. 2007. Discourse Analysis. (In the series: Oxford Introductions to Language Study). Oxford: Oxford University Press.


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(Im)politeness in an American and Slovak Context: Constructing Identities and Calibrating to them in the Course of Simple Conversations Mark W. Lencho University of Wisconsin - Whitewater, USA 1. Introduction The process of ordering a sandwich at Subway®, America’s largest franchise of any type, can reveal the amount of contextual

knowledge that is needed even in conversations intended to accomplish rather simple things. There are some aspects of this discourse situation that make it especially felicitous for investigations into politeness and interaction. “Politeness” is not only something that we all consider from time to time, as one of the most fundamental aspects of human social interaction, it is also a term that has been subjected to a great deal of debate in specialist circles. Despite the problematic nature of attempts to define the term, there are some points of general agreement: politeness, whatever it is, involves us in thinking about how we come across to others. There is an element of planning, of premeditated activity. The huge volume of sandwiches processed on a daily basis by the Subway® franchise depends on thousands of repeat customers. Repetitive operations lend themselves to planned activity, both on the customer’s and server’s part. Thoroughly planned activities promise to reveal much about how we construct discourse: how we arrange language to reveal our values, build our identity and cast our relationship with others, how we invest discourse with significance, and how we interconnect it with the rest of our social life. 2. Ordering food in a US Context Much in the American cultural landscape gives evidence to the overarching importance of speed and efficiency as a value cherished by Americans: the mega malls, hypermarkets, electronic commerce, all-night convenience stores, fast food and auto services all conspire to reveal the importance of convenience and efficiency in the US. As an intensively planned interaction in a culture of efficiency, the Subway® experience is nearly an ideal situation to see how efficiency is manifested in interaction and discourse. Entering Subway® around the noon hour usually means queuing into a moderately long, but quickly moving line that extends from inside the entrance up to and then along a display case showing the various meats and vegetables that customers can choose from to include on their sandwiches. A group of three or four employees are generally working behind the counter, providing services ranging from operating the bread ovens and microwaves to preparing the vegetables, cheese, and condiments, to running the cash register. Approaching the counter, you are greeted with the invitation to place your order... A1) They: Next? This is an overt request to take a turn; though note that this is an indirect request, a shortened form of “Who is next”? It actually questions a preparatory condition on the request “Tell me (the appropriate part of) your order!” Though it is nearly inconceivable to imagine a more concise prompt, the amount of indirection attests to a certain degree of polite or at least politic behavior.

A2) Me: Small veggie please, on wheat with a thin line a mayo My response, first of all, recognizes the invitation to take a turn, and also the expectations on the content of my turn. I know that I am to begin my sandwich order. My knowledge of the larger world of discourse is such that I understand that the preparation process involves three steps: preparing the bread, folding in solid matter, and then spicing the stuffed bread with sauces and powders. I also know that the ordering process is typically allocated among three employees, one involved in bread preparation, one responsible for the sandwich contents, and one responsible for accompanying sides and drinks, packaging the meal, and charging the customer. Recognizing the sequential constraints on the situation, I confine my first remarks to instructions relevant to bread preparation. From the range of possibilities in this domain, I must specify whether I want a 6 or 12 inch piece of bread, the type of bread, and the type of condiment to put on the bread. Certain hot meat choices preclude the selection of a condiment, so the server will also want me to identify the type of sandwich I intend to have, even though he will not be responsible for the sandwich ingredients. I specify a “thin line” of mayonnaise, rather than the more subjective “a little,” because I can be quite precise about my instructions, knowing that the mayonnaise is dispensed out of a squeeze tube that dispenses the condiment through a narrow opening at the end of a conical top. The precise instruction here, I have learned, works better than the more vague instruction, which will usually prompt an additional exchange, in which the server will want to know if the customer approves of the amount of condiment. B1) They: Cheese? This turn signifies that the first stage of the meal preparation has been completed, and that the server is ready for me to provide further instructions. The concision of the server’s request nicely accomplishes two queries simultaneously, which could be more directly phrased as follows: (i) Tell us whether you want cheese on your sandwich; and (ii) if you do, then tell us what kind of cheese to put on your sandwich. Again, the question format disguises the fact that the server’s intention is to make a request, most directly communicated in the imperative form. B2) Me: White American. Cheeses offered range from yellow and white American, to provolone, to cheddar. If I make the mistake of indicating only white cheese, then the server would have to ask me to choose between provolone and American, both of which are white. My effort to supply all and only the information necessary (i.e. abide by the Gricean Maxim of Quantity) presupposes that I know the entire world of relevant information from which the sandwiches are built. C1) They: Veggies? This turn indicates that the server is ready for me to provide instructions regarding the main ingredients of my sandwich. As in the prior turns, the prompt is as short as possible and yet continues to be indirect. Hence, it is a request (Tell me the ingredients to put on


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the bread) expressed in the form of a question (Would you like veggies?) shortened to eliminate all the procedural and functional elements from the question, presumably because they can be inferred from the context, given some familiarity with the situation. C2) Me: Everything except the hot and banana peppers, and easy on the pickles and olives. My response gets me tomatoes, lettuce, onions, green peppers, pickles, black olives, and, depending on the store, spinach and carrots. By itemizing what to avoid rather than what to include, I keep the message shorter. Christopher Haase (personal communication) has indicated that the human cognitive processing mechanism can handle efficiently strings of up to 21 words, suggesting that there are cognitive as well as social dimensions to negotiate in the quest of maximum efficiency. Without consciously knowing this number, I can learn it inductively through the experience of trial and error, always with the intention of building the most information into the instruction as possible without overtaxing the server in such a way that he would have to ask me to repeat part of the order.... and, in this spirit, pre-emptorily I continue with... D1) Me: And just a dash of oil and vinegar...and salt and pepper. That’s it.... These instructions anticipate the transition into the final stage of the sandwich-building process: spicing the ingredients. If I can gauge it just right, I can offer this instruction without waiting to be prompted, exposing the fact that a maximally efficient interaction is one in which prompting is unnecessary, because the information flows organically given the constraints on the discourse event, knowledge of which all participants continue to hone as they grow increasingly familiar with all aspects of the event. My turn-closing remark, “that’s it” is necessary to avoid discussion of additional spicing options, such as oregano and other Italian spices. E1) They: Meal deal? Subway® bundles services and food selection into a number of different promotions. My order overlaps with a “Meal Deal” in that both involve small sandwiches. The promotion includes extras like chips and a medium-sized soft drink, which purchased all together (as a “Meal Deal”) is slightly cheaper than purchasing each item separately. Since customers are responsible for their own chip and drink selection (this is self-serve and to the side of the service counter), the servers prompt fulfills three important functions: (i) it provides some advice to the bargain hunting customer about how to get the most goods for the money, (ii) it prods the customer to maximize his purchase, and thus sweeten the store profit on the transaction, and (iii) it signifies that the sandwich building part of the transaction is over. F1) Me: Chips and just water from the fountain, thank you. I only broach the topic of chips at this stage of the order, because I know from prior experience that I am responsible for selecting my own chips, and so the appropriate time to bring this up is after the server has prepared the part of meal that the server is responsible for, but before the server rings up my bill. “Water from the fountain” signifies that I do not want bottled water, so the server will respond by giving me a plastic cup to fill on my own. The downtoner “just” serves to indicate that my order falls short of a Meal Deal. Since the water is free of charge, I convey that I wish to be charged for the items separately. I will not be getting the highest percentage of product for payment that is conceivable, but my bill will be slightly less than if I pay for a Meal Deal. “Thank you” serves to indicate that I have completed my order. GI) They: Here or to go?

This is a shortened and indirect version of a request to inform the server if he needs to package the food or merely to place it on a tray. G2) Me: Here, please. I indirectly ask not to have my sandwich bagged, and to instead by given a tray so I can carry my food to a table. “Please” is what House and Kasper (1981) describe as a politeness marker. It continues in the same register as “Thank you,” although here it doesn’t have a corresponding obvious functional utility. H1) They: That’ll be $2.96 Using the modal to express futurity thus displaces the request for payment. Compare the utterance to the request: Pay me $2.96. I1) Me: Thanks (handing them $3.00) “Thanks” acknowledges the transfer into my possession of the food J1) They: Four cents change, have a nice day. Reciprocally, the server acknowledges in the conventional way transfer of money to me. The final request is a conventional farewell. J2) Me: Thanks, you too. Social goods, the server’s farewell, are also acknowledged, just like material goods. And then the farewell sequence is completed. 3. Turn-taking In the pragmatics literature, a considerable amount of attention has been paid to turn-taking in conversation. Whether turn taking is “fundamental to conversation”(Sacks, Schlegoff, and Jefferson 696), or whether it plays merely an “operational function” (Crowley 544), it is pragmatically interesting in that (i) it is an essential element of functional conversation, and (ii) it is almost never explicitly announced, but must be inferred through the operation of our pragmatic competence. The first point is underscored by reflecting on conditions in which there is a breakdown of turn-taking: when participants in a conversation speak simultaneously, either because of a disinclination to yield the floor on one hand or to remain silent on the other, the conversation can rapidly become intolerable. Interruptions, though not always indicators of impoliteness, are most typically thought to be so. Conversely, one-sided conversations where speakers cue their audience to take a turn, but where these invitations are met with no uptake are also felt to be highly dysfunctional. The point that turn taking must be nearly always inferred from the context and is almost never explicitly announced has led to considerable investigation of proximate indicators of turn taking, both linguistic (e.g. phonological, semantic, or syntactic characteristics of the utterance) and para-linguistic, such as non-linguistic vocalizations, prosody, and fluctuations of voice quality, and body movement. If the process of ordering a sandwich at Subway® has anything to offer specialist discussion of turn-taking, it is that it reveals some ultimate factors that go into managing turns. Turn-taking, as we can see, may involve a considerable among of socialization. James Paul Gee (2005) has proposed that every discourse reflects and negotiates the distribution of social goods. He states that when we interact an integral part of what we do is to communicate “what is taken to be ‘normal,’ ‘right,’ ‘good,’ ‘correct,’ ‘proper,’ ‘appropriate,’ ‘valuable,’ . . . ‘the way things ought to be’ . . . and so forth”(12). Certainly, one of the most fundamental social goods that can explain the server/customer interaction at Subway® is the value of efficiency. In the Subway® context, efficiency is enacted through orderly turns. Managing orderly turns successfully, as we have seen, requires familiarity with the Subway® culture, which is


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one of the more extreme forms of the American culture of efficiency. Exactly what an orderly turn is can be extracted out of the sandwich ordering scenario I have described in part two of this paper: it is a turn that does not occasion repetition, it is on-task, it does not occasion extraneous information. In order to avoid repetitions or any extraneous turns, the customer must know the sequencing, substance, and structure of the food-preparation process, how the food is bundled for pricing purposes, and the division of labor between server and customer (as we have seen, part of the food acquisition process is self-help: selecting chips, and making a drink). The customer learns how food, customer management, and pricing all come together over repeated visits to the fast food chain. The server-- “sandwich artist” as they are called at this establishment—must in turn continually calibrate his interaction according to the degree of insider knowledge the customer projects. Glimpses of that calibration process may be seen in the sandwich ordering scenario I describe. Note how, during the bread preparation process, the server prompts the customer (cf. B1, C1). In contrast, D, E, and F are not fully explicit adjacency pairs, rather either the prompt is anticipated (in the case of D and F) or the reply is implied (E). Whether this is the result of the server calibration (no need to prompt if customer knows exactly when to make a contribution and exactly what constitutes a relevant contribution) or customer calibration (the customer better anticipates the moment when the server will prompt him and then moves to pre-empt the prompt by offering the information in advance of the prompt) is unclear. The important point, however, is that the interaction reveals an enormous amount of prior experience with this activity, while also revealing a continuing process of on-the-scene fine tuning, the fruits of which will be a potentially even more efficient ordering exchange the next time the customer visits the store. 4. Ordering food in a Slovak Context To gauge the extent of social embedding in even simple transactions like a food purchase, it is interesting to compare the English language transaction described above with a similar transaction in a different social context conducted in a different language. The following conversation is a taped recording of the author’s first-ever attempt to order food from a pizza delivery service in Nitra, Slovakia1 : K1) Hoffer: Dobrý deň? (Hello?) The rising pitch contour indicates that the speaker is inviting me to take a turn. K2) Me: Dobrý deň. (Hello) Chcel by som objednov . . objednať pizza . . .môzem? (I would like to order (?) order pizza. Can I?) Perhaps the most striking feature of our very first exchange, apart from the display of my limited control over Slovak, is the inability to anticipate or negotiate the turn taking process. There is a two second pause after my inquiry about ordering a pizza, as I wait to find out if I have the correct person with whom I can conduct business. Presumably the server at Hoffer’s is waiting for me to continue with my order. I therefore follow up my inquiry with a request, reiterating explicitly what I was hoping to communicate at first implicitly. L1) H: Áno, nech sa páči? (yes, what would you like?) The server responds to my request both on the locutionary level (answering the question, with ‘yes,’) and then taking up my request to invite me to take a turn.

L2) Me: Áno, jeden ungaresa, ah mega. (yes, one Ungarese, ah large.) My order, in contrast to the Subway® exchange is extremely flabby: “áno” and “ah” have no readily discernable function apart from signaling that I am holding my turn. “jeden” is probably also an extraneous feature, resulting from my uncertainty over whether and how to express the quantity of the order. Again, I conclude awaiting more turn-taking instructions. M1) H: Áno (yes) I am invited to take another turn, though I have too little social orientation in this context to fathom the expectations on the content of my turn, so . . . M2) Me: aah, bývame 27 Štefánikova (aah, we live at 27 Štefánikova) After signaling the acceptance of the invitation to a turn, I abruptly (?) transition into information necessary to allow the dispatcher to organize the pizza delivery. M3) H: Štefánikova 27. Poschodie? (Štefánikova 27 what floor?) The dispatcher registers the information I have provided her (a redundancy that probably results from the fact that she has constructed me as a customer who is somewhat contextually disoriented). However, the redundancy may be a reflection as well of the channel of communication: we are transacting our business over the phone instead of in person. Interesting is the presupposition that I am making a call from a multi-unit location. M4) Me: poschodie piatej (floor number five) I supply the dispatcher’s request for information with (an inappropriate adjectival declination) indication of the floor on which I live1 M5) H: prosim? (excuse me?) This response registers a momentary breakdown in the exchange, perhaps because of the faulty declension of „five“. M6) Me: piatej (five) I reiterate the information regarding my floor number, though without grammatical correction, forcing my interlocutor to make further adjustments and draw further inferences regarding my lack of familiarity with this particular communication event. N1) H: Áno, na zvonček xxxxx meno? (yes, on the doorbell . . . . name?) Again the dispatcher registers what I take to be a reconstruction of my information in such a way that it becomes useful. And then, in a request that I only partially hear (the x’s indicate parts of the response that I could not discern), the dispatcher continues to lead me through further turns accumulating enough information to permit a successful delivery. N2) Me: Klopček. Ja som Marek Lencho, ale na zvonček je Klopček. (Klopček. I am Mark Lencho, but on the doorbell is “Klopček“) An apparent complication is that my name is not on our doorbell on the ground floor. However, for the purposes of this communication there is really no problem. So the gratuitous inclusion of my name can only lead to further confusion.1 N3) H: Ake je meno xxx zvončeku? (What is the name . . . doorbell?) Again registering confusion, the dispatcher has been put in the place where she will need to winnow out the necessary from the unnecessary and misleading information. N4) Me: Klopček. Another moment of impasse, I am hoping for further turn-taking instructions, but none are forthcoming, so I launch out in a different direction: O1) Me: Chcel by ste môj telefónne čislo? (Would you like my telephone number?)


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This is really an act of desperation (underscored by the infelicitous verb conjugation, which should be „chceli“ in agreement with „ste“). I have the sinking conviction that my instructions have been hopelessly infelicitous, so I offer additional information as a fall back plan, should the pizza delivery fail. O2) H: Áno (yes) At this stage, I do not know if the dispatcher is simply being indulgant or if she is as alarmed as I am at the course taken in this conversation. The dispatcher may be able to read a phone number off of her answering mechanism, completely at variance with the one I am about to give her, in that the call-in number would register whatever is provided by the Skype formatting service that I am using to make the call over the computer. However, she would be presumably unable to access Skype to place a return call O3) Me: 090208969 My target phone number is 0902086969. In my growing agitation I have trouble straightening this out after my initial omission of the first “6” O4) H: 090208 . . Continuing what has become a theme of verification through repetition, with the effect of underscoring the lack of clarity in this communication. O5) Me: ahsshe 6 ah 6969 The first ‘expression of procedural meaning’ here (the onomatopoetic “ahsshe”) is intended to register as an interruption and an effort to reclaim the floor, in order to make the necessary correction in my telephone number. O6) H: 6 xxxxx za sebou? (6 . . . . after it/you?) This is a request for clarification that I am unable to fully parse. Therefore, I attempt to backtrack to the last point of certainty . . . . the start of the telephone number: O7) Me: 0982, eh prepáč ……0982 eh prepáč, prepáč …..0902086969 (0982, eh excuse me, 0982 eh excuse me, excuse me, 0902086969) However, I am flustered enough by this point that I repeatedly misspeak, saying “8” (“osem”) while meaning to say “O”. Repetitive “eh” functions to continue to hold on to my turn, while the inappropriately informal “prepáč” (which should be “prepácte”) is an ostensibly polite gesture which nevertheless is uttered with the similar intent of holding on to the turn. At this point, my two minute recorder reached its time limit and disengaged. The conversation ended without much further exchange of information, and to my real astonishment a pizza did indeed appear at our door (though after a time delay in excess of two hours). Although there is much that goes wrong in the telephone conversation (much that can be attributed to fundamental lack of grammatical and lexical knowledge of Slovak on my part), the inability of the dispatcher and me to comfortably negotiate a turn taking sequence was a major contributor to the manifold dysfunctions there. On a micro level, we could read each other’s invitations and claims to turn, but because of my ignorance of expectations of how I should direct, delimit, sequence and package my instructions, the conversation foundered, went off topic, became confused, and verged on unintelligibility. 5. Conclusion Though much attention has been paid to the surface linguistic features and micro-context by which we mediate turns in conversation, even simple conversations like we have when we buy a sandwich or order a pizza reveal the extensive amount of social

embedding modulating the turn-taking process. In an American context of ordering a Subway® sandwich, the organizing principle is the overarching politics of efficiency. More local knowledge about how the sandwich preparation is organized, the scope of operations and range of choices, how products are promoted and bundled, the delimitation of server and customer responsibility all come into play as customer and sandwich artist work to calibrate in the direction of that magical goal of a maximally efficient exchange of information, services, and payment. Each turn has a premeditated length and content; each transaction contributes to sharpening even further the parameters on these variables. The extent of contextual embedding becomes painfully apparent when we examine the pizza order where the customer has no prior experience of ordering in a Slovak context. What I should be trying to do, when, how, and for what purposes are surprisingly unclear when customer and server lack access into a mutually familiar and relevant world of discourse. So we may now return to our initial consideration of politeness. When I order a sandwich at the Subway® franchise as described in part two of this paper, is there any reason to describe the interaction as “polite”? Obviously there is both a local and remote management system drawing on extensive social experience in order for the conversation to be socially appropriate on a rather high level. Richard Watts (2003) describes socially appropriate behavior as “politic” behavior, reserving the designation “polite” for behavior that is politic, and something more (21). The problem with this definition is that it implies that socially appropriate behavior has an upper limit, beyond which we can move into the realm of politeness. What I have tried to suggest in this study is that socially appropriate behavior may be instead thought of as an ideal, which we never quite fully realize. On this theory, politeness may be thought of in terms of calibrations in the direction of the ideal. In our sample, such calibrations allow for turns to be realized ever more efficiently in the course of the dialogue, such that by the end of the order, the customer can anticipate and thereby obviate the need for explicit prompts to provide information. To the extent that there is any calibration going on in the Slovak dialogue, it appears to be in the opposite direction of socially normal. Thus, as I begin to have difficulties communicating the sought after information, I cast about somewhat wildly to bring any information to bear that may be relevant (such as volunteering information like my name and telephone number, even though it is not asked for and no doubt not needed, under the circumstances). The reaction this ‘calibration’ engenders is that the dispatcher becomes increasingly less directing, in an increasingly one-sided conversation. The impression is that as the conversation goes on, she realizes that she cannot expect much helpful information out of this particular customer, and so she lets me sputter on about a phone number, without ever corroborating this information (thus leaving the impression that such information was entirely gratuitous).1 So here we have an instance of a conversation that seems to develop momentum away from social appropriateness. (Im)politeness as movement in relation to idealized social appropriateness—this is a theoretical perspective that might permit us to isolate politeness, and rescue it from its identification with face work, and all the problems engendered by such an identification.

Bibliography and references


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Crowley, S. (1998): “Of Timing, Turn-Taking, and Conversations, “ in the Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, Sept, Vol. 27, 541-571. Gee, J.P. (2005): An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method. New York: Routledge. Grice, P (1975): “Logic and Conversation,” in P. Cole and J. L. Morgan (eds.) Syntax and Semantics, vol. 3: Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press. Haase, C. (2007): Chemnitz University of Technology, at 2nd International Nitra Conference on Discourse Studies, personal communication. House, J. and Kasper, G. (1981): “Politeness Markers in English and German,” in Coulmas, F. (eds.), Conversational Routine, The Hague: Mouton, 157-85. Jesenská, P. (2007) Univerzita Mataja Bela, FHV, at 2nd International Nitra Conference on Discourse Studies, personal communication. Sacks, H., Schegloff, E.A., Jefferson, G. (1974): “A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation.” Language, 50: 696-735. Watts, R. (2003): Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


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Proximization: A Methodological Account of Legitimization Strategies in the Post-9/11 US Political Discourse Piotr Cap University of Łódź, Poland 1. Introduction Almost six years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, memories of these petrifying events keep prompting

questions about how America, the American public and the American government have been changing ever since, how and what new social attitudes have been evolving and what policies, both home and abroad, have been put in place to handle the post-9/11 reality. One obvious issue that emerges involves the US government’s response to the attacks. What form(s) did it take? Was it legitimate? What steps, political and non-political, military including, were taken to make it appear legitimate? Finally, what strategies were pursued to communicate this legitimacy to the American and the world audience? It is primarily the last question that lies at the core of this paper and defines its goals. Before we turn to a specific description of these goals, let us note that when President George W. Bush declared the worldwide War on Terrorism on the evening of 9/11, the American people were hardly filled with a spirit of vengeance, rather, they would expect the government to seek a balanced solution to the terrorism problem as a whole (cf. Silberstein 2004). This was echoed in one of the first eyewitness accounts of the day which was broadcast on Aaron Brown’s CNN night edition: [...] Americans will persevere. And you know what? I don’t think we’ll stoop to the level of these zealot, terrorist pigs. And we won’t kill children and mothers. But you know what? I just hope Bush will do whatever is necessary to get rid of this terrorist vermin [...] These words do not seem to give license to wage a war, at least not of the kind that broke out almost immediately in Afghanistan and eighteen months later in Iraq. In fact, the social picture of the late 2001 America shows multiple attitudes of reluctance to engage in a retaliatory combat operation, even if the 9/11 perpetrators were to constitute the primary target (cf. Hendrickson 2002). But, as we know now, two foreign wars did follow. And while the prompt bombing of Afghanistan was an operation that, given the logic of an attempt to destroy the Al-Qaeda network, could be (and indeed was) perceived as justifiable by both the American people and the majority of the world community, the invasion on Iraq in March 2003 needed a much stronger rationale. The lack of a clear enemy of the Osama-like kind, the wobbly evidence of the possession of WMD by the Iraqi regime, the apparently unsubstantiated claims of the relationship between Saddam Hussein and the Al-Qaeda group, the conceivable human and financial costs of going to war, the anti-war attitudes in the academic elites–all these were serious adverse factors to be surmounted by the Bush administration in the service of making the military involvement in Iraq legitimate. My primary objective in this paper will thus be (a methodologically oriented) analysis of the rhetorical legitimization of the Iraqi intervention.

2. Assumptions, goals and methods Arguably, the Bush administration did everything that they possibly could in order to communicate to the American and the world audience that the ongoing military operation in Iraq (apparently, with no end in sight) has been justified and that it has been pursued in the vital interest of all the peoples abhorring the vision of the 9/11 ever repeating again. A consistent pattern of rhetoric was developed in the aftermath of the WTC attacks, aiming to justify military retaliation on account of the apparent imminence of danger facing the American citizens. To this day, the most salient premise of the White House rhetoric has been the construal of the terrorist threat as existing within the US borders. Unlike in the past, when America was going to foreign wars in Korea, Vietnam or, recently, Kosovo, the war has come “home.” One cannot possibly underestimate the role of the evidence brought by the 9/11 attacks in such an argument. Although following the WWII the legitimization of each consecutive military involvement has drawn on the simplistic dichotomy of “us and them,” the latter party usually symbolizing some kind of adversarial or plainly evil ideology that could potentially jeopardize the American system of beliefs and values or, in the long run, threaten the lives of the American people, it was not until after 2001 that the ideologies of evil and terror could be claimed, by analogy, to have already been operating within the American territory. Consider the following excerpt from President Bush’s 9/11 prime-time speech: [...] Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts, right here, on the American soil. [...] Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. [...] Immediately following the first attack, I implemented our government’s response plans. I’ve directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and to bring them to justice. America has stood down enemies before, and will do so this time and in the future [...] And now let us turn to a necessarily longer quotation which comes from the president’s address at the American Enterprise Institute, delivered on February 26, 2003, the mere three weeks before the first US troops entered Iraq on March 19: [...] We are facing a crucial period in the history of our nation, and of the civilized world. On a September morning, threats that had gathered for years, in secret and far away, led to murder in our country on a massive scale. As a result, we must look at security in a new way, because our country is a battlefield in the first war of the 21st century. [...] We learned a lesson: the dangers of our time must be confronted actively and forcefully, before we see them again in our skies and our cities. And we will not allow the flames of hatred and violence in the affairs of men. The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values, because stable and free nations do not breed the ideologies of murder. [...] Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass


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destruction are a direct threat to our people and to all free people. [...] My job is to protect the American people. When it comes to our security and freedom, we really don’t need anybody’s permission. [...] We’ve tried diplomacy for 12 years. It hasn’t worked. Saddam Hussein hasn’t disarmed, he’s armed. Today the goal is to remove the Iraqi regime and to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. [...] The liberation of millions is the fulfillment of America’s founding promise. The objectives we’ve set in this war are worthy of America, worthy of all the acts of heroism and generosity that have come before [...] At a glance, one can see a functional, goal-oriented continuum underlying the two performances. It is almost as if the AEI speech fulfils the promise made at the end of the 9/11 address, to trace down the perpetrators and thus prevent any future threats. Importantly, by referring to “our skies and our cities”, as well as to the country being “a battlefield,” Bush invokes an analogy between the 9/11 tragic events and the possibility of such events (or even more tragic, given the nuclear element at stake) occurring again should there be no action from the government on the current Iraqi issue. The justification for going to war in Iraq is thus built on the recurring closeness and imminence of danger facing the American people, which this time stems from the alleged possession of WMD by the Iraqi regime and, consequently, by easy access to these weapons for terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda. In this paper I will give a brief and necessarily tentative pre-proposal for an analytic model to serve as a viable handle on the post-9/11 war-on-terror rhetoric, taking select instances of the language of the Iraq war as a case in point. Approaching the concept of legitimization in a broad theoretical sense of a combined enactment of the political speaker’s right to be obeyed and of the linguistic justification of actions following this obedience, I will be particularly interested in the model’s capacity to explain, how the described ‘9/11 analogy’ and the concept of ‘direct threat’ have been used to legitimize the intervention in Iraq, and, what steps have been taken to maintain the stance of legitimization after it became clear that the intelligence reports on the Iraqi possession of WMD failed. Since, as can be seen from the two excerpts above, the White House pro-war rhetoric has been relying heavily on conceptualization of the terrorist (nuclear) threat in terms of a physically close phenomenon, I employ Chilton’s original (2004) and Cap’s revisited (2005, 2006) notion of proximization to serve as a controlling concept for defining the internal structure of the model, encapsulating all the legitimization related techniques. In short, thus, the advocated model recognizes legitimization (of the post-9/11 foreign military involvement) as a macro function of all the war-on-terror rhetoric. The function of legitimization is enacted by utilizing the peruasive power of proximization, a concept which assumes “putting the discourse addressee in the center of events narrated to him/her” (cf. Chilton 2004) and which will be described as such in more detail below. Finally, there are language constructs whose strategic combination triggers proximization. All the three levels, involving the constancy of the legitimizing function, the ongoing presence of proximization pattern serving legitimization, and the consistent use of language making up a given proximization aspect or strategy, must be seen to interrelate in their collective contribution to the aura of justification, in order for the proposed analytic model to prove theoretically sound.

3. Proximization The concept of proximization has originally (cf. Chilton 2004) been developed to account for situations in which the speaker (political actor) seeks legitimization of his actions by alerting the addressee to the proximity or imminence of phenomena which can be a “threat” to the addressee (and the speaker, too) and thus require immediate reaction. In other words, the speaker solicits approval of his actions by placing the addressee close to the source of the threat or, alternatively, by picturing the threat as close to the addressee. In Chilton’s view, proximization has an intrinsically spatial character; the addressee is located in the “deictic center” of the event stage, from which setting he conceptualizes external phenomena in terms of physical distance holding between their source and his own location. If we apply the spatial aspect of proximization to account for the geopolitical context of the early stages of the Iraqi conflict, we observe that the Bush administration has been utilizing the notion of “direct threat,” in order, first, to alert the addressee to the proximity of nuclear danger stemming from the alleged possession of WMD by the Iraqi regime, and second, to enhance the perception of this threat by building the analogy between the current situation and the events of 9/11 when the previously underestimated danger indeed materialized and physically affected the addressee. The excerpt from the AEI speech features a large number of lexical realizations, or “triggers,” of spatial proximization. They include such items and phrases as “secret and far away,” “all free people,” “stable and free nations,” “Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction,” “direct threat” and “flames”. Some of them define the elements/members of the deictic center as such (“all free people”), while some others define entities which can potentially enter the deictic center and threaten or destroy its members (“Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction,” “flames”). As the gap between the former and the latter is seemingly closing due to the presence of the 9/11 analogy, the spatial proximization appears successful in its role of soliciting legitimization for the government’s reaction to the evolving threat. However, in addition to Chilton’s (2004) findings on the spatial character of proximization, I argue (cf. also Cap 2005, 2006) that a fully-fledged proximization theory, equipped with enough explanatory power to account for a variety of legitimization related phenomena, must necessarily involve two other dimensions, i.e. temporal and axiological. Temporal proximization involves construing the events which take place in the spatial dimension as momentous and historic and hence of central significance to the discourse addressee, as well as to the speaker. It needs to be made clear that, under the proposed triadic approach, the speaker belongs to the deictic center (the anchor point for all conceptualizations) no less than the addressee does; otherwise, it would be reasonably difficult to have both parties unanimously subscribe to the course of action which the speaker attempts to legitimize. This observation holds true for all the three aspects of proximization, spatial, temporal and axiological. Returning to the temporal aspect, I shall claim that its contribution to the integrated proximization model lies in its capacity to provide the analysis of actions or events bringing about physical consequences (in other words, space-dynamic events like the projected use of WMD by Saddam Hussein or the US intervention in Iraq seen as a preventative measure) with a retrospective insight which allows generation of inferences or analogies such as the 9/11 analogy mentioned before. Additionally, a combined spatial-temporal analysis possesses a heuristic value; for instance, the study of


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the speaker’s description and the addressee’s construal of current events (viz. the American military involvement in Iraq) which are happening as a result of previous events (viz. the 9/11 “lesson”) may lead to anticipation of recurrence of a similar cause-and-effect pattern in the future, with the same or a different adversary involved. Finally, in my approach there is the axiological aspect of proximization, too. It consists in the addressee’s interpretation of alien ideological beliefs and values relative to the axiological background of the self, or the dominant ideology of the State, in our case the US. Here, the proximization of “threat” is neither a physical phenomenon (viz. the conceivably destructive consequences of the use of nuclear weapons by the Iraqi government) nor a temporal one (viz. the unfolding of the state of affairs which makes the above scenario possible); it rather involves the narrowing of the distance between two different and opposing ideologies whose clash could lead to the events defined within the other dimensions. All in all, such a model of proximization, a much-revised version of Chilton’s (2004) theory, consists in the speaker’s continual endeavor to impose upon the addressee the conceptualization of the suggested adversary in terms of an entity which gradually enters, along the spatial, temporal and axiological lines, the addressee’s “territory” in the deictic center. For an overview of the functioning of this integrated proximization strategy, let us consider the concept of the “ideologies of murder” invoked in the AEI address: The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values, because stable and free nations do not breed the ideologies of murder. [...] The mention of the “ideologies of murder” serves to establish an axiological frame defining the essence of the dictatorship-based functioning of the states opposing the US ideology of “freedom,” “democracy,” etc. The components of this frame are the implicitly communicated antithetical concepts of “regime,” “dictatorship” and “oppression” which, presumably, give rise to violence and terror as the natural outlets for the anger and frustration of the oppressed. The assumption behind the composition of the frame is that the ideologies of anger and hatred have a tendency to grow and expand (cf. the use of the word “breed”) if nothing is done to prevent them from being enacted by authoritarian figures such as Saddam Hussein in Iraq. This is how the proximity of threat to free states like the US is communicated within the axiological dimension. In addition, it is implied, by the use of “the” [ideologies of murder] that places like world terrorism harbors where the anger and hatred turn into concrete plans to destroy the “enemy” (most of the countries of the “civilized” West and the US in particular) have indeed evolved worldwide and that it is their existence that constitutes the very physical threat (cf. the spatial aspect of proximization). Let us remember that immediately following the 9/11 attacks, Bush’s explanation of the terrorists’ “rationale” to strike has been the envy of the American way of life, the freedoms guaranteed to citizens living in a state ruled by law: [...] Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts, right here, on the American soil. [...] America was targeted for attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. [...] The world now knows the full evil and capability of international terrorism which menaces the whole of the democratic world. Blind in their hate and envy of our freedoms, the terrorists responsible have no sense of humanity, of mercy, of justice. [...] Finally, the axiological and spatial proximization strategies salient in the application of the “ideologies of murder” catch-phrase get complemented within the

temporal domain. One of the implicit messages in “the world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values, because stable and free nations do not breed the ideologies of murder” is that the growth of the ideology of destruction in terrorist groups can be traced back to the period of inaction following the initial recognition of the evolving threat. From the 9/11 viewpoint, the roots of international terrorism spreading from the Middle East region can be attributed to the US being previously too soft on the Taliban regime in Afghanistan or the UN being unable to properly execute its 1991 resolution on the disarmament of Iraq. As usual in the time of national catastrophe, the leader of the state involved is expected to admit at least some degree of blame on the part of his own government (or on behalf of the preceding governments) and this is exactly what can be found in Bush’s tacit assumption of temporal perspective on the evolution of antagonistic beliefs and values. 4. Conditions for operation of the Spatial-Temporal-Axiological model of ‘legitimization via proximization’ Let us recap the findings so far. Under the proposed model, legitimization is seen as the principal goal of the political speaker seeking justification and support of actions which the speaker manifestly intends to perform in the vital interest of the addressee (cf. pursuit of the “war-on-terror”). While not detracting from the importance of factors related directly to the persona of the speaker such as charismatic leadership projection or positive self-presentation, the major factor affecting the success or failure of legitimization is the speaker’s ability to follow a consistent, tripartite proximization strategy, involving space-, time- and axiology-based conceptual shift of alien and normally antagonistic entity onto the addressee’s own mental and physical territory in the deictic center, from which both the addressee and the speaker view the external events. As has been seen from the brief overviews of the concepts of “9/11 analogy” and “ideologies of murder”, the STA proximization always involves functional interaction within or between its bottom-level language constructs. In other words, a phrase such as “ideologies of murder,” carrying primarily a heavy axiological load, will never be conceptualized in isolation from the spatial and/or temporal aspect of the notion it addresses. The latter aspects may be seen to exist within the “anchor” phrase itself,1 but they can also be found operating in the adjacent phrases, whether overtly or by implication (consider “free nations,” explicit reading vs “oppressed nations,” implicit or “follow-up” reading; “do not breed,” explicit reading vs “do breed,” implicit or “follow-up” reading). The existence of functional interaction between the language realizations of the three aspects of proximization is the first of the two necessary conditions for the operation of the STA-based model of legitimization, which, given the crucial role of the integrated proximization strategy in producing legitimization, can simply be referred to as the STA model, capturing thus both the global legitimization effect and the very internal structure of proximization triggering this effect. The second condition is more complex and can be summarized as follows: If, over a period of time, a text involving proximization is followed by another proximization-driven text, produced by the same political speaker, in relation to the same issue and with the same overall goal but against so different a contextual background that it has affected the selection of bottom-level lexical items to the extent that the new text displays a considerable lexical divergence from the old or “previous” one, then any ensuing decrease/increase in manifestation of one


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type of proximization must mean, respectively, an increased/decreased salience of another type. This means that, if we take the WMD threat, aggravated by the operation of the “9/11 analogy,” to constitute a major premise in the US pro-war stance in the early stages of the Iraqi intervention, the loss of this premise in the later phase manifestly produces a need for rhetorical compensation from another type of proximization. Since the spatial aspect of proximization lost its salience after the intelligence failure became evident, the ensuing legitimization pattern had to draw much more heavily on another aspect, in fact, the axiological one. Consider the following excerpt from President Bush’s speech given at the Whitehall Palace in London on November 19, 2003: [...] By advancing freedom in the greater Middle East, we help end a cycle of dictatorship and radicalism that brings millions of people to misery and brings danger to our own people. By struggling for justice in Iraq, Burma, in Sudan, and in Zimbabwe, we give hope to suffering people and improve the chances for stability and progress. [...] Had we failed to act, the dictator’s programs for weapons of mass destruction would continue to this day. Had we failed to act, Iraq’s torture chambers would still be filled with victims, terrified and innocent. The killing fields of Iraq– where hundreds of thousands of men and women and children vanished into the sands–would still be known only to the killers. For all who love freedom and peace, the world without Saddam Hussein’s regime is a better and safer place. [...] Apparently, with the cornerstone of the spatial proximization strategy missing, Bush extends the scope of the pro-war rhetoric to cover a broader geopolitical spectrum. There is an extended representation of countries to be construed collectively as harbors of values endangering the axiological backbone of the US audience and the majority of the world audience. The language used draws on the increasingly drastic imagery (“torture chambers,” “killing fields”), seeking a natural common ground for rejection of the alien ideologies. Legitimization of the ongoing military presence in Iraq is thus claimed in the following way: alien ideological concepts (“dictatorship and radicalism”) are shown to inspire actions which come in increasingly direct conflict with the basic axiological principles shared by the members of the “deictic center.” As is the case with the AEI speech, the analysis of the text of the Whitehall address finely illustrates the dynamic character of the (pre-)proposed STA model. The “S,” “T” and “A” parameters of analysis are designed to complement one another in accounting for the global legitimization effect; furthermore, their complementary capacity is a factor in keeping up with the macro function of the political performance in case there is underrepresentation of one of the three proximization aspects. 5. Extensions of operation of the STA model of proximization. What kind of analytic awareness do the construction and implementation of the STA model require? Evidently enough, I have so far been reluctant to state definitively that the proposed model will or will not operate beyond the field of the war-on-terror rhetoric, which in this paper has constituted its primary scope of

application. However, since the intrinsic structure of the STA model involves accounting for sociopsychological variables, which, by their very nature, define larger social and political audiences, the chances are that the model could indeed be utilized in analysis of the phenomenon of (political) legitimization as a whole. In such a situation, consideration of the currently downplayed factors like charismatic leadership projection or positive self-presentation on the part of the political speaker might turn useful. The current pre-proposal for the STA model draws on not merely linguistic variables, but also on those involving the domains of related disciplines, such as politology, psychology, and social sciences. Such a cross-disciplinary approach to the study of political language entails questions about the mutual relations between the particular layers of analysis. In particular, it prompts considerations of which of the analytic parameters are methodologically superordinate and which have a merely auxiliary value. The apparent problem with a cross-disciplinary analysis of political language is that there is hardly any visible one-to-one correspondence between the analytic components derived from the different disciplines. For instance, the general strategy of proximization, which the latter can be described as a cognitive and sociopsychological concept, is not to be equated with any particular linguistic form. It is rather a combination of specific language forms that can contribute to proximization, but even in this case, it cannot be guaranteed that the language forms involved will address simultaneously all the three aspects of proximization, i.e. spatial, temporal and axiological. Mindful of these limitations, I shall argue that although resolution of most methodological difficulties such as the above can possibly be sought in adopting a hierarchical model of analysis where, like in the STA model, the upper-level, controlling parameters of analysis (viz. legitimization, proximization in general) break down into a set of mediating variables (viz. the three aspects of proximization) and, finally, into multiple sets of bottom-level variables (language items), there may still occur problems with a possible overdetermination of analysis by the upper-level parameters (cf. e.g. Beaugrande 1997). In view of this, due attention must be paid to the consistency of balance between utilizing the upper-level parameters (such as, again, the overall strategy of proximization) as entities which signpost the direction of analysis a priori, and their controlling potential, i.e. the capacity to verify, in an a posteriori manner (and against the global function, i.e. legitimization), the critical findings from the study of specific language forms at the very bottom level. It seems the chief task of the prospective research to keep the described balance in place for the successful operation of the STA model. A feasible working assumption might be that the essence of the macro functions of legitimization and proximization identified in particular instances of the investigated discourse can unfold as a result of “updates”: for instance, the empirical checking of the data involving spatial proximization will result in a hypothesis about the proximization pattern characterizing the given chunk of text as a whole, but the hypothesis will be open to subsequent redefinition upon the study of these parts of the text’s data which possess primarily temporal and axiological load.

Bibliography and references Beaugrande, Robert de. New Foundations for Science of Text and Discourse. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1997. Cap, Piotr. “Language and Legitimization: Developments in the Proximization Model of Political Discourse Analysis.” Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 1 (2005): 7-36.


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Cap, Piotr. Legitimization in Political Discourse: A Cross-Disciplinary Perspective on the Modern US War Rhetoric. Cambridge/Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006. Chilton, Paul. Analysing Political Discourse. Theory and Practice. London: Routledge, 2004. Hendrickson, David. “Toward Universal Empire: The Dangerous Quest for Absolute Security.” World Policy Journal 19 (2002): 3-16. Silberstein, Sandra. War of Words. London: Routledge, 2004.


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The Dynamic-Semantic Scales within the Framework of Functional Sentence Perspective Martin Adam Masaryk University, Czech Republic Abstract The study of information processing has shown that there are two basic ways of how a sentence in the act of communication may be perspectived. Principally, a sentence may introduce a phenomenon to the discourse (and so is perspectived towards the subject) or a sentence says something new / context-independent about the subject (and is thus perspectived away from the subject). In the theory of functional sentence perspective, the two possible directions are labelled as sentences implementing the Presentation Scale and those implementing the Quality Scale. The present paper explores these two Firbasian basic types of so called dynamic-semantic scales within FSP and also looks at a somewhat special case of a recently

identified subtype – the Extended Presentation Scale. The types of dynamic semantic scales are illustrated by both Czech and English examples and commented on in terms of functional linguistics. Key words FSP, Firbas, dynamic, semantic, scales, presentation, quality, extended 1. Introduction In 1844, Henri Weil, a French classical scholar, published an inconspicuous monograph De l’ordre des mots dans les langues anciennes comparées aux langues modernes (in 1878 the book was published in English under the title The order of words in the ancient languages compared with that of the modern languages). Weil was a true pioneer in the study of word order, distinguishing between “the movement of ideas” and “the syntactical movement” (Firbas 1974). Later on, it was evidently Weil’s ideas (and obviously those of a Swiss linguist Anton Marty), that inspired Vilém Mathesius and were further developed by him. In Mathesius’ view, word order phenomena “constitute a system characterized by a hierarchy of word order principles; the hierarchy is determined by the extent to, and the manner in, which the principles operate” (Firbas 1974). Before Mathesius advanced his conception of Czech word order, three other Czech scholars (Zubatý, Ertl and Trávníček) had proved to be aware of the relevance to word order of what may be termed functional approach, speaking of “the psychological subject” and “psychological predicate” (Firbas 1974). In harmony with their observations, Mathesius claims that in communication “the lexical and grammatical means of language are made to serve a special purpose imposed on them by the speaker at the moment of utterance, i.e. the very act of communication” (Mathesius 1947). In his numerous papers, Mathesius endeavored to establish the essential principles rendering word order; he “allots the leading role to the grammatical principle, ranking FSP only with factors of secondary importance” (Firbas 1974). Further research on the position of word order in the English language showed that besides word order (and intonation in spoken language), semantic structure operates as an effective means of FSP. In 1964, Jan Firbas published a paper on functional sentence perspective, introducing the concept of communicative dynamism (CD). In his article, he defines a degree of CD as “the extent to which the element contributes towards the development of the communication” (Firbas 1964). As has been proved many times, Firbas’ understanding a sentence as a field of distribution of CD (accompanied by the factors of context and semantic structure) provides us with one of the most effective approaches towards the study of language.

2. FSP The key figure in the study and elaboration of FSP, Jan Firbas, found his inspiration in the teaching of his predecessor, Vilém Mathesius. Mathesius was a true pioneer in the implementation of functional analysis of sentences viewing the sentence as a dynamic phenomenon developing in the act of communication (as opposed to the traditional formal analysis that considers a sentence a static body). As early as in 1911, Mathesius was the first to notice the language universal of every utterance having a theme (topic) and a rheme (focus), and to formulate the basic principles of what was to be labelled FSP only later (Mathesius 1975). According to Mathesius’ studies on the word order in Czech, the theme of a sentence represented the point of departure (východisko výpovědi), that is “what is being talked about” (and hence is retrievable from the context), while the rheme was connected with the core of the message (jádro výpovědi), that is “what is being said about the theme” (most often something that is not known from the context of the act of communication)1. The natural, unmarked (objective) sequence of these segments of communication is theme-rheme; the reversed word order is a marked (subjective) one, usually signalling an emotive flavour to the message conveyed (Svoboda and Hrehovčík 2006).

Beginning in the 1950s, Jan Firbas started to investigate into the principles of word order outlined by Mathesius; for instance he re-examined Mathesius’ claim that English seems to be “less susceptible to the theme-rheme articulation than Czech because of its relatively fixed word order (grammatical word order)” (Svoboda and Hrehovčík 2006). Firbas gradually elaborated and deepened the theory, making it more systematic. He labelled it Functional Sentence Perspective (FSP). In Czech, the term runs ‘aktuální členění větné’ (a term coined by Mathesius himself); in English, the label functional sentence perspective is sometimes, by other authors, altered as theme-rheme structure / topic-focus articulation / topic-comment structure.


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The core of Firbas’ FSP lies in the functional approach: he claims that every meaningful element of communication is a carrier of so called communicative dynamism (CD) and hence pushes the communication forward. By a degree of communicative dynamism of an element Firbas understands its relative communicative value within the utterance in the act of communication (the topic of CD is treated in detail in the following chapter). In other words, the sentence is “a field of semantic and syntactic relations that in its turn provides a distributional field of degrees of communicative dynamism (CD)” (Firbas 1992). According to FSP, sentence elements serve as communicative units with different degrees of CD. The degrees of CD are determined by the interplay of FSP factors involved in the distribution of degrees of CD. The FSP factors are, firstly, context, secondly, linear modification, and, finally, semantics. In spoken language, the interplay of these factors is logically joined by a fourth factor – intonation. As has been noted above, the theory of FSP represents – in the broadest sense – one of the branches of linguistics dealing with information processing. In consequence, it explores how a piece of information is produced in the act of communication, and also how different elements are given different communicative prominence, i.e. are emphasized (foregrounded) or made less significant (backgrounded) to achieve the author’s communicative intention. In any type of discourse, the sender chooses something that is highlighted (in speech: intonation centre / nucleus; in writing: different ways such as end-focus principle, cleft sentences etc.). For Firbas, the very moment of utterance (or perception of a sentence) is thus a phenomenon of paramount importance (Firbas 1992). The Dynamic Semantic Scales At an early stage of their research, both Mathesius and Firbas noticed and described the difference between the ways of how an element is emphasised in Czech and in English. In the sentences below, the natural core of the message (rheme) is underlined. (3) A terrifying noise was heard from the window. Interestingly, native speakers of English view some elements as rhematic even though these do not occupy the predictable end-position (and do not follow the end-focus principle) (Svoboda 1983). In Czech, however, the same idea will be expressed by a totally reversed word order (the most dynamic element occurs at the very end of the sentence): (4) Z okna bylo slyšet hrozný hluk. The question is what is the reason for such a remarkable difference in the word order of the sentences communicating the same idea. Having explored this issue in numerous cases, Firbas (1992) came up with the idea of so called dynamic semantic scales, which functionally reflect the distribution of CD and operate irrespective of word order. In contrast with a static approach towards semantic functions of sentence constituents (e.g. affected participant, agent, instrument etc.), the dynamic semantic functions may change in the course of the act of communication; the same element may thus perform different functions in different contexts and under different conditions. In principle, Firbas distinguishes two types of dynamic-semantic scales: the Presentation Scale and the Quality Scale. The labels “presentation” and “quality” have to be understood in the widest sense of the word (Chamonikolasová 1998). In the scales, each element is ascribed one of the dynamic-semantic functions (DSFs) (Firbas 1992).

The items of both the scales are arranged in accordance with a gradual rise in CD from the beginning to the end of the sentence reflecting the interpretative (underlying) arrangement. The distribution of degrees of CD within a sentence is not necessarily implemented linearly, and so it is inevitable to distinguish between the actual linear arrangement of sentence elements on one hand, and their interpretative arrangement on the other (Firbas 1995). The interpretative arrangement is defined as “the arrangement of the sentence elements according to the gradual rise in CD irrespective of the positions they occupy within the sentence“ (Firbas 1986: 47). The two arrangements may either coincide, or there are differences of various kinds. It is the interpretative arrangement that plays an important role in the development of the dynamic-semantic layers and that is why it is used in the charts of FSP analysis. The word order in an actual sentence often deviates from the interpretative word order. Such deviations are more frequent in English than in Czech and other languages with a flexible word order (cf. Dušková 1988: 527-541). This difference is due to the different hierarchies of word-order principles operating in different languages. In English, the leading principle is the grammatical principle, enforcing the sequence SVOA; in Czech, the leading principle is the FSP-linearity principle, arranging elements in a sentence naturally from the least dynamic to the most dynamic (cf. Dušková 1988: 353-356). 3.1 The Presentation Scale The basic version of the presentation Scale implements the following dynamic semantic functions (the thickness of frames is to symbolize the gradual rise in communicative dynamism of the elements):

The Presentation Scale (Pr-Scale) includes three basic dynamic semantic functions (DSFs): firstly, there is a scene (Setting) of the action, usually temporal and spatial items of when and where the action takes place; in an unmarked context, these adverbials convey neutral, background information. Secondly, the existence or appearance on the scene (see above) is typically conveyed by a verb (Presentation of Phenomenon) and, thirdly, the major, most dynamic element (Phenomenon) is literally ushered onto the scene. 3.2 The Quality Scale The Quality Scale reflects the more frequent sentence perspective both in English and in Czech:

The Quality Scale (Q-Scale) represents, in principle, an opposite in comparison with the Presentation Scale. Something new (Specification) is said about the subject (Bearer of Quality). The verb usually performs the transitory DSF of Quality. Naturally, all the action


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typically has a scene as well as everything is going on in some time and at some place (Setting). 3.3 The Combined Scale Apart from the two basic interpretative scales, instances of so-called Combined Scale may be encountered; in the typology of sentence perspective scales, it stands in between the Pr- and the Q-Scales, forming a fusion of the two (Firbas 1992: 67 and Svoboda 1989: 14-15). The Combined Scale implementation means that a Phenomenon is being presented and, at the same time, something new is said about it by means of Specification (see the thick framing). In such cases, Firbas says that the distributional field “telescopes the Ph-function and the B-function into the subject”, reflecting the following interpretative arrangement:

I agree with Chamonikolasová (Chamonikolasová 2005), when she says that the semantic structure of sentence (9) corresponds almost precisely to the Quality Scale, differing only in the absence of a previous introduction of the subject (Pr) into the context of communication. In other words, what Firbas labels a Combined Scale may actually be abandoned and readily re-evaluated as a variant of the ‘pure’ Quality Scale. 3.4 Extended Presentation Scale There is, however, another sentence type that may be regarded somewhat special within the traditional Firbasian framework of dynamic semantic scales. Its existence and structure were first described in Adam 2003 within his FSP analysis of biblical discourse (in his study, such sentences are, in accord with later Chamonikolasová’s conception, denoted as presentation sentences containing a ‘double rheme’), and elaborated systematically in Adam and Chamonikolasová 2005. The structure of sentences implementing this type of interpretative scale actually corresponds very closely to the Presentation Scale, differing only in the presence of the Specification, which is not part of the ‘pure’ Presentation Scale as defined by Firbas.

Set - Pr - Ph - Sp The occurrence of such a ‘double rheme’ in certain types of presentation sentences were identified in several passages of the Gospel according to Matthew and Luke (The New Testament, New International Version of the Holy Bible; see Adam 2003). Some distributional fields displayed a considerable degree of potentiality, which creates difficulties in the interpretation of dynamic semantic functions (cf. Adam 2003: 129-134; 165-7). A passage from the New International Version (1984.683) illustrating this feature is presented below. (10) Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (11) Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. (12) Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. For instance, the underlined communicative unit in (10) can be theoretically interpreted in two ways: it can represent just an additional piece of information and perform a DSF of a Setting, or it can convey a crucial

piece of information, denoting the reason for ‘the poor in spirit’ to be blessed. The people Jesus is talking about are introduced on the scene by means of saying that they ‘are blessed’. A reason for that (or rather a future consequence of the fact that they are blessed)1 always follows – e.g. ‘for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’. If we consider the clause of reason to convey crucial information (not just a Setting), we have to admit that we do not deal with a classical type of Presentation Scale. A thorough examination shows that such sentences implement a special kind of Presentation Scale, the core of which lies in the existence of a double rheme within a Presentation Scale (cf. Adam & Chamonikolasová 2005). To be more specific, the examples above consist of a subject complement (blessed), copula (are), subject (the poor in spirit, those who mourn ...), and an adverbial clause of reason (for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, for they will be comforted ...). Potentially, the sentences may be interpreted as implementations of the Quality Scale, in which the subject functions as a Bearer of Quality, the copula as an Ascription of Quality, the subject complement as a Quality element, and the adverbial as a Specification. Although subject complements do indeed most often function as Q, i.e. as rhematic units (cf. Dušková 2004: 57-71), the rhematic character of the subject complements in the sentences above is questionable. Due to their repetition, the complements have to be interpreted as context dependent, i.e. thematic; the thematic interpretation of the complements is also supported by their initial position in the sentence. The interplay of context and linear modification suggests that the subject complements function here as mere Settings, rather than Q-elements. Since no Quality is being ascribed to the subjects, the sentences have to be interpreted as implementations of the Presentation Scale, in which the context independent subjects perform the Ph-function. Since the sentences also contain adverbial clauses of reason, which are most often rhematic when occurring in final positions, the sentences have to be considered as implementations of the Extended Presentation Scale. In other words, the information conveyed by the Sp-element is more dynamic than the information conveyed by the Ph-element (Adam & Chamonikolasová 2005). Below are further examples of the Extended Presentation Scale identified in the New International Version (1984: 682 and 724-5): (13) In these days John the Baptist came preaching in the Desert of Judaea ... (14) Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptised by John. (15) So Joseph went also from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem. It seems that the occurrence of Extended Presentation Scale sentences, where two rhematic elements (i.e. Ph and Sp) are present, is related to the character of biblical language: it may derive from the lexical and semantic density that is typical of religious discourse, marked by a saturation of religious notions. Analyzing various passages in the light of FSP, several examples of a double rheme within the distributional fields implementing the Extended Presentation Scale were identified. Most of the cases have been traced in the New Testament texts. It is not to say, however, that the phenomenon of a double RhPr operating within one clause does not occur in other kinds of writing. Such a lexical and semantic density is not restricted to biblical texts only. Sentences implementing the Extended Presentation Scale seem to occur also in fiction, journalistic texts, and sometimes even in


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everyday conversation (Adam & Chamonikolasová 2005). Below is an illustrative example found recently in a Czech newspaper report (the Czech sentence is followed by a word-for-word English translation in brackets): (16) Jako první cílem projel brněnský cyklista Petr Novák, protože favorit závodu Jan Smutný z oddílu Cyklo Liberec těsně před cílem upadl na kluzké vozovce. [The first to pass the finishing line was the Brno cyclist Petr Novák, because the favourite Jan Smutný from the Cyklo Liberec team fell on a slippery road just before the finishing line.] The dynamic semantic functions of the individual elements may be interpreted as follows (Adam & Chamonikolasová 2005):

Jako první

cílem projel brněnský

cyklista Petr Novák,

protože favorit

závodu ...

As the first

the finishing

line (acc.)

passed the Brno

cyclist Petr Novák (nom.)

because the favourite ...

Set Set Pr Ph Sp The Sp-element, realized grammatically as an adverbial clause of reason, carries the highest degree of CD within the sentence: it specifies the presentation of the phenomenon by means of an explanation of the reason for the presentation.

4. Conclusions The present paper explores one of the crucial principles within information processing: there are two basic ways of how a sentence in the act of communication may be perspectived. Principally, a sentence may introduce a phenomenon to the discourse (and so is perspectived towards the subject) or a sentence says something new / context-independent about the subject (and is thus perspectived away from the subject). In the theory of functional sentence perspective, the two possible directions are labelled as sentences implementing the Presentation Scale and those implementing the Quality Scale. These two Firbasian basic types dynamic semantic scales, along with a special case of a recently identified subtype – the Extended Presentation Scale, have been discussed and exemplified on a comparative basis. Recent research into the area of the dynamic-semantic scales has confirmed the applicability of the modification of the original framework of dynamic semantic scales developed by Firbas (1992) and supplemented by Svoboda (1989). The modification consists in the recognition of the occurrence of a Specification within the Presentation Scale in semantically dense sentences (Adam & Chamonikolasová 2005). The Presentation Scale including a Specification is referred to as the Extended Presentation Scale. I believe that the modification presented is obviously compatible with the original framework and contributes to a more precise analysis of language in the act of communication.

Bibliography and references Adam, M. (2003) Religious text: the Thematic and the Rhematic Layers within a Distributional Macrofield, an unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Brno: Masaryk University. Adam, M. (2005). ‘Functional Macrofield Perspective?’. In Theory and Practice in English Studies, Volume 3. Proceedings from the 8th Conference of English, American, and Canadian Studies. Brno: Masaryk University, ISBN 80-210-3930-2. Adam, M. and J. Chamonikolasová (2005). ‘The Presentation Scale in the Theory of Functional Sentence Perspective’. In: Čermák, J. et al. (eds.): Patterns (A Festschrift for Libuše Dušková), Praha: Filozofická fakulta Univerziy Karlovy, 59-69. ISBN 80-7308-108-3 Adam, M. (2006). Functional macrofield perspective (a religious discourse analysis based on FSP). Brno: Masarykova univerzita, ISBN 8021041374. Chamonikolasová, J. (2004). ‘Gradation of Meaning in an English Sentence’. In Anglica Wratislaviensia 42, 111-118. Wroclaw: Wroclaw University, ISSN 0301-7966. Chamonikolasová, J. (2005). ‘Dynamic semantic scales in the theory of functional sentence perspective’. In Aleg(r)ace pro Evu. Papers in Honour of Eva Hajičová, 61-67. Daneš, F. (1995). ‘Paragraph – a central unit of the thematic and compositional build-up of texts’. In Warwik, Tauskanen and Hiltunen (eds.) Organization in Discourse: Proceedings from the Turku Conference, Anglicana Turkuensia 14, 29-40. Turku: University of Turku. Dušková, L. 1988. Mluvnice současné angličtiny na pozadí češtiny [A grammar of contemporay English against the background of Czech]. Prague: Academia, ISBN 80-200-1413-6. Dušková, L. (2004). ‘Syntactic constancy of the subject complement, Part 1: A Comparison between Czech and English’. In: Linguistica Pragensia 14, Vol. 2, 57-71. Praha: Academia, ISSN 0862-8432. Firbas, J. (1964). ‘On defining the theme in functional sentence analysis’, Travaux Linguistiques de Prague 1, 267-280. Praha: Univerzita Karlova. Firbas, J. (1974). ‘Some aspects of the Czechoslovak approach to problems of functional sentence perspective’, Papers on Functional Sentence Perspective, F. Daneš (ed.), 11-37. Prague: Academia. Firbas, J. (1986). ‘On the dynamics of written communication in the light of the theory of functional sentence perspective’. In Cooper and Greenbaum (eds.) Studying Writing: Linguistic Approaches, 40–71. Beverly Hills: Sage, ISBN 0803923724. Firbas, J. (1992). Functional sentence perspective in written and spoken communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521373085. Firbas, J. (1995). ‘On the thematic and the rhematic layers of a text’, In Warwik, Tauskanen and Hiltunen (eds.) Organization in Discourse: Proceedings from the Turku Conference, Anglicana Turkuensia 14, 59-72. Turku: University of Turku. New International version of the Holy Bible (1984). Colorado Springs: International Bible Society, IBS97-80000/12000/35000/20000. Pípalová, R. (2005). ‘On the global textual theme and other textual hyperthemes’, In Linguistica Pragensia 15, Vol. 2, 57-86. Prague: ÚJČ AV ČR, ISSN 0862-8432.


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Svoboda, A. (1983). ‘Thematic elements’, Brno Studies in English 15, 49-85. Brno: Masarykova univerzita. Svoboda, A. (1989). Kapitoly z funkční syntaxe (Chapters from functional syntax). Prague: Státní pedagogické nakladatelství. Svoboda, A. (2005). ‘Firbasian semantic scales and comparative studies’. In: Čermák, J. et al. (eds.): Patterns (A Festschrift for Libuše Dušková), 217-229, Praha: Filozofická fakulta Univerziy Karlovy, ISBN 80-7308-108-3. Svoboda, A., T. Hrehovčík (2006). An ABC of theoretical and applied linguistics. Opava: Slezská univerzita, ISBN 80-7248-382-X.


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Structural and Cohesive Devices in Business Letters Magdaléna Bilá University of Prešov, Slovak Republic

Abstract When people communicate with each other, they aim at achieving a goal and meeting certain expectations of their audience. Thus, they follow certain stereotyped conventions of discourse (CHANG Zhonglin, 2006). However, L2 users’ of English discourses may exhibit some deviations” from these conventions. The present paper explores English business letters (invitation letters) composed by the Slovak users paying special attention to their structure and use of cohesive devices. With respect to the distribution and frequency of cohesive devices, lexical cohesion is prevalent. Out of the categories of lexical cohesion, simple lexical repetition is, as

expected, in majority followed by less numerous synonyms. With respect to the devices of grammatical cohesion, out of referential ties, demonstratives are predictably most frequent (they do not cause ambiguities and connect paragraphs) followed by devices of comparative reference, possessive reference and personal reference. Out of conjunctions those expressing addition and enumeration are represented. In summary, it is possible to conclude that invitation letters composed by Slovak writers follow the general pattern of closed registers although in some individual cases more attention ought to be paid to careful proofreading and polishing in order to make them “reader-friendly”. Key words Business letters, structural devices, cohesive devices, channel 1. Introduction It is generally accepted nowadays that language is a heterogeneous system exhibiting a number of varieties depending on the selection of language means (Urbanová, 2002: 9-10). This selection is in some situations intuitive and in others intentional yielding different styles of discourse (Chang, 2006). With regard to medium (i.e. speech signs by means of which a message is conveyed from one person to another) linguists differentiate spoken and written discourse varieties and compare them in the following features: Channel (the route in which a message is transmitted from the addresser to the addressee) limitation; spontaneity of the message; audience interaction; publicity of the situation (Chang, 2006: 149). Channel limitation implies that the transmission of a message is confined to a single channel. This is the case of written language, which is limited to the visual channel only. Unlike in speech, a writer cannot exploit phonological features that help indicate how the message is to be understood. Moreover, the writers do not often know to what extent their readers share any common background knowledge; therefore, greater explicitness is required. Spoken language, on the other hand, relies on multiple channels (phonological means and paralinguistic means). With regard to the spontaneity of the message, spoken language is impromptu – exhibiting normal non-fluency (filled and unfilled pauses, unintended repetitions, false starts and ellipses), which affects its loose syntactic structure. Thus, spoken language exhibits the following features: unclear sentence boundaries, frequent occurrence of minor sentences, preference for paratactic structure (coordination with connectives as well as unlinked, loose coordination, a clause with an appended clause), and the use of postponed or anticipated identification, comment clauses in end position, repetition of the same syntactic structure. Regarding the lexical choice, clichés, general or vague words are prevalent. A formal written text is normally an outcome of the writer’s good deal of thinking, planning, revising and proofreading, which results in syntactic completeness and complexity characterized by clear sentence

boundaries, more complex and more compact structure, cleft sentences, the use of various logical indicators, cohesive devices (expressing addition, contrast and concession, enumeration, exemplification, summary, and some others). Moreover, words are carefully selected (Chang, 2006: 149-164). Regarding the audience interaction, it is probable and even invited in spoken language (especially in dialogue) and limited or even excluded in written language. Publicity of situation, as a rule, affects the formality in language such that in spoken language, the larger the audience and the more public the setting, the more formal the language gets. Written language is generally more formal (Chang, 2006: 149-164). Business letters are limited to visual channel, they are prepared, planned and polished beforehand, exclude the audience’s interaction, and, as a rule, are formal. What is more, they represent a more restricted register striving primarily for clarity and avoidance of ambiguity, which affects their structure and the distribution and frequency of cohesive devices (Buitkiene, 2005). 2. Material and methods Eight business letters composed by various Slovak companies (dated between August and December 2006) have been analyzed with regard to structural components and the use of cohesive devices. All the letters fulfilled the same communicative purpose – inviting an expert or a group of experts to the company in question. 3. Results and discussion Regarding the structure, all of them were printed on letterhead stationary containing the writer’s company and address. They also contained the inside address indicating the name and address of the recipient. The salutation was left out in three of them. Out of the remaining five, two used “Dear” followed by the name of the recipient; one used “Dear Sir", one “Dear Sirs" one “Dear Sir/ Madam” all of which were followed by a comma. Since comma implies a friendly, familiar and sociable tone, the use of it appeared to be inappropriate in one letter the tone of which was rather formal.


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Six letters contained the subject matter or reference line. In all the letters there were no roundabout manners of beginning and the subject matter was stated immediately. Only one letter was composed as a solid piece of text with no paragraphing. In the remaining ones, however, the text was broken into clear paragraphs. In addition, it was possible to identify the topic sentence or word or phrase indicating the topic of the paragraph (establishing the contact, stating the purpose of invitation, providing further details of the visit and sorting out the coverage of expenses). With regard to lexical choice, one letter used rather pompous, legal-sounding vocabulary. Two letters provided lists of items that extended over a few lines. Therefore, in order to provide a clearer framework for the readers, it would have been more appropriate to break them out with numbers or bullets. Regarding the complimentary close, five letters were concluded in “Sincerely yours”, one used “Respectfully yours” and two used “Best regards” and “With best regards” respectively. In relation to the contents and overall tone of the letters, however, the last two closes appeared too informal. With respect to the distribution and frequency of cohesive devices, the results were predictable and lexical cohesion proved to predominate (Buitkiene, 2005). Out of the categories of lexical cohesion (tables 1 and 2), simple lexical repetition4 was, as expected, in majority. This category was followed by less numerous synonyms. There was only one occurrence of substitution and no cases of complex lexical repetition5, no hyponyms/ meronyms6 and no antonyms. This distributional pattern can be explained by the fact that the investigated samples of writing required precision and clarity (compare Buitkiene, 2005) and simple lexical repetition “can be defined as the most stable way of pointing to a particular referent” (Buitkiene, 2005). With respect to the devices of grammatical cohesion (table 3), out of referential ties, demonstratives were predictably most frequent (they do not cause ambiguities and connect paragraphs). They were followed by devices of comparative reference, possessive reference and personal reference. There were no cases of substitution and ellipsis as these devices have higher frequency in open registers. Out of conjunctions those expressing addition and enumeration were represented (table 4). In summary, it is possible to conclude that invitation letters composed by Slovak writers follow the general pattern of closed registers although in some individual cases more attention ought to have been paid to careful proofreading and polishing in order to make them “reader-friendly”. Table 1: Cohesive devices: Lexical cohesion

4 Simple lexical repetition includes cases “when a lexical item is repeated with no greater change than is explicable in terms of a closed grammatical paradigm” (Buitkiene, 2005). 5 Complex lexical repetition occurs when two lexical units have an identical morpheme but different grammatical functions (Buitkiene, 2005). 6 Meronymy concerns pairs of lexical items related as part to whole (Buitkiene, 2005).

Table 2: Cohesive devices: Lexical cohesion Letters/ numbers of words

substitution synonyms simple lexical

repetition Letter 1 (60)

- - 1

Letter 2 (96)

1 3 -

Letter 3 (184)

- 3 5

Letter 4 (188)

- - 11

Letter 5 (64)

- - 3

Letter 6 (144)

- - 2

Letter 7 (100)

- - -

Letter 8 (138)

- 2 4

Table 3: Cohesive devices: Grammatical cohesion7

Letters/ numbers of words

demonstrative

reference

personal reference

possessive reference

comparative

reference

Letter 1 (60 )

1 - - -

Letter 2 (96)

2 1 2 1

Letter 3 (184)

- - - 1

Letter 4 (188)

- - - -

Letter 5 (64)

- - - -

Letter 6 (144)

4 2 - -

Letter 7 (100)

4 - - -

Letter 8 (138)

2 - 2 3

7 Articles were not explored in this research study.


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Table 4: Cohesive devices: connectives

Letters/ numbers of words

Discourse markers

(connectives)

Letters and

numbers of words

Discourse markers

(connectives)

Letter 1 (60)

1 Letter 5 (64)

2

Letter 2 8 Letter 6 2

(96) (144) Letter 3 (184)

1 Letter 7 (100)

-

Letter 4 (188)

8 Letter 8 (138)

2

Bibliography and references Bhatia, V.J. (1993): Analysing genre. Longman. Brown, G. & Yule, G. (1993): Discourse analysis. Cambridge University Press. Buitkiene, J. (2005): Variability of Cohesive Devices Across Registers. In: Studies about languages, No. 7., ISSN 1648-2874. CHANG, Z. (2006): Stylistics: A Coursebook For Chinese EFL Students. Foreign language teaching and research press, Beijing. ISBN 7-5600-5374-2. Crystal, D., Davy, D. (1986): Investigating English Style. Longman. Crystal, D. (1995): The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge University Press. Hoffmanová, J. (1997): Stylistika a... Současná situace stylistiky. Trizonia. Mistrík, J. (1995): Štylistika. SPN. Rázusová, M. (2001): Genre Analysis and its Applications in a Professional Setting. Odborný styl ve výuce cizích jazyku, Západočeská univerzita Plzeň, pp.: 179-186. Schiffrin, D. (1992): Discourse markers. Cambridge University Press. Slančová, D. (1996): Praktická štylistika. FF Prešov. Urbanová, L. (2002): Úvod do anglické stylistiky. Barrister and Principal. ISBN 80-86598-33-0. http://www.gel.ulaval.ca/~poussart/gel64324/McMurrey/texte/lettov.htm The present paper is based on research carried out within the scheme VEGA 1/3714/06 Žánrová analýza autentických textov vo vybraných inštitucionálnych prostrediach


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E-mail - a Bridge between Written and Spoken Mode & Strategy of Beginnings Jan Comorek University of Hradec Králové, Czech Republic

Abstract This paper shows how such a simple phenomenon as e-mail can change during a relatively short time. Authentic material proves that nowadays the most common type of Czech greeting phrase in emails is “Dobrý den” which gives this type of communication some aspects of typical spoken mode. The fact that introductory phrase works as a customary introductory expression in a spoken dialogue increases the feeling of an authentic conversation. Politeness, is communicated by feelings of loyalty, nearness and immediacy arising from the spoken feeling of e-mail. A unique

feature of spoken discourse – prosody - is sometimes conveyed by the use of diacritics and emoticons expressing various emotions.

Key words Communication, e-mail, electronic letter, e-mail case study, greeting phrase, spoken mode, written mode 1. Introduction E-mail is one of the new communication channels that have appeared just recently. The word “recently” in this context means just a few decades. Technological progress goes on so fast and technological miracles are changing the way of our lifes everywhere on our globe. Communication between people in various distant places can be realised via different channels and different means. And as computers are practically inherent part of our homes and the Webb or Internet connection points today are not a question of money we use more and more this electronic device to communicate with people around us. E-mail is becoming one of the most common means of communication. Fifteen years ago we hardly checked our e-mail address for new messages once or twice a week but today we have to check it every day and for most of us even several times a day. Appeared a word netiquette which in fact was a set of rules and recommendations for the people who wrote e-mails to help them organise their letters on the screen, sound polite and avoid inapt expressions; netiquette today is rather a guide how to behave on the net than a guide recommending language usage or organising layout. This has become less important, it is up to us to organise our language. Netiquette originally was connected with politeness. But does the fact that netiquette in the sense in which this word used to be understood has changed mean that our e-mail letters are less polite? Or may be better question: How we realise in today´s e-mails the necessary (and required) politeness? How do we do it that our electronic letters are polite though comparison of an e-mail and a paper letter shows astonishing differences in all aspects involved – grammar, lay-out, lexico or even a typeface. How much are both types the electronic and paper letters different and how much are they similar. The time passes quickly and technology – as it has already been mentioned - goes forward fast. What was new last week is old today and we keep getting rid of such old thing. But not in all cases: the idea of electronic mail – an “electronic” letter that we send to someone else on the other end of the wire has not change. It is here from the very beginning of modern computers. At first it substituted paper letters but until today it developed in somehow different “species” of written communication. Undoubtedly it is written (we type it) but its nature seems to be more spoken like and this fact also influences embeded politeness. Let us ask some questions that show us the shift in

understanding the e-mail as a typical communication channel of the written mode and the politeness involved in such change. 2. Written and Spoken Mode – Characteristics of a Letter and an Electronic Letter What are the main differences between the two modes. Let me mention at least some notoriously well known differences which are usually discussed when talking about discourse and language used in written or spoken mode. Written mode is typical for its permanency, it is well structured, organised and uses grammatically correct language, there usually are not any mistakes and words are carefully chosen to fit the purpose of the text and atop of the above mentioned we work with a layout of the document/text which is really a unique feature of the written mode. On the other hand spoken mode may be characterised as transient, structured in more casual and less sophisticated way, with grammatical errors (sometimes corrected on the spot), repetitions, rephrasing, hesitations, sentences in the “grammatical sense” are often substituted by “groups of words” and similarly as the layout worked in the written mode we have the “audible layout” of the spoken mode - we have prosody. The audible aspect of the text. For the moment such a brief list may be sufficient though I realise this is not a complete list but for the moment it is sufficient. I try to investigate only some of the characteristics of the both modes. E-mail – which is an example of a discourse (language used in the context of concrete time, place and participants as viewed e.g. by Gee (2003) or Brown and Yule (1993)) in which from the nature of the communication channel it is considered that exclusively written mode shall be used. This is not only because e-mail was and still is an equivalent of regular mail or simply a letter that we do not write on paper but on the screen (the sole fact of writing). But also because we usually treat this “electronic letter” in the same way as a real (paper) one. We follow the rules that we usually follow when writing a letter by hand on a paper. We know that there should be a proper beginning (depending on whom we write) then the main part and finally some greetings or saying good bye. We do not suppose that the letter will be read aloud, we do not count on it when writing. It seems as easy as this until you look at your own file of outgoing messages in your e-mail client and look at them in a bit more critical way.


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The truth is that we write, but some characteristics of most normal daily e-mail messages are today closer to characteristics of the spoken mode than to the written one. I decided look at the most striking and interesting characteristics and relate them somehow to politeness embeded in e-mails. The most interesting change that happend during the last couple of years (talking about Czech surroundings) in email form and content (I believe that this change began just two or three years ago) was the change of the initial addressing – the greeting phrase. Why has this happened and how does this fact affect politeness? 3. Data for Investigation Data which I took as a sample corpus represent nearly 700 e-mail messages mostly written in Czech. They were collected during a big international conference and thus represent more or less the type of e-mail messages that can be considered more formal, though some of them as the organisers knew some people to whom they wrote were more personal (but this was absolute minority). Prevailing portion of the e-mail communication was between participants (unknown to organisers) and an organisation committee or individual people (four members) representing this committee. Alltogether there were some 500 participants at the conference and about 90% of them did not know the members of the committe untill they saw them at the conference. All the data were collected during some three or four months; “subjects” of the e-mail of the messages were relatively not varied. People asked for information, they wanted to know something about application forms, accommodation, meals, schedule, speakers and similar practical questions. From this point of view the whole corpus is very homogeneous. Situation and conditions and circumstances were same or very similar for practically all participants. Each person wrote an e-mail as if she/he wrote a normal letter to an official institution or a person representing this institution (unknown to the sender) and asked for some information. E-mails should have been organised similarly as a formal written letter with typical phrases, organisation, addressing or salutation and other characteristic features. However this formality has changed recently quite a lot. The tendency of e-mail to swing between the spoken and written characteristics as described for example by Baron (1998) keeps changing. As the electronic medium develops and gives the sender more writing freedom an inclination to written/spoken changes in overall linguistic profile (structured according to Baron in four parts: Social Dynamics, Format, Grammar, Style) of email is different to the one a few years ago. Within this vast field of changes I have focused on the following things: beginnings – “salutation”; final phrases; and expressions ensuring politeness and I will try to explain how we achieve required politeness though the level of formality has been reduced by the mentioned inclination to spoken mode. Obtained data and results are in Tables 1, 2 and 3 in section 7. Tables and e-mail sample) 4. E-mail (Electronic Letter) - Real Characteristics Though e-mail is by nature a written discourse, it definitely has some characteristics that move it closer to the spoken mode. Two things observed in the corpus will be discussed. First is the most used types of salutation and second the structural aspect following from usage of such type of salutation; both will be discussed from the point of view of their impact on politeness.

1) Beginnings/salutation What were the usual beginnings of the e-mails, what “salutation” was used? In the collected e-mails one of the most common and in fact the most often used (occurrence 219, which is 34%) was “Dobrý den” (and similar expressions) – which really is very rarely used in paper letters. A usual beginning would probably be – “Vážený pane, Vážená paní, Vážení,” in the case of official letters and “Drahý, Drahá, Milý, Milá,” in the case of personal letters. Such usual beginnings ensure a loyal and friendly tone even at the very beginning of the letter and thus comply with the requirement of politeness. (The politeness in the sense as described by Leech (1983)). The simple greeting “Dobrý den” is more neutral and thus may seem less polite. But in fact we do not feel it less politely. In e-mails we accept it as a suitable, polite beginning, even if sending an e-mail letter to an unknown person or organisation. What is the sender trying to point at and highlight by such greeting is an aspect of time. Not only in the sense of hypothetical delays or similar time relations but real running time. What seems to be important is actual running time – as if the writer expected an immediate answer from the reader as if speaking to the other person and awaiting an immediate answer. The sense of a dialog or conversation is quite strong and brings several associated feelings (feelings alway embeded in spoken mode discourse): - A feeling of loyalty and nearness; An official written letter can never express these feelings no matter how polite it is and how many phrases ensuring politeness have been used. It is only when we speak with someone else that we have this feeling. (there is no impersonality or anonymity, physical proximity is evoked) - A feeling of immediacy or perhaps instantaneousness or naturalness; This also imprints in such e-mails or electronic letters features of the spoken mode (which is typical with its spontaneity and casualness); or at least it evokes an impression of the spoken discourse with all associated facts and connections. 2) Feeling of “a turn” There is another structural aspect of such beginning that moves the written electronic text towards the spoken dialog or conversation. The words “Dobrý den” are a part of the usual beginning of a typical spoken conversation. They strongly evoke turn-taking; we expect either continuation or a fast reaction, like in a normal spoken dialog or conversation. This second structural aspect functions simultaneously with the former (the type of greeting) and amplify its influence. Politeness achieved in normal official written letters by standard lexical means, phrases and structures is somehow substituted by maybe less formally structured but more cordial “speech evoking” text. What is plugged in are our feelings and our subconscious. Such substitution works very successfully. Maybe more successfully and efficiently than polite but somewhat dry official phrases and characteristic structures. We know from practical life that if we want to address feelings (and emotions) of the other person the spoken mode is much more successful and efficient than the written one. Both types of feelings – loyalty/proximity as well as naturalness/immediacy (which give the impression of spontaneity and openness) work in similar way. We feel tuned in the mind of the other person. Politeness of an explicit official written phrase has been substituted by more subtle but possibly greater-functioning subconscious feelings we have when a spoken mode is evoked.


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5. Other Means/Tools Affecting Evoking the Feeling of a Spoken Mode There are definitely other possibilities for the sender to intensify impression of the spoken dialog or conversation. I will mention only three that were present in the e-mails in the corpus. The occurrence of some is illustrated in section of Table 1 “Other not frequent beginnings” though they can appear (probably more often) in the body of the text and not at the beginning or at the end of e-mails:

- layout – usage of diacritics marking prosody (pauses, intonation, and so on) or evoking feelings - shape of smiling faces and other

- discourse markers that would normally be used in spoken mode

- different layout of ending – usually the signature is in the bottom left corner which would never (or rarely) appear in the written letter

Of course, no matter how hard we try, we cannot recreate the uniqueness of prosody. But one example of an e-mail (Sample 1) shows that usage of pictures or emoticons and other diacritics can strongly associate the prosody - intonation, stress, pauses or maybe even tempo. (And as we can see from the sample, it also can say more about the character of the sender as it works a little bit as his/her handwriting). 6. Conclusion The goal of this paper was to show how such a simple phenomenon as e-mail can change during relatively short time. Authentic material proved that the most common type of Czech greeting (introductory) phrase in email is nowadays “Dobrý den” which gives this type of communication some aspects of typical spoken mode. It seems that perception of time is of the biggest importance. Though the mode is in fact written, the sender is trying to create an impression of a spoken dialogue. Also the fact that this introductory phrase works as an usual introductory turn in a spoken dialog increases the feeling of real authentic dialogue or conversation. Politeness, which is in a normal paper letter ensured by respectful phrases and usual structures is communicated by feelings of loyalty, nearness and immediacy arising from the spoken feeling of e-mail. A unique feature of the spoken discourse – prosody is sometimes conveyed by the usage of diacritics and human faces (emoticons) expressing emotions. 7. Tables and E-mail Sample Table 1 - Summary I - Beginnings addressing directly

Czech beginnings:

Occurrence:

English beginning

s:

Occurrence:

Dobrý den 207 Dear ... 58 Hezký den 5 Hello 9 Dobrý večer 2 Hi 8 Pěkný den 3 Dobré ráno 1 Dobré

odpoledne 1

Vážení/vážená ...

129

Milý/milá/é 35

... Ahoj 26 Ahojky 3

Čau 3 Olga, Jan ... 8 Paní O., Pane

J. ... 12

Total 450 Total 75 Table 2 - Summary II - Beginnings not addressing directly

Beginning Occurrence Beginning Occurren

ce Děkuji 34 V příloze 4 Moc děkuji

6 Přikládáme 2

Díky moc 3 Doufám 2 Prosím 5 Já/I am... 11 Posílám 9 Jasně 3

Promiňte 2 Thank

you/Thanks 10

Tak 3 Zdravím 2 Total 62 Total 34

Table 3 - Summary III – Some other infrequent beginnings (occurrence 1)

O.K. Oh thank you Greetings note ²

Jsi hvězda !!!! Napište note ¹

Ach jo

Naprosto vyčerpávající

Našla :)))

Na místo Pozor Zřejmě Žádám

Pro jistotu Omlouvám se Jejejeejeeje Ospravedlňujem sa

Note ¹ - Subject of the e-mail message was a part of the message (incorporated). Note ² - Non-native speaker E-mail Sample 1 (source – author´s archive, November 2006, shortened) .... pani kopecka!!!!!!! japa se mame???????? nic nevim a

nerikej ze nejsou zadny novinky!! urcite minimalne

nejaky novy slova co ana zvladla a co barak, uz???

zdravim mohutne!!!!!!!!!

su, su, suuuuu!!!!!!! diky za mail!!!! doufam ze hned

zitra ti napisu krasnou intimni romantiku!!!!!!! zatim

pusu velikou a urcite mas mailovou adresu na

wendys a bobrisko, tak mi je plis napis dzenkujem

bardzo a prosim vas, prijedte uz nekdo, je mi tady smutno. tomova cestina je bidna, zatim se dostal na: "mam hlad. vyborny jidlo. chutna." to je nase posledni lekce cestiny.

tot vsjo. priste snad budou nejaky fotky. davejte na sebe pozor, pozdravujte ty, na ktery nemam mail a

mejte se uuuzasne!!!!! pap m.


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Bibliography and references Baron, N. (1998). Letters by phone or speech by other means: The linguistics of e-mail. Language and Communication, 18, 133-170. Brown, G. and G. Yule (1983) Discourse Analysis. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Gee, J.- P. (1999). An introduction to Discourse Analysis. Routledge, London. Hillier, H. (2004). Analysing Real Texts. Palgrave Macmillan Ltd., New York. Leech,G. (1983). Principles of Pragmatics. Longman, London. Yule, G. (1996). Pragmatics. Oxford University Press, Oxford.


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Some Aspects of Politeness in Public Speaking Olga Dontcheva-Navratilova Masaryk University, Czech Republic Abstract This contribution studies aspects of politeness in public discourse in international institutional communication. The analysis is performed on a sample of speeches made by the Director-General of UNESCO; it focuses on the salutation part of the speeches, which indicates the alignment of the speaker with the audience. The paper tries to relate linguistic markers of politeness, such as lexical choice, modality and forms of address, to discourse strategies which may be regarded as genre-specific. The study has evidenced that positive- and negative-politeness strategies used by the speaker are interwoven and that they correlate with discourse strategies indicating

the speaker’s alignment with the audience to achieve existential coherence. The analysis has also proved that the language means used to convey politeness cannot be categorically assigned to particular politeness strategies, as they can be used to express different strategies and their function and politeness value is context- dependent. Key words diplomatic discourse, communication, politeness, negative and positive politeness strategies, forms of address, self referencing, other referencing, existential coherence, speaker’s alignment, footing 1. Introduction Power relations, related politeness phenomena and their manifestation in public speaking have for several decades been a central issue in the study of political discourse from the point of view of sociolinguistics and pragmatics (e.g. Wilson 1990, Ng and Bradac 1993, Bull and Fetzer 2006). However, diplomatic communication, i.e. institutional communication at intergovernmental level, is a field of research in discourse studies which remains relatively neglected. Although in institutional discourse most of the linguistic choices made by the participants are register- or genre-specific, and, as some linguists claim, may be seen as having “little to do with politeness and little connection with pragmatics” (Thomas 1995: 154), this research undertakes to show that “power is a significant determinant of strategic choice (or lack of choice)” (Harris 1995: 133) and that the choice of politeness strategies in public discourse in international institutional communication is connected to discourse strategies indicating the speaker’s alignment with the audience and asserting his/her existential coherence. 2. Diplomatic communication Public speeches at the UN reflect conflicts about important world issues and promote worldviews across different cultures. Since human communication is deeply affected by culture-specific rules and norms of interaction and interpretation (Hymes 1975), awareness of cultural diversity is a pre-requisite to cross-cultural communication; misunderstandings can lead to conflict and frustration, and “when the arena is international affairs, the results of cross-cultural misinterpretation can be tragic indeed” (Tannen 1985: 212). Though diplomatic communication at the UN uses discourse conventions and “rhetorical standards [which] appear similar to western conventions” (Donahue and Proser 1997: 4), it has to accommodate different cultural perspectives; consequently, the multicultural nature of diplomatic discourse requires frequent explicit reference to cultural structures and background knowledge which are activated in the process of discourse understanding (Miššíková 2005: 89). Moreover, speakers/writers engage in elaborate discourse ‘framing’, which introduces the receivers to the content and its arrangements in discourse. Frames are of two kinds: the outer frames (Swales 1990) consist of topic indicators, participant alignments, content summation and final closure; the inner frames

direct the receivers to an understanding of purpose, content and organization. The present research focuses on participants’ alignments and studies the salutation part of addresses, i.e. “the section of a speech by which the speaker gives acknowledgement to his or her host and to the audience” (Donahue and Proser 1997: 66). Since the salutation part of a speech typically provides an expression of gratitude for services rendered, appreciation of achievement and recognition of personal or professional association, it is reasonable to expect that it will be marked by a high degree of politeness and formality. When establishing their relationship with the audience, diplomats and politicians may choose different footings (Goffman 1981): they may act as animator, author or principal, or use a change of footing, e.g. they may opt to switch from author to principal in order to “downplay their personal role, thereby avoiding the appearance of immodesty” (Bull and Fetzer 2006: 35). The choice of footing is closely connected with the establishing of ‘existential coherence’, i.e. the desire of the speaker to project a coherent image of him/her self and of the institution he/she represents, which is constantly under construction in the negotiating of the relationship between the self and the other(s) (Duranti 2006: 469). Politicians and diplomats are particularly anxious to project and maintain a coherent image of themselves, i.e. they try to present their beliefs, actions and relations with other political entities and individuals as based on some clear principles which do not contradict one another. This existential coherence is motivated both externally and internally; on the one hand politicians are concerned with how to save face in front of an audience that is evaluating their actions and works, and on the other hand they must address their own sense of coherence (ibid.: 470). The present research undertakes to investigate how the discourse strategies a speaker may use for asserting existential coherence are related to the politeness strategies used to achieve smooth interaction with the audience. An analysis of the interaction between the speaker and the audience within the UN system should take into consideration the fact that it is slightly different from the interaction taking place when a political speech is delivered by candidates within an election campaign, or by leading politicians on issues of national importance. In the latter case the speaker is concerned for his personal image and the image of the political party or institution he/she represents, and the audience is a


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socially and politically divided but culturally relatively homogenous general public; therefore the aim of the speaker is to manipulate the audience in order to achieve immediate political goals, i.e. to make people believe in certain things, vote for him/her or the political party in the upcoming elections etc. In the former case, however, the interaction is mediated; the speaker is seen primarily as a representative of an institution (government or international governmental organization) on behalf of which he/she is acting, and the audience is composed of representatives of different governments who are defending different national interests, i.e. they are representing institutional views and actions which have to be approved by the institution they represent. Therefore, since speeches at the UN cannot be expected to have an immediate effect on the behaviour of the institutional addressee, they are rather ritualistic and act as declarations of intent or good will. 3. Material The present research is an investigation into the genre of diplomatic addresses within the UN system. It studies in particular speeches given by the Director-General of UNESCO at the opening of international conferences and meetings, i.e. instances of international and intercultural communication which involve important world issues and related conflicts. Addresses are scripted formal speeches, which are usually produced in the modes of both speaking and writing, i.e. the speech is typically performed from a written script which after the delivery of the address is published or distributed as a written document. The analysis of politeness strategies in UNESCO addresses has been carried out on ten speeches made by Koïchiro Matsuura, the current Director-General of UNESCO; nine of the speeches were delivered in the period November 2006 – February 2007 and one speech was delivered at the UN headquarters in 2005. As mentioned above, this analysis focuses on the salutation part of the addresses. Speeches at United Nations organizations may be delivered in different languages, and very often they are multilingual, i.e. they provide examples of code-switching mainly for considerations of positive politeness. However, since one of the aims of this paper is to investigate language means used to express politeness in the English language, for all the addresses selected for the purposes of this research the English version is the original. 4. Approaches to politeness Though interdisciplinary in its essence, the study of politeness from the perspective of discourse analysis does not approach this complex, multifaceted phenomenon as a real-world goal, i.e. the desire to be pleasant and kind to others; it is regarded rather as a conscious implementation of behavioural and language strategies for the achieving of smooth interaction with the interlocutor(s) (e.g. Ide 1989, Thomas 1995, Wilamová 2006). The present paper draws on two influential approaches to politeness, namely Leech’s Politeness Principle (1983), which is intended to account for exceptions and deviations from Grice’s Cooperative Principle (Grice 1975), and Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory (1987), which builds upon Goffman’s concept of ‘face’ (Goffman 1967), i.e. “the public self-image that every member [of a society] claims for himself” (Brown and Levinson 1987: 61). Brown and Levinson assume that “people cooperate (and assume each other’s cooperation) in maintaining face in interaction, such cooperation being based on the mutual vulnerability of face” (ibid.), and define two interrelated aspects of face: negative face, i.e. “the want

of every ‘competent adult member’ that his actions be unimpeded by others” (ibid. 62), and positive face, i.e. “the want of every member that his wants be desirable to at least some others” (ibid.). In agreement with Brown and Levinson (1987: 56), the present research approaches interaction as the expression of social relationships through strategic language use. The choice of politeness strategies is considered to be influenced by the interplay of three sociological variables, i.e. social distance, and the relative power and size of imposition. In order to maintain or enhance face in interaction, the speaker may use four politeness ‘super-strategies’, namely bald on record, positive politeness, negative politeness, and off record. This study focuses primarily on the two on-record ‘super-strategies’ with redressive action: negative politeness, which is associated with redress and assurance of non-imposition, and positive politeness, which is not necessarily redressive and is associated with the acceptance and appreciation of the other and the expression of similarity between the speaker and hearer’s wants. The choice of linguistic means for the realization of positive and negative politeness strategies is context-dependent (Leech 1983: 102). Brown and Levinson, however, claim that there are two general aspects which are valid for all strategies. Firstly, apart from using the lexical and syntactic choices available, politeness may involve the organization and ordering of the face wants that are to be satisfied; secondly, “the more effort S expends in face-maintaining linguistic behaviour, the more S communicates his sincere desire that H’s face wants are satisfied” (Brown and Levinson 1987: 93). Diplomatic discourse is characterised primarily by formal politeness, which to a great extent is predetermined by social norms and is associated with distancing, complex grammatical structures and context-dependent implicature (Urbanová and Oakland 2002: 43). However, the choice of whether or not to observe the norm and to what extent, is a pragmatic and stylistic choice made by the speaker in order to achieve his/her communicative goals. Moreover, since politeness is relative to context or situation, “polite language may be seen as deferential and indicative of low status in some situations but as effective and indicative of high status in others” (Ng and Bradac 1993: 37). In the context of diplomatic interaction, the co-occurrence of polite linguistic features with a speaker’s use of a valued variety of language reinforces the impression of gentility, diplomacy and convergence, and it fosters perceptions of high communicator solidarity and persuasiveness of the discourse (ibid.:57). 5. Aims of the research The aims of the present research into politeness strategies used in public discourse in an international institutional setting are: to study the interplay of different politeness strategies used by the speaker in the salutation part of the addresses to achieve smooth interaction with the audience to show how these politeness strategies correlate with discourse strategies for asserting existential coherence and indicating participants’ alignments with the audience to identify linguistic markers of politeness associated with these politeness strategies. 6. Analysis of politeness strategies in the salutation part of addresses In the context of delivering addresses at intergovernmental meetings and conferences, the institutional participants are relatively distant and the relative power of representatives of member-states is a


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function of the power of their states, which may be further modulated by the office a particular representative holds within the organisation; the relative power of executives depends on their rank within the organization. Since addresses given by the Director-General are part of the ritual of meetings or conferences, taking the floor is not considered as a serious imposition. The institutional ranking of the speaker (as Director-General of UNESCO) grants him a position of power with regard to the other participants, i.e. he is the superior of the other executives within the organization and he represents the organization with regard to representatives of member states and other intergovernmental organizations. Therefore, the politeness strategies used in an address focus on the reducing of social distance and power, a value attached to individuals and roles or role-sets which may be further modulated by context (Brown and Levinson 1987: 78-9). Since speeches open with forms of address, this analysis begins by considering the function of forms of address in establishing relationships with the audience. Forms of address are typically associated with the indication of social relationships and may be used to signal deference (e.g. honorifics) or in-group membership (e.g. nicknames), i.e. they can function as markers of both negative and positive politeness. Giving deference is a component of the broader negative-politeness mechanism ‘don’t coerce H’. It is a double-sided negative politeness strategy which is based on the raising of the other and the lowering of the self; it maintains social distance and restraint and is related to the avoiding or mitigating of imposition and coercing. One of the most frequent means used to intensify the power of the hearer is the use of forms of address including titles and honorifics. Societal rules of address, especially in diplomatic discourse, are categorical, i.e. the use of address forms is dictated by sociolinguistic norms. As a consequence, it is possible to claim that “the speaker has no choice as to whether to use the deferent form or not” (Thomas 1995: 152) and that therefore “deference has little to do with pragmatics” (ibid.). However, the speaker always has a choice between observance and non-observance of the set norms; moreover he/she may opt for some variation or deviation from the norm, which may be regarded as a pragmatic choice. It is an awareness of the marked and unmarked linguistic choices available that enables the participants in an act of communication to make strategic choices; therefore the choice of an unmarked form in a particular context indicates a desire to preserve the expected interpersonal relations, while the choice of marked forms signals an attempt to change these relations (Jaworski and Galasinski 2000: 37) In Koïchiro Matsuura’s speeches, forms of address are used to give deference and to show alignment with the audience. The forms of address used in the speech delivered at the UN headquarters (1) refer to individuals and groups within the audience. Individuals are indicated by honorific or title and surname, i.e. the unmarked forms for this context, and when necessary further information is provided to specify the social role of the person (e.g. Dr Arima, representative of the Government of Japan for DESP Affairs). Respect is shown by the choice of individuals mentioned and by the labels selected for identifying relationships with groups within the audience. Thus in the example below, respect is shown to four individuals; the order of listing is by social and institutional rank: Mrs Anan, as a woman and wife of the Secretary-General of the UN, the highest-ranking official of the super-ordinate organization, is mentioned first, followed by an official representative of a member country, a deputy executive of an affiliated organization (UNICEF) and an individual,

who, as the following text reveals, is also taking part in the event as a speaker. The groups paid respect to are the members of the Diplomatic Corps, as official representatives of their governments, people working within the UN system, and guests present at the ceremony. It is to be stressed that the choice of the label colleagues may be interpreted as a marker of the positive-politeness strategy claiming in-group membership. (1) Mrs Anan, Dr Arima, representative of the Government of Japan for DESP Affairs, Mrs Rima Salah, Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF, Professor Rockefeller, Distinguished Members of the Diplomatic Corps, Colleagues from the UN system, Distinguished guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, (UN Decade on Education for Sustainable Development, New York) The text of the salutation which follows the forms of address, provides further details on the alignment of the speaker with the audience. For instance, the Director-General pays tribute to the involvement of Mrs Anan with the Decade on Education for Sustainable Development: (2) Let me first say how delighted I am to be joined at this event by Mrs Nane Anan, wife of the UN Secretary-General; I know that this is a subject she cares about deeply and I very much appreciate her interest and support. In doing so, he shows strong personal involvement, indicated by the use of the personal pronoun I supported by mental-process verbs (know, appreciate) and adjectives and adverbs expressing emphasis and intensification (how delighted I am, I know and I very much appreciate); furthermore, he claims common attitudes and goals and shows strong interest in and approval of the beliefs and actions of Mrs Anan. In so doing, the speaker is claiming common ground with Mrs Anan and the audience as a whole, i.e. he is using a positive-politeness strategy. According to Brown and Levinson (1987), ‘claim common ground’ is one of the three broader mechanisms (the other two being ‘convey that the speaker and hearer are cooperators’ and ‘fulfil hearer’s wants (for some X’) which are involved in indicating positive politeness. The eight strategies associated with claiming common ground indicate that the interlocutors belong to a group of people who share specific wants, ideas, goals and values. Since the Constitution of UNESCO claims that “the States Parties to this Constitution, believing in full and equal opportunities for education for all, in the unrestricted pursuit of objective truth, and in the free exchange of ideas and knowledge, are agreed and determined to develop and to increase the means of communication between their peoples and to employ these means for the purposes of mutual understanding and a truer and more perfect knowledge of each other’s lives”, it is obvious that at UNESCO and the UN in general claiming common ground is an essential aspect of behavioural and language strategies for achieving smooth interaction with partners at an interpersonal and an institutional level. One of the speaker's strategies to claim common ground with his audience is the use of in-group identity markers, such as diplomatic jargon and UNESCO terminology, especially acronyms, as in: (3) It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the sixth meeting of the EFA High-Level Group. (6th meeting of the EFA High-Level Group, Egypt) where EFA stands for ‘Education for All’ and high-level group refers to a body of some thirty Ministers of


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Education and of International Co-operation, heads of development agencies and representatives of civil society and the private sector convened annually by the Director-General of UNESCO to deliberate on a global policy of education, the aim of which is “to sustain and accelerate the political momentum created at the World Education Forum and serve as a lever for resource mobilization” (www.unseco.org). In addition, in the context of diplomatic communication the use of formal language and established forms of address can be seen as conveying in-group membership. Example (4) below illustrates the interplay of several politeness strategies for claiming common ground. The act of welcoming, which is unambivalently polite, is introduced by what Leech (1983: 140) labels ‘hedged performative’, which stresses the desirability of the illocution. The personal involvement of the speaker as well as his approval of the beliefs and actions of the other is indicated by exaggeration associated with the use of expressions - e.g. delighted, particularly pleased, dedicated, inspiring - which indicate emotional intensity or the extremes of a value scale; these may be termed ‘highly emotive’ lexical units (Kačmárová 2006: 51). The expression of personal involvement is typically associated with the discourse strategy of self-disclosure, which contributes to the existential coherence of the speaker by making explicit his attitude to people, facts and ideas, thus allowing him to represent these as continuous. (4) I am particularly pleased to welcome Mrs Laura Bush once again to UNESCO Headquarters. In her role as Honourary Ambassador for the United Nations Literacy Decade, Mrs Bush has become a dedicated partner of this Organization, and inspiring leader and advocate. The White House Conference on Global Literacy that Mrs Bush hosted last September – and that I had the honour of attending – was a truly landmark event. We had very rich discussions on the importance of female literacy, and the impact of literacy on health and well-being. I would like to thank you, Mrs Bush, for taking this new initiative, which turns attention to the critical issue of teacher training needs in literacy. (Round table on Teacher Training and Literacy, Paris, UNESCO) Other ways of claiming common ground are by indicating common attitudes and by expressing strong interest in and approval of the other’s beliefs and actions (see also the discussion of (2) above). The Director-General praises the achievements of Mrs Bush, which are declared to be in consonance with the goals and beliefs represented by the speaker; this is indicated by the expression dedicated partner of this Organization, inspiring leader and advocate and by the shift from the first personal pronoun I to the inclusive we used expressively to signal solidarity (Mühlhäusler and Harré 1990). The use of the expressions once again, partner and I had the honour of attending indicates that the speaker and the hearer are cooperators and that their relations are continuous; it also shows deference by indicating the superior status of Mrs Bush as host of the conference. The next strategy, expressing thanks, is a face-threatening act which threatens primarily the speaker’s face, since the speaker accepts a debt and thus humbles his own face. Therefore it may be interpreted as a realization of deference, i.e. a negative-politeness strategy, emphasised by the use of a hedge on the performative force of the utterance, taking the form of the modal would and the mental verb like; at the same time, however, it is associated with praising the hearer and showing approval for her achievements, i.e. a positive politeness strategy. Finally, the ordering of the politeness strategies in (4) illustrates an ordering from positive politeness, assuming common ground, to

negative politeness, giving deference, i.e. it is in conformity with the continuum of face-threatening act ‘danger’ as described by Brown and Levinson (1987:73). The assertion of common ground, shared values and sympathy in (5) correlates with a discourse strategy which views the present as a natural extension of the past, thus asserting existential coherence. The continuous relation of the present, the 9th International Forum for Lifelong Integrated Education, to the past, Ms Nomura’s work and vision, is indicated by the expressions the legacy of Ms Nomura and we share this vision, and want to keep it alive; this is further supported by the factual modality of the first sentence in the quote and the shift from the first personal pronoun I to the inclusive we in the following text. The it-cleft emphasizes the emotional involvement of the speaker with Ms Nomura, and the rare stylistically marked construction of the sentence Hers was a vision of universal, inclusive and continuous learning, where the head noun of the subject phrase is recovered from the following context, intensifies the commitment to shared values and ideas. (5) The legacy of Ms Nomura is in good hands. (…) It was with profound sadness that I learnt, three years ago, of Ms Nomura’s passing away. (…) Hers was a vision of universal, inclusive and continuous learning. We are gathered here today because we share this vision, and want to keep it alive. (9th International Forum for Lifelong Integrated Education, Paris, UNESCO) Joke is a politeness strategy typically associated with informal face-to-face conversation, where the risk of misunderstanding is very low, since “the current speakers use some signals (e.g. interactive D-items) to suggest to their current hearers a preferred line of interpretation of the ongoing conversation” (Povolná 2006: 132). In the address delivered by the Director-General at the opening of the Pilgrimage Route Meeting, the use of a joke (6) is indicated explicitly by the expression More seriously though, which marks a return to a formal and serious mode of discourse typical of the occasion. (6) I made my first official visit to Ghana at the invitation of President Kufuor three years ago, in order to launch the 2004 International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery. On that occasion, I had the privilege of making my first address as Nana Nyarko Abronoma the First, a name that was graciously bestowed upon me in Cape Coast. Yesterday, I was almost made Nana of the Ga people at the ceremony held at James Town, Accra. But they discovered at the last minute that I am already Nana of Cape Coast. They therefore decided to withdraw their offer, which I regret nonetheless. More seriously though, it is with genuine pleasure that I return to your country … (Pilgrimage Route Meeting, Ghana) Since jokes are based on background knowledge and values mutually shared, they can be used for claiming common ground. In Koïchiro Matsuura's speech the joke is integrated into a narrative of belonging, a discourse strategy asserting the existential coherence of the speaker by stressing his close relationship with the audience. In his narrative the Director-General claims common ground with his audience in Ghana by indicating that this is not his first visit to the country; furthermore, he indicates that he has been granted the honourary title of Nana of Cape Coast, i.e. he claims to have been accepted as a member of the Cape Coast people by using an in-group identity marker. He proceeds to relate the story of how he was nearly made Nana of the Ga people, but was then refused this honour (a face-threatening act), i.e. within the joke the


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speaker humbles and abases himself, thus showing deference to the hearer and minimizing the imposition of his institutional rank and the fact that he is holding the floor; deference is also indicated by the use of the personal pronoun they to indicate distancing and to present the referent as indefinite and powerful, similarly to the use of they to refer to the government, police or army (Wilson 1990: 67-9). It is therefore evident that, similarly to (4), in (5) positive-politeness strategies for claiming common ground are closely related to negative-politeness strategies indicating deference and minimizing imposition. 7. Conclusion This analysis of politeness strategies in the salutation part of ten addresses given by the Director-General of UNESCO has evidenced that the speaker uses both positive- and negative-politeness strategies, and that these are interwoven; it is often difficult to draw a demarcation line between them, as they can be expressed by the same linguistic means and the interpretation of discourse is context-bound. Since the main aim of the salutation part of addresses is to give acknowledgement to the host and to the audience, it is not surprising that the prevailing strategies are positive-politeness strategies related to the claiming of common ground with the audience. These strategies work to assert common ground and shared values, to indicate in-group membership and to exaggerate approval and sympathy with the hearer. Negative-politeness strategies related to an avoidance of coercion of the hearer serve to minimize the size of imposition and to show deference. In addition, in agreement with the findings of Miššíková (2006) and Dontcheva-Navratilova (2005), it is possible to state that Brown and Levinson’s claim that politeness is

enhanced by the considerable effort the speaker expends in face-maintaining linguistic behaviour has been confirmed. The present study has also proved that politeness strategies correlate with discourse strategies indicating the speaker’s alignment with the audience to achieve existential coherence. The strategies of self-disclosure, narrative of belonging, narrative of achievements and casting the present as a natural extension of the past are connected primarily with claiming common ground, i.e. positive politeness. The most frequent language means used to convey politeness in the salutation part of addresses are determinate reference by honorific, title and surname, shift of self-reference from I to we and in-group vocabulary, highly emotive lexical items and modality. However, it should be stressed that the individual language means listed above cannot be categorically assigned to particular politeness strategies, as they can be used to express different strategies (e.g. forms of address may indicate deference or in-group membership) and their function and politeness value is decided upon in context and is dependent on the background knowledge of the participants. It is evident that the present study has not exhausted the discussion of politeness in public discourse in an international institutional setting. It has, however, suggested that the study of politeness phenomena may contribute to a better understanding of diplomatic interaction as an instance of mediated institutional communication in an intercultural context. Further research will reveal new insights into the interplay of politeness strategies in public speaking in institutional intergovernmental organizations as well as into motivation for the making of culture-specific and idiosyncratic choices.

Bibliography and references Brown, G. and Levinson, S. C. (1987) Politeness. Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 0-521-31353-4. Bull, P. and Fetzer, A. (2006) ‘Who are we and who are you? The strategic use of forms of address in political interviews.’ Text & Talk 26-1. 3-37. ISSN 1860-7330. Donahue, R. T. and Prosser, M. H. (1997) Diplomatic Discourse: International Conflict at the United Nations – Addresses and Analysis. Greenwich, CT, London: Ablex Publishing Corporation. ISBN 1-56750-291-1. Dontcheva-Navratilova, O. (2005) ’Politeness strategies in institutional speech acts.’ In: Povolná, R. and Dontcheva-Navratilova, O. (eds) Discourse and Interaction 1. Brno seminar on linguistic studies in English: Proceedings 2005. Brno: Masaryk University. 85-97. ISBN 80-210-3916-7. Duranti, A. (2006) ‘Narrating the political self in a campaign for U.S. Congress.’ Language in Society 35. 467-497. ISSN 0047-4045. Goffman, M. (1967) Interaction Ritual: Essays on face to face behavior. Garden City: New York. ISBN: 0394706315. Grice, H. P. (1975) “Logic and conversation”. In: Cole, P. and Morgan, J. L. (eds) Syntax and Semantics. Volume 3: Speech Acts. New York, San Francisco, London: Academic Press. 41-58. Hymes D. (1975) Foundations in Sociolinguistics. An Ethnographic Approach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN: 0812210654. Ide, S. (1989) ‘Formal forms and discernement: Two neglected aspects of universals of linguistic politreness.’ Multilingua, 8-2/3, 223-247. ISSN 0167-8507. Jaworski, A. and Galasinski, D. (2000) ‘Vocative address forms and ideological legitimization in political debates.’ Discourse Stiudies, Vol 2(1). 35-53. ISSN: 1461-4456. Kačmárová, A. (2006) On Conveying Strong Judgments in Conversational English. FHPV PU Prešov 2006. ISBN 80-8068-505-3. Leech, G. (1983) Principles of Pragmatics. London and New York: Longman. ISBN: 0-582-55110-2. Ng, S. H. and Bradac, J. J. ( 1993) Power in Language. Newbury Park/ London/ New Delhi: Sage. ISBN 0-8039-4423-3. Miššíková, G. (2005) ‘Background knowledge in interpretation of discourse.’ In: Povolná, R. and Dontcheva-Navratilova, O. (eds) Discourse and Interaction 1. Brno seminar on linguistic studies in English: Proceedings 2005. Brno: Masaryk University. 85-97. ISBN 80-210-3916-7. Miššíková, G. (2006) ‘Politeness and interaction in a talk show.’ In: Povolná, R., Dontcheva-Navratilova, O. (eds) Discourse and Interaction 2. Brno: Masaryk University. 109-119. ISBN 80-210-4203-6. Mühlhäusler, P. and Harré, R. (1990) Pronouns and People: The Linguistic Construction of Social and Personal Identity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. ISBN: 0631165924. Povolná, R. (2006) ‘Interaction in spoken discourse.’ In: Povolná, R. and Dontcheva-Navratilova, O. (eds) Discourse and Interaction 2. Brno: Masaryk University. 131-142. ISBN 80-210-4203-6. Swales, J. M. (1990) Genre Analysis. English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-33813-1.


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Tannen, D. (1985) ‘Cross-cultural communication.’ In: Van Dijk, T. (ed.) Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Vol. 4.London: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-712004-1. Thomas, J. (1995) Meaning in Interaction. An Introduction to Pragmatics. Learning About Language. London and New York: Longman. ISBN: 0-582-29151-8. Urbanová, L. and Oakland, A. (2002) Úvod do anglické stylistiky. Brno: Barrister & Principal. ISBN: 80-86598-33-0. Wilamová, S. (2006) ‘Motivation and impact of context-sensitive politeness strategies.’ In: Povolná, R. and Dontcheva-Navratilova, O. (eds) Discourse and Interaction 2. Brno: Masaryk University. 203-213. ISBN 80-210-4203-6. Wilson, J. (1990) Politically Speaking. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-16502-9. On-line sources: http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=50558&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html. 21. 5. 2006. Appendix Speeches of Koïchiro Matsuura, Japan, Director-General 1999 – Address on the occasion of the international launch of the United Nations Decade on Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014); United Nations Headquarters, New York, 1 March 2005. 5 p. DG/2005/036. Address on the occasion of the opening ceremony of the Pilgrimage Route Meeting; Accra, Ghana. 16 February 2007. 6 p. DG/2007/017. Address on the occasion of the First Session of Conference of Parties to the International Convention against Doping in Sport; UNESCO, 5 February 2007. 5 p. DG/2007/009. Address on the occasion of the Round Table on Teacher Training and Literacy: UNESCO, 15 January 2007. 3 p. DG/2007/005. Address on the occasion of the opening session of the Fifth Meeting of the Review Committee of UNESCO's Sciences Programmes, to be delivered by Mr Marcio Barbosa, Deputy Director-General of UNESCO; UNESCO, 9 January 2007. 3 p. DG/2007/002. Address on the occasion of the opening of the international conference: Freedom of Expression and Media Development in Iraq; UNESCO, 8 January 2007. 6 p. DG/2007/001. Address on the occasion of the celebration of World Philosophy Day 2006; Sana'a, Yemen, 24 December 2006. 4 p. DG/2006/180. Address on the occasion of the UNESCO Forum for Higher Education, Research and Knowledge; UNESCO, 29 November 2006. 4 p. DG/2006/167. Address on the occasion of the inaugural ceremony of the 6th Meeting of the High-Level Group on EFA; Cairo, Egypt, 14 November 2006. 6 p. DG/2006/157. Address on the occasion of the 9th International Forum on Lifelong Integrated Education: Enlightenment on the Order of Coexistence, Wisdom for Creating our Future; UNESCO, 8 November 2006. 2 p. DG/2006/152.


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Politeness Aspects of Question-Answer Sequences in Mediated Talk-in-interaction (Radio Phone-ins)* Milan Ferenčík University of Prešov, Slovak Republic Abstract In the non-institutional setting of call-in programmes the question-answer sequence is the principal framework for participants´ contributions. It is employed for a variety of actions, such as elicitation of stance or opinion, challenging, expressing doubt, accusation, making co-participant admit something, etc. The paper focuses on the examination of politeness aspects of the acts of questioning and answering used for the purpose of requesting information from the co-participant. As the point of departure, Brown and Levinson´s (1987) model of politeness as face-redressive action is used, but also newer theories, esp. Watts´ (2003) theory of politeness

conceptualized as discursive struggle, are taken into consideration. The paper, besides suggesting viable ways of approaching the multifaceted phenomenon of QA sequences, discusses those moments of interaction in which interactants appear to be engaged in struggle for the achievement of mutually shared understanding of what constitutes for them (im)polite behaviour. *The paper is supported by research grants VEGA 1/3719/06 Politeness Strategies in Mass-media Communication from Cross-Cultural Perspective (A Comparative Analysis of Selected Mass-media Genres) and VEGA 2/6118/26 Slovenská politická kultúra v médiách po roku 1989 (The Culture of the Slovak Politics after 1989). Key words question-answer adjacency pair, politeness, face-threatening act, politeness as discursive struggle 1. Introduction Since every use of language involves users interacting in particular socio-cultural settings, it is intrinsically a social act. The sequences of interactional moves of ´questioning´ and ánswering´ (question-answer sequence, QAS), being one of the most common interactional activities, pervade the entire spectrum of interpersonal communication from the most mundane to the most formalized types of settings. Besides its central function, i.e. eliciting and providing information, QAS underlies many other kinds of discourse actions causing it to be one of the key units of conversational organization. In the semi-institutional setting of talk radio, in which interactants are bound to engage in performing purely verbal actions, the discourse acts of questioning and answering are deployed in a variety of activities, most typically for the purpose of elicitating a stance or opinion, challenging and rebutting, accusation and denial, expressing doubt, making co-participant admit something, etc. The very acts of seeking and providing information constitute only one of these activities here, by no means the most central. It is the examination of the interpersonal dimension of these acts that the paper focuses on with the purpose of demonstrating how interactants structure the information-seeking questions and provide answers in the flow of interaction in order to display orientation to their face wants (i.e. QAS as a site where facework is carried out). The term ´question´ itself, however, despite its wide currency, has not been satisfactorily defined. In order to obtain the full picture of the phenomenon of QAS as a sequence of discourse acts, it is instructional to investigate it from several parallel perspectives: syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, (critical) discourse-analytical, conversation-analytical and sociolinguistic. The nature of question cannot be fully understood without taking answer into consideration, as they function in a complementary way. When it comes to answers, however, their nature is even more elusive, as there is no simple way of establishing ánswerhood´ in terms of its predictable syntactic shape and of its being a clearly defined discourse act.

2. Perspectives on QAS The following is a survey of several perspectives from which to view QAS as a linguistic and discourse phenomenon, with each focusing on particular aspect of its structure and/or functioning as a common interactional device. 2.1 QAS and syntax Linguistic theory (e.g. Quirk et al. 1972) generally recognizes three broad types of question, viz. yes/no questions, wh-questions and alternative questions, which are distinguished on the basis of recognition of a. their syntactic characteristics (the use of one from among the closed-class set of wh-words, interrogative syntax), b. the accompanying prosody (rise and fall tunes and their combination), and c. the type of answer they project (affirmation or negation after yes/no questions, reply from an open range set with wh-questions, choice from two or more options with alternative questions). In the case of yes/no questions this is as much as syntax can say – answers can not be unequivocally syntactically pre-classified, as in fact any response, regardless of its syntactic outfit, can be interpreted as an answer (on the basis of the constraints placed on the interpretation of the utterances following questions): questioners may assume that whatever follows can be taken to mean either ýes´ or ńo´. Thus a question Are you hungry? may be given a variety of responses cast in different syntactic moulds (declarative, interrogative, imperative, exclamatory) which can all equally mean ýes´ or ńo´ (Q: Are you hungry? A

1: It’s

five o’clock. A2: Why do you need to ask? A

3: Don’t make

me laugh. A4: What a question!).

In the case of wh-questions, constraints on their answers seem to be of syntactico-semantic nature in that As are expected to provide an adjunct which corresponds to the given wh-word (when – time adjunct, where – place adjunct, how – manner adjunct etc.); cross-examples seem to be ruled out (Q:Where is Mike? A: At school./*At 8 o’clock.). However, it is possible to construe a situation in which a time adjunct would serve to supply information on both time an space, as in the following example (condition: answerer


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can rely on the questioner’s knowledge that 8 o’clock is the time when Mike is normally at school): Q:Where is Mike? A: It’s 8 o’clock. The counter-example to syntactic parallelism between Q and A suggests that it is insufficient to establish their relationship solely on syntactic grounds,; rather, it seems to be of semantic nature. 2.2 QAS and semantics Viewed from the angle of semantics, the relation between Q and A is seen in terms of the propositional frame set up by Q of which one variable is unspecified and requires a completion to be supplied by the A: a. in yes/no questions, that value is the unspecified polarity: „The question sets up a propositional frame: a proposition with one value (polarity) unspecified. The polarity is supplied by the answer which is the propositional completion.“ (Stubbs 1983: 106) b. in wh-questions the unspecified variable is of various types (time, place, manner, etc.): „The question sets up a propositional frame which has one variable. This preclassifies any following utterance, which is searched to provide a value for the variable.“ (Stubbs 1983: 107). Any utterance following a Q is thus expected to provide its propositional completion, which may done a. explicitly, i.e. by the combination of surface form and semantics (A:Where is Mike? B: At school.), or b. implicitly, i.e. by semantics only - proposition is then not asserted but inferred (A:Where is Mike? B: It’s 8 o’clock.; A: When did he learn English? B: In Britain). Inferential processes triggered by similar kind of answers bear on the knowledge of the ´ways of the world´, i.e. pragmatic knowledge. There is no single way of direct assignment of answers to their questions simply because „there is no proposed illocutionary force of answering (Levinson 1983: 293); in other words, while there is a speech act of questioning, there is no corresponding speech act of answering. 2.3 QAS and pragmatics Within pragmatics as a ´dustbin´ area of linguistics the procedures of establishing implicit meaning, the theory of speech acts and politeness theory are placed (politeness will be treated separately in section). 2.3.1 QAS and pragmatics: implicit meaning Seen from pragmatic perspective, Q is not neutral as to the possible content of the expected A, but with expectations of certain propositional content which could count as „normal“ in the shared world: in the following example, A´s reasoning is based on the assumption of one such ´normality´ (e.g. that Mike is in the pub) and which B presupposes to hold in order for A to be able to infer the unasserted proposition (A: Where is Mike? B: As usual. A: Of course.). B´s use of implicit meaning rather than the explicit statement of the proposition ´Mike is in the pub´ (and the breach of the Gricean maxim of Quantity) may be motivated by a variety of factors (e.g. B deems it inappropriate to talk in unfavourable terms about Mike trying to be considerate towards him and avoid direct attribution of blame etc.) which may have a common denominator, viz. being considerate toward partner’s face. 2.3.2 QAS and pragmatics: Speech Act Theory Within the framework of speech act theory Q has been understood as: a. illocutionary act; Lyons (1977; cited in Tsui 1994: 77) offers these characteristics of Q as an illocutionary act: it contains a feature of doubt, one of its felicity conditions is that the speaker should not know the A, there is an expectation of A to follow a Q though their

association is merely conventional; the logical representation of the act is ASK (a,b,S), where a = speaker, b = addressee, S = proposition b. request (e.g. Labov and Fanshel 1977, cited in Tsui 1994: 77) whose purpose is to elicit information, with the folowing logical representation: REQUEST (a,b, TELL (b,a,S)). Auhors like Sadock (1974) and Lyons (1977) and Tsui (1994) disagree with subsuming questions under requests claiming that they require different types of response and, accordingly, perform different discourse functions (Q invites primarily verbal response while request invites primarily a non-verbal response). c. elicitations; in order to avoid the vagueness of the concept of Q which often confuses formal and functional criteria by using the same denotate (´question´) without discrimination, Tsui (1994) proposes classification of initiating utterances which solicit purely verbal response irrespectively of their syntactic form. d. Q as directive; in Searle’s (1976; cited in Levinson 1983: 240) classic taxonomy of speech acts questioning features as a separate speech act, on par with requesting, within Directives; by these the Speaker attempts to get the addressee to do something. 2.4 QAS and Discourse Analysis Discourse analytical (DA) perspective tries to extend linguistic methods to the study of structures beyond the sentence level and helps explain how conversational exchanges cohere in order to produce intelligible talk. Seen from this perspective, QAS is a prototypical example of an exchange; defined as a minimal interactive unit produced by two different speakers exchange comprises initiation (I) from one speaker and response (R) from another (and optionally feedback (F) from the first speaker).

What holds turns together so as to form a single exchange is the propositional frame. Stubbs (1983: 109) has it that exchange „may be regarded as an information unit, the propositional frame being defined by the initiation. Any utterances which function to complete the proposition, by, for example, giving a value to variable, form part of the same exchange“. Two ´irregularities´ of exchange structure will be mentioned here. Exchange is normally spread over two neighbouring turns, but may also be distributed across more turns with a possibility of a proposition being produced jointly by more speakers (as in the following example, where the complex proposition is ´Mike flew to the Bahamas with his new secretary and with all his family savings´): A:Where´s Mike? B:He flew to the Bahamas. C:With his new secretary. D:And with all his family savings. The notion of propositional frame as underlying QA exchange creates strong expectations which are not suspended even if Q an A are not immediately adjacent. In the following example QAS is interrupted with an inserted QA exchange: A:Where´s Mike? I Q

1

B: Why do you want to know? I Q2

A: Just curious. R A2

B:He flew to the Bahamas. R A1


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2.5 QAS and Conversation Analysis Conversation-analytical (CA) perspective provides several areas of relevance to the problem under discussion: adjacency pair and preference organization, interaction in institutional settings, relations between participant roles and forms of talk. 2.5.1 QAS, Adjacency pair and preference organization In CA tradition, Q and A are seen as mutually defining – they make sense only when one is treated on the background of the other. Their mutual complementariness is conceptualized within the notion of Adjacency Pair (AP, roughly comparable to exchange

in DA) with the following restrictions of co-ocurrence of its subcomponents: a.they are produced by different speakers (cf. answering a Q oneself), b. they are placed adjacently (cf. immediate vs. delayed A), c. they are ordered as 1st and 2nd part (Q =1st, A= 2nd position; Q precedes A), d.certain 1st positions require certain 2nd positions (Q requires A and not non-A). An important notion is that of preference organization which conceptualizes which acts forming 2nd parts are preferred (i.e. unmarked, structurally simpler, done without delay etc.) and/or dispreferred (i.e. marked, structurally complex usually delivered with a delay etc.):

The preference structure of Question-Answer Adjacency pair:

1st part 2nd part Preferred Dispreferred

question answer

non-answer postponed answer displaced answer

2.5.2 QAS in institutional settings Another area of CA practice of pertinence to the present discussion is the analysis of talk in various (non/semi)institutional settings. The fact is that QAS is central to much of the institutional interaction with Q being a powerful interactional resource because it places discourse constraints on the options available to the recipient; sequences of Qs constrain even more strongly (Hutchby 1996). Qs are an important resource of exercising control over the range and type of participants´ actions in talk-in-interaction and the analysis of QAS may reveal intricate practices, often very subtle, which underlie exercise of/resistance to power in the domain of public media. Accordingly, it may elucidate the ways how institutional interaction is carried out in society as well as unearth the dominating politeness practices. Hutchby and Wooffitt (2002) identify two basic types of institutional settings, the criterion being the degree of variation in turn order, size and type: a. formal (such as law courts, broadcast news interview, job interview, classroom, ceremonies) and b. non-formal (GP consultations, counselling sessions, social work encounters, business meetings and radio phone-in conversations). It is the turn-taking system for mundane conversations, in which the turn order, size

and type are free to vary, that is used as a benchmark against which other forms of talk-in-interaction can be distinguished. In institutional forms of talk-in-interaction the range of those practices which are available in mundane conversation is reduced, modified and/or systematically specialized. CA conceptualizes the relationship between actors (participant roles) and their acts (forms of talk) in institutional settings by pointing at the ways they are closely entwined – forms of talk are constrained in the type of turns according to their participant roles. Atkinson and Drew (1979) coined the term „turn-type pre-allocation“. The following tables present the different patterns of distribution of the acts of questioning and answering in the semi-institutional settings of the two discussed radio phone-in programmes (IHS and ND) on the background of the ´standard´ institutional settings, from which radio phone-ins depart in that it is the non-institutional figures of caller and guest who engage in asking questions and providing answers, while the institutional figure of host is in charge of the organizational aspect of the discourse (cf. also allocation of participant roles based on their institutional position, so called institutionally relevant categories, in Ferenčík 2007):

Distribution of Qs and As among participants in standard institutional settings:

Adjacency pair Institutional figure

(host/judge/teacher etc.) Non-institutional figure (caller/witness/pupil/ etc.)

Question-answer Questioning Answering Distribution of Qs and As among participants in IHS:


(host) Non-institutional figure

(caller) Question-answer Answering Questioning


39

Distribution of Qs and As among participants in ND:


(host) Non-institutional figures

Caller guest Question-answer Mediator

Questioning Answering CA sets forth the task of the identification, examination and accounting for the occurrences of shifts in the format of pre-allocated distribution of roles and accompanying shifts in the forms of talk. 2.6 QAS and Politeness Theory The theory of politeness represents a domain of pragmatics in its own right. The academic research into politeness in the ´West´ was launched in the 1970s by Robin T. Lakoff, continued by Leech (1983) and reached its heyday after elaboration (1978) and republication (1987) of the classic politeness model by P. Brown and S. Levinson (B&L). In the early 1990s there have emerged conceptualizations which not only challenged B&L´s basic assumptions but also offered a sound alternative built on a radically different social theory. B&L´s theory is built upon Parsonian, structural-functionalist model of society which is conceived of as an independent system in a ćybernetic hierarchy´ in which the supra-individual precedes the individual and which, as Eelen (2001: 195) sees it, “fits the politeness theories like a glove”. In this model of society, politeness functions as a ńormative instrument´ ensuring its internal coherence, stability and status-quo. The ever increasing volume of empirical research triggered off by B&L has shown, however, that the ´grand´ theoretical scheme elaborated to the minutest detail has a serious weakness in that it ceases to correspond to the lay perceptions of what constitutes polite behaviour, which results in a gap between politeness theoretizations (or second-order politeness) and real-life understanding of what is (not) polite (or first-order politeness). Amongst the new post-structuralist initiatives a prominent place is held by Eelen´s (2001), Watts´ (2003) and Watts and Locher´s (2005) theorizations which find alternative social-theoretical foundations in Bourdieu´s theory of practice and habitus and Watts´ concepts of ´politic behaviour´ and émergent networks.´ 2.6.1 QAS and Leech´s (1983) model of politeness In Leech´s taxonomy of speech acts, we may assume that questions, like requests, are ćompetitive´ and as such are intrinsically discourteous; as such they require

negative politeness strategies which are aimed to minimize the ímpoliteness of [their being] impolite illocutions´ (Leech 1983: 83). 2.6.2 QAS and Brown and Levinson´s (1987) model of politeness As to the act of questioning, it is not explicitly mentioned in B&L´s catalogue of FTAs but it may be subsumed within the category of requests as an act of requesting information (cf. „The usual function of a question in discourse is to request the listener to respond verbally with information that the requester seeks“; Quirk and Greenbaum 1973: 306). Request for information seen as a subtype of request constitutes then an intrinsic FTA threatening the addressee’s negative face: requesting information predicates some future act of an addressee whereby putting pressure on him/her. As a result, it primarily threatens addressee’s negative face want by „indicating (potentially) that the speaker (S) does not intend to avoid impending H´s freedom of action“ (Brown and Levinson 1987: 65). Generally speaking, in order to offset the impact of FTA, or at least to minimize its threat, rational agents choose from among five politeness strategies. Depending on the estimated risk of face loss, these strategies range from not doing an FTA at all to doing so baldly (i.e. without redress) with the intermediate stages of off-record, negative and positive politeness. The three wants determining the choice of a strategy are a. to communicate the content, b. to be efficient and c. to maintain the addressee’s face. The following chart summarizes politeness implications of both Qs and As as seen from the perspective of B&L´s model and suggests that both acts have possible repercussions upon questioner’s and answerer’s negative and positive face (examples for illustration are fabricated: 1Sorry but the boss told me to ask you when you’re going to turn in the final report. 2Sorry to bother you but could you tell me ... 3Maybe it will sound stupid but I don’t know what class we are in. 4I don’t know. 5I don’t want to hurt you but I won’t answer this. 6A: How did I do on my test? B: I won’t please you with this but you’ve failed. 7No comment.):

NEGATIVE FACE POSITIVE FACE Adjacency

pair

Preference of response options Questioner’s Answerer’s Questioner’s Answerer’s

Question

1undermines Q´s self-

determination

2puts pressure on A

3reveals Q´s ignorance, lack of

resources

4reveals A´s ignorance

Answer preferred leaking 5unfavourable towards Q

Non-Answer dispreferred 6lack of

consideration

7isolates A as antisocial

2.6.3 QAS and Watts´ (2003) and Locher and Watts´ (2005) model of politeness In the most recent politeness theorising a noticeable initiative promising a radical break from the dominating B&L paradigm is the one proposed by Eelen (2001) and further elaborated by Watts´ (2003) and Locher and Watts´ (2005) model which conceives of politeness as a discursive struggle. They claim that predictive capacity of the current dominant politeness paradigm, which

strives for universal validity, devoids politeness of its ´real´ content. Contrary to this, if abstract politeness models are to be credible, they must be based on the close examination of situated practices of actors in authentic socio-cultural settings and search for their own evaluations of what constitutes polite/impolite behaviour. Instances of polite behaviour thus cannot be predicted in advance; rather, politeness is seen to emerge contextually in socio-communicative verbal


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interaction. This leads to the reevaluation of many linguistic structures traditionally referred to as being intrinsically polite as those which are merely appropriate, expected (i.e. politic). In the light of this assumption, no linguistic structure is inherently polite; instead, it may be open to potential evaluation as such. Contrary to the current practice, polite behaviour is seen to constitute a much smaller portion of relational work; most of it is classified in this model as politic behaviour, i.e. appropriate to the discursive format. Politeness then rests in the act of “giving more than is required by the expected politic behaviour” (Watts 2003: 130; my emphasis). (Im)politeness is a salient linguistic behaviour beyond the structures used in politic behaviour, no particular linguistic forms are realisations of (im)polite behaviour – rather than that, particular forms of (verbal) behaviour in an ongoing interaction might potentially be open to interpretation by lay participants themselves as (im)polite. Linguistic (im)politeness is thus only one aspect of facework and not the entire facework (as advocated by B&L) and is noticeable only as being additional to, or deviational from that type of (linguistic or otherwise) behaviour which participants follow if they wish to stay within the politic frame of interaction. This radically new conceptualization sets new agenda for politeness research. The task of the theory of politeness should be “to locate possible realisations of polite and impolite behaviour and offer a way of assessing how the members themselves may have evaluated that behaviour” (Watts 2003: 19-20; bold italics added). The following set of summarizing statements attempt to point at locations of possible realizations of (im)polite behaviour in he phone-ins: (im)politeness is a discursively struggled over phenomenon; interactants themselves are left to judge what for them in a particular setting counts as (im)polite behaviour; their perceptions are made on the background of individual normative expectations of appropriate behaviour to particular social context; appropriateness is determined by the frame (structures of expectations based on previous experience) or habitus “the set of dispositions to behave in a manner which is appropriate to the social structures objectified by an individual through her/his experience of social interaction” (Watts 2003: 274); polite behaviour is a salient type of behaviour which represents giving more than is required by the expected politic behaviour, and is potentially open to positive or negative evaluation; within the habitus each participant is attributed face by the others; facework includes that type of behaviour which attempts to preserve one’s own and/or the other’s face; attribution of face is done reciprocally in accordance with the lines participants take in the interaction; line is a pattern of verbal/non-verbal acts by which participant expresses his/her view of the situation and which forms the basis of his evaluation of participants; line is a part of politic behaviour; interaction is seen to consist of construction, reproduction and maintenance of faces; face-threatening act is that act which threatens the way in which an individual sees him/herself or would like to be seen by others; staying within the line is expected, politic type of behaviour; falling out of line constitutes a break from the politic behaviour and poses a potential face-threat to a partner (it may be evaluated negatively as impolite, or rude); potential face damage arising from falling out of line may be compensated for by supportive facework, signalled by e.g. conventionalized structures which are may potentially be evaluated as polite. To present two different perspectives of the assignment of politeness, a fictitious example of a service encounter is offered:

The ensuing close analysis of four examples from the corpus of on-line phone-in interactions will attempt to spot such locations where struggle over what constitutes polite behaviour might have taken place and will point out the clues which might have led the members themselves to evaluate one another’s behaviour as (im)polite. 3. Analysis: the data site The analysed data are taken from a set of transcripts of calls to a radio phone-in talk show (“Irv Homer Show“ and „Nočné dialógy“, IHS and ND) recorded over the years of 1995-2000. Phone-in talk show is an instance of a public participation radio programme which gives the audience of radio listeners an opportunity to voice their opinions in live broadcast and discuss them with the host of the programme and the invited guest(s). The interaction within the phone-in format bears features of semi-institutional interaction which is characterized by the uneven access of participants to the interactional resources, including the patterns of questioning and answering, between the host/guest and the callers. This imbalance, however, is not closed towards contestation; any shifts in the pre-allocated patterns of resources and practices is a manifestation of the struggle for discursive power. The focal point of the paper rests in the comparison of the strategies of requesting for information and the ensuing responsive actions as employed by participants to the two radio phone-in talk shows. Consequently I refrain from discussing those instances where syntactic questions are used for other goals than to elicit information from co-participants. One of the major uses of the act of questioning tends to occur initially in the calls where they serve the purpose of eliciting some kind of information from the host; they cluster around what Levinson (1983: 312) calls ´first topic slot´ which sets the topical agenda for the subsequent talk. The overall comparison of the uses of Q-A format in the two talk shows a marked disproportion: while in IHS it is used as a device for clothing a large variety of discursive activities (e.g. challenging, casting doubt, making the addressee admit something etc.), the ´real´ questioning for information is rather rare. It seems that the difference arises from differing reasons for participation: while IHS callers seem to be more oriented towards presenting their opinions on issues and demonstrate their preparedness to defend them (which often leads to argumentative nature of talk which manifests itself in the employment of such actions as disagreement, challenge, confrontation, accusation etc.), ND callers seem to be more oriented towards eliciting the opinion of the partner rather than presenting their own, hence requests for information features high in patterns of their participation. 3.1 The framework of participation in IHS and ND The following scheme outlines the framework of participation in the two phone-ins and sets out what may be considered as lines of appropriate (expected, normal, neutral, politic) participation against which any departures (i.e. falling out of line) may be evaluated as bearing on politeness.


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Irv Homer Show Nočné dialógy Social context public domain

Mass-media genre live radio phone-in programme

Discursive mode: co-operation/ confrontation

co-operation

Participants: host, caller host, caller, guest Lines

Caller provides relevant input (asks questions, presents

opinion ...)

announces the topic(s) to

the switchboard

Host manages callers´

participation enquires about caller’s well-being

responds co-operatively (gives advice, answers questions ...) presents opinions, makes jokes,

teases

elicits callers´ categories

Guest responds co-operatively answers questions, presents opinion

Face

Caller: knowledgeable,

opinionated validates his/her participation

Host

jovial, popular, somewhat controversial, friendly, helpful, generous,

knowledgeable, takes a man-on-the-street

approach

institutionally neutral,

knowledgeable

Guest competent,

knowledgeable 3.2 The structure of the information-seeking questioning move Rather then being issued in a straightforward fashion, information-seeking Qs tend to be wrapped in ´supportive verbal material´ in which their requestive power ´dilutes´ and which softens their possible FTA impact. This type of hedging is instantiated in the following ways: a. pre-question, i.e. a fore-warning of what ensues and which functions as a hedge on the illocutionary force of questioning/elicitation. It often contains redressive linguistic material (modality, particles, markers), b. call validation (precedes or follows Q), used as a hedge addressed to Grice´s maxim of relevance whereby callers justify their contributions and make implicit claims to being relevant, e.g. by offering a personal connection with the issue proposed, by referring to their previous history of listenership (I listen to you often), c. apology as redressive action; for example, caller warns that what follows has not been approved of as an item on the list of possible contributions (I didn’t tell your producer but can you tell me what happened to Bernie?),

d. redress attached directly to questions, in the form of their embedding within requests which render them conventionally indirect (i.e. indirect speech act as a hedge on illocutionary force which questions the felicity condition of the act, such as the ability to perform an action: can you tell me). The pattern of questioning move leading to the 1st topic slot in the phone-ins has the following structure (note: validation has three possible places of realization - initial, medial and final): (validation) + (pre-question) + (validation) + (redress) question + (validation) The acts of questioning are constructed in such a way so as to minimize or eliminate potential face-threat or forestall ensuing face damage. A similar strategy may be expected to apply to answering moves whose structure reveals similar tendencies. Just like Qs, As are double faced as to their politeness potential: they are oriented towards questioner’s as well as answerer’s positive and negative faces.


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3.3 (Im)politeness aspects of QAS in IHS

The call is illustrative of two types of behaviour bearing on politeness: a) impoliteness potentially attributed to the moderator (lines 5-7): moderator’s cancellation of caller’s presupposition contained in the pre-question and the act of teasing is potentially interpretable as impolite (i.e. as an FTA). However, if it is admitted that the discursive format of the show allows for conflicting talk, then the otherwise negative evaluation (and the concomitant assignment of impolite value to the moderator’s behaviour) is neutralized; b) politeness potentially attributed to the caller (line 14): supportive facework done by the caller attempts at a collaborative turn completion. The execution of the QAS in the call follows these steps: 1. Pre-question (line 4) as hedge + proposition providing the basis for the ensuing question, 2. Insertion sequence (lines 5-8): M refuses propositional content for the upcoming question, C double checks whether the content holds by openly requesting M to confirm it, M admits that this is the case but indirectly, C laughs as he feels he has become

the object of teasing (non-politic, hence potentially impolite), 3.Question (yes/no) + validation (lines 10-12), i.e. personal authentication (justification of the relevance of the question linked to personal experience) + reiterated Q 4. Non-answer + compensatory redress (line 13): (the polarity is not supplied which leaves the propositional frame incomplete), a potential FTA to answerer’s positive face as he breaks out of line (demonstrating lack of knowledgeability), as a compensation, self-supportive facework is carried out (assertion with the modalised proposition: I think ...); caller’s attempt at collaborative completion of M´s turn (line 14) constitutes a supportive move (in excess to what is expected) and is potentially open to interpretation as polite; 5.Follow-up (line15): the caller acknowledges/endorses the answer; cooperative, politic behaviour.

The caller performs two supportive moves which may have potentially been evaluated as polite: a) he falls out of line when trying to raise an issue which has not been approved of by the radio staff (producer). He takes a

measure to indicate that the attribution of face is still valid (i.e. that he does not intend to cause damage to M´s face), viz. he uses a disclaimer (I didn’t tell your producer but…), b) he endorses M´s answer, open to


43

interpretation as polite (supportive facework); politic behaviour would be merely an acknowledgement of the answer. The QAS is instantiated in this call along these steps: 1.PreQ (line 4) – modification (ellipsis) of the pre-question model I HAVE A QUESTION, 2. Disclaimer (line 4) – supportive facework, aims to let M know that his

face is meant to be supported, potentially interpretable as polite; 3.Question(line 4); 4.Answer (line 5); 5. Follow-up (line 6) – endorsement of M´s answer, potentially interpretable as polite; 6. Assertion: afterthought (line 7); 7. Acknowledgement (line 8).

3.4 (Im)politeness aspects of QAS in ND

Being a politician, the guest may have used his non-committal answer as a self-protective measure, as a means of disclaiming the responsibility for the possible consequences that may follow. His non-answer is thus potentially evaluated as impolite as the caller is left to exert some extra effort to infer the content by himself. By initiating an inserted QAS (i.e. withdrawing a

preferred answer), the guest breaks out of line; he takes over the initiative and takes hold of the discursive power. His following a dispreferred path in interaction poses an FTA toward the caller; this non-politic behaviour is open to the interpretation by the caller as impolite.

The caller ´s question (viz. why the petrochemical plant of which the guest is the top-manager sells oils produced by the competitors) is prefaced with a pre-question move (line 4) which follows the conventional model CHCEM SA (KOHO) SPÝTAŤ/OPÝTAŤ (NA NIEČO), contains conditional mood as a redress and is supported by a validation (authentication). This procedure of the caller’s may be considered as politic, i.e. as appropriate to the format of the programme (hence the indirectness associated with the structures is conventional, non-polite). However, the insertion sequence (line 6) launched by the moderator and aimed at positive evaluation of the caller’s question (remarking that the question is ´to the point´) exceeds the expected politic behaviour and is thus open to the evaluation as being polite (in spite of the fact that, by providing a non-answer, it breaks the expected politic behaviour). The potential positive politeness effect of moderator’s move is added to by the guest who reiterates the moderator’s supportive comment and adds an intensifying modifier (´the question is very to-the-point´, line 9). Further guest’s self-supportive

facework, explaining the decision made on the part of the company’s management to sell the given product, serves as a self-protective measure to offset possible unfavourable impact on his (company’s) face. It is only after this facework-related behaviour that the expected answer to the caller’s question is provided (later in line 9). 4. Conclusion Politeness conceptualized as discursive struggle which I have tried to locate in the four examples is seen to constitue only a small part of relational work, most of which consists of non-polite, appropriate, unmarked behaviour. Accordingly, within the framework of the phone-in mass-media genre, the semiformulaic expressions (pre-questions, hedges) are felt as politic/appropriate, hence non-polite (whereas in B&L´s model they are considered to be in the service of negative politeness). Deviations (i.e. acting out of line) from the expected behaviour in a positive way constitutes supportive facework: what is in excess to the appropriate behaviour is potentially evaluated as


44

polite (e.g. positive evaluation of caller’s question) and what is negatively marked from the appropriate behaviour is potentially evaluated as impolite (e.g. non-answer by the guest). Most of the interactional behaviour is appropriate to the format (unmarked/neutral/politic, and non-polite) and is important for smooth flow of communication. In general, localization of polite behaviour in the call-ins, just as in any instance of talk-in-interaction, is problematic, because it is not openly addressed:

participants rarely evaluate each others´ behaviour as polite in explicit way. Rather than that, it is impoliteness which often invites explicit evaluation as such. Resulting from this is the fact that, when localizing politeness, the analyst is bound to rely on the participants´ own judgements. The present article has attempted to do so by investigating ways participants utilize information-seeking QAS as the site for supportive (i.e. polite) and non-supportive (i.e. impolite) facework.

Transcription symbols + pause .hh/hh. inbreath/outbreath // overlapping talk ? rising tune (( )) unclear talk/ ((laughter)) , continuing tune . falling tune nepočul stressed syllable : vowel prolongation = = no gaps between turns Abbreviations: A Answer B&L Brown and Levinson C caller CA Conversation Analysis DA Discourse Analysis FTA Face-threatening Act G guest IHS Irv Homer Show M moderator ND Nočné dialógy Q question QAS Question-answer sequence Bibliography and references Atkinson, J. M. and Drew, P. (1979): Order in Court. London: Macmillan. Brown, P. and Levinson, S.C. (1987): Politeness: Some universals in language use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0 521 31355 4. Ferenčík, M. (2007): Exercising politeness: Membership categorisation in a radio phone-in programme. Pragmatics. In print. Eelen, G. (2001): A Critique of Politeness Theories. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing. ISBN 1-900650-40-1. Hutchby, I. (1996): Power in discourse: the case of arguments on a British talk radio show. Discourse & Society, Vol. 7(4): 481-497. Huchby, I. and Wooffitt, R. (2002): Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 0-7456-1549-X. Kačmárová, A. (2003): When in Rome ... (or politeness strategies of the second language). In: Cudzie jazyky v škole (Didaktická efektívnosť učebníc cudzieho jazyka), Nitra 2003, pp. 49-55. Labov W. and Fanshel, D. (1977): Therapeutic Discourse. New York: Academic Press. Leech, G. (1983): Principles of Politeness. London: Longman. Levinson, S. (1983): Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-29414-2. Locher, M. A. and Watts, R.J. (2005): ´Politeness theory and relational work´, Journal of Politeness Research: Language, Behaviour, Culture 1: 9-33. Lyons, J. (1977): Semantics I and II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Miššíková, G. (2006): Politeness principle and its maxims in discourse of a talk-show. DISCOURSE STUDIES – TRENDS AND PERSPECTIVES. Nitra: FF UKF, 2006. pp. 107-116.ISBN 80-8094-029-0. Quirk, R. and Greenbaum, S. (1973): A University Grammar of English. London: Longman. Quirk, R. et al. (1972): A University Grammar of English. London: Longman. Rázusová, M. (2004): Power Asymmetry in the Political Interview. Zborník FF UP Philologica LX. Bratislava: Univerzita Komenského. pp.147-152. ISBN 80-223- 2001-3. Sadock, J.M. (1974): Towards a Linguistic Theory of Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press. Searle, J. (1976): The classification of illocutionary acts. Language in Society, 5: 1-24. Stubbs, M. (1983): Discourse Analysis. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-77833-9. Tsui, A.B.M. (1994): English Conversation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Válková, S. (2004): Politeness as a Communicative Strategy and Language Manifestation (A Cross-Cultural Perspective) Olomouc: Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci. ISBN 80-244-0961-5. Watts, R. J. (2003): Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-79406-4.


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Subjectivity and Vagueness in Academic Texts: Scientific vs. Popular-Scientific English Christoph Haase Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany Abstract This contribution introduces the corpus-based study of phenomena of vagueness in a new parallel corpus of academic texts in English. It tries to connect linguistic approaches of a classification of point-of-view markers with rule-based, technical methods. For that end, a corpus with texts from diverse natural sciences (physics, biosciences, medicine, psychology) has been compiled. Data from a preliminary study of hedge expressions in academic and popular-academic texts is investigated and subjected to qualitative as well as quantitative analysis. We will define a quantifiable feature of hedge expressions – propensity- and a quantifiable feature for semantic

complexity – semantic depth. Finally, the contribution makes suggestions how to incorporate this theoretical insight into academic writing course modules. Keywords Corpus linguistics, English for Academic Purposes, Hedge expressions, Stance, Vagueness in language, Academic writing 1. Introduction Linguistic markers of subjectivity can be found on any level of language description. For a quantifiable analysis, however, we need to limit the scope of our investigation to clearly identifiable markers. This means, the focus of the following study will be largely on morphosyntactic markers. Quantification comes at a cost: Valid results can only be obtained by looking at large amounts of texts as provided by corpora. Corpora provide a perspective that extends the experiential boundaries of an author or learner, thus enabling prospective text producers to learn on the example or to test via search engines whether a collocation is appropriate. A key issue here is representativeness of the corpus (e.g. Mukherjee 2005:5) as a mere study of other research papers may introduce and perpetuate in-group language which can inhibit readability and coherence considerably. As there can be no “general” corpus for an author in the academia (the sub-disciplines even within e.g. astrophysics are enormously diverse) the corpus compiler can only hope to capture some important strategies and successful conventions of producing coherent yet complex but always accessible texts. The approach taken by us was to combine representativeness as well as accessibility by compiling a parallel corpus of academic and corresponding popular texts. This new corpus is called SPACE for Specialized and Popular Academic Corpus of English. The experience from other corpus-based projects such as the Chemnitz Internet Grammar (http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/InternetGrammar), cf. Schmied 1999, 2005, had shown a learner preference for deductive, rule-based learning of grammar. It is however difficult to state explicit rules for academic writing apart from a set of well-known principles of establishing cohesion via co-reference and semantic continuity establishing causation via grammaticalization of cause-effect relationships (Haase, 2006). Ventola observes multiple links of academic writing with other forms of discourse e.g. conference contributions or other papers (Ventola 1999: 121). As authors and readers access different sources of declarative knowledge, some configuration of “individual semiotics” will emerge (ibid). It seems however implausible to teach academic writing on the basis of heterogeneous, individual knowledge. Thus, our approach focuses on quantifiable linguistic features. Particularly at the interface of the parallel

academic and popular versions several salient linguistic features were identified and selected for investigation. As a pragmatic feature, especially subjectivity of the author stands out as a graded feature that seems especially viable in popular texts. The attribution of commitment and involvement can be reformulated as a question of subjectivity. This has been studied particularly well in questions of English for academic purposes where the point of view of the author has a linguistic influence on many levels. As a working hypothesis, authors of popular academic texts would less frequently shy away from “absolute” statements than authors of academic articles. The results of our study could not substantiate this claim – at least not for popular academic texts which address a critical and informed readership. 2. Linguistic markers of subjectivity Author subjectivity is grammaticalized mainly by the following linguistic phenomena in a non-exhaustive list: a) lexical items:

1. reporting verbs (thinks, believes, claims, says…);

2. verbs of outcome and resultatives (succeeds, finishes…)

3. prepositional phrases of result such as by means of, on behalf of..

4. modal verbs in their deontic and epistemic meaning

b) discourse items:

5. direct vs. indirect speech 6. the use of the passive voice 7. the use of hedges

c) pragmatic items:

8. a wide spectrum of presuppositions the author assumes to be the case (factive, lexical, counterfactual, of the type When did Smith stop lying? etc.)

9. entailments that logically follow from what is asserted in an utterance

10. implicatures where information assumed to be known is not stated, communicated but not lexicalised

Linguistic items to investigate are lexical items like verbs (1-2) and prepositional phrases of result (3), other


46

natural candidates are modal verbs (4) and conjunctions. Discourse items that allow efficient automatic tagging and are therefore easy to study are 5 and 7. Hedges (7) are complicated to investigate and have to be subjected to careful interpretation. Among pragmatic items, entailments and presuppositions (8-9) are interesting to juxtapose as the former is independent from the speakers’ beliefs. Put differently, speakers have presuppositions, sentences have entailments. Demonstratives and performatives further modify any expression of a subjective point of view. Implication (10) is a stylistic as well as a subtle pragmatic means. In the interpretive part, the participation of the reader in the author's commitment is achieved via strategies of active or passive embodiment. The reader's mind constructs perspective-taking on the levels of affordance (referential properties of the objects/events in the text), of spatio-temporal reference frames (author-centred, reader-centred, object-centred, environment-centred), causation (which enables action-construction via word order schemes) and the appeal to social values/social keywords. Perspective construction is therefore an active, incremental and multi-modal process for reader understanding. Other phenomena to investigate are transitivity, deixis, lexical aspect, and agency. The phenomenon of deixis is related to the analysis of texts because it represents the relativity of subjectivity in reference to the rest of the linguistic message. 3. The SPACE corpus 3.1 Compilation and structure The corpus has a transparent binary structure: part 1 is comprised of the academic texts, part 2 of the popular texts. The corpus is parallel in the sense that a text in part one corresponds to a particular text in part 2. We started out with the observation that articles in popular science publications such as Scientific American or New Scientist commonly based on one current publication in an academic journal. The findings there are routinely put into a form accessible to a general-interest reader who has an academic background but is not necessarily an expert in the field of the article. As the original article is usually referenced in the popular article we started compiling both original and popularized versions of the articles. Table 1. SPACE Corpus content and structure

subcorpus descriptors word count

arXiv

physics, astrophysics, computer science, quantum mechanics

161,864

New Scientist – physics

physics, astrophysics, Computer science, quantum mechanics

40,694

Proceedings of the National Academy of

Science (PNAS)

biochemistry, genetics, genetical

engineering, microbiology

267,105

New Scientist - biosciences

biochemistry, genetics,

30,499

genetical engineering, microbiology

Public Library of Science – Medicine

(PLoS), New England Journal of

Medicine, Journal of Clinical Investigation

medicine, virology, clinical psychology, public health

217,254

New Scientist – medicine

medicine, virology, clinical psychology, public health

17,050

total 734,466

The academic texts were retrieved from 3 preprint servers for academic publications. First, there is a set of 46 articles from arXiv.org which specializes in physics and astrophysics. The second set is comprised of 61 articles from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (pnas.org), usually biochemistry and genetics. The third part has 50 medical texts from the Public Library of Science - Medicine (PLoS). An equal number of corresponding articles were taken from the New Scientist magazine which routinely publishes popular summaries of the latest results in science. Table 2. Parallel corpus samples (academic original and popularised version)

code subcorpus word count

title

0001AX

arXiv 5768

Indeterminate-length quantum

coding

0001NS

New Scientist

468 The ultimate computer

0002AX

arXiv 3852

Quantum phase transitions and the

breakdown of classical General

Relativity

0002NS

New Scientist

2134 What lies beneath

0046AX

arXiv 2226

The disruption of stellar clusters containing

massive Black Holes near the galactic center

0046NS

New Scientist

162 Star shepherds

0051PN

PNAS 2338

Spirochete and protist symbionts

of a termite (Mastotermes

electrodominicus) in Miocene amber

0051NS

New Scientist

128 Tiny fossil has guts

0052PN PNAS 4963

Feeding acetyl-L-carnitine and

lipoic acid to old rats significantly

improves metabolic function


47

while decreasing oxidative stress

0052NS

New Scientist

137 Pep pills for old

age

Even a glance at the titles in parallel shows that all popular versions use syntactic compression and semantic simplification, (e.g. Indeterminate-length quantum coding vs. The ultimate computer). This effect is similar to the effect of “lack of lexical differentiation”, observed by Lorenz in second language learners (Lorenz 1998: 58) who overuse stylistic devices like amplifiers (completely, absolutely) and boosters (very, highly, immensely) similar to the authors of popular academic texts. This lack of lexical differentiation is mirrored by a lack of scientific differentiation on the side of the popular authors and likewise on the side of the readers. A further observation is that the mean length of the popular articles is considerably shorter than that of the academic articles, cf. the following survey. Table 3. Mean lengths of academic and popular articles

subcorpus mean length in words

arXiv 3113 New Scientist 634

PNAS 4359 all 2262

We identified text length as a parameter of semantic depth but a closer look at the sample shows that they are hardly comparable. The popular texts are always shorter than their scientific counterparts but their distribution is far from normal with a standard deviation of 729,7 higher than the mean. This is due to the heterogeneous profile of journalistic texts which range from short research news (minimum: 110 words) to full-length feature articles of 2000+ words. 3.2 Post-processing and adjacent corpus tools The texts have been parallelized and POS-tagged using Treetagger and Penn Treebank tagset as well as CLAWS 7. Furthermore, all texts have been manually annotated for author commitment (cf. example in the appendix). This means that all hedge expressions like probably, normally, suggests that, some evidence for etc. regardless their grammatical category were assigned a value between 1 and 10, with 1 (extremely low probability/propensity) and 10 (certainty, extremely high probability/propensity). E.g. partially_AV0_M_6 received a POS tag signalling the adverb, a positional marker (M for medial) and a propensity score of 6. Remark however, that the scores were not assigned automatically as partially can receive different scores in different contexts. For semantic analysis we have developed a software tool (Complexana from Complexity Analyzer) that calculates a single score of semantic complexity (cf. fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Semantic complexity analyzer


48

The algorithm for this score bases on the ontological depth of all nominal items. This ontological depth is measured by assessing the position within the hierarchy of a semantic knowledge database. For convenient implementation we used WordNet Lexical Database (cf. Fellbaum (ed.), 1998) which provides a IS PART-OF / IS TYPE-OF hierarchy for nouns in more than 110.000 strings (source: http://wordnet.princeton.edu/man/wnstats.7WN). As a first step, Complexana counts all words of a text, POS-tags the text and generates a subset of all nominals included. In the second step, all nominals are searched in a precompiled version of WordNet. The

single most important coefficient in the semantic algorithm is the hierarchical depth within WordNet. Our hypothesis is that average categories (which are acquired early and usually represent prototypes) appear with less frequency in academic texts and with higher frequency in popular academic texts. Other coefficients are the number of nouns unknown to WordNet and the number of nouns not in a list of the 500 most frequent nouns in English. As a syntactic marker the mean number of commas per sentence (as a rough marker of subordination) and the maximum degree of semantic specialization of a text (cf. fig. 2) are recognized.

Fig. 2. Semantic complexity analyzer and processed text 4. Investigating the corpus: pragmatic and semantic determinants This section is subdivided into two independent studies concerning linguistic features of author commitment (subjectivity) and of semantic complexity (semantic depth). For both, different methods were tested.

4.1 Subjectivity in the study of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) Academic texts typically try to impart objective expository information that is densely integrated with frequent nouns and conflated in long words (Biber, Conrad & Reppen 1998: 149). Conventionally, there is little space for subjectivity in natural sciences. However, subjectivity can involve an objective account of the


49

author’s involvement or participation in experiments, for instance, as well as the author’s commitment and conviction of other writers’ or his/her own research results and interpretations. Involvement and commitment are usually related; authors who have conducted the experiments themselves will generally use higher commitment features than science journalists who can only report on others’ research results and possibly add their own interpretation. Finally, readers of the “original” and the “journalistic” text will have their own expectations and draw their own conclusions from the involvement/commitment cues in the texts. Author commitment is a topic in linguistics because it can be extracted directly from their texts, i.e. it is often stereotypically lexicalised and shows in collocational frequency (cf. Hyland, 1994). Commitment is of course also pivotal in practical terms for the producers of argumentative texts, especially when the writing is not in their first language. This is the case for most scientists working and publishing today. Intercultural differences, for instance, in directness (“I claim” vs. “the data suggest”) are important for the evaluation of research results and their interpretation in international argumentative discourse. The acceptance of research papers and the effective influence does not only depend on journal- or discipline-specific conventions but also on national research traditions, irrespective of the surface language a paper is written in. In practical terms of language analysis, subjectivity, commitment or perspective can be lexicalised and grammaticalized in many ways, which vary in different languages and language varieties. A contrastive look at perspective has far-reaching implications on the modelling of text types, the production of written texts in international contexts (= peer-reviewed journals), the teaching of a second language and the translation of texts. While perspective is conventionally often seen as a pragmatic filter, we will adopt a wider definition of perspective as commitment. This constrains an argument brought forward by Aijmer that advocates a multifunctional application of pragmatic markers of stance (Aijmer 2005: 92) and essentially extends it to interactive functions. However, within the framework of our approach this is difficult to quantify. 4.2 Assessing semantic difficulty: Complexana and WordNet The perceived difference between academic and popular academic texts in terms of accessibility and readability can be captured in the parameter of semantic difficulty. Highly specialized papers use very few generic terms. Most terms will be hyponyms of hyponyms of hyponyms, therefore deep down in ontological hierarchies, such as conjectures, compactification, coalescence, planetesimals, angular, mesoscopic, gauge field, accretion, radial drag (all from 0007AX, Experimental hints of Gravity in Large Extra Dimensions?). Frequency lists of nouns differ substantially depending on the area of expertise. Gavioli 1997:87 lists the most frequent nouns of the COBUILD Corpus as time, people, way, man, years, work, world, thing, day, and children, and of an (unspecified) “biology corpus” as cell, water, membrane, food, plant, root, molecules, wall, energy, and concentration. In our corpus this distribution is as follows: Table 4. Most frequent nouns in the subcorpora

subcorpus frequency list (20)

arXiv mass, energy, time, number,

0001AX-0046AX

quantum, length, hole, stars, case, data, scale, density, state,

probability, terms, model, order, code, field, value

New Scientist- physics 0001NS-0046NS

quantum, universe, energy, theory, time, space, light, matter, gravity, particles, physicists, years, Earth, holes, idea, issue, page, stars,

physics, magazine

PNAS 0047PN-0107PN

cells, cell, data, DNA, gene, species, table, rate, time, analysis, results, control, stress, number, group, levels, expression, effects,

sequences, mice

New Scientist- biosciences 0047NS-0107NS

cells, genes, team, years, researchers, fields, species, field, farmers, water, DNA, gene, people, cell, human, primates, work, way,

core, animals 5. Hypotheses We hypothesize that the observed and intuitive differences between academic and popular academic texts can be quantified 1) in terms of the propensity of their vague and hedge expressions 2) in terms of the semantic depth of their content words. Both are essential components of academic writing and can post-analytically be used for the modelling and subsequent teaching of academic writing strategies. A parallel example from the corpus shows in what way propensity is lexicalised (AX for arXiv and NS for New Scientist): 0008AX This paper continues our study on the possible observational effects that struts of negative masses would produce if they are isolated in space. Since wormhole structures require the violation of some of the most sensitive energy conditions at the wormhole throat, wormholes are natural candidates –if they exist at all– for stellar size negative mass objects. A corresponding sequence in the parallel text from New Scientist reads as follows: 0008NS If sophisticated aliens are commuting across the Galaxy using a superfast transport network, we should be able to spot the terminuses. A multinational team of physicists has shown that "wormholes"—gateways to distant regions of space—should stamp a coloured hallmark on light from distant stars as it travels past them on its way to Earth. The original academic article is more cautious about the outcome (“possible observational effects”) whereas the New Scientist is more optimistic (“we should be able to spot…”). The original uses physical terms like wormhole structures. The popularised version brags about a superfast transport network. A working hypothesis for markers of subjectivity is therefore that academic texts use more hedge expressions with lower mean propensities whereas popular academic texts use more certainty, quantified as hedge expressions with higher mean propensities. 6. Data discussion 6.1 Subjectivity tagging in specialized and popular academic texts The two sample texts below display “manually” identified expressions of commitment/ involvement (shown in bold type) which were, again, manually supplied with syntactic and pragmatic information in tags. This is included in the respective part-of-speech tag (e.g. AV0 for adverbs, VM for modal verbs), the


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position in the clause (I for initial, M for medial, F for final position), and the commitment propensity score from 1 to 10 (1: unlikely, 10: certain). The propensity marks to what extent the information given is relativized (i.e. might be (Text 2) means “not impossible”, score 4; suggest (Text 1) means “there is some evidence”, score 8). Mean scores show therefore tendencies of certainty of an author towards the results of their research (the higher the more certain). We hypothesized a tendency towards more cautious commitment in popular texts (of which authors are usually not involved in the research) and stronger commitment for involved researchers as authors of the original text. Academic text 0090PN: Topical DNA oligonucleotide therapy reduces UV-induced mutations and photocarcinogenesis in hairless mice UV-induced DNA damage gives rise to mutations and skin cancer. We have previously reported that treatment of skin cells in vitro with thymidine dinucleotide (pTT) activates p53 and increases the ability of cells to repair subsequent UV-induced DNA damage by enhancing endogenous DNA repair capacity. Here we show that topical pTT pretreatment enhances the rate of DNA photoproduct removal, decreases UV-induced mutations, and reduces photocarcinogenesis in UV-irradiated hairless WT repair-proficient and Xpc heterozygous partially_AV0_M_6 repair-deficient mice, both transgenic for the lacZpUR288 mutation-indicator gene. These data support the existence of inducible mammalian DNA damage responses that increase DNA repair capacity after DNA damage and hence reduce the impact of future exposures to environmental carcinogens. The ability of topically applied pTT to induce protective physiologic responses that normally_AV0_M_8 result from DNA damage suggests_VV_M_8 a previously undescribed means of reducing skin cancer in high-risk individuals. Skin cancer accounts for at least_AJS_M_9 40% of all human malignancies, 1,000,000 cases annually in the U.S. (1, 2). Incidence is clearly_AV0_M_9 linked to UV exposure and increases exponentially with age (1, 3). Skin cancer risk is greatly_AV0_M_8 increased in the rare disease xeroderma pigmentosum (XP), because of mutation in one of several DNA repair enzymes responsible for nucleotide excision repair (NER) (4–6). Development of a hairless mouse model (7, 8) and more recently hairless XP gene knockout mice that mimic the human cancer susceptibility (4) has greatly_AV0_M_8 facilitated studies of photocarcinogenesis. In particular, lowdose daily UV irradiation of XP group C (Xpc) mice leads to the development of skin cancer with a short latency time (80–100 days) and 100% prevalence, and partially_AV0_M_6 repair deficient Xpc mice are also more prone to UV-induced skin cancer than their WT counterparts (9). Finally, to study DNA mutations induced by physical and chemical agents in tissues of higher eukaryotes, transgenic mice carrying multiple copies of a lacZpUR288 mutation-indicator reporter plasmid have been generated (10) and crossed into WT and repair-deficient mice strains (11). Our laboratory has shown that many_PNI_M_6 protective responses triggered by UV irradiation are duplicated by treatment of cells in vitro and in vivo with thymidine dinucleotide (pTT) (12, 13), originally selected for study because it is the obligate substrate for formation of most_PNI_M_8 UV-induced DNA photoproducts (14). These effects include tanning, activation of the p53 transcription factor and tumor suppressor protein (12, 15–17), transient cell cycle arrest (17, 18), and immunosuppression mediated in part by tumor necrosis factor (19) and IL-10 (20). Of relevance to the

present study, pTT up-regulates several_PNI_M_6 gene products involved in DNA repair, some but not all_PNI_M_6 of which are known to be p53-regulated, and increases the rate of DNA repair after UV irradiation as measured in multiple assay systems (13, 17, 21). As anticipated from_VV_I_9 the fact that carcinogenic chemical adducts are generally_AV0_M_6 removed by the same NER pathway as DNA photoproducts, pTT treatment also accelerates removal of highly_AV0_M_8 mutagenic benzo(a)pyrene adducts (16). Corresponding popular academic text 0090NS: Suntan lotion primes the skin's defences It might be_VM_M_4 possible to develop suntan lotions that kick-start the skin's protective mechanisms against cancer before you hit the beach. The key ingredient could be_VM_M_6 a fragment of DNA just two bases long, called a TT dimer, that mimics one of the signs of DNA damage from ultraviolet light. Barbara Gilchrest's team from Boston University and colleagues in the Netherlands exposed hairless mice to a mild ultraviolet radiation, the equivalent of half an hour of afternoon sun. They found that genes involved in DNA repair were more_AV0_M_8 active in mice that had the TT dimmer rubbed on their skin before exposure. And only 22 per cent of the treated mice developed skin cancers after 24 weeks compared with 88 percent of untreated mice. (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI:10.1073/pnas.0306389101). People who want a tan may not even need to_VM_M_5 go out in the sun. Mouse skin does not produce melanin but earlier tests on guinea pigs suggest that_VV_M_7 the TT dimer also triggers the tanning response. The team has not yet begun testing it on people. As the examples show, the difference of the propensity tags between both text types is not significant. Authors of both articles show similar cautionsness (might, suggest that etc.) and max out the system for clearer propensity (most, highly etc.) 6.2 Semantic complexity in specialized and popular academic texts The ontological depth of the nominal items is measured as a mean taxonomical depth of the respective items in the Wordnet database. As hypothesized, for the semantic complexity of the texts we assume highly specialized nominal items with high semantic depth scores to occur with greater frequency in the academic texts and more generic lexical items in the popular academic texts. This relationship should be reflected in lower semantic complexity scores for the popular texts. The figures below show that although the popular academic texts vary in length, their scores are on average below 20 (19,11 for the popular physical texts 0001NS – 0046NS and 19,79 for the popular bio/genetic texts 0047NS – 0107NS). Table 5. Semantic complexity analyser results

Text types

Physics texts

Biosciences texts

all

Corpus codes

AX NS01-46

PN NS47-107

NS all

AX+PN

all

mean complex

ity scores

23,61

19,11

26,28

19,79 19,50

25,06

22,37

The mean score for the academic texts from arXiv (AX) is slightly lower (23,61) than the one from the Proceedings of the National Academy (PN) with 26,28. Although the sample is not particularly large with N =


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46 texts we can assume with some confidence that these figures hold for a large population of academic texts. With a standard derivation of 2,12 we calculated a standard error of 0,31 and z 1,96 (95% confidence limits) so we estimate a population mean µ with 23 <= µ <= 24,22. This means we can be 95% confident that the true population mean for academic physical texts µ lies between 23 and 24,22. Furthermore, this means on the one hand that our hypothesis can be confirmed, the popular academic texts receive lower scores. On the other hand, there is no correlation between the academic and corresponding popular academic texts. We calculated a Pearson product moment correlation coefficient for all physical texts 0001AX to 0046AX and 0001NS to 0046NS at r -0,014 which means no correlation (the algebraic sign is not significant).

7. Conclusion As demonstrated, a limited scope of academic English can be represented in the compilation of corpora. Further analysis of the corpus data yields that there are versatile determinants of the linguistic shape of subjectivity. Establishing models therefore requires primarily a catalogue of phenomena to investigate. The notion of subjectivity can be lexicalised in different ways according to primary origin (academic or popular academic) and readership (scientists or educated laypersons). Furthermore, we could confirm and substantiate on quantitative grounds the higher semantic complexity pf academic texts. A tool for semantic analysis was developed. Both, corpus and analyser can be used in teaching academic writing, not only to sensitivize students to the pragmatic and semantic markers of subjectivity in academic English but also to investigate and quantify the results of their own academic work.

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Some Pragmatic Aspects of the Process of Communication and their Relevance to Language Pedagogy Adriana Halušková Comenius University, Slovak Republic Abstract In my paper I intend to analyse the process of communication, paying primary attention to some of the existing models of this process adhering to the field of communicative methodology. By means of them I would like to highlight some of the fundamental aspects that need to be taken into consideration when attempting to draw several pedagogical implications, pointing out the importance of respective

pragmatic issues. For the purposes of my analysis I formulated a hypothesis stating that taking into consideration the nature of the process of communication and the communicative intention analysed within the communicative methodology and the theory of speech acts, it is possible to adopt a more informed and effective approach to English language teaching. Key words Process of communication, pragmatics, interaction, conversational principles, speech acts, models of linguistic communication, communicative language methodology. 1. Introduction For philosophy of language in particular, the theory of speech acts underscores the importance of the distinction between language use and linguistic meaning, which was also captured by the attempts to make a distinction between pragmatics and semantics. Due to the fact that speech acts are acts of communication, we are interested in the study of individual models of linguistic communication. To communicate is to express a certain attitude, and the type of speech act being performed corresponds to the type of attitude being expressed. That is why it can be said that the theory of speech acts is partly taxonomic and partly explanatory. As Austin observed, the content of a locutionary act is not always determined by what is meant by the sentence being uttered. Moreover, what is said does not determine the illocutionary act(s) being performed. We can perform a speech act (1) directly or indirectly, by way of performing another speech act, (2) literally or nonliterally, depending on how we are using our words, and (3) explicitly or inexplicitly, depending on whether we fully spell out what we mean. Nonliterality and indirection are the two main ways in which the semantic content of a sentence can fail to determine the full force and content of the illocutionary act being performed in using the sentence. For this reason we need to consult the theory of speech acts, which finds its specific representation also in the so-called Inferential model of the process of communication that I intend to analyse. 2. Communication as a multi-faceted pragmatic issue Understanding the nature of communication also helps us a lot when formulating teaching/learning goals, selecting appropriate teaching methods and choosing adequate tasks and techniques. It is not only a psycholinguistic view that emphasizes the necessity to use a particular target language through authentic communication to develop it effectively. One can learn a language best by using it in a way, in which it is put to practice in everyday use. To simulate such authentic use of language we need to be perfectly aware of all its features being present in authentic communication, however, not so common and subconsciously used in the classroom context that does not exhibit a one hundred per cent authenticity. That is why we need a deliberate investigation of the process of communication, paying attention to those phenomena that appear to be crucial for postulating relevant

pedagogical implications. In order to accomplish this ambition it is helpful to familiarize oneself with the nature of communication and furthermore, choose a model of the process of communication that may be perceived as a metaphor that enables us to see reality in an idealized way, encompassing dominant and the most prominent features and suppressing incidental details and aspects (Repka 2006: 3-4). It goes without saying that there is a large number of definitions of communication. For my purposes, I shall be concerned with those that can be assigned to verbal communication in a great variety of contexts. According to Trenholm & Jensen (2004: 4-9), our communication displays the following attributes, operating in the process of creating and regulating social reality. Communication is a process that can be described as highly dynamic. It is due to the fact that within our communication we have to make constant decisions about the choice of adequate language means and our choices are influenced by a momentary communicative situation which we find ourselves in. In this case it was Halliday who proposed the view of language as ´meaning potential´ (1973). According to him, every word may have more denotative and connotative meanings. It is, however, the context and the momentary situation that allows us to assign the acceptable and desired meaning to the word in consistency with the intended meaning on the part of the speaker/writer. It is, however, not only the situational context that is shaping our selections. A great deal of power can be assigned to cultural, social and linguistic contexts. All the above mentioned variables are in a constant interplay that can in turn change the relationships among the interlocutors depending on the length of social distance determined by social or/and cultural conventions. In other words, asymmetric relationships can be turned into symmetric ones and vice versa, reflecting the communicative dynamism represented by the continuous negotiation of meanings. Linguistic communication is uniquely human behaviour and thus, it exhibits a number of features that can be assigned only to humans. We are able to use language naturally and spontaneously, which gives us a flexibility and creativity when constructing new utterances. The issue over the process of using the language and even more importantly over its acquisition is also studied by psycholinguistics. Due to the complexity of this topic I shall not be interested in any further analysis as my


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primary intention is to study the process of communication, pointing out some pedagogical implications. Communication is also a collective (social) activity that should direct our attention to studying this process in the context of pragmatics. This scientific discipline emphasizes the importance of studying of how more gets communicated than is said. Communication is essentially a social activity and as such is always a matter of settling and preserving social relationships together with the above mentioned negotiation of meaning in harmony with the expectations with which we enter the process of communication. Trenholm & Jensen postulate also another feature of the process of communication which they refer to as ´communication as creative endeavour´. According to them, when we communicate we can relay on the existing world around us (extra-lingual reality). Referring to it is only a matter of naming the individual objects/notions – functional onomatology (see Vachek 1975) on the basis of agreed conventions within a particular language. Then, however, we also have to be able to achieve a desired interpretation of the so-called implied meaning by means of making the necessary inferences. In these cases we need to recognize the content of the shared knowledge which causes that not everything needs to be said explicitly. Thus what they call creative process is in fact a process of recognizing the communicative value of inferences made by interlocutors. Communication also serves as a means for regulating the world around us. In the field of communicative methodology we refer to this phenomenon as to functions that a language can perform. For instance Stern (1984:223-225) names the following functions performed by language: a/ to express personal state of mind or attitude b/ to state mutual relationships or contacts (emotional relationships) c/ referential function – processes, objects, people, abstractions, qualities, states and relations of real world d/ instrumental function – request, requirement e/ performative function – warning, congratulating, promising f/ heuristic function – asking, searching g/ aesthetic function h/ meta-linguistic function All the above mentioned functions have considerable pedagogical implications. As we shall see later, functions that the language may perform are closely connected with specific linguistic means through which we are able to perform them. What is more, every utterance may be perceived either as having literal or non-literal meaning that can be correctly interpreted taking into consideration the power of situational context. This aspect is elaborated within pragmatics, namely the theory of speech acts. The problem is that in everyday communication we may come across such utterances that may at first sight be meaningless. This impression may, of course, be the result of our insufficient pragmatic knowledge and subsequent inability to make use of the situational context that would enable us to arrive at an appropriate inference. However, there are also such cases when the listener’s inability to comprehend the meaning is based on some objective reason resulting from the lack of speaker’s knowledge regarding the fundamental principles guiding the process of communication. The principles I am about to mention are the so-called Grice´s conversational maxims and are closely connected with the ´Inferential model of linguistic communication´. At this point I intend to tackle the question of various models of linguistic communication

that may help us to understand the complex and complicated nature of this process itself (encoding – transmission – decoding), and, at the same time, this type of analysis will enable us to pay attention to other related fields of study that will make our implications more informed and insightful. However, to understand the nature of the already mentioned Inferential model, it is important to introduce the so-called ´Message Model´ (dating back to the 17th century) first, as the Inferential Model has been constructed as a reaction to the drawbacks present in the Message Model. This model is well known and popular as it postulates only two participants in the process of communication, i.e. a sender and a receiver, an identical code for the encoding of the message, a channel of communication, and the decoding of the message. However, as I have already pointed out, the model as such has a few shortcomings. Akmajian – Demers – Farmer – Harnish (In Repka 2003: 58) have drawn attention to six typical problems faced by this model: “1. It lacks principles of contextual appropriateness to overcome the pervasive ambiguity of natural languages. This is the problem of disambiguation. 2. It lacks mechanisms for successfully recognizing the intention to refer to a specific person, place, or thing. For example, the phrase "the shrewd politician" can be used on different occasions to refer to different people such as Churchill, Nixon, Roosevelt, etc. This is the problem of the undetermination of reference by meaning. 3. It does not account for the speaker’s communicative intent. For instance, the sentence "I’ll be there tonight." might be a prediction, a promise, or even a threat. This is the problem of undetermination of communicative intent. 4. It does not account for the additional fact that we often speak non-literally. Common cases include irony, sarcasm, and figurative uses of language such as metaphor. Thus the sentence "Oh, that’s just great." can in the appropriate context mean the opposite of what these words mean. This is the problem of non-literality. 5. It does not account for the fact that we sometimes tend to perform one communicative act by means of performing another communicative act. It is quite natural to say "My car has a flat tyre." to a filling station attendant indirectly meaning that he repair the tyre. This is the problem of indirect meaning. 6. It does not explain cases when communicating a message is not the purpose of our utterance. The point at issue is of course various institutional acts such as firing someone, baptizing someone, naming something, etc. Likewise, there are speech acts (called perlocutionary speech acts) whose main purpose is to cause an effect in a hearer (e.g. to persuade, to impress, to frighten, etc.). This is the problem of non-communicative acts.” The problems and the limitations of the Message Model have been taken into account by the above authors when constructing the Inferential model of linguistic communication. The most conspicuous feature of this model is the fact that the linguistic communication is perceived as a kind of problem-solving, and it is successful when the hearer recognizes the speaker’s communicative intention. The Inferential Model also expects the learner to acquire a variety of shared beliefs or presumptions, as well as a system of inferential strategies. The authors are thinking in terms of four presumptions: linguistic presumption (the hearer is presumed to be capable of determining the meaning and the referents of the expression in the context of utterance),


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communicative presumption (the speaker is assumed to have some identifiable communicative intent), presumption of literalness (the speaker is supposed to speak literally), and finally conversational presumption (Grice´s conversational maxims, i.e. relevance, sincerity, truthfulness, quantity, quality). As for the inferential strategies, they in fact handle the inadequacies in the Message Model. There are four strategies: direct strategy (what we communicate directly), literal strategy (what we communicate literally), non-literal strategy (what we are communicate non-literally), and indirect strategy (indirect communication). I am perfectly aware of the fact that the above mentioned constituents of the Inferential Model can provide us only with a very simple idea of what is going on when we are producing a speech act. However, for my purposes, I consider them to be sufficient. What is of particular importance in this connection is the idea of the conversational presumption which is, in other words, represented by Grice´s conversational maxims. In the following lines my aim will be to show that pragmatics as a study of how more is communicated than what is said is firmly grounded in the process of communication. Moreover, the cooperation between the speaker and the listener so widely discussed in the Inferential Model is only the starting point for making sense of what is said. When mentioning cooperation I mean the one that is usually interpreted in the traditional sense as the mutual or collaborative exchange of ideas, thoughts and feelings between the speaker and the listener (Brown 1994). However, if we hear a sentence like: Business is business. (an example of so-called tautology), we may be a bit confused when trying to determine the extent to which the speaker intends to be cooperative. However, if we take for granted the premise that the speaker is being cooperative, then the above mentioned sentence is no longer perceived to be a pointless expression. At the same time, however, we are witnessing the phenomenon where more is communicated than is said, as this sentence may be interpreted in many possible ways depending on the situational context. To move on a bit, let me use the following example as a point of departure for my further analysis. “There is a woman sitting on a park bench and a large dog lying on the ground in front of the bench. A man comes along and sits down on the bench. Man: Does your dog bite? Woman: No. (The man reaches down to pet the dog. The dog bites the man’s hand.) Man: Ouch! Hey! You said your dog doesn’t bite. Woman: He doesn’t. But that’s not my dog.“ (Yule 1996: 36) As we can see from the example, there is a communication problem. Namely, the man makes the wrong inference or, in other words, he believes that more is communicated than is said. On the other hand, it can also be said that the woman’s answer is definitely not an example of cooperation. In the above example, she provides less information than one may normally expect. So there are two questions: What is the cooperative principle about? and What connection is there between this principle and models of the process of communication we have already mentioned? As far as the first question is concerned, the cooperative principle is elaborated in four sub-principles that are called ´maxims´. These are: Quantity Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange).

Do not make your contribution more informative than is required. Quality Try to make your contribution one that is true. Do not say what you believe to be false. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. Relation Be relevant. Manner Be perspicuous. Avoid obscurity of expression. Avoid ambiguity. Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity). Be orderly. (ibid: 37) As we can see, Grice´s maxims are in fact unstated assumptions that each of us have when involved in a conversation. However, the example that I used in the very beginning proves that sometimes we do not adhere to the four sub-principles which may bring about a breakdown of our effort to negotiate the meaning. It also shows that in everyday life we as listeners make such inferences that heavily rely on the fact that more is communicated than is said. What does this mean then? On one hand, we as users of our mother tongue are not always aware of the pragmatic aspect of our oral performance. We simply consider the four cooperative principles to be an inseparable and quite obvious part of our communicative output. On the other hand, we as acquirers of the target language desperately need to be reminded of this pragmatic aspect, especially in such cases when the target language and its culture are substantially different from our mother tongue and culture. To push my analysis a bit further, making use of knowledge of other relevant scientific disciplines, let me include at this point also the cognitive aspect of the analysed issue. Sperber and Wilson (1986) followed Grice´s theoretical proposals and they also took into consideration the notion of ´relevance´ that can be defined as a feature of utterances and other inputs in relation to existing cognitive processes. (In Repka 2006) When processing a given input, we need to exert certain mental effort and the greater the effort is, the lower degree of relevance may be assigned to the utterance produced by the speaker. On the basis of these findings Sperber and Wilson postulated two principles: a/ Cognitive principle of relevance b/ Communicative principle of relevance Cognitive principle of relevance says that whenever a speaker produces his utterance, he also automatically expresses the fact that his utterance is meaningful and relevant corresponding to his abilities and, at the same time, this utterance is worth decoding and interpreting as it relevant in a given communicative situation to the best of the producer’s knowledge. Second principle, on the other hand, says that the achieved communicative impact should be sufficient for justifying the exerted effort. The listener is expected to quit the process of interpreting a given utterance, both on the level of literal (explicit) and non-literal (implicit) meaning, once the interpreted utterance is perceived to be relevant. In this way the decoder chooses the path of least effort. Taking into account the above mentioned findings, we can realize the power of context that can multiply our perception of an utterance as being relevant as long as the context itself is perceived to be familiar. The overlaps in cognitive and contextual sources are referred to as ´shared knowledge´. When it comes to teachers of English as a foreign or second language, one quite important implication needs to be emphasized. All teachers should be familiar not only with the existence of the Grice´s cooperative principles; they should also be aware of the so-called ´hedges´ and introduce them either directly or


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indirectly (methodological and psychological issue) to learners. Hedges can be characterized as linguistic devices that help us to indicate that what we are about to say may not be fully accurate, thus adhering to one or more cooperative sub-principles. For instance, our awareness of the listener’s expectation of manner may lead us to make use of hedges like: this may be a bit confused, but …; I´m not sure if this makes sense, but …; etc. Similarly, we may use the hedges by means of which we assure the listener that we are conscious of the quantity maxim like: as you probably know, …; to cut a long story short, …; I won’t bore you with all the details …; etc. The importance of such linguistic devices is also apparent in connection with the student’s ability to convey the intended meanings and maintain interaction as all the mentioned structures (and many others of the similar kind) belong to the so-called interaction strategies which our students need to practice and be familiar with. As for the links between the models of the process of communication and Grice´s maxims it is worth pointing out that the Inferential Model bridges the gaps that existed in the Message Model in the form of the six problems (the problem of the undetermination of reference by meaning, undetermination of communicative intent, the problem of non-literality, indirect meaning and non-communicative acts). It goes without saying that each of the problems and inadequacies can be overcome as long as we adopt the Inferential Model or more precisely, become familiar with the cooperative principle and its pedagogical implications. Thus, if I take the premise that the speaker is cooperative and follows the conversational principles, I can proceed further in my analysis. Namely, I may investigate the communicative functions of individual utterances and, what is even more interesting, I can also distinguish between direct and indirect speech acts on the basis of their structure, taking into account the role played by the speech event within which a particular utterance is made. When, however, mentioning the communicative function of utterances it is necessary to realize that these are determined by the speaker’s communicative needs and intentions and are further coloured by the situational context. In this connection Repka (1997) clearly emphasizes that “…komunikanti vstupujú do určitého situačného rámca s určitým cieľom, čo je prirodzené, pretože situácia ako usporiadaná aktivita musí mať špecifickú orientáciu. Je preto logické, že túto kategóriu je treba objasniť.” (p. 31) That is why I continue my analysis with the categorization of speech acts based on the functions they fulfil. According to Searle (1979), the following five speech act types may be distinguished. The first category is represented by declarations that change the world (i.e. objective reality). It is essential, however, that the speaker must hold the authority to perform declaration adequately. We include here speech acts like marrying, naming, declaring, etc. The second type of speech acts are representatives that express the speaker’s representation of the world. That is why, we include within this category descriptions, conclusions, statements, etc. Expressives being the third category have the function of expressing one’s psychological states as well as statements of pleasure, pain, sorrow, joy, etc. Directives, on the other hand, express the speaker’s intention to get somebody to do something for the speaker. Not surprisingly, this includes orders, requests, and suggestions.

Finally, according to Searle we may speak about commissives through which the speaker commits himself to some future action. Promises, refusals, offers, etc., fit into this group. Similar categorization of speech acts was proposed by Bach and Harnish (1979). They borrow the terms ćonstative´ and ćommissive´ from Austin and ´directive´ from Searle. What is more they adopt their own term ácknowledgment´, over Searle´s éxpressive´ for apologies, congratulations etc., which express an attitude concerning the hearer who is affected by some event that is thereby being acknowledged. Examples of each type are the following: Constatives: affirming, announcing, answering, claiming, classifying, confirming, denying, disagreeing, disputing, informing, predicting, ranking, stating, etc. Directives: advising, asking, begging, excusing, forbidding, instructing, ordering, requiring, suggesting, urging, warning, etc. Commissives: agreeing, offering, promising, inviting, guaranteeing, etc. Acknowledgments: apologizing, congratulating, greeting, thanking, condoling, etc. It is essential to remark that according to Bach and Harnish there has to be a correlation between type of illocutionary act and type of expressed attitude. In cases like e.g. disputing or agreeing together with all types of acknowledgments, the act and the attitude it expresses presuppose a specific conversational or social conditions. The above mentioned division has great importance when evaluating the power of language and the message we may convey depending on our personal communicative needs. Its importance, however, is even more conspicuous when it comes to the structural distinction between the three basic sentence types in English (declarative, interrogative, imperative) and the three general communicative functions (statement, question, command/request). In connection with direct speech acts we can speak about the correspondence between a structure and a function. On the other hand, once there is a mismatch between a structure and a function, we refer to them as indirect speech acts. For instance, we can imagine the situation at a restaurant where a person sitting at the table needs some salt for his soup. His request may be expressed at least in the following two ways: Request expressed by: 1. Can you pass me the salt, please? (interrogative sentence - direct speech act) 2. The soup is not salty enough. (declarative sentence - indirect speech act) As we can see, the usefulness of speech acts analysis can be seen in the variety of ways in which the individual words/utterances can be interpreted. I especially mean those instances that seemingly violate the already mentioned cooperative principles of conversation and require of us to take into account the specific speech event. I would like to conclude my paper with Searle´s example (1969) illustrating this phenomenon (taken from Yule 1996:103). “One crucial distinction between promises on the one hand and threats on the other is that a promise is a pledge to do something for you, not to you; but a threat is a pledge to do something to you, not for you. … Furthermore, a promise, unlike an invitation, normally requires some sort of occasion or situation that calls for the promise. A crucial feature of such occasions or situations seems to be that the promisee wishes (needs, desires, etc.) that something be done, and the promisor is aware of this wish (need, desire,


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etc.). … One can, however, think of apparent counter-examples to this condition as stated. Suppose I say to a lazy student, Íf you don’t hand in your paper on time I promise you I will give you a failing grade in the course.´ Is this utterance a promise?” According to Searle, it is difficult to consider this sentence to be an example of a promise. Beyond doubt, we describe it as a warning or better to say a threat. Then, quite naturally, the question is: What enables us to use the verb ´promise´ in the above mentioned example? Searle explains that it is the fact that the structures “…Í promise´ and Í hereby promise´ are among the strongest illocutionary forces indicating devices for commitment provided by the English language. For this reason we often use these expressions in the performance of speech acts which are not strictly speaking promises, but in which we wish to emphasize the degree of our commitment.” (ibid: 103-104) 3. Conclusion To sum up, my aim was to examine the two aspects of pragmatics that have the greatest impact upon the practice of English language teaching in the context of the communicative methodology. Firstly, my aim was to show that there is a mutual relationship among English language didactics, theory of communication and pragmatics. The argument I decided to adopt in my paper is the ability of the Inferential Model of the process of communication to take into account and

solve the problems present in the Message Model. This difficult but still topical task may be accomplished thanks to the fact that pragmatics forms an inseparable part of the Inferential Model. At the same time it poses a demand upon language teachers to familiarize students with the so-called hedges whose presence in a conversation can ensure its smooth flow. Secondly, I examined the importance of speech acts and the variety of communicative functions they may have depending on the particular speech event. Thus, the teacher should always remind students of the fact that language is a meaning potential which is activated within a particular context and that quite frequently, there is an exception to the rule in the form of a mismatch between the structure of a speech act and its function. Last but not least, when specifying the communicative tasks and techniques, resulting from the goals set in the field of foreign language teaching, we need to keep in mind the significance of hedges that may prevent us from misunderstandings due to unfamiliarity with context. What is more, we should always be aware of the already presented dynamism that the process of communication exhibits and which, in turn, represents the necessity to develop the ability of our foreign language learners to use a wide range of negotiation skills being part of their communicative competence.

Bibliography and references Bach, K. and Harnish, R.M. (1979): Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Brown, H.D.(1994): Teaching by Principles – An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. New Jersey: Prentice Hall Regents. Halliday, M.A.K.(1973): Explorations in the Functions of Language. London: Edward Arnold. Halliday, M.A.K.(1994): An Introduction to Functional Grammar. Second edition. London: Edward Arnold. O´Grady, W. – Dobrovolsky, M. – Aronof, M.(1997): Contemporary Linguistics. New York: St. Martin´s Press. Repka, R.(1997): Od funkcií jazyka ku komunikatívnemu vyučovaniu. Bratislava: Slovak Academic Press. Repka, R.(2003): An Introduction to English Language Didactics – Fundamental Concepts. Bratislava: Lingos. Repka, R.(2006): K problematike modelovania procesu komunikácie. (V tlači.) Bratislava. Searle, J.(1969): Speech Acts. An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Searle, J.(1979): Expression and Meaning. Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sperber, D. – Wilson, D.(1986): Relevance. Communication and Cognition. Blackwell. Stern, H.H.(1984): Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching. Oxford University Press. Tandlichová, E.(1991): Práca s textom vo vyučovaní anglického jazyka. Bratislava: SPN. Trenholm, S. – Jensen, A.(2004): Interpersonal Communication. Oxford University Press. Vachek, J.(1975): Linguistic Characterology of Modern English. Bratislava: Univerzita Komenského. Widdowson, H.G.(2003): Defining Issues in English Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Yule, G.(1996): Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


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Pre 9/11 Inaugural Address of President George W. Bush: Critical Discourse Analysis Juraj Horváth University of Prešov, Slovak Republic Abstract This article examines the ways and strategies how ideologies are concealed in seemingly innocent and mundane texts. The Fairlough’s model of Critical Discourse Analysis was applied in order to prove validity of the covert ideologies theory postulated by Kress (1993: 174): “The everyday, innocent and innocuous, the mundane text is as ideologically saturated as a text which wears its ideological constitution overtly.” The text selected for this analysis is the pre-9/11 inaugural address of President George W. Bush. The speech is perceived as ‘innocuous and mundane’, but still covertly ideological. I claim that the Kress’s theory is well founded

and this article attempts to prove that the pre 9/11 inaugural address is covertly ideological and that it contains an obvious bias towards particular individuals or group. Key words Critical discourse analysis, George Bush 1. Introduction It is not difficult to define openly slanted or biased expressions of political nature. However, there is a great deal of intangible form of politically shaded language, having a more dangerous impact on the society as such. Its relevance lies in the fact that it is very difficult to be recognised and that it comes straight from the ones in the position of power. The very effect of the abovementioned is that it conditions the expectations of the recipient, it makes the social inequality greater and the recipients remain in their position. Stubbs (1990: 8) describes this fact in the following: “If people and things are repeatedly talked about in certain ways, then there is a good chance that this will affect how they are thought of.” For defining, describing and delimitating of this concealed control of the society by the politicians in power the Critical Discourse Analysis was developed, the followers of which claim that the control of the establishment keeps the society stratified. 2. Critical Discourse Analysis A lot has been written concerning the CDA recently, mostly in broader terms. It appears to be rather difficult to agree on a definition in simple terms, which in fact is a result of the very nature of CDA. For it includes a very many broad principles and uses a great number of techniques. Its aim, it follows, is to identify the political and social inequalities existing in society. An apt definition has been provided by Fairclough (1992), which condenses the rest of the CDA definitions:

[CDA is the study of] often opaque relationships of causality and determination between (a) discursive practices, events and texts, and (b) wider social and cultural structures, relations and processes; to investigate how such practices, events and texts arise out of and are ideologically shaped by relations of power and struggles over power, and to explore how the opacity of these relationships between discourse and society is itself a factor securing power.

(Fairclough 1992: 132-3)

The one element of CDA by which it is differentiated from other forms of discourse analysis lies in its attribute of ‘critical’. “‘Critical’ implies showing connections and causes which are hidden; it also implies intervention, for example providing resources for those who may be disadvantaged through change.” Fairclough (1992: 9). It is important to expose the

hidden things, since they are not evident for the individuals involved, and, because of this, they cannot be fought against. Of the theoreticians of discourse linguistics, who, in the words of Van Dijk contributed “many articles and books that establish CDA as a direction of research, and that focus on various dimensions of power”, is the work of Norman Fairclough (1989: 1992). It is for him that CDA is perceived as a research tactics rather than a direction of thought or a model of analysis. What the followers of CDA try to achieve has been put by Batstone (1995):

Critical Discourse Analysts seek to reveal how texts are constructed so that particular (and potentially indoctrinating) perspectives can be expressed delicately and covertly; because they are covert, they are elusive of direct challenge, facilitating what Kress calls the “retreat into mystification and impersonality” (1989: 57)

Batstone (1995: 198-199) The definitions, as proposed above, are quite complete, but they would need further specification of how CDA is undertaken. Norman Fairclough, in his work Language and Power (1989), wishes to “examine how the ways in which we communicate are constrained by the structures and forces of those social institutions within which we live and function.” (Fairclough 1989: vi). In the same publication, the possible procedures for analysing of texts are suggested. Fairclough (1989: 24-26) gives his opinions on the actual nature of discourse and text analysis. In his view, there are three levels of discourse, firstly, social conditions of production and interpretation, i.e. the social factors, which contributed or lead to the origination of a text, and, at the same time, how the same factors effect interpretation. Secondly, the process of production and interpretation, i.e. in what way the text was produced and how this effects interpretation. Thirdly, the text, being the product of the first two stages, commented on above. Fowler subsequently gives three stages of CDA, which are in accord with the three abovementioned levels of discourse: ● Description is the stage which is concerned with the formal properties of the text. ● Interpretation is concerned with the relationship between text and interaction – with seeing the text as a product of a process of production, and as a resource in the process of interpretation… ● Explanation is concerned with the relationship between interaction and social context – with the social


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determination of the processes of production and interpretation, and their social effects.

Fairclough (1989: 26) Fairclough designed a list of ten principal questions and a number of sub-questions (1989: 110- 112) that can be applied for text analysing. The questions are thematically divided into three groups, regarding the subject analysed: A Vocabulary 1. What experiential values do words have? What classification schemes are drawn upon? Are there words which are ideologically contested? Is there rewording or overwording? What ideologically significant meaning relations are there between words? 2. What relational values do words have? Are there euphemistic expressions? Are there markedly formal or informal words? 3. What expressive values do words have? 4. What metaphors are used? B Grammar 5. What experiential values do grammatical features have? What types of process and participants predominate? Is agency unclear? Are processes what they seem? Are normalizations used? Are sentences active or passive? Are sentences positive or negative? 6. What relational values do grammatical features have? What modes are used? Are there important features of relational modality? Are the pronouns we and you used and if so, how? 7. What expressive values do grammatical features have? Are there important features of expressive modality? 8. How are (simple) sentences linked together? What logical connectors are used? Are complex sentences characterized by coordination or/ subordination? What means are used for referring inside and outside the text? C Textual structures 9. What interactional conventions are used? Are there ways in which one participant controls the turns of others? 10. What larger scale structures does the text have? Fairclough (1989: 110-112) The framework can only be understood after the definition of the three terms; experiential, relational and expressive. Experiential values, as perceived by CDA, are to reveal “the text producer’s experience of the natural or social world” (ibid: 112) and how this experience is demonstrated in the text. The way a person perceives the world can be identified by assessing formal features with experiential value. The mutual set of social relationships that exist between the producer and the recipient of the text can be identified by relational values. Expressive value gives an insight into “the producer’s evaluation (in the widest sense) of the bit of the reality it relates to” (ibid: 112). The expressive value should identify the social identities of the text’s relevant parties. However, these values, provided by Fairclough, are fully subjective. The same author goes on to giving another value, this being the connective one, as it links and connects the various parts of the text. Fairclough stresses that “any given formal feature may simultaneously have two or three of these values” (ibid: 112). Since the list of possible analytic tools provided by Fairclough is rather substantial, for the purposes of this

analysis we will abstain from applying all of them and rather concentrate on those that fit into the genre of political speaking and are expected to render results. The model, as explained above, has gone through a substantial amount of criticism by relevant authorities in discourse analysis (Pennycook 1994 and Widdowson 1995). Their main concern was in the neglecting of agency and “the relation between description and explanation” (Langer 1998: 23). This criticism can be averted by pointing at points five and six in Fairclough’s model, which in fact address agency in great detail. However, the main problem in this analytical theory, as proposed by Fairclough, can be identified as the lack of objectivity. This model of Critical Discourse Analysis have been applied in the analyses of a number of texts dealing with various topics, sexual inequality (see Hoey 1996 and Morrison 1996), racial inequality (Krishnamurthy 1996) and Wodak 1996) and abuse of political and institutional power (Coulthard 1996). 3. Critical Discourse Analysis of speech The following section of the article will examine the pre-9/11 inaugural address of the President of the United States of America, before the events of September 11, when the Al-Qaeda terrorist attacked New York and Washington. The analysis will focus on the content of the statement, making use of the framework for CDA proposed by Fairclough (1989: 110-112), which proposes an apt variety of analytic tools for the corpus. 3.1 Cultural context The speech is delivered on 20th January, 2001, being a part of the prescribed ceremony marking a change of the White House occupants. 3.2 Situational context Field An inaugural address, given on the inauguration day, 20th January, 2001, outlines basic policies of the newly elected president. Tenor The speech is given by the president of the United States of America, by the leader of the world’s leader, and it is aimed at the citizens of the United States as well as at the citizens of the world. Mode Political speeches, being originally written and delivered orally have primarily persuasive function. It should be stressed, at this point, that there is no doubt about Mr. Bush’s non-involvement in the actual producing of the speech, although, it can be argued, the content of the speech reflects his political beliefs. The president is active in the actual delivering process of the speech, the handling of which being not subject of this analysis. 3.3 Post contextual analysis 3.3.1 What experiential values do grammatical features have? ● What types of process and participants predominate? An apt quote from Fairclough will give an insight into the analytic relevance of this question: “When one wishes to represent textually some real or imaginary action, state of affairs or relationship, there is often a choice between different grammatical process and participant types, and the selection made can be ideologically significant” (1989: 120). The grammatical processes and participants are examined by the next question: ● Is agency unclear?


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The role of George W. Bush as president – so to speak the CEA and Chairman in one person, and the unity of the nation and their elected leader, especially after the nationwide allegations of election fraud, is strengthened by predominantly active structures used in the speech:

And we are confident in the principles that unite us and lead us forward We will build our defences beyond challenge, lest weakness invite challenge.

3.3.2 What experiential values do words have? ● Are there words, which are ideologically contested? Perhaps the most evident word in the text, having the quality of being ideologically contested is ‘freedom’, used in a number of occasions throughout the speech, not only for describing the basic feature of the United States of America, but also for having an attributive function in a number of collocations, which are to be addressed in replying to the following analytic question proposed by Fairclough: ● What ideologically significant meaning relations are there between words? It has been postulated that most ideologically shaded word in the text is ‘freedom’, the quality of which would seem more positive than negative, after having consulted the Coubuild Corpus. On the other hand, in sharp contrast to ‘freedom’ and its collocation stand the collocation ‘the enemies of freedom’. ‘Freedom’ and the ‘enemies of freedom’ are ideologically different and for this reason contested. The collocations of ‘freedom’ and ‘the enemies of freedom’ in the text are as follows: ‘Freedom’ collocations: America’s faith in freedom the cause of freedom direction to our freedom ‘The enemies of freedom’ collocations: the enemies of freedom and our country 3.3.3 What relational values do grammatical features have? ● What modes are used? Except for the four instances of the first person, plural imperative, the declarative mode is used throughout the speech:

[…] we must follow no other course. We must live up to the calling we share. Now we must choose if the example of our fathers and mothers will inspire us or condemn us. We must show courage in a time of blessing […].

● Are the pronouns we and you used, and if so, how? The division of the we group as oppose to them group throughout the text, can, and indeed has been analysed by a number of authors, having applied a number of methods, (see Cronick, 2002, Myers, 2003, Leudar and Nekvapil, 2006). For the purposes of this paper we might conclude that a relatively high occurrence of the pronoun we, can be ascribed both to Bush’s aspiration to be inclusive, united with the people, both with his supporters and his opponents, especially after the alleged election fraud:

[…] we are confident in principles that unite and lead us onward. […] and, to unite the supporters of the ‘cause of freedom’ throughout the world against the ‘enemies of freedom’:

The enemies of liberty and our country should make no mistake: America remains engaged in the world by history and by choice, shaping a balance of power that favors freedom. We will defend our

allies and our interests. We will show purpose without arrogance. We will meet aggression and bad faith with resolve and strength. And to all nations, we will speak for the values that gave our nation birth.

A relative low occurrence of the pronoun you (two in total), can be explained by the abovementioned, namely by the effort of Bush to be/sound united with his fellow Americans. 3.3.4 What expressive values do words have? We can distinguish two groups of words with expressive value in the analysed text. The first group refers to the United States of America, the American people as such, with highly positive connotations, and the second group to America’s enemies, who, by implication, are also described as the enemies of freedom and the civilised world, with negative connotations. Positive connotations Negative connotations [America is] a nation of justice

enemies of liberty and our country

America [is] courageous [Americans should not be] subjects

America [is] compassionate

(indirect reference to the nations subjugated by their leaders)

Americans are generous and strong and decent

● What metaphors are used? America’s basic beliefs in democracy and freedom are referred to as a “rock in a raging sea”, being one of the fundamental biblical references to St. Peter. So is the following metaphor in the same paragraph of the speech, with a “seed [of freedom and democracy] taking root in many nations”. Here, also a definite New Testament reference of the good and bad seed taking and not taking root respectively, pending on the location of its landing, springs in mind. 4. Summary of analysis 1. Throughout the speech, there are instances of ideological and contentious issues presented as facts, which might be perceived as, if not outright lies, but mostly unethical. 2. ‘The enemies of America’, although not specified, are referred to, both directly and indirectly, in a negative way. 3. The agency is clear, with president Bush putting himself in the first position of the sentence, in a number of occasions including the American people, thus creating an image of a ‘truly popular and legitimate leader’, despite the allegations of electoral fraud. 5. Conclusion The above analysis have shown that by the application of Fairclough’s (1989) CDA framework one can detect features of the text, inaugural address in our case, which might influence the thinking of the recipients, in our case, the American people – being the primary target, and the global populace as such. Also, that even in pre 9/11 texts of political character, one can identify features of Bush’s post 9/11 rhetoric, concerning the enemies of America. Finally, this analysis supports the well-groundedness of the theory of Kress, claiming that even in ‘mundane texts’ – in our case a pre 9/11 text, the traces and instances of covert ideology can be identified. One can agree with Van Dijk that also this covert ideology is an effective “way to reproduce dominance and hegemony” (1997).


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Bibliography and references Batstone, R. (1995): Grammar in Discourse: Attitude and Deniability, in G. Cook and B Seidlhofer, (eds.) Principle & Practice in Applied Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 197-213. Bourdieu, P. (1999): Language and Symbolic Power, in A. Jaworski, and N. Coupland, (eds.) The Discourse Reader. London: Routledge, pp502-513. Brown, W.S, Deakin and P, Ryan. (1997): The Effects of British Industrial Relations Legislation 1979-97, National Institute Economic Review, 161, 69-83. Caldas-Coulthard, C.R. (1996): Women Who Pay For Sex And Enjoy it. Transgressions Versus Morality in Women’s Magazines, in C.R. Caldas-Coulthard, and M. Coulthard, (eds.) Text and Practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Routledge, pp.250-270. Caldas-Coulthard, C.R. and M. Coulthard, (eds.) (1996): Texts and Practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Routledge. Fairclough, N. (1989): Language and Power. London: Longman. Fairclough, N. (1992): Discourse and Social Change. London: Polity Press. Fowler, R. (1966): On Critical Linguistics, in C.R. Caldas-Coulthard, and M. Coulthard, (eds.) Texts and Practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Routhledge, pp.3-14. Jaworski, A. and N. Coupland, (eds.) The Discourse Reader. London: Routledge. Krishnamurthy, R. (1996): Ethics, Racial and Tribal: the Language of Racism?’ in C.R. Caldas-Coulthard, and M. Coulthard, (eds.) Texts and Practices: Readings in Critical Discourse analysis. London: Routledge, pp. 129- 149. Laybourn, K. (1991): British Trade Unionism c. 1770-1990. Stroud: Sutton Publishing. Pennycook, A. (1994): Incommensurable Discourses in Applied Lingistics, Vol. 15, No.2, pp115-138. Oxford University Press. Van Dijk, T. (1996): Discourse, Power and Access, in C.R. Caldas-Coulthard, and M. Coulthard, (eds.) Texts and Practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Routledge, pp. 84-106. Wallace, C. (1992): Critical Literacy Awareness in the EFL classroom, in N. Fairclough (ed.) Critical Language Awareness. London and New York: Longman. Wallace, C. (1995): Reading with a Suspicious Eye: Critical Reading in the Foreign Language Classroom, in G. Cook, and B. Seidlhofer, (eds) Principle&Practice in Applied Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.335-347. Widdowson, H.G. (1995): Discourse Analysis: a Critical View. In Language and Literature 4, pp.157-172.


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EUROSPEAK and ELF – English as a Current Global Lingua Franca Petra Jesenská Matej Bel University, Slovak Republic Abstract The presented article characterizes the specific features of the special kind of English called Eurospeak. The author emphasises the fact that it is not the standard English spoken by native speakers in the UK, the Republic of Ireland or the USA. Key words Lingua franca, Eurospeak, international language, international English, variety, Latin, reasons to use Eurospeak, vagueness.

1. Introduction It is estimated that nearly 400 million people consider the English language their mother tongue and another nearly 300 million speakers use it as their second language. Hundreds of millions interlocutors use English in tourism, during business negotiations, in international academic programmes and institutions, and in many other fields of the ´third sector´, where English is used as a lingua franca. The authors Krupa-Genzor (1996: 73) assert that since the 1950s use of the English language in the world has increased by 40 percent and the accelerating process still continues. From the purely geographical point of view, English is the most used (extended) language in the world. 2. Lingua Franca From Mistrík´s Encyklópedia jazykovedy (1993: 265) we learn that in the Middle Ages the term lingua franca was used to denote a kind of Arabic language mixed with the features of another language(s) mostly used in the Mediterranean harbours. The term came to cover all so-called ´hybrid´ languages in the course of time. In pragmatic-communicative terms it was either necessary or at least useful for interlocutors coming from various ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. English has become today´s lingua franca, and it is English, too, that may be considered a kind of Esperanto of our times. It is also obvious that, at least in a European context, English plays the dominant role that used to be characteristic of Latin in previous centuries. 2.1 Differences between EFL, ESL and ELF In linguistic science and language teaching we distinguish between EFL (English as a Foreign Language) and ELF (English as a Lingua Franca). 2.1.1 EFL and ESL EFL refers to the teaching of English to students whose first language is not English and the official language of whose country is not English. It means that pupils/students/learners usually learn/study English at schools. To complicate things even more another type of English should be mentioned here, namely ESL, which means simply English as a Second Language. ESL refers to the teaching of English to speakers of other languages who live in a country where English is an official or significant language. In the context of our discussion EFL and ESF are not immediately relevant. We are mostly interested in ELF, because this is the only variety that has to do with the global use of the English language.

2.1.2 ELF The abbreviation ELF stands for English as a Lingua Franca. ELF has a number of specific features. There is a pragmatic approach used in ELF teaching because, its main goal is to make communication as effective and successful as possible. However, it depends on the specific interlocutors. To put it simply: a native speaker of English almost subconsciously adapts his or her way of speech (grammar, vocabulary, diction and speed) to the level of their foreign listener (interlocutor). When there are non-native interlocutors involved in the conversation, it is more relevant to make the other interlocutor understand the contents of the discourse than to speak perfect English. Some ´mistakes´ in pronunciation, such as non-use of the phoneme schwa (@), can make English more easily comprehensible to foreign and/or non-native speakers. On the other hand, there is one important fact to realize – a native speaker may (and surely will) make the most of his better command of the language. On the international scale English (ELF) is widely spoken by experts and scientists who are familiar with the discussed issues and terms connected to them. 2.2 Ogden’s BASIC In short, ELF is as diverse as its speakers are diverse. We may talk of a considerably simplified system of the language developed from the so-called language stripped bare introduced in the 1930s by a British linguist, Charles Ogden, who named it Basic English. BASIC is an acronym for British – American – Scientific – International – Commercial. Ogden reduced its vocabulary to 600 nouns, 150 adjectives and 100 so-called structural expressions (pronouns, prepositions and so on). In fact, it is quite a reduced form of proper English grammar. Although Ogden’s Basic English has not become an international language, as the author wished, a similar language has since his time become globally used – ELF. Jennifer Jenkins (King’s College, University London) was one of those who has done research on language stripped bare, and based on her research she found out that intercultural ELF communication is in general very fruitful despite the non-existence of fixed norms. We have to emphasise again the significant fact that ELF is a pragmatically reduced form of the English language. It is not the language of Shakespeare or Virginia Woolf, though paradoxically in this context it is characteristic that it lacks a kind of ´pragmatic easiness´, which can be achieved by means of scarcely used so-called gambits (expressions or sentences used for starting a conversation), i. e. routine sentences by means of which the topic of discussion, taking turns, and so on are introduced in a polite and formal way. For example: I’m afraid I don’t understand…True, but…Quite simply, the question is… Are you


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suggesting… Excuse me, if no one objects…We’re beginning to lose sight of the main point... May I draw your attention to a more important question? Perhaps we could return to your point later. Would you like to comment on the last point? Let’s remember that... Don’t you agree that…You will have to recognize that…Can’t you see that… Even so... Granted, but... The fact of the matter is that…I take your point. 3 Kachru´s three circles of English speakers In 1985, the American linguist Braj B. Kachru divided English speakers (users) into three circles which became the basis for the classification of English speaking (use) in the world. However, many anglophone linguists point out that Kachru´s classification has its disadvantages in disregarding various sociolinguistic aspects of the spread and use of the English language. On the other hand, Crystal (1996: 107) accepts this classification, and posits three circles of aspects of English spoken on a global scale. The fields of all three circles are not fixed, and they may overlap. 3.1 The Inner Circle There are traditionally English speaking countries in the Inner Circle such as the U.S., the U.K., Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. At the moment of publishing Crystal´s Encyclopeadia, the total number of English speakers ranged between 320 and 380 million inhabitants. However, today the number is much higher – approximately 400 million people use English as their mother tongue. 3.2 The Outer Circle The Outer Circle goes back to the early days of the English language boom in non-English environments where English has now become an official language of the main state institutions and plays an important role as the second language in a multicultural country. Mostly this is true of former colonies and dominions in which English has become a lingua franca because citizens come from diverse ethnic groups speaking various languages. This includes countries such as Singapore, India, Malawi and over 50 other countries around the world. The number of English speakers ranges between 150 and 300 million users. 3.3 The Expanding Circle The Expanding Circle represents about 100 million – 1 billion English speakers and includes all those nations and countries which know the global and international importance of English, though they have not had direct historical experience of the anglophone colonisation of those countries belonging to the Inner Circle, and they have not let English become dominant in their national language policy. This is the situation in countries of central and eastern Europe, China, Japan, Israel, Greece and many others. English is being taught as a foreign language in these countries. Anglicists have been wondering whether this kind of international English is acceptable or not. It is highly likely they will accept it for the plain reasons that it turns out that people speaking English as a foreign language outnumber those who use it as their mother tongue. The following picture depicting all three circles of the English speakers has been taken from the website

http://jalt-publications.org/tlt/files/96/oct/englishes.html#1 (05/09/2006): Figure 1. Three Concentric Circles of English according to Kachru.

One of the basic features of the English language is its great ability to borrow lexical units from an enormous number of languages. After many centuries of language and cultural interactions it has developed into a language with prevailing a Germanic grammar and a dominant Roman vocabulary (words having Old French, Latin or Greek background) which approximately makes up 75 percent of the whole English vocabulary. English has borrowed words from about 120 different languages. This open-mindedness towards other language influences and impacts has also contributed to its global dominance all over the world. 4. Pointing to an analogy between Latin and English In the course of the centuries Latin, as the language of science, scholarship and education, contributed to the development of several European languages which had been existing simultaneously with itself, although at the beginning they were considered too outlandish or even vulgar. Latin created a solid ground for its new varieties and later on the new languages. The analogy with English is obvious: nowadays there is no single standard English. We know several kinds of standard Englishes (or varieties of English) such as British, American, Australian, African and Indian (the English spoken in India). Each of them has its own specific pronunciation, morphological, grammatical, lexical, syntactic, stylistic and cultural features, although the core of the lexicon is more or less the same. Latin has been the language of the Roman Catholic Church, scholarship and education in the course of the centuries, while English has reached its dominance only recently and has usually been connected with the language of business and diplomacy (superseding French). English is a secular language, and this fact is very important in connection with the spread of English both in tourism and in the worldwide communication of everyday life. 5. Europe and a universal language


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All attempts to create a single universal language have failed; however, taking 6, 000 languages8 into consideration, one has to admit that those attempts have their justification. For example, there are about 400 languages and dialects spoken in Papua New Guinea, while 18 million Amerindians speak 1, 200 different languages. In Russian Dagestan there live about 1.5 million people speaking approximately 40 various languages. In the Russian peninsula of Cola there live only 1, 700 Saams using their own language and alphabet (Rybár, 1992:61). In Ghana about 45 languages are spoken. In Nigeria, the country with the highest population density in Africa, around 100 languages are spoken. People in Cameroon use about 170 languages and dialects. Mainly English and French were used as unifying and official languages during the times of colonisation and imperial hegemony. Both languages, English and French, remain official in a considerable number of states where considerations of language and politics are problematical (Pisárčiková, 1988: 262). Attempts to create the only artificial, logical, universal and/or international language spoken on a global scale are as ancient as a human society itself, considering the power potential that can manipulate a human mind. Moreover, in the 20th century a certain doctor developed several artificial languages some of which had a vocabulary of up to 10, 000 lexical units. Since Francis Bacon´s time human society has chalked up approximately 700 attempts to create an artificial language common to as many countries and societies as possible. The first noticeable success was posted when a German priest called Schleyer introduced a ´world language´ known as volapük in 1879. In 1907 there was published the very first Esperanto textbook for Slovaks in the town of Martin. The publication contributed to the increasing popularity of Esperanto in Slovakia. It is believed that its ´father´ was a Polish doctor called L. Zamenhof. Esperanto is very probably the most successful artificial language in which congresses are held and into which literary works of art are translated (for example, Sládkovič´ Detvan). Esperanto was followed by Ido – new elaborate version of Esperanto. Interlingua (IALA9) was introduced by an American think tank in the years 1924 – 1951, and it was meant to supersede Latin. Interlingua is a set of 10, 000 expressions adapted from Latin. The association believed in the reabsorption of Latin into languages of the world – that is why they introduced its modernised form enriched by many expressions from living languages. Basic English (1930s) is a simplified version of British and American English (more information can be found in 1.1). Its vocabulary has 850 words, necessary to make communication possible and comprehensible. However, it is a paradox that a minimum number of words limits the number of interlocutors, and even the easiest expressions are described by means of a long set of lexical units. For example, instead of a single

8 To define the term ´language´ is a difficult task, and even to distinguish it from a dialect or dialects is very complicated, because some languages are spread only by oral means. The demise of several languages, mostly in Asia and Oceania, is a continuous process that also influences a number of other languages in the world. However, linguists have come to an agreement that there are around 6, 800 languages all around the world. 9 The International Association for an Artificial Language

word selfish the following description is necessary without thought for others (bez myslenia na druhých). Another extreme case may be mentioned: a cut from the back end of a male cow kept on the fire long enough (odrezok z chrbta konca samčej kravy nechaný na ohni dosť dlho) describing nothing else than beefsteak (hovädzí rezeň)“ (Krupa-Genzor, 1996: 302). 5.1 Official languages of the EU and language equity – reality or chimera? Ten new member countries (among them Slovakia) entered the EU on May 1st, 2004 and the number of official languages accordingly increased from 11 to 20. It it has been the greatest Euro-enlargement ever. Until the May enlargement the following eleven languages were notionally all equally spoken in the EU institutions: Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish. 5.2 Looking for a neutral language Although the Eurorepresentatives try to enforce a symmetrical language model that could be applied on every communicative occasion, it is obvious that their attempt is in vain. Today’s English enjoys the significant position of a (neutral) working Eurolanguage, despite the fact that its dominant status has been prompting lively discussion in political and other circles of society. In English´s favour is its globalism (i.e. world use) conditioned by historical context and neutral specifications without British, American or Australian cultural/political backgrounds or allusions. The term neutral English indicates international English divested of regional varieties containing political, social and cultural connotations. A formal form of international English prevails at universities, and among scientists where English merely functions as a communicative-cognitive language, because its aim is not to fulfill emotional or aesthetic functions. It is this form of English that has been preferred in the language culture of the western world. Although British colonialism laid the foundations for global English, international English is a result of forming world culture (i.e. western culture), the intensive influence of the U.S. also contributes, but decisive influence upon the use of international English unambiguously has a language-cultural interaction among non-English-speaking interlocutors10. This fact eliminates both the British and the American impact on other interlocutors. In English´s favour, too, is the fact that non-native speakers outnumber English native speakers. All around the world English is used as a local/regional language fulfilling communicative-cognitive needs. On the other hand, opponents (of the global use of English) say that the neutrality of any language is a pure unattainable ideal, because all languages bear certain items of information about their users (i.e. speakers). Opponents also remind us that non-native speakers are exposed to the influences of various varieties of standard British, American and other less well-known varieties of the English language. Another strong argument is that relying on the use of international English makes the native speakers of English (predominantly Americans) dependent on the language abilities of others. A suitable international English divested as far as possible of local shades could be substituted for British/American English in the future. There is a high chance of mixing both standard varieties11 together, thereby creating a supranational variety of English superseding current varieties.

10 ´Non-English-speaking interlocutors´ means all interlocutors whose mother tongue is not English. 11 Standard British English/General American English


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According to Crystal, the British linguist, native speakers of English will be exposed to two standards of English – one that will be a part of their national and local identities, while the other will help them to keep in touch with the rest of human society. Crystal does not discount bilingualism within the English language. 5.3 International English – the language of international institutions The term international English usually indicates the British variety spoken in the UK12 and the Commonwealth of Nations. It is named international English in order to distinguish it from the American variety. The majority native speakers use the American variety, and the rest of native speakers consider the British variety a standard. However, American English prevails in the world. The international character of British English is dependent on three factors: 1) British English, compared to American English, is a standard spoken in more countries over the world; 2) many scientific works written outside the U.S. follow Oxford rules; 3) this variety is an official language of the United Nations and the European Union, and it is also used for testing language skills and abilities by the means of the International English Language Testing System. The British variety of international English is installed in computers sold on the world markets. The most influential and also the best-known organisations in which the British variety is spoken are the following: the network of the UN organisations (UNESCO, UNICEF, etc.), WTO (the World Trade Organisation), WHO (the World Health Organisation), OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries), Interpol (the International Police), Amnesty International, and many others. What is typical of all the above-mentioned organisations is the application of Oxford orthography (e.g.. using the suffix –ize in verbs such as organize and recognize, but not analyse). Organisations following the standard British variety of govenmental documents (organise, recognise) are: NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization), the EU (the European Union), OECD (the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), the Commonwealth Secretary, Transparency International, Greenpeace and many others. The American variety (e.g. the double use of suffix –se/–ze in verbs: defense, analyze) is typical of documents issued by the U.S. government and also of the following organisations: the IMF (the International Monetary Fund13), the World Bank, the Secretary of the NAFTA organisation, and many others. Varieties of the English language amongst English speakers using this language as their second or third language are being extended by means of documents and a wide diapason of activities impinging upon nearly all fields of human society in contact with the named organisations. 6. Eurospeak Let us start this part of our article with a nice easy question: Parlez-vous eurojargon? (Do you speak Eurolanguage?) If you do, you are few of the lucky ones and if not, you had better start learning it, otherwise you will not be able to communicate with the Eurocrats in English. It is believed that a good command of Eurojargon helps you to take part in any of the EU-granted projects. By the way, EU-funded projects are very popular these days.

12 The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland 13 It is a part of the United Nations which encourages international trade and gives financial help to poor countries

6.1 European lexical units Eurospeak or Eurojargon is a new kind of special and mysterious language understandable only to a specific circle of people. Eurolanguage was invented by Éuroclerks´, and they are the only ones who understand it. It is as if it was meant especially for them. The European Information Association published a 350-page dictionary called Eurojargon in February 2004. It is a dictionary of abbreviations, acronyms, sobriquets (nicknames) and terminology used in the European Union´s agencies, institutions, schemes, projects and programmes. There are more than 5, 200 entries in the dictionary. There are words like ERASMUS, LEONARDO, SOCRATES and acronyms such as CAP or NOW. Eurocrats use them without further explanation and, for the person who is not an insider, it is usually difficult to get the point. However, Eurocrats and other pro-Eurospeak people think that Eurospeak is not just jargon. They say it is a European hybrid language that comes into its own when a European project has different collaborators from different European countries, cultures and languages. Eurolanguage, it is claimed, obviates the need for translations. (On the contrary, when translated one feels that the Éuro´words bear too vague a meaning.) Eurodocuments use words of European origin: identity, flexibility, implementation, innovation, integration, negotiation, subsidiarity, zone, and so on. There is also a special group of words combining with the prefix Euro- or euro-, for example eurocheque, europhile, eurosceptic, eurocentric, etc. 6.2 Blend Éurocrat´ Eurocrat is a pun on the word ´bureaucrat´ and denotes one of the thousands of EU citizens working for EU institutions (e.g. the Council, the Commission, the Parliament, etc.). Euroland is a nickname for the EU member states that have adopted the euro as their currency. The éuro area´ (sometimes called ´the euro zone´) includes Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain. Other countries are going to become part of this éuro area´ sooner or later. 6.3 Faux amis (False friends) The question is whether Eurospeak helps us or whether it complicates our communication even more. We will give one example to illustrate the situation. In January 2006 a case was discussed at the European Court of Justice concerning the proper interpretation of a phrase used in the legislation governing proprietary plant varieties. The point is that farmers are allowed to keep seed from their crops for sowing on their own farms, provided they pay a fair fee to the breeder of the plant variety in question. However, the level of the fee is not known or specified, and it is certain that it must be ´sensibly lower´ than the royalty element in the price of new seed of the same variety. The legislative aspects do not concern us here. We are interested what exactly ´sensibly lower´ means. This glaring gallicism (taken from the French expression ´sensiblement inférieur´) may be translated as ´deutlich niedriger´ in German and something like áppreciably lower´ in English. In fact, the non-native English speakers outnumber the native speakers. It seems that a translator was taken in by a ´false friend´ (or so-called faux ami). In one of the UK parliamentary debates on the subject one MP suggested that a more appropriate expression to choose would have been ´suitably lower´. One has to conclude that Eurospeak turns out to be the ham-fisted English of the non-native speakers who cannot speak proper English. In this particular case all the parties at


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the European Court of Justice were German – there were no British or Irish judges. That is why the expression ´sensibly lower´ had not been examined carefully in detail. 6.4 Four reasons for using Eurospeak What are the reasons for using Eurospeak, Eurojargon, vague Euro-expressions, dubious Euro-English, ham-fisted English, or whatever we choose to call it? Let us be honest with ourselves. It is not just pure incompetence. A Czech Senator, Miroslav Škaloud (2005), has claimed that there are at least four main reasons for this phenomenon: The wish to reach a compromise at any costs – the less specific words are, the higher are the chances of coming to an agreement. Using dubious and vague words may be quite practical: you can always agree on empty words that promise nothing and hurt no one. European politicians (Europoliticians) are believed to be more favourably looked upon when they find a compromise. Creating as good an impression as possible is part of their work and necessary to their personal ambition. For example: social equity is the ideal that the EU institutions would like to achieve. Another synonym for social equity and social inclusion is social coherence, defined as ´the capacity of a society to ensure the welfare of all its members, minimizing disparities and avoiding social polarisation´… The desire to underestimate the actual importance of a problem – and if something ´does not sound good´ it is immediately given a more ´glancing´ name (in fact, an opaque name); for example, political correctness is an attempt not to give things their proper names. Flexicurity is another expression avoiding the denotation of real things by their real names but in fact it means nothing more than the oxymoronic expression ćurrent flexibility and security of work places´, two things which are virtually impossible to ensure simultaneously. One can hardly ensure working positions and offer a flexible working market at the same time. The desire to make new solutions look good by means of brand-new words and expressions, although they offer nothing but well-known and banal phenomena – for instance, social capital means abilities and skills, development of human resources refers to the education of people, and so on. Satisfying the requirements, ideologies and ideas of various lobbies and pressure groups – defenders of certain phenomena want to put a new expression into use if they fail to put into use the specific phenomenon. They usually use vague expressions to name the ńew social rights´ of EU citizens, such as the right to get accommodation, the right to work or the right to health. Such rights are rather dubious and not clearly defined. The right to get accommodation is to support availability at a suitable level. The right to work means nothing else than the achievement of the highest and the most stable level of employment possible. The right to health has not been defined yet, and so, as Škaloud points out, its application is beyond common sense. Health is, according to the international organization WHO, a highly subjective feeling that has enormous indefinable aspects, including genetic factors. That is why it is impossible to apply it accurately to any individual. 6.5 Attempt to characterize Eurospeak There are other specific Euro-expressions that have something to do with EU phenomena and are common to all member states. For example, acquis communautaire refers to the rights and duties shared in all member states; harmonization suggests

unification of standards, Shenghen denotes an area without internal borders, including the common visa policy. What exactly is Eurospeak? Lorang (2005) states: ´Linguisten verstehen darunter den zunehmenden Einfluss des Englischen auf andere europäische Sprachen.´ (´Linguists understand by this the increasing influence of English on other European languages.´) However, he does not consider Eurospeak in the same way as Škaloud. Lorang includes international anglicisms in Eurospeak, for example words like ´shopping´, évent´ or ´lifestyle´. Such lexical units are usually used by young people in France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, and elsewhere. So when answering the question ´What is Eurospeak?´, it is much easier to say what is it not. It is not the language of Virginia Woolf or William Shakespeare. It is not the English of Mark Twain, Toni Morrison or Ernest Hemingway either. It is definitely not the English of the Oxford dictionary. With regard to vocabulary it has nothing to do with standard British, Irish or American English. Eurospeak is characteristic of a particular language level – lexical level and word formation. In fact, it is a lexicon of terms and highly formal expressions used by the European clerks and bureaucrats. It does not interfere with other language levels (either in grammar or syntax), although from the stylistic point of view high formality and abstraction (often even vagueness) are typical of the éuroterms´. Eurospeak does not have to be spoken or written only in English. It might be found in other national languages of the EU members. It is not the language family that is important, but the choice of Eurospeak words. It turns out that English has become an innocent victim of Eurospeak; however, had it been spoken on a world wide scale this could have happened to any other language, too. 6.6 The EU in numbers There are 23 languages (since January 2007) spoken in the EU, which is not actually an enormous number. On the other hand, 23 languages mean over 400 different language-combinations during translation or interpretation processes. The EU budget for the translators and interpreters comes to € 1, 200, 000, 000 and increases every year in proportion to the rising number of languages. Eurocrats assert that this is not very substantial when the number is expressed in a percentage – it makes ónly´ 1 per cent of the whole EU annual budget and it is ónly´ slightly over €2 per one EU citizen per year. In reality, it depends on one’s point of view. Many people would say it is too much. The European multilingual approach is not cheap at all. On one hand, Eurocrats proclaim the multilingual viewpoint and on the other, they use English as often as possible to communicate. All languages in the EU are believed (and declared) to be equal. There are, however, only three working languages in the EU: English, French and German – that is no language equity. That is language dominance, and hegemony of the three chosen languages. The question is whether a fair and equal treatment is possible for all languages in the whole EU. We do not think so – the number 23 expresses only the number of official languages spoken in the member states, and the languages of minorities are excluded. What is more even these 23 languages are not treated equally within the EU institutions. How can one expect other languages to be treated ´well´? The importance of Eurospeak should not be underestimated. It is here to manipulate our minds, to force us to do the things the Eurocrats want us to do. Referenda on the EU Constitution or on EU enlargement


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are very good examples. If a referendum fails in one member country, that means just one thing – the referendum is put off for a certain period of time, but later on it takes place anyway, the Eurocrats having become more active and alert in the intervening period, using a massive propaganda machine to ´make the vox populi (referendum) successful´. Any referendum is considered a failure if the results are different from the Eurocrats´ wishes and requirements. 6.7 Emma Wagner’s suggestions Emma Wagner suggests several possible ways of resolving this issue on her website http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue4/eurospeak/. There is no space for us to present all her inspiring ideas, but probably one of the most striking she adduces is what she calls the cure for Eurospeak when on one hand she suggests encouraging people to speak Eurospeak, but on the other hand discouraging them from writing it. Wagner also mentions that an important role is played by audience awareness, honesty, responsibility, planning ahead and expert editing. The last-mentioned can be considered the most significant in the context of

the 23 official languages of the 27 member states. Her idea is to allow éxperts to rewrite documents before they are translated´ into all 23 languages (Wagner, 2001). She points out that expert consultants and/or expert editors could come from outside. Against this, Eurocrats can object that outsiders do not know enough about a particular field to comprehend the eurodocuments. However, Wagner thinks that íf intelligent, interested readers don’t understand, that proves that the documents need to be rewritten´ (ibid.). There is no reason to argue with her about this logical and sensible point. 7. Conclusion As we have shown, language is a strong and important instrument for presenting (Euro)politics, and for enforcing the Eurocrats´ wishes, but at the same time, it may become the source of many conflicts. The EU, in its cunning way, takes sovereignty out of the hands of the national states in an increasingly large number of cases. The use (or abuse) of language plays an important part in this process.

Bibliography and references Cambridge Advanced Learner´s Dictionary. Cambridge University Press, 2003. Software TEXTware A/S. Version I.0 CRYSTAL, David. 1996. The Cambridge Encyclopedia Of The English Language. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1996, 490 s. ISBN 0-521-40179-8 ČERMÁK, František. 2001. Jazyk a jazykoveda. Praha : Karolinum, 2001, ISBN 80-246-0154-0 ČERNÝ, Jiří. 1996. Dějiny lingvistiky. Olomouc: Votobia, 1996. ISBN 80-85885-96-4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_English http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3695/is_200312/ai_n9335152 (12/10/06) http://workinglanguages.blogspot.com/2006/01/eurospeak.html (12/10/06) http://www.brugesgroup.com/mediacentre/releases.live?article=161 (17/10/06) http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue4/eurospeak/ http://www.eu2004.ie/templates/standard.asp?sNavlocator=3,243,249 (12/10/06) http://www.euroinfo.gov.sk/index/go.php?id=344 http://www.fhv.umb.sk/Katedry/Katedra%20anglistiky%20a%20amerikanistiky/zbornik%203/043-058plintovicova.doc KACHRU, Braj B.: The Language Teacher: Norms, Models, and Identities. (05/09/06) http://jalt-publications.org/tlt/files/96/oct/englishes.html KOLKOVÁ, T. (2005): “How to speak eurospeak.“ Týždeň, Bratislava, W Press, year 1, No. 24, 2005, pp. 34-35. KRUPA, Viktor – GENZOR, Jozef. 1996. Jazyky sveta v priestore a čase. Bratislava: Veda, 1996. ISBN 80-224-0459-4 LORANG, P.V. (2005): Eurospeak. http://www.sprachpresse.vds-bb.de/?n=17 (12/10/06) MISTRÍK, Jozef. 1993. Encyklópedia jazykovedy. Bratislava: Obzor, 1993. ISBN 80-215-0250-9 PHILIPS, M. (2003): “When ńo´ means ýes´ in eurospeak.“ Daily Mail, June 9, 2003. http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles-new/?p=131 (12/10/06) PISÁRČÍKOVÁ, Mária et al. 1988. Jazyková poradňa odpovedá. Bratislava: SNP, 1988. Bez ISBN PLINTOVIČOVÁ, Slávka. 2005. Linguistic Equality And Linguistic Diversity: European Language Policy And The Status Of The English Language. In: Teória a prax prípravy učiteľov AJ 3. Zborník KAA FHV UMB. Banská Bystrica: UMB FHV BB, 2005. ISBN 80-8083-148-3 RYBÁR, Ján. 1992. Sociálno-psychologické úvahy o povahe reči a jej živote. Bratislava: Letra & Line, 1992. ISBN 80-85513-02-1 SCRUTON, R. (2005): Eurospeak. Týždeň, June 20, 2005 Available: http://www.tyzden.sk/index.php?w=art&idart=3315&idiss=69 (17/10/06) ŠKALOUD, M. (2005): “Proč eurospeak používá neurčité výrazy.“ Available: http://www.skaloud.net/index.php3?act=stanoviska&display=1142 (12/10/06) WAGNER, E. 2001. Eurospeak – Fighting the Disease. In : Cultivate Interactive, issue 4, 7 May 2001. Available: http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue4/eurospeak/ (28/02/07)


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The Janus-Face of Politeness: Hidden Strategies Revealed in Problem Interviews in Health Communication* Monika Gyuró University of Pécs, Hungary László I. Komlósi University of Pécs, Hungary Abstract The paper reports on an emergent aspect of research into the dynamics of professional-patient health-related interviews, according to which politeness, cooperation, empathy, sympathy, distance, reluctance, rejection, etc. get manifested in different degrees on a continuum between open and hidden strategies only to determine participants’ power relations. Our approach challenges the traditional presumption that politeness is a monolithic phenomenon. We see politeness as an open communicative strategy when used by participants in equal positions (e.g. in scientific debates). Politeness can serve as a hidden strategy when it is indirect in the sense that it manipulates the person in focus. The analysis based on a case study in the framework of a health-related interview that was carried out on the basis of the principles of ethnomethodological conversation analysis. We have found that politeness strategies can counterbalance the inequality of social roles between the participants. The analysis observes and suggests that in a ’Problem Interview’ an attempt can be made for traditional professional-patient roles to be inverted, however the original cast needs to be balanced by politeness strategies to reach understanding and cooperation between the participants.

*Work on the present paper was supported by the Research Group for Theoretical Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS) operative at the Universities of Debrecen, Szeged and Pécs. Key words applied argumentation-theory, professional-patient interview, open versus hidden communicative strategies, Habermas’s concept of concealed strategic action, politeness as indirect argumentative manipulation, institutionalized argumentative discourse, patient-centered clinical interview, synergy of relational communicative techniques and rational argumentation, Problem Interview, negotiated meaning in argumentative discourse space, holistic and plausible reasoning. 1. Introduction A pragmatic approach to communication emphasizes that verbal interaction is both reflective and constitutive of hierarchical roles. Our research shows that social interaction is a multi-layered process where participants apply certain communicative strategies to influence the others’ perception and acknowledgement of social reality. Pragmatics aims at exploring the discourse strategies speakers employ in their interactions. On the basis of our investigation we will claim that discourse strategies are used to build, maintain, or even destroy participants’ social status. Accordingly, discourse strategies may utilize a wide range of factors that contribute to successful interaction. We focus on politeness to show its instrumental effect on speakers’ choice within the framework of institutionalized argumentative discourse. The objective of the paper is to highlight the open and concealed characteristics of politeness in clinical interviews. This aspect of an institutionalized argumentative practice is one of several possible, but crucial aspect applied argumentation-theory should be sensitive to. As more patient-centered styles of communication have gained ground, emphasizing mutuality, open strategic action has become less acceptable to patients. In this altered context, Habermas’s analysis of concealed strategic action is particularly useful. The concept of concealed strategic action allows for doctors

(frequently) and patients (more rarely) to act with an orientation toward success. The ideas we are presenting here are the result of the early stages of a wider research project in applied argumentation theory. In earlier work (see Komlósi 1989, 2003a, 2003b, Gyuró 2005, 2007) we have formulated the objectives and methods to be applied in the investigations. The present paper discusses the consequences of the so-called Problem Interview, whose resolution is to be sought in the idea of negotiated meaning in argumentative discourse space. Our research focuses on a specific set of data obtained in the health care context and on an adequately applied method which is claimed to be suitable for revealing the constructed meanings derived, though not exclusively, from the linguistic material under scrutiny. The paper will show that conversation analysis needs to be augmented with the operational technique of Topic Generated Grammar so that research could identify relevant, so far unobserved aspects of the linguistic data obtained from argumentative discursive interaction: the internal dynamics of therapeutic interactions, the scope of roles determined by the hierarchical and asymmetrical set-up of the context, and the efficiency of the argumentative strategies. The results of the research can be formulated as follows: although rational argumentation based on expert knowledge plays a necessary and decisive role in therapeutic interactions, it proves to be insufficient by


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itself. A complementary technique, labeled as relational communicative technique, is required to facilitate a balanced and successful interaction. The inclusion of politeness, empathy, and confirmational feedback figures as powerful means in influencing people without threatening their face. It is confirmed on the basis of the research findings that the contribution of relational communication to rational argumentation and expertise may conduce to radical improvements in professional-patient interactions. The subject of the paper is the investigation of clinical interviews in order to reveal certain types of linguistic behavior under conditions of institutional settings. The purpose of analyzing clinical interviews is to identify the linguistic means which have the power to trigger behavior or attitude change in patients and professionals, respectively. We presume that both parties are influenced by each other in the communication process. According to our working hypothesis, the success-rate of persuasion based on reasoned argumentation must be the outcome of complex measures. We suppose a delicate balance between reasoned expert argumentation and reasonable argumentation using politeness strategies. We propose that the rules of discursive interaction of the professional-patient type should be seen as being constituted in an adaptive, easily identifiable, critically open frame of holistic and plausible reasoning. The present case study, obviously subject to inevitable limitations, analyzes an authentic text of a professional-patient interview on the basis of which it attempts to draw theoretical conclusions. According to standard methods of ethnomethodological conversation analysis, we reproduce the relevant stretches of dialogues in the original Hungarian language of the interview together with a truthful English transcript.14 2. The Clinical Interview as a Specific Discourse Type The health care interview plays an important role in clinical practice. Information-provision, data-gathering, discussion of results, monitoring the outcomes of treatment and building relationships all depend on interviewing. At the same time, our research has made it clear that specific aspects and special properties involved in health-related interviews have not been brought to awareness to a desirable extent in the professional communities involved in linguistic and communication studies. The commitment and intention of the paper is to make up for some of these losses in the interdisciplinary study of applied argumentative discourse by exposing the findings to a wider scholarly community. When examining health care interviews from a communicative perspective, we can find similarities and differences with other types of interpersonal communication. All of these communication forms involve two persons interacting with each other, verbally to a major extent and nonverbally to a lesser extent. Nevertheless, interviews bear distinctive characteristics that differentiate them from other types of interpersonal communication. First, interviews are intentional and directed, as participants are made to keep the conversation focused on some designated topic. Secondly, the interviews have a tacit or undisclosed blueprint: they are realized in questions and answers that form longer sequences determined

14 We adhere to the technical solutions adopted in an article by members of our Research Group for Theoretical Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (see Iványi, Kertész, Marinecz and Máté 2006).

and guided by the goals of the interviewer. Thirdly, the goals of all health related interviews can be twofold: sharing information and providing therapy (Northouse 1998). Information-sharing interviews emphasize the content, while therapeutic interviews focus on the relational dimensions in interaction. Not all interviews appear to be clear specimens of the two mentioned types, and some of them seem to be mixed in characteristics, e.g. in advice giving. Therapeutic interviews identify personal issues, therefore patients are able to express their feelings, develop problem-solving strategies and improve their own mental states of health. In this respect, therapeutic interviews show similarities with bio-psychosocial interviewing techniques where the patient is in the centre of examination. Health related interviews often figure as persuasive dialogues when advice giving is associated with behavioral change. In this case, the advice giver may face the problem that the advisee is not willing to accept the advice, let alone act on it. Instead, the advisee would overtly or covertly entertain an opposite perspective. In this situation conflict is bound to emerge between the speakers. This seems to be a common problem in health related encounters. Taking a communicative perspective into consideration, interpersonal conflict can be perceived as an interaction between persons with opposing interests, views, and goals over differences in desires for control, status, and affection (Northouse 1998:226). There are two major types of conflict: conflict over content issues and conflict over relationship issues. Conflict over content issues involves struggles between a health professional and a patient on a problem such as, for example, the importance of a special diet for diabetics. Conflict over relationship issues involves contradictions between a health care provider and a patient about how they are related to each other. Most of the time the two types of conflict parallel the communicative perspective, in this way interactions contain both a content component and a relational component (Northouse 1998: 228). Taking the communicative perspective, conflict situations in health care contexts can be overcome with the help of rhetorical techniques applied by the advice giver, using expertise, empathy, or politeness. This type of persuasive dialogue requires a dialectical style of reasoning where questions and answers represent reasons and counter-reasons in the dialogue. The dialogues are critically open for both interlocutors, despite the fact that they are determined hierarchically. In this sense, the health related interviews can be considered as asymmetrical interactions from the point of view of control, where the professional plays the dominant role as opposed to the subdominant patient. The social meanings are being constituted through differences in opinion and conflicts of interest in the dialogues and can form partly-shared responsibility for both parties. In order to gain cooperation (or compliance as it is used in health care contexts) and satisfaction of patients, health care providers employ certain communicative strategies to influence their clients to follow the instructions and change their behavior. Comforting strategies are messages to lessen the distress experienced by the patients. They can be considered as an instrumental communicative method to resolve interpersonal conflicts. Comfort modifies the psychological problems of people by showing the positive side of their problems. Another type of a comforting strategy is using symmetry in conversation. Symmetry can be regarded as matching styles of conflict, when a person can moderate differences in conversation if he or she applies the same style as his or her counterpart does.


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The Rogerian approach is the most widely-used comforting technique in health care settings. Carl Rogers emphasizes (Rogers 1961) that a therapist should express empathy, positive regard, and congruence toward a patient to improve his or her condition. These factors known as therapeutic factors can be predicted to cause openness and compliance in patients. Such supportive therapeutic climate may contribute to conflict resolution and to some extent to the recovery of patients. On the other hand, mainly in the therapeutic interview phase patients may influence the professional to pay attention to their problems. Patients’ communicative strategies are restricted to a specific relational technique, such as politeness, to convince the other party of their truth. The inherently asymmetrical social role distribution in the interview situation does not allow them to apply harder communicative techniques for persuasion. 2.1 The Standard and the Problem Interviews Clinical interviews are social events as they belong to institutional discourse. They are structured in a predictable way and are organized to reach a specific outcome. They must fulfill the institutional constraints of a particular setting (Fisher 1984:202). Participants construct talk in the context of the clinical interview where they show their official roles as professionals and patients in accordance with the norms established by the institution and society. The asymmetrical relationship between professional and patient – with the ‘active’ professional and the ‘passive’ patient roles – is characteristic of the information-sharing interview phase or, in other terminology, of the Standard Interview. The institutional framings of the Standard Interview are by their structure asymmetrical as role distribution shows. This asymmetry can be seen in the sequential constraints of the conversation process which may involve a type of sequential deference. By asking a question, the dominant speaker (professional) constraints the subdominant person’s next move. A more balanced interaction is attempted in the therapeutic phase, where the Problem Interview appears as personal framing. It is mostly the patient who proposes interaction. Shifting to personal framings introduces a more symmetrical relation where the roles of the professional and patient remain in the background. Patients proposing a departure from the institutional contexts often interrupt the discourse of medicine by a set of informal information characterized by their own world of experience. As Mishler (1984:121) formulates it, ’Discourse reveals a dialectic between the voices of the lifeworld and of those of medicine, it involves conflict and struggle between two different domains of meaning.’ ‘Problem’ refers to the patient’s perspective that Mishler calls the ‘voice of the world’. This voice is opposed to the institutional voice of the expert representing the ‘voice of medicine’. The problem situation may weaken the expertise of the professional which in turn may be balanced by the patient’s politeness strategies. 3. Cooperation and Politeness According to Grice (1975) conversations are guided by the cooperative forces of the speakers who establish the rules and meaning of their talk with the help of the conversation maxims. Consequently, the clinical interview too is rightly treated as a cooperative interaction in which the speakers exchange questions and answers to produce consensus in order to reach the physical well-being of the patient. One of the most important tasks of the health professionals is to obtain

the compliance of their patients in order to persuade them to follow a specific therapy. Beside cooperation, the politeness principle as an implicature plays an equally important role in professional-patient interactions. 4. The Politeness Principle in Healthcare Settings Cruse’s politeness principle (Cruse 2000:362) formulates that „politeness causes the minimum loss of face to the hearer”. In accordance with the purpose of the analysis this definition can be extended to the pragmatic principle which secures concessions to the dominant party to allow less ’face-loss’ for the subdominant person than the actual loss. Politeness can also counterbalance uncertainty in asymmetrical situations to reach cooperation among the speakers. In clinical interviews politeness is an obvious demand. The interview involves the patient’s rights and necessities that must be obeyed by the professional. On the other hand, patients may choose to use polite communication to counterbalance unequal social roles between the professional and lay party. 4.1 Politeness Strategies Challenging the mainstream theory according to which politeness is mainly a face-guarding means to promote cooperation among the speakers, we propose that one should look at politeness as a multi-faceted phenomenon deserving further analysis. Politeness strategy will be shown to be manipulative in the sense that it serves to influence the hearer, or the subdominant party in conversation to accept the speaker’s standpoint. We follow the distinction that Habermas (1984:289) makes between ’communicative action’ in which the speakers fulfill illocutionary aims at reaching agreement, and ’strategic action’ which occurs when a speaker produces a perlocutionary effect on the hearer. In other words, the speakers act strategically when they are oriented to success, but they act communicatively when they are oriented to understanding. Habermas categorizes simple requests and imperatives as open strategic actions, as the speaker „openly” influences the hearer. If the action aims at success, the interaction is called a concealed strategic action. Instances of concealed strategic action may involve either conscious or unconscious deception. In the latter case, the speaker is acting with an attitude oriented to success and keeping up the appearance of a communicative action. 5. Emergent aspect of our research We identify the dynamics of professional-patient health related interviews, according to which cooperation, politeness, compliance, empathy, sympathy, distance, reluctance, rejection, etc. get manifested to different degrees on a continuum between open and hidden strategies only to determine participants’ power relations. Our approach challenges the traditional presumption that politeness is a monolithic phenomenon. We suggest that politeness be treated as: 1. Attitude (normative perspective) – „be cooperative” 2. Process (behavioral perspective) – „be agreeable” 3. Manipulative procedure (interactive strategy) (interactive strategy) – „ be persuasive” We see politeness as an open, direct communicative strategy when used by participants in equal positions (e.g. scientific debates), or in unequal position when the attitude of the participants is normative. In a non-equal position, politeness can serve a hidden strategy when applied to counter-balancing the unequal positions of the interlocutors. Here, politeness serves persuasion with a manipulative purpose. Consequently,


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politeness as a hidden strategy can be indirect in the sense that it can manipulate the person in focus. The literature witnesses that patient-centered styles of communication have gained ground, emphasizing mutuality. Therefore, open strategic action has become less acceptable to patients owing to the traditional asymmetrical power distribution between professionals and patients. In patient-centered communication the role of the expert is challenged, but not questioned. Recognizing the dominance of the expert the patient can have his opinion accepted if he applies certain communicative techniques that do not cause any “face-loss” of the expert. Politeness can be regarded as normative, behavioral, and interactive strategy that manipulates the person in focus, but promotes the intentions of the actor. In this altered context, Habermas’s analysis of concealed strategic action is particularly useful. The concept of concealed strategic action allows for doctors (frequently) and patients (more rarely) to act with an orientation towards success. The paper intends to analyze the latter case. The empirical data analyzed involve a professional-patient interview in a clinical context. The topic is hospital administration as a problem for a patient suffering from high blood pressure. The genre of the conversation is persuasive interview whose type is a problem interview according to the classification in (Mishler 1984). In health care context, problem interviews comprise a substantial part of professional-patient interactions. In these interviews, „problem” refers to the patient’s perspective or point of view, which Mishler calls “the voice of the world”. This voice is contrasted with the institutional voice of the expert, in other words, with “the voice of medicine”. The main characteristic feature of this interview type is that the professional, who is in the expert position, reasons by expert knowledge so that he can persuade the patient to act on his advice, or at least accept his standpoint. On the other hand, the patient persuades the professional to accept his own thoughts about hospital administration and management. The patient uses politeness as a communicative technique to make the professional accept his standpoint. In this way, the problem interview is a prime example of applied argumentation as opposed to formal argumentation. The case study illustrates that politeness is shown to be a reciprocal and relational strategy that has the force of manipulating any speech participant in order for them to accept the other’s position. The interview we analyze was voice-taped at the Department of Internal Diseases of the University Medical Clinic in Pécs, Hungary in 2006. The participants were the interviewer-professional, the interviewee-patient, and the observer-linguist, the researcher who made the recording during the interview.15 The researcher informed the patient of the purpose of the research and made it clear to him that she was a teacher of communication studies at the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Pécs, Hungary. She explained that her work may make a significant contribution to a better understanding of and a more effective impact on health communication in order to improve health care provision in the future. 6. The method The analysis was carried out on the basis of the principles of ethnomethodological conversation analysis (Garfinkel 1967) and made use of recent examples of the application of ethnomethodological

15 The first author of the present study.

conversation analysis (Iványi, Kertész, Marinecz and Máté 2006) too. Ethnomethodological conversation analysis offers a good basis for revealing the empirical aspects of verbal interactions, in our case those of health-related interviews. Conversation analysis as a linguistic discipline aims at describing the systematic features of the sequential, processual and interactive organization of talk activity. These structures show a specific order and organizational orientation that derive from a systematic strive for meaning coherence in the interaction despite inherent conflicts. The discourse perspective (derivative of the relational communicative technique) together with discourse coherence and role dynamics are special features of such discursive interaction (see Komlósi 1989, 1999, 2003b, Gyuró 2005, 2007). One of our aims is to show exactly why it is not sufficient to refer simply to the Gricean Cooperation Principle in the analysis of these dynamic features of problem interviews. The solution we offer comes from two sources. As a precursor to the type of applied argumentation in case, we carried out research in connection with discourse interaction schemata to establish the minimum conditions of plausible reasoning in cooperative argumentation (see Komlósi and Knipf 1987, Komlósi 1989, 2006). The other prerequisite for our methodology is the Pragma-Dialectic framework for reasoned argumentation for the resolution of differences in opinion (see van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1984, 1992, Komlósi 2003a, Gyuró 2005). On the basis of our findings we claim that cooperative efforts directed towards the resolution of differences in opinion can be best captured in discursive sequences to be identified by topical units. Such sequential stages indicate communicative problems which the participants are expected to resolve. Thus, for the clinical interviews we propose a reconstruction of their thematic organization that correlates with the formal stages of a Topic Generated Grammar (see Sillince and Saledi 2000). With the help of this formal means the structure and dynamism of an argumentative conversation gets mapped. The present paper shows the sequential and thematic organization of the interview under scrutiny to illustrate how mutual understanding is shaped and constituted between a professional and a patient in the course of an interview. 7. The working hypothesis According to the working hypothesis formulated in the Introduction above, the present study focuses on the following problems: What communicative forms of conflict and cooperation can be detected in the problem interview? How can a patient accomplish persuasion and behavior change in a professional with the help of directed argumentative discourse utilizing both reason and the polite attitude for plausible reasoning? Consequently, in answering these questions we ought to be able to formulate the main hypothesis of our paper. In full accordance with the international literature on this matter, our assumption is that persuasion can be successful if the patient in the Problem Interview applies dialectical, holistic, plausible and cyclic reasoning to fulfill his therapeutic objectives. The reasoning process may reveal verbal strategies supported by linguistic constructions that are constitutive in expressing conflict and cooperation between the speakers. As we will demonstrate it, the two phenomena are interrelated aspects of the hypothesis of the present paper. Thus, (H) articulates the main hypothesis of the paper: H: Persuasion to result in behavior change in professionals can be achieved successfully in directed argumentative


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discourse of a professional-patient type provided the patient is capable of applying relational communicative techniques supported by dialectical and holistic attitudes and plausible and cyclic reasoning practices to fulfill his therapeutic objectives. In quest of the justification of (H), the sequential analysis of the health interview presented will be shown to be an appropriate means for the illustration of conflict and cooperation between professional and patient as a form of persuasion with a dialectical and dynamic character that should ultimately induce behavior change both in a patient and in a professional. 8. The analysis In our analysis we investigate the development of conversation between the professional and the patient from the perspective of conflict and cooperation. The interview begins with the preliminary exploration phase which highlights the problems of the patient causing a conflict situation between him and the professional. At this point the interview changes into a persuasion type of dialogue where the patient’s idea is to convince the professional about a proposed hospital administration, and the professional’s task involves adherence to certain regulations. The analysis represents the path during which the participants move from an antagonistic to a cooperative interaction. The following moves are essential in argumentative dialogues: asking questions, making assertions and defending assertions. The sequence of moves represents the development of the dialogue towards the goal it serves. This kind of dialogue is termed agent or goal-directed reasoning. In this way, sequences are comprised of goal-to-means or conflict-to-solution types of meaning structures. Sequences form part of a greater unit that is termed topic in a dialogue. If the persuasion of the patient is unsatisfactory, he can return to the same topic later, after a few turns. In this way, topics are sometimes regenerated based on a cyclic mode of reasoning. The present analysis examines, on the one hand, the utterances of the professional extending from the strictly expert-style to the empathic-style of persuasion, while, on the other hand, it shows the critical perspective of the patient, ultimately reaching agreement and cooperation with the professional. Consequently, the analysis shows the attitude and perspective-change of both participants whose adherence to certain values might also changed by the end of the interview. Conversation is a process where values and perspectives are in a state of constant transformation. For example, the Dynamic Model of Conflict Analysis (DMCA), (see Boulding 1963: 85) takes event sequences for its basis. According to the DMCA model, conflicts take place temporally and consist of a succession of states of change. These states of change contain certain regularities that are carried by the sequences. In our example, argumentative schemes reflect the regularities. As speakers use persuasive or argumentative communicative techniques to resolve conflicts in conversation, interaction extends from problem to solution sequences in the communication process. The sequences representing argumentative processes can be regarded as transformations from opening to closing types of meaning structures. On the other hand, patients also use argumentative techniques manifested in sequences, but they extend the sequences by praising turns that represent a kind of politeness towards the professional. 9. The Case History We investigate a case when the patient dominates the conversation politely, concealing his aim to tell problems about hospital life and administration.

The interview is between the head nurse and a 85-year-old male patient suffering from high blood pressure (HBP). The patient is a former army officer and that role had a lasting effect on his personality. His drive to control the interview is unusual in clinical settings, but understandable from his former life. His problems provide his basic motivation to keep the conversation under his control. As a former officer, he is very polite to women, therefore he uses politeness strategy (praise) to cover his criticism against the staff of the hospital. The head nurse being a patient-centered professional agrees with the patient very politely, showing sympathy. The analysis of the transcript reveals that the turn-taking sequences unfold the problem of the patient. He is driving his idea home cautiously by putting forward his criticism step by step. He starts out by talking about the inappropriate instructions of a hospital booklet about hospital rules and regulations: Patient: No, no, it’s good! It’s good, but has to be changed a bit, I wrote at the bottom that this part has to be filled in by the nurses. Nurse: Thank you. Patient: Everything has to be stopped that causes… Nurse: Misunderstanding, right? Patient: Yes, that’s right. The patient always wraps his problems in the praises of the different members of the staff, which mitigates his criticism. First, he speaks about the director. Patient: That person is speaking so well, no question, he is the director here… Nurse: Yes. Patient: He can be understood, and he considers the patient as a human being, he speaks so nicely with the people. Nurse: I’m glad to hear that. Then he praises the nurses. His polite comments are met with the nurse’s agreement. Patient: Generally, the nurses are decent people… Nurse: Yes. Patient: .......and the head nurse came to help immediately… Nurse: Yes, did she? Patient: She came in and said: ’Are you satisfied here?’ I say these women, girls, nurses work wonderfully, they speak to the patients nicely, manage them… Nurse: I’m glad that you have a good opinion. The patient feels a contradiction between his appraisal and criticism. He emphasizes that his intention is an open strategy. Patient: At that moment I felt something wrong and I directly told her. After this turning point, the patient formulates his second problem, doing it still in a polite way. Patient: ...because nurses, doctors have to do quite complicated work, come and go, so… one is in constant uncertainty, one doesn’t feel himself in peaceful conditions, because he doesn’t know what will come. Patient: There is another thing I don’t like…if somebody has to be sent to ECG, he has to be called on time. He shouldn’t wait for one and a half hour… The patient formulates criticism causing minimal face loss of the hearer, because his critical remark is followed by praise immediately. Politeness strategy is used to avoid the emergence of conflict situations. Otherwise, antagonism appears if arguments are expressed directly. Politeness mitigates contradictions between the speakers but inhibit the development of conflict. The aforementioned criticism is mitigated by the following acknowledgement: Patient: You know, there is a very considerate woman there…


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By the end of the conversation, criticism and praise appear together: Patient: Everybody has to be listened to. The elderly, young and middle-aged as well… This is a very good booklet (turning back to the original problem). The interplay between the critical and praising remarks of the patient give dynamism and development of the conversation. His politeness conceals his strategy to express criticism towards the staff. Politeness mitigates conflicts between the speakers. His utterances are followed by the professional’s agreements which are always polite remarks as open strategic action indicating understanding with the patient. The following table shows the occurrence and the polite expressions of the patient and nurse separately. Nurse

Linguistic expression

Occurence Indication

Right (you are) 6 Agreement Thank you 3 Politeness

e.g.“go home” 8 Repetition

Yes 52 Active listening

Glad (I am) 8 Positive state Patient

Linguistic expression

Occurence Indication

I don’t like it 10 Criticism It has to be changed

4 Intention

She knows it 2 Praise

Well, nicely 7 Mitigating effect

wonderfully 1 Mitigating effect

10. Topic Generated Grammar and Argumentative Sequences in the Interview Topics are indispensable elements of both narratives and argumentations. Topic defines the permitted content of a chapter in a narrative, and that of a turn in a dialogue. In argumentation, topic may overlap several turns, and at the same time, argumentation should adhere to topic. In any other case, explicit justification is necessary in argumentation. These justifications may result in topic shifts that provide the development of discourse (Sillince and Saledi, 2000). Topic shifts give structure, consequently global coherence to the whole discourse. Certain parts are more important than others in a discourse. The level of importance is hierarchically organized, presenting higher or lower order levels of importance of the participants. Importance is manifested in two ways in the discourse. One of them is repetition of a proposition that participants use to underline a certain point in discourse. The other form is the topic. Topic or thematic stability may be characteristic for both narrative and argumentative organizations. Topic Generated Grammar (Sillince and Saledi, 2000) bears similarities with narrative and argumentative discourses. The hierarchical tree may function as a kind of grammar generating the development of topics, consequently the whole discourse as Sillince and Saledi formulate it (2000:48). The grammar generates the chronological sequence of topics, the scale of increasing probability of interruption of topics, and the scale of increasing likelihood of unfolding sequences from problem to solution types.

Topic generated grammar provides the overall structure to discourse on the level of global coherence and provides dynamism and temporality to argumentative and narrative discourses. Each of the three constructions (narrative, argumentation, TGG) has an organization built on three pillars: 1. Introduction-Problem initiation, 2. Topic unfolding-Argumentation and 3. Ending-Conclusion. This structuring may show the possible cognitive approach that plays an important role in the linguistic manifestations of conflict situations. On the one hand, they take part in unfolding topics as developmental process in the dialogue, on the other hand, they bind linguistic processes. The topical structure of the interview to be examined can be illustrated as the following table shows:

Topic 1: refers to the patient’s problem concerning a hospital form that is meaningless for him. Topic 2: refers to the patient’s feelings concerning the constant stress in hospital life. Topic 3: refers to the patient’s impatience about the long waitings before examinations. Topic 4: refers to the nurse’s suggestion for the patient’s problems. The sequences in the interview follow the argumentative set-up that is a conflict (problem)-to solution type of meaning structure. Sequences form part of a greater unit that is termed topic in a dialogue. If the persuasion of the patient is unsatisfactory, he can return to the same topic later, after a few turns. In this way, topics are sometimes regenerated on a cyclic mode of reasoning as we could see it from the above example. The patient and the professional follow similar, but slightly different ways of reasoning in the dialogue. It can be represented in these sequence structures: Nurse (Problem) – Solution – Confirmation Patient: It should be better to call patients for ultrasound when it is needed. You shouldn’t wait one and a half, or two hours...(problem) Nurse: You are absolutely right. But there is a problem that we have three wards and an outpatient department where this monitor was set up for you. Paramedics bring in the in-patients and a kind of order of arrival is accepted that following-up should be continuous. That’s why we have a schedule. (solution) Patient: Well... Nurse: You are absolutely right. (confirmation)


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Patient Problem – Example – Praise Patient: I came next after a two-hour-long waiting. There was a lady who told me that a patient with a wheel-chair should come first. This is natural. (problem-example) Nurse: That was a positive case. Patient: Yes. She was a very cooperative lady, because she knew my name, and told me about the condition of the patient with the wheel-chair. (praise-mitigating effect) The Dynamic Model of conflict (Boulding, 1963: 85) analysis takes the event sequences for its basis. According to this model, conflicts take place temporally and consist of a succession of states of change. These states of change contain certain regularities that are carried by the sequences. In our example argumentative schemes reflect the regularities. As health care providers and patients use persuasive or argumentative communicative techniques to resolve conflicts in conversation interaction extends from problem to solution, or problem- to-praise sequences in the communication process. 11. Conclusions The aim of the analysis was to reveal the politeness strategies used by a patient in clinical setting in order for him to mitigate the criticism he had formulated against the staff. The analysis presented the different communicative strategies of the speakers As more patient-centered styles of communication have gained ground,

emphasizing mutuality, open strategic action has become less acceptable to patients. In this altered context, Habermas’ analysis of concealed strategic action is particularly useful. The concept of concealed strategic action allows for doctors (frequently) and patients (more rarely) to act with an orientation towards success. The patient’s concealed strategic action explored that politeness could be applied for mitigating conflict between the speakers in order to have the hearer accept the speaker’s perspective. In this case the conversation aimed at success. On the other hand, the nurse’s open strategic action aimed at understanding the patient, therefore she had applied only direct politeness in her utterances indicating agreement with the patient. We have found that politeness strategies can counterbalance the inequality of social roles between the participants. Conflict and cooperation between the professional and patient was accomplished in the argumentative sequences of the dialogue. The patient’s persuasion could be considered as successful as he applied plausible, relational, and cyclic reasoning to convince the professional. Topic Generated Grammar showed the overall structure of the interview on the level of global coherence. The analysis observes and suggests that in a ’Problem Interview’ an attempt can be made for traditional professional-patient roles to be inverted, however the original cast needs to be balanced by politeness strategies to reach understanding and cooperation between the participants.

Bibliography and references Boulding, K. E. (1963): Conflict and Defense: A General Theory. Harper: San Francisco. Cruse,A.(2000): Meaning in Language.An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press,ISBN 0-19-870010-5 Eemeren, F. H. van and Grootendorst, R. (1984): Speech Acts in Argumentative Discussions. A Theoretical Model for the Analysis of Discussions Directed towards Solving Conflicts of Opinion. Berlin/ Dordrecht: De Gruyter/Foris. Eemeren, F. H. van and Grootendorst, R. (1992): Argumentation, Communication, and Fallacies: A pragma-dialectical perspective. Hillsdale, NJ.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Fisher, S. (1984) ”Institutional authority and the structure of discourse.” Discourse Processes,7, No.2:201-24. Garfinkel, H. (1967): Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Prentice Hall. Grice, H.P. (1975): ‘Logic and Conversation.’ In.: Cole, P. and Morgan, J. L. (eds.) Syntax and Semantics. Vol.3: Speech Acts. New York. Academic Press, pp. 41-57. Gyuró, Monika (2005): Discourse Coherence and Arguments in Health Related Interviews. (Unpublished manuscript of a PhD dissertation submitted to the University of Pécs, Hungary), pp. 204. Gyuró, Monika (2007): A klinikai interjú, mint az alkalmazott érvelés példája. /Clinical Interview as a Prime Example of Applied Argumentation-Theory/. (Unpublished manuscript of a PhD dissertation submitted to the University of Pécs, Hungary), pp. 285. Habermas, J. (1984) The Theory of Communicative Action. Volume One: Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Cambridge:Polity Press. Hamblin, Ch..L. (1970): Fallacies. Meuthen. London. Iványi, Zs., Kertész, A., Marinecz, K. and Máté, N. (2006): ‘Social Categorization and the Grammar-Pragmatics Relation: An analysis of Hungarian Data’, Sprachtheorie und germanistische Linguistik, 16.2: 111-157. Komlósi, L. I. (1989): ‘Connectedness and Discourse Structure: Perspective Semantics of Predications and Coherence of Discourse.’ In: Conte, M.-E., Petıfi, J. S. and Sözer, E. (eds.): Text and Discourse Connectedness. /Studies in Language Companion Series 16./, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 421-434. Komlósi, L. I. (1999): ‘Value-Free Worlds and Value-Imposing Minds.’ In: Fehér, M., Kiss, O. and Ropolyi, L. (eds.): Hermeneutics and Science. Berlin/New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 325-343. Komlósi, L. I. (2003a) ‘The conceptual fabric of argumentation and blended mental space.s’ In : Eemeren, F. H. van, Blair, J. A., Willard, Ch. A. and Snoeck-Henkemans, A. F. (eds.): Proceedings of the Fifth Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation. Amsterdam: Sic Sat, pp. 632-635. Komlósi, L. I. (2003b) “In Quest of Cultural and Conceptual Universals for Situated Discursive Practice”. In: Komlósi, L. I., P. Houtlosser and M. Leezenberg: Communication and Culture: Argumentative, Cognitive and Linguistic Perspectives. Amsterdam: SIC SAT, pp. 159-176. Komlósi, L. I. (2006) “Hidden Effects of Presumptive Arguments on Argument Assessment Strategies”, in: Houtlosser, P. and A. van Rees (eds.): Considering Pragma-Dialectics. A Festschrift for Frans H. van Eemeren on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday. Mahwah, N.J./ London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 175-183. Komlósi, L. I. and E. Knipf (1987) "Negotiating Consensus in Discourse Interaction Schemata", In: Eemeren, F.H.van, R. Grootendorst, J.A. Blair and Ch. A. Willard (eds.):


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Argumentation: Perspectives and Approaches. Dordrecht: Foris Publ., pp. 82-89. Mishler, E. G. (1984) The Discourse of Medicine: Dialectics of Medical Interviews. Norwood, N. J.: Ablex Publishing Corp. Northouse, P. G. (1998) Health Communication. Strategies for Health Professionals. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall. Rogers, C. R. (1961) Characteristics in a helping relationship .On becoming a person. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Sillince, J.A. A. and Saledi, M. H. (2000) „Linguistic Coherence in Organisational Argumentation.” In: Proceedings of Fourth International Conference on the design of Cooperative Systems (Sophia Antipolis, France), Amsterdam: IOS Publishers. Walton, D. N. (1992) Types of Dialogue, Dialectical Shifts and Fallacies.In: F. H. van Eemeren, R. Grootendorst, J.A. Blair and Ch. A. Willard (eds.): Argumentation Illuminated, Amsterdam, SICSAT. pp.133-147. Walton, N. D. (1999) Dialectical Relevance in Persuasion Dialogue. Informal Logic Vol. 19/2-3: 119-143.


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Maxim Hedges in Political Discourse: A Contrastive Perspective Gabriela Miššíková Constantine the Philosopher University, Slovak Republic Abstract The article presents conversational analysis of maxim hedges. The purpose is to recognize conversational strategies employed by the participants of communication, focusing on specific usages of hedging expressions and intensifiers. A meta-linguistic function of hedges is central to my considerations; hedges are viewed as indicators and cues helping to infer the likeliest meaning in the given context of conversation. Specific usages of hedges in political discourse implying diplomacy, politeness and respect are also pointed out.

A contrastive perspective is achieved by working with a language pair English and Slovak, more specifically, by analysing hedging devices in the speeches of Tony Blair and Mikuláš Dzurinda. In conclusion, a variety of hedging devices is classified stating their specific pragmatic functions in the language of diplomacy and political discourse. Key words Hedges, intensifiers, pragmatic functions, mitigating effects, politeness 1. Introduction In his speech from March 2007 Tony Blair focused on the changing nature of work/life balance and referred to the issue as ‘actually rather different’. Both ‘actually’ and ‘rather’ can be classified as hedges. Hedges are expressions with metalingual functions; they gloss on the extent to which the speaker is abiding by the respective conversational maxim. The speech I refer to is labelled as pre-prepared in the internet archive and given to an invited audience. Blair used the hedged adverb ‘rather’ five times (in the speech of 4 055 words) with the purpose to mitigate the effects of critical statements. The hedged adverb ‘actually’ is used once in combination with ‘rather’. The hedging expression ‘actually rather’ indicates the quality of talk; it reflects the speaker’s wish to provide as truthful information as possible, while still being polite and diplomatic, and advices the audience how to perceive the message. The first element of the hedged expression ‘actually’ indicates that the speaker sees the issue differently than his opponents; the second one shows that Blair does not want to disagree openly. Thus ‘actually rather’ can be classified as the hedge related to the maxim of quality. In this paper, I discuss major types of hedges (as related to the classical Gricean conversational maxims) with regard to the pragmatic functions they have in (spontaneous and pre-prepared) speeches. In linguistic research, hedges have been studied and analysed both from a semantic and a pragmatic perspective. Lakoff defines hedges as “words whose meaning implicitly involves fuzziness”, as “words whose job it is to make things fuzzier or less fuzzy” (1973: 471). Grundy views hedges and intensifiers as expressions of propositional attitude (1999: 5). Yule (1998: 38) considers them as related to a particular conversational context; he refers to hedges as to “cautious notes” showing that the speaker is conscious of the respective conversational maxim. In discourse analysis and speech act theory “hedging is the qualification and toning-down of utterances or statements, so common in speech and writing, by clauses, adverbials, etc. in order to reduce the riskiness of what one says” (Wales 1990: 215). As exemplified by Povolná (2007: 110) the reasons for hedging are mitigation (of seemingly too forceful statements) and/or politeness (respect to strangers and superiors, etc.). In sociolinguistics, Watts (2003: 274) defines

hedges as “linguistic expressions that enable the speaker to avoid being too direct in her/his utterance”. In this paper, I study the use of hedges and observe how they function in different languages, using the language pair English and Slovak. For the empirical research, I have chosen speeches of Tony Blair and Mikuláš Dzurinda. The speeches were both pre-prepared and spontaneous; the size of the analysed sample was 20,000 words in each language (10 000 spontaneous and 10 000 pre-prepared). Both for the English and the Slovak audience’s better orientation in political discourse, hedges are useful. They show speaker viewpoint and advise the listener how to take what is in focus. In this paper, I classify the main types of the hedges used in my corpus and explore the ways these hedges are used in English and Slovak. 2. Cooperation in political discourse The speakers agree to cooperate in conversation by means of abiding by the conversational maxims. The four classical Gricean conversational maxims are maxims of quality, quantity, relation/relevance and manner. The maxim of quality is concerned with truth telling (‘try to make your contribution one that is true’), the maxim of quantity indicates the amount of information given by the speaker (‘make your contribution as informative as required’), the maxim of relation/relevance says ‘be relevant’ (i.e. speak to the point, stay focused) and the maxim of manner says ‘be perspicuous’ (i.e. make your talk clear and easy to understand) (Grice 1975: 45-6; Cruse 2000: 355-361; Yule 1996: 36-37). In the political discourse the speakers use hedges and a range of hedging devices to indicate that they are abiding by the respective conversational maxim. These linguistic expressions advise the hearer of the extent to which the speaker is committed to the well-foundedness, informativeness and relevance of his talk. They show speaker viewpoint and advise the hearer how to take what is in focus. In the following extract from the pre-prepared speech of T. Blair several hedging devices (written in cursive) are to be considered: ‘And I think within the limits for example of what we could do in relation to the G8, you know I kind of look back on that and think well we had a summit…’ The phrase I think is a hedge indicating that the speaker is providing a personal point of view of the matter. Doing so he is declining responsibility for the


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truth value of the proposal he is making. This kind of hedges is related to the maxim of quality and thus can be labelled as quality maxim hedges. The speaker’s awareness of the quality and quantity maxims is also indicated by the expression for example; this expression shows that the speaker is aware of the complexity of the problem he is talking about; he decides to use one example to illustrate what particular case he has in mind. To get the point right he has to consider the truth value of his message. The modal verb could is another hedging device implying the avoidance of the “riskiness” of the statement. Together with the pronoun we it is also open to a polite interpretation: using the pronoun we the speaker (the Prime Minister) gives credit for the achievements to the others as well (the Government). Uttering the hedge kind of he gives imprecise propositional content leaving an option for the listeners to impose their own intent. The phrase you know provides ground for certain solidarity and appeals to mutual knowledge shared by the audience of his speech. Similarly, the function of hedging devices can be observed in the Slovak language. In the following extract the speaker uses a variety of hedging devices to create a persuasive and appealing utterance: ‘Prešli sme bezo sporu zložitú cestu [...], ale myslím si, že to bola cesta bezo sporu správna a v konečnom dôsledku aj cesta úspešná.’ The repetitions of an intensifier bezo sporu (no doubt) supported by the hedge myslím si (I think) contribute towards the perception of the truth value of the proposition encoded in the utterance. The adverbial phrase v konečnom dôsledku (literally “in the final consequences”) can be seen as an empty word phrase used for rhetoric purposes; however, it also indicates the effort of the speaker to abide by the maxim of quality and say only things he believes are true. The next two sections are devoted to the analysis of the role of hedges in drawing inferences as to the likeliest meaning in the given context. My aim is to classify the types and functions of hedges; more specifically, I want to explore the distinctive use of hedges in political discourse in both languages. 3. Maxim hedges in political discourse The most common type of hedges in my corpus relates to the speaker’s desire to express his ideas as accurately as possible; both politicians use hedged expressions (e.g. actually, I know, I think, I believe, I’m fairly sure, etc.), which indicate their desire to describe the events according to his best knowledge. Here, the function of hedges is metalinguistic, it is talk about talk; hedges refer to the ‘quality’ of the language used by the speaker and thus are concerned with ‘telling the truth’. In the next example, T. Blair emphasises his personal conviction and his truth telling by means of a hedged phrase I think further strengthen by the use of another hedged phrase I am sure. Hedging devices help to make his utterance impressive and persuasive: ‘I think the single most important thing, and I think (ref.) this is very important in relation to Africa, is that long term I am sure our self-interest is best served by the values based policy.’ Similarly, in the following extracts from the pre-prepared speech of M. Dzurinda the clauses and verb phrases (Ak ma pamäť neklame/If I remember well; Zdá sa mi /It seems to me; zdá sa/it seems; tuším/I reckon) clearly indicate the speaker’s desire to describe the events according to his best knowledge. Thus they fulfil the function of quality maxim hedges: ‘Ak ma pamäť neklame, tak som bol medzi vami na každom sneme...’

‘Zdá sa mi na záver ešte za podstatné povedať niekoľko poznámok [...] zdá sa, že vzdelanie sa stalo prioritou pre každú krajinu...’ ‘...a práve na ostatnom rokovaní 10. mája, to bolo tuším tento týždeň,...’ The speaker’s attempt to provide information which is adequate and necessary is commonly indicated by certain cautious notes, i.e. the hedges of the quantity maxim. These notes can be formally structured as clauses or independent statements and/or, as pointed out by Dontcheva-Navratilova (2007: 129), as unfinished sentences. In my corpus, the most frequent hedged phrase indicating the speaker’s awareness of his being repetitive and excessive in speech is ‘(as)I said before/ako som už povedal’, occasionally the speakers vary this statement (e.g. ‘o tom tu už dnes bola reč/it has been mentioned already’): ‘I said before we came to power that we had to focus on standards…’ (T.B.) ‘Ako som už povedal – chodil som a chodím medzi vás rád, lebo...’ (M.D.) There are several expressions in my corpus which refer to the relevance maxim. These are usually found in the middle of an utterance, such as ‘No, but I know’. It shows the speaker’s awareness of certain need to provide relevant information in his talk. By means of this kind of hedge speakers signal or admit that they may have drifted away from the topic. Similarly, the initial phrase ‘I mean’ used by T. Blair identifies more specifically the problem he wants to talk about: ‘Yes, but I mean I think in a sense for Europe, I mean OK this has been a priority…’ ‘Yes, I mean I want to stay engaged…’ M. Dzurinda is usually more explicit in his speeches, for example: ‘Ja som si však vybral dva, o ktorých by som chcel hovoriť trošku konkrétnejšie...’ A small portion of maxim hedges in my corpus shows the speaker’s awareness of the manner he formulates the message and reflects his wish to make the utterance perspicuous. The typical examples are: Let’s be honest, I don’t mean that, don’t get it wrong. The speaker can also provide some kind of instruction or explanation introduced by a hedged phrase, such as: ‘čo v jednoduchej reči znamená/what in simple words means; Celkom konkrétne môžem povedať/I can say very concretely. A profound analysis, based on the complexity of contextual relations, reveals that the pragmatic function of hedges often relates them to more than one conversational maxim. More specifically, the classical four conversational maxims can be better discussed when seen in their mutual interaction and complexity. In the context of conversation, the maxim of manner can be seen as a dimension of the maxim of quality; similarly, the maxim of relevance can be considered as a subcategory of the maxim of quantity. This can be illustrated by the following example: ‘Prešli sme bezo sporu zložitú cestu – cestu, na ktorej boli aj pochybnosti, nedôvera alebo obavy a treba otvorene povedať, že aj občasné nedorozumenia, treba povedať, že aj chyby – iste aj chyby a boli aj emócie, ale myslím si, že to bola cesta bezo sporu správna a v konečnom dôsledku aj cesta úspešná.’ The desire of the speaker to provide an adequately informative, perspicuous and persuasive account of the events is clearly demonstrated. The hedging expression ‘bezo sporu’ (without doubt) indicates that the speaker can guarantee the quality, the truth of his statement. Similarly, the particle ‘treba’ (it is necessary) emphasises his conviction to mention all data, including those which might be less favourable for the government. From this point of view these hedges can


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be seen as related to the quality maxim. Both of them are repeated twice within the utterance for the purpose of emphasis and better impact on the audience. The speaker shows his personal involvement by uttering the phrase ‘myslím si’ (I think) and uses another hedging device, an adverbial phrase ‘v konečnom dôsledku’ (after all). The verb phrase ‘myslím si/I think’ can either be understood as referential or as a hedge. Based on my assumption that the speaker believes in what he says in the embedded clause (že to bola cesta bezo sporu správna/that it was undoubtedly the right way) I consider the phrase as having a referential function. The speaker is often aware of the ambiguity of the phrase and wants to make sure that the listener gets his message right. In the next example T. Blair uses additional means (i.e. the intensifier frankly and an embedded clause) to indicate his sincere intentions: ‘I think frankly, and this is honestly, I think almost outside the party political or ideological battle today, I think whatever happens people are going to want that type of service more and more in the future. ’ Similarly, the phrase has a referential function in the following examples: ‘I think one of the things that most aggravates feelings about the criminal justice system is where the victim of a crime feels that…’ (T.B.) ‘akej autorite a povesti sa dnes Slovensko teší vo svete a myslím si, že je to aj vaša zásluha.’ ‘Myslím si, že Slovensko, ak pôjde touto cestou vzdelaných ľudí, že…’ ‘Myslím si, že má Slovensko na to, aby…’ (M.D.) However, if the phrase indicates that the speaker is declining responsibility for the truth value of the proposition embedded, the phrase has to be seen as a hedge. The following examples illustrate the phrase ‘myslím si/I think’ used as a hedge. ‘Well I think my response would be it makes the case…’ ‘…or as I think will happen increasingly,… ’ ‘So I think these things are always, always difficult to do…’ (T.B.) ‘Myslím si, že to je dobrá šanca, ...’ ‘Úrad pre Slovákov žijúcich v zahraničí má, myslím, dnes vytvorené predpoklady... ’ ‘... sme jednak počuli veľmi ucelene a myslím aj korektne... ’ ‘...rozdelí bezmála 20 mil. - 19,65 - čo je, myslím, evidentná tendencia.’ (M.D.) 4. Hedges and politeness in political discourse The canonical interpretation of expressions such as I think, I believe, etc. in the politeness literature when they are used as hedges is that they are instantiations of linguistic politeness (Watts 2003: 159). Some of the hedged phrases I think, I believe, etc. in my corpus may be considered as open to interpretation in this way. In the flow of conversation, structures such as these are generally not perceived by participants as overt expressions of politeness but they all contribute towards the positive facework being negotiated between the participants. In this way they contribute towards the politic behaviour of the interaction. In the example [1] and [2] the speaker wants to express a different point of view and using the phrase I think he prepares the interlocutor for this turn. He also shows his respect by admitting that the opponent is also right. The intensifiers support the effect of hedging devices: [1] And I think that although you are absolutely right in saying that with China's emergence as a dominant force in Africa because… [2] Right, but I think you see the key to this is the difference between, and in my view… The phrase I think is often accompanied by the phrase you know which opens the floor for the opponent, too. It shows the speaker’s belief that the opponent is well

informed about his political opinions and achievements. Examples [3] and [4] exemplify the case: [3] I think you know from my conversations with the Chinese leadership… [4] And I think you know that one of the things that just occasionally we should reflect on... In the next utterance the speaker wants to show his appreciation of the opponent’s effort. He does not want the opponent and the audience to misinterpret his words and thus provides them with a cautious note ‘without unduly flattering you’. This is a hedged phrase which relates to the maxim of manner and provides instructions for the recipients how to infer the likeliest meaning in the given context. For the rhetorical reasons the phrase is used twice; it creates the emphasis and provides floor for the opponent to consider potential response. [5] Yes absolutely, but I think without unduly flattering you, I think I am looking at one of the reasons. Similarly, the Slovak phrase ‘verím’ (I believe) can be interpreted as polite. By uttering the phrase, the speaker shows his respect towards the opponent and the audience, who can be the representatives and supporters of different political parties. He is being diplomatic and polite when assuming openly that all participants of the communication, regardless their political affiliation, see the trends in the foreign policy of Slovakia as progressive and good. His utterance ‘Verím, že ste si všimli’ (I believe that you have noticed) provides implicatures, such as I am sorry to say something so well-known, I know that you know, this was such a big thing, etc. Thus the phrase has a clear hedging purpose; to show that the speaker is aware of giving us redundant information (i.e. hedges related to the quantity maxim). He wants to justify doing so by means of verbal politeness. In the utterances [6] and [7] the hedges (verím/ I believe) and solidarity markers (ste si všimli/you have noticed) can be interpreted as means of verbal politeness: [6] Verím, že ste si všimli, že sme vlani hostili samit prezidentov Spojených štátov a Ruska. [7] Verím, že ste si všimli, že sme medzi vás chodili tak, ako nám to ukladajú predpisy... 5. Conclusions In the majority of the examples here, the hedges were concerned with truth telling. They were used by the speakers either to avoid the riskiness of the given statement (e.g. sort of, kind of, rather, actually, etc.) or, in combination with intensifiers, to present the statement as an absolute truth (definitely, absolutely, no doubt, etc.). Several phrases sharing the purpose of weakening the illocutionary force of a statement were used, for example attitudinal predicates such as I think, I don’t think, I mean, etc. Observing the functions of the phrase I think, I believe/ myslím, verím interesting findings were made: the phrases are used as hedges when the speaker wishes to decline the responsibility for the truth value of the statement, as in ‘I think these things are always difficult to do’ (T. B.) or ‘Myslím si, že to je dobrá šanca.’ (M. D.). In the context of the political discourse it is important to realise that these expressions can be understood also as referential, that is indicating that the embedded clause is indeed what the speaker/politician believes. In this case it is the politician’s credibility which is in play. Examples are plentiful; however, the relevant interpretation requires a larger context (cf. section 3). The second largest group of examples consists of the hedging devices which indicate that the speaker is aware of the quantity maxim. Assuming that these hedges, by means of distinguishing between the more or less adequate/important information, further specify


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the quality of the statement, I suggest viewing these as a subgroup of the quality maxim hedges. The smaller group of examples consists of the hedges related to the manner and relevance maxims. These expressions are less frequent but their pragmatic function cannot be overseen. Hedged expression, such as ‘as I said before/ako som už povedal, simply put/jednoducho povedané’, etc. gloss on the speaker’s effort to be clear and succinct. These qualities contribute towards the positive face of a politician. There were several examples in my corpus, where hedging expressions seem to indicate a concession to the opponent (e.g. as you probably know/ako pravdepodobne viete). Similarly, when being in excess of what is necessary, hedging devices are open to a polite interpretation (e.g. Let me/dovoľte mi). However, the issue of linguistic politeness appeared only as a by-product of my analysis and deserves a more profound research. The presented analysis of hedging devices in political speeches has confirmed that classical four conversational maxims have to be discussed, interpreted and analysed in their close interaction and

complexity; they have to be studied in the particular context of communication and seen as pragmatic realisations of the cooperative principle in speech. In the context of political conversation, the maxim of manner can be often seen as a dimension of the maxim of quality; similarly, the maxim of relevance is better considered as a subcategory of the quantity maxim (cf. sections 3 and 4). As observed in my analysis, in their respective context of a political discourse, all hedges call for a pragmatic explanation. In the majority of cases, the uses of hedges in English and Slovak do not show significant differences in their pragmatic functions. This statement, however, cannot be generalised because it is based only on a preliminary research. A detailed study of the hedging configurations requires looking at their properties in the context of their own functional system, considering specific qualities of the discourse of diplomacy and political speeches. Such a detailed description can allow for further conclusions as to contrastive study of conversational strategies.

Appendix: Analysed texts Tony Blair archive – 2007 Speeches (T.B.) http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page10688.asp Mikuláš Dzurinda archive – 2006 Speeches (M.D.) http://www.8.vlada.gov.sk/archiv/dzurinda/agenda/aktuality_zoznamc150.html Bibliography and references Cruse, A. (2000) Meaning in Language. An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dontcheva-Navratilova, O. (2007) ‘On Coherence in Written Discourse.’ In: Schmied, J., Haase, Ch., Povolná, R. (eds.) Complexity and Coherence: Approaches to Linguistic Research and Language Teaching. Cuvillie Verlag: Göttingen. 127-146. Grice, H. P. (1975) ‘Logic and conversation.’ In: P. Cole and J. L. Morgan (eds.) Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press. (1975), 41-58. Grundy, P. and Jiang Y. (1998) ‘Cognitive semantics and deictic reference.’ Working Papers in Chinese and Bilingual Studies 1, 85-103 Hong Kong: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Lakoff, G. (1973) ‘Hedges: A study in meaning criteria and the logic of fuzzy concepts. ’ Journal of Philosophical Logic 2, 458-508. Povolná, R. (2007) ‘Aspects of Coherence in Spoken Discourse.’ In: Schmied, J., Haase, Ch., Povolná, R. (eds.) Complexity and Coherence: Approaches to Linguistic Research and Language Teaching. Cuvillie Verlag: Göttingen. 107-126. Wales, K. (1990) A Dictionary of Stylistics. London and New York: Longman. Watts, R. J. (2003) Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Yule, G. (1996) Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


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Some Means of Politeness in English Face-to-Face Conversation Renata Povolná Masaryk University, Czech Republic Abstract Politeness plays a crucial role in human communication, particularly in communication taking the form of spoken face-to-face interaction in which participants have to face immediate reactions from their conversational partners. By taking turns and co-operating in spoken interaction speakers attempt to establish a social contact with other discourse participants and contribute to the further development of communication. The present paper investigates some language means that enhance the smooth flow of spoken interaction and which facilitate coherent interpretation and understanding on

the part of the current hearer(s), thus establishing discourse coherence. It is suggested that these language means, labelled interactive D-items by the author (e.g. you know, you see, I think, I suppose, I’m sure), can operate as part of politeness strategies as recognized by Brown & Levinson (1987) and can be used in order to communicate not only efficiently, i.e. in agreement with the Co-operative Principle (Grice 1975), but also in accordance with the Politeness Principle (Leech 1983). Key words communication, face-to-face conversation, co-operation, turn-taking, conversational maxims, coherence, politeness, negative and positive politeness strategies, interactive D-items 1. Introduction In their everyday communication people have to follow certain principles of co-operation and what is considered polite behaviour in their social and cultural environment since these are important aspects of all human communication. Spoken interaction, i.e. co-operation between two or more partners in a communicative situation, is a joint, here-and-now social activity which is governed by two main principles: turn-taking and co-operation (Stenström 1994: 1). By taking turns speakers show their willingness to co-operate and contribute to the further development of the communication. The current speaker endeavours to establish and maintain a social contact with his/her interlocutors while conveying the message in the form he/she believes to be in agreement with his/her conversational partners’ expectations, i.e. cultural schemata. At the same time, the current hearer attempts to arrive at a coherent interpretation and understanding of what the current speaker intends to convey, while hoping that the message mediated by speech is in agreement with Grice’s conversational maxims and his/her own social and cultural background knowledge which he/she is ready to extend and/or modify if necessary. (The importance of social and cultural background knowledge for the appropriate interpretation of the text has been emphasised by Miššíková (2005: 86-87), among others.) Spoken interaction is a co-operative achievement and all interlocutors are expected to communicate not only efficiently, while achieving their communicative goals, but also in agreement with the principles of polite behaviour reflected in the use of politeness strategies (Leech 1983, Brown & Levinson 1987). 2. Human communication A basic feature of all human communication is the ongoing process of negotiation of meaning between all participants. It is obvious that this process is not based on grammatical rules, but above all on principles of human behaviour which are important to follow, namely the Co-operative Principle (Grice 1975) and the Politeness Principle (Leech 1983). “Communication is not a matter of logic or truth, but of cooperation. Given that I want to communicate, what I do communicate depends on what I can communicate, given my

circumstances, and on what I must communicate, given my partner’s expectations” (Mey 2001: 70). It follows that Grice’s conversational maxims are not sufficient for the explanation of broader, socially and psychologically motivated requirements of speech behaviour since logic and truthfulness are not by any means the only criteria of language use. In order to explain why Grice’s conversational maxims are so frequently flouted in everyday conversation and why speakers tend to be so often indirect in what they want to convey, Leech formulated his Politeness Principle, which is viewed as complementary to and of the same status as Grice’s Co-operative Principle. In the works on the theory of politeness by Leech (1983) and Brown and Levinson (1987) politeness is considered a pragmatic phenomenon and interpreted as a strategy employed by a speaker to achieve a variety of communicative goals, such as promoting and maintaining harmonious relations between discourse participants, in other words as a means that “makes possible communication between potentially aggressive parties” (Brown & Levinson 1987: 1). According to Thomas (1995) “making meaning is a dynamic process, involving the negotiation of meaning between speaker and hearer, the context of utterance (physical, social and linguistic) and the meaning potential of an utterance” (ibid.: 22). In agreement with Dontcheva-Navratilova (2004) it is assumed that all the elements of the act of communication must be taken into account in any appropriate analysis of verbal interaction because “they constitute the factors that determine the character of the exchange of meaning in the context of the communicative situation (ibid.: 26). In order to achieve the smooth flow of interaction, participants have to arrive at coherent interpretation of what the current speaker wants to convey, because otherwise they would not be able to contribute in a coherent way to further conversation. Coherence is viewed in the paper as the result of an ongoing process of negotiation of meaning between all participants in a given spoken interaction. Since it is a context-dependent, comprehension-based and interpretative notion (Bublitz 1997: 2-4), it is best understood as a scalar notion, which requires it to be checked continually against new information in the process of human interaction.


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3. Aim of the research In accordance with the broader research the author has performed into interactive discourse items (D-items) and their role in spoken English, the present contribution aims to show that: D-items (e.g. you know, you see, I mean, I think, I’m sure) can enhance the smooth flow of spoken interaction; D-items contribute to the achievement and maintenance of discourse coherence; D-items tend to be used when the current speaker wants to indicate to the current hearer(s) that one or more of Grice’s conversational maxims may be flouted (i.e. his/her contribution to a given conversation need not be coherent, which often happens in impromptu speech, according to Östman 1982); D-items can operate as part of the politeness strategies used in order to communicate not only efficiently, but also in accordance with principles of politeness. 4. Face-to-face conversation analysed The examples used for exemplification in the present paper have been found in three conversational texts taken from the London-Lund Corpus, namely texts S.1.1, S.1.6 and S.1.8. All texts represent authentic private face-to-face conversation and were recorded surreptitiously, i.e. the participants did not have any prior knowledge that they were being recorded. The speakers are British males and females of different ages with a professional background as university lecturers, researchers and secretaries. (For complete information about the texts and speakers, see Svartvik 1990: 19-45.) Each text takes the form of a dialogue, consequently representing what Östman (1982) calls prototypical impromptu speech, characterized by the following features: � visibility; � reciprocity (interchangeability of roles); � informality; � spontaneity (unplanned, feedback); � empathy (communication as a joint endeavour); � inconsequentiality (no import beyond immediate

context of discourse) (ibid.: 157-158). The above-mentioned features are reflected in the structure of the spoken interaction analysed. Owing to the presence of face-to-face contact and visible feedback between all participants, speakers can make use of all kinds of both verbal and non-verbal means of communication, including laughs, head-nods and facial gestures, which implies a relatively high degree of implicitness of expression. Since everyday face-to-face conversation is characterized by “on-the-spot language that is to be processed in real time” (Östman 1982: 154), there is hardly any time for planning in advance; in fact interlocutors have to negotiate continuously the topics they intend to discuss next. Conversation is a co-operative achievement and “each contribution should be treated as part of the negotiation of ‘what is being talked about’ ” and, furthermore, “it is speakers, and not conversation or discourses, that have ‘topics’ ” (Brown & Yule 1983: 94). Face-to-face conversation is characterized by a considerable degree of participant co-operation, which results in a tendency to use certain interactive D-items such as those under investigation, quite often. “Co-operation is behind much of what happens when two or more people converse. We monitor ourselves and others to keep the cooperative enterprise going” (Wardhaugh 1985: 138). 5. Interactive D-items and their role in spoken interaction Interactive D-items such as you know, you see, I mean, I think, I’m sure tend to be used frequently in spoken discourse without being constitutive elements of the

syntactic structure (Aijmer 2002: 16) and without contributing much to the propositional content of utterances into which they are inserted (Stenström 1990: 137). Nevertheless, they are crucial for the meaning mediated by speech because they perform various pragmatic functions; for example, they express the speaker’s intentions, feelings and emotions, and also the speaker’s attitude towards the addressee or the situation under discussion, thus contributing to the smooth flow of interaction and the establishment and maintenance of discourse coherence. The importance for spoken communication of what is called here interactive D-items has been stressed by many linguists. For example, Aijmer (2002) states that when clausal forms such as those under examination “are absent or if they are used wrongly, listeners may have difficulty in establishing a coherent interpretation of discourse” (ibid.: 15). And it is above all the role interactive D-items play in creating coherent contributions to the further development of the communication and in operating as part of politeness strategies that is at the core of the present study. Many linguists assume that there is a correlation between informal conversation and the use of what is called here interactive D-items (Östman 1982, Biber 1988, Stenström 1990, Aijmer 2002). And indeed, as evidenced by some previous research (see Povolná 2005, 2006), they are much more common in all their functions in the unplanned and dialogic type of discourse (e.g. in private face-to-face conversation) than in the planned and monologic type of discourse (e.g. in public radio discussions). Since the possible pragmatic functions interactive D-items can perform in spoken discourse have been discussed elsewhere (for their exemplification, see Povolná 2006), let me only state here that after the application of several different criteria (such as syntactic type, orientation, turn position, prosodic features and above all the entire situational context), the following pragmatic functions can be distinguished: monitor, opine marker, marker of certainty, marker of emotion (in the overwhelming majority realized by I-oriented D-items, such as I mean, I think, I suppose, I’m sure, I’m afraid), and inform marker, empathizer, and appealer (all connected with you-oriented D-items, realized in particular by you know and you see). Interactive D-items in some of these functions will be exemplified below together with their role in establishing and maintaining coherence and operating as part of politeness strategies in spoken discourse. 6. Politeness in spoken interaction Since the present paper concentrates on linguistic means used as part of politeness strategies, it becomes evident that it does not deal with politeness as a kind of human behaviour; it concentrates rather on the study of linguistic politeness as defined by Ide (1989), who states that it is “the language usage associated with smooth communication, realized 1/ through the speaker’s use of intentional strategies to allow his or her message to be received favourably by the addressee, and 2/ through the speaker’s choice of expressions to conform to the expected and/or prescribed norms of speech appropriate to the contextual situation in individual communities” (ibid.: 225). The use of interactive D-items will be discussed with regard to the politeness strategies recognized by Brown and Levinson (B&L) (1987), since their theory of politeness, based on the notion of ‘face’ (Goffman 1967), i.e. “the public self-image that every member wants to claim for himself” (B&L 1987: 61), is considered one of the most influential and comprehensive theories dealing with politeness. According to their theory, ‘face’ is constantly at risk in an interaction: it can be lost, maintained or enhanced.


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People co-operate “in maintaining face in interaction, such co-operation being based on the mutual vulnerability of face” (ibid.: 61) since, normally, everyone’s face depends on everyone else’s face being maintained. Accordingly, it is “in every participant’s best interest to maintain each others’ face” (ibid.). The authors define politeness as a need to minimise the imposition that is put on the addressee in the interaction, which can potentially represent a face-threatening act (FTA). In order to avoid the loss of ‘face’, one can employ several different politeness strategies that are dependent on the seriousness of the FTA assessed in accordance with three sociological variables: power, social distance, and rating of imposition. Brown and Levinson distinguish between two aspects of ‘face’: positive and negative. The former is defined as the want of every member that his wants be desirable to at least some others, the latter as the want of every ‘competent adult member’ that his actions be unimpeded by others (ibid.: 62). It is above all the use

of mitigating devices such as the interactive D-items under examination that will be related to politeness strategies oriented either towards the speaker’s/hearer’s positive or negative face. Before presenting some authentic examples, let me make a few remarks on possible politeness strategies as recognized by B&L. As can be seen from Figure 1, there are altogether five possibilities from which the current speaker can choose when performing an act, i.e. “what is intended to be done by a verbal or non-verbal communication” (ibid.: 65). The first choice every speaker has to make is between performing (1 to 4) or not performing an FTA (5), which happens when the act is considered too threatening to be performed. When the speaker decides to perform an FTA, there is a choice between performing it ‘off record’ (4) or ‘on record’ (1 to 3). The fifteen ‘off-record’ politeness strategies Brown and Levinson distinguish include all kinds of hints as to what the current speaker wants to communicate without stating this directly.

Figure 1: Possible strategies for doing FTAs (according to Brown and Levinson 1987: 69)

Do the FTA

Don't do the FTA (5)

on record

off record

without redressive action (bald on record) (1)

with redressive action

positive politeness (2)

negative politeness (3)

As for ‘on record’ strategies, there are three sets: one without a redressive action, i.e. the ‘bald-on-record’ superstrategy (1), which the authors (ibid.: 69) identify with the adherence to Grice’s conversational maxims (which means it is not at the core of the present paper) and two sets of strategies with a redressive action (2 to 3), i.e. which use some mitigating devices including the interactive D-items analysed. Accordingly, these language devices operate as part of either positive (2) or negative (3) politeness strategies: the former fifteen strategies reflect the speaker’s/ hearer’s desire to be liked, approved of, respected and appreciated by others, while the latter ten strategies reflect the desire not to be impeded or put upon, to have the freedom to act as one chooses. 7. Exemplification of the data analysed Below are some exemplifications of the issues introduced and discussed above. Example 1: A and [әm] - - - I don’t think the doctor had expected that I would do barrier nursing *you s/ee* C *[m]* A I think she said something about [i ? a:] she wished that everybody would take . [ә:] the thing seriously you know when they were told as I did cos she came in and the whole corridor . was lined . C *[m]* A *with* various forms of . washing . and so on

(S.1.8.1017-1028) Note: The transcription of the examples included in the paper has been simplified, leaving only indications for nuclear tones in the interactive D-items analysed, asterisks for simultaneous speech, dots and dashes for short and long pauses respectively. The first example comprises two tokens of interactive D-items used as empathizers. (For more details on the individual pragmatic functions of interactive D-items,

see Povolná 2006.) Their prevailing function is to invite the current hearer to take an active part in the conversation by asking him/her for understanding and co-operation, i.e. two important aspects of all spoken interaction. According to Östman (1981) they ask the hearer “to accept the propositional content of utterance as mutual background knowledge”, thus contributing to the establishment of coherence. Owing to their function, it is highly predictable that they mostly prompt some feedback from the current hearer, either in the form of a proper verbal response or in the form of a backchannel signal, which does not imply any shift of speaker, as illustrated in Example 1. Empathizers usually occur in a separate tone unit with a rising tone (see you s/ee above) and according to B&L (1987: 102ff) can operate as part of a positive politeness superstrategy: “Do FTA on record plus redress to: H wants (S wants H’s wants): Claim ‘common ground’.” Accordingly, they are used as means of claiming the common point of view, opinions, attitudes, knowledge, or empathy, mostly realised by presupposing the common ground. In the above example, while using you know and you see, speaker A expresses his presupposition that B knows what barrier nursing involves. B&L suggest that you know scattered through a story may not claim that H’s knowledge of the particular details to which it is attached is equivalent to S’s, but “rather claims H’s knowledge of that kind of situation in general” (ibid.: 120). Example 2: A awkward position . quite easy* to have Dürer and Rembrandt not all this modern stuff B I suppose it is but they’re too big you kn/ow A yes of course they are B they’re far too large A much bigger than the face B yes - - -

(S.1.8.225-238)


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Another function performed by interactive D-items is that of appealer. Appealers are explicit signals to the current hearer that some kind of feedback would be appropriate. Since they usually occur at the end of a turn, in a separate tone unit with a rising tone (see you kn/ow above), they have a questioning effect: “are you listening”, “do you agree”, or “do you see what I mean” (Östman 1981: 23) and in the majority of the cases analysed they prompt a proper verbal response, which implies a shift of speaker, as in Example 2. Appealers enable negotiation of meaning between the speaker and the hearer, thus contributing to discourse coherence. As with empathizers, they can be considered (according to B&L) as part of a positive politeness superstrategy: “Do FTA on record plus redress to: H wants (S wants H’s wants): Claim ‘common ground’.” However, unlike empathizers, appealers can be further specified as means conveying that X is admirable or interesting, mostly realised by increasing the H’s interest in the topic discussed, which is the case of you kn/ow in Example 2, where the speakers are commenting on the paintings displayed in the room in which their conversation takes place. Example 3: A ah - [ә:] you mean that [@i: @i:] the papers are more or less set ad hominem are they - B [ә:h] - - they shouldn’t be - - but [әh] - I mean one sets - - one question now I mean this fellow’s doing the language of advertising * . * so very well A *yeah*

(S.1.1.21-30) When using interactive D-items as monitors, the current speaker usually wants to make a new start or rephrase what has been uttered. A typical monitor is I mean. According to Quirk et al. (1985) it is used as a means of ‘mistake editing’ used “in order to correct a phonological or semantic mistake (which is common enough in impromptu speech)” (ibid.: 1313), and it is mostly connected with the planning and organization of discourse, thus contributing to discourse coherence. As for its position within the turn, I mean (mostly without any nuclear tone) often appears in the middle when the current speaker cannot find an appropriate word or can see that the current hearer(s) cannot follow what has been uttered; in other words, it tends to be used to indicate that there can be some flouting of Grice’s conversational maxims, namely those of manner and/or quantity. Based on B&L’s theory (1987), I mean might be part of a negative politeness superstrategy: “Do FTA x on record plus redress to H’s want to be unimpinged upon”, realized as hedges addressed to Grice’s Maxims (ibid.: 164ff), and usually indicating that not as much or not as precise information is provided as might be expected, as in Example 3 above. Example 4: B perhaps it was . if he thought it was trivial while he was an undergraduate and discovered his error - I supp\ose by the time he was about forty - . it had become genuinely trivial *(laughs - - -)* A *yes now this is a I th\ink . it it transmits itself I think that the lecturers* are very very bad you know - *too 2sylls* B *there was* a difference when he was lecturing on a subject that he’d written on . you see this is a . this is - - [?] a classical subject really . I don’t think anybody as far as I know does any work on it now -

(S.1.6.833-850) As for interactive D-items used as opine markers, they signify the speaker’s tentativeness, which is a cultural specificity of English (Urbanová 2002). They clearly

communicate that what is being uttered is just the speaker’s own opinion, feeling or attitude, which may not be generally accepted, thus drawing the hearer’s attention to the flouting of Grice’s maxim of quality. By indicating the responsibility for the propositional content of the message, opine markers facilitate the hearer’s interpretation and understanding and thus enable the establishment of coherence. Typical opine markers are the clausal forms I suppose, I think, I should think, I gather, I thought, I guess, as far as I know. According to B&L (1987) they can operate as part of a negative politeness superstrategy: “Do FTA x plus redress to H’s want to be unimpinged upon” (ibid.: 145ff), realized as hedges encoded in particles (e.g. I suppose) or adverbial-clause hedges (e.g. as far as I know), both illustrated in Example 4 above. Example 5: B you’ve been [t] you’ve been put on to [@i: ә: ә ә] CSC Spanish Language sub-committee as you know in place of Benson – A yes

(S.1.1.824-827) The last pragmatic function to be illustrated in the present paper is that of inform marker, typically realized by the you-oriented D-items you know and you see. They indicate that the hearer should pay attention to some new piece of information or a new aspect within it, so it is hardly surprising that they represent one of the most typical functions of all the interactive D-items analysed. However, they can also indicate to the current hearer that the subject matter is already known to the participants, in which case as you know is often used, as in Example 5, or when the current speaker wants to create such an impression or remind the hearer of knowledge they already share in order to make that knowledge part of the activated context of discourse (McCawley 1979), thus enhancing discourse coherence. By appealing to the knowledge conversational partners share, the current speaker openly flouts Grice’s maxim of quantity. According to B&L (1987) the clausal form as you know in the above example is part of a negative politeness superstrategy: “Do FTA x on record plus redress to H’s want to be unimpinged upon”, realized by the hedge as you know addressed to one of Grice’s Maxims (ibid.: 164ff). 8. Conclusion Based on some previous research (Povolná 2006, 2007) and in particular on analysis of the material exemplified above, it can be concluded that, owing to their pragmatic functions they perform in spoken English, the interactive D-items analysed enable the smooth flow of spoken interaction. Their role in the ongoing process of negotiation of meaning is crucial because they contribute to the establishment and maintenance of discourse coherence. They tend to be used when the current speaker wants to indicate to the current hearer(s) that some of Grice’s conversational maxims may be flouted. Moreover, it is assumed that their use can be considered a courtesy on the part of the current speaker (if they are not the current speaker’s habit) since they clearly facilitate the current hearer’s coherent interpretation and understanding of what is being communicated in a given situation. Interactive D-items also help the current speaker express attitudes to the message mediated by speech and create a social contact with other discourse participants, which is the main purpose of all human communication. In addition, interactive D-items can operate as part of positive or negative politeness strategies as recognized by Brown and Levinson (1987), being beneficial to both the current speaker and the current hearer(s). However, it


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must be stated that it is not always clear whether a particular interactive D-item is operating within a positive or a negative politeness strategy because these are sometimes difficult to separate from one another, or they may be adopted at the same time. Arguably,

only further research into the use of interactive D-items and comparison with other genres of spoken English will throw valuable light on the complexity with which politeness is expressed in English face-to-face conversation.

Bibliography and references Aijmer, K. (2002) English Discourse Particles. Evidence from a Corpus. Studies in Corpus Linguistics. Vol. 10. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN: 90-272-2280-0. Biber, D. (1988) Variation Across Speech and Writing. Cambridge, New York, Port Chester, Melbourne, Sydney: Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 0-521-32071-2. Brown, G., Levinson, S. C. (1987) Politeness. Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 0-521-31353-4. Brown, G., Yule, G. (1983) Discourse Analysis. Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 0-521-28475-9. Bublitz, W. (1997) “Introduction: View of coherence”. In: Bublitz, W., Lenk, U., Ventola, E. (eds) Coherence in Spoken and Written Discourse. How to Create it and How to Describe it. Selected Papers from the International Workshop on Coherence, Augsburg 1997. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 1-7. ISBN: 90-272-5077-4. Dontcheva-Navratilova, O. (2004) “Situational characteristics of the discourse of international governmental organizations: UNESCO resolutions and declarations”. Acta Academica Karviniensia. 1/2004. Karviná: SUO OPF v Karviné. 25-41. ISSN 1212-415X. Goffman, M. (1967) Interaction Ritual: Essays on face to face behavior. Garden City: New York. ISBN: 0394706315 Grice, H. P. (1975) “Logic and conversation”. In: Cole, P., Morgan, J. L. (eds) Syntax and Semantics. Volume 3: Speech Acts. New York, San Francisco, London: Academic Press. 41-58. Ide, S. (1989) “Formal forms and discernment: Two neglected aspects of universals of linguistic politeness.” Multilingua, 8-2/3, 223-247. Leech, G. (1983) Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman. ISBN: 0-582-55110-2. McCawley, J. D. (1979) “Presupposition & discourse structure”. In: Oh, C.-K., Dinneen, D. (eds) Syntax and semantics. Vol.11: Presupposition. New York: Academic Press. Mey, J. L. (2001) Pragmatics. An Introduction. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd. ISBN: 0-631-21131-4. Miššíková, G. (2005) “Background knowledge in interpretation of discourse”. In: Povolná, R., Dontcheva-Navratilova, O. (eds) Discourse and Interaction 1. Brno Seminar on Linguistic Studies in English: Proceedings 2005. Brno: Masaryk University. 85-97. ISBN: 80-210-3916-7. Östman, J.-O. (1982) “The symbiotic relationship between pragmatic particles and impromptu speech”. In: Enkvist, N. E. (ed.) Impromptu Speech: A Symposium. Publications of the Research Institute of the Åbo Åkademi Foundation 78. Åbo: Åbo Akademi. 147-177. ISBN: 951-648-865-X. Östman, J.-O. (1981) You know. A Discourse-Functional Approach. Pragmatics & Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ISBN: 90-272-2516-8. Povolná, R. (2007) “Aspects of coherence in spoken discourse”. In: Schmied, J., Haase, Ch., Povolná, R. (eds) Complexity and Coherence. Approaches to Linguistic Research and Language Teaching. REAL Studies 3. Göttingen: Cuvillier Verlag Göttingen. 107-126. ISBN: 978-3-86727-215-5. Povolná, R. (2006) “Can interactive discourse items contribute to the coherence of spoken discourse?” In: Mačura, M., Miššíková, G. (eds) Trends and Perspectives. 1st Nitra Conference on Discourse Studies. Nitra: Department of English and American Studies. Faculty of Arts. Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra. 117-128. ISBN: 80-8094029-0. Povolná, R. (2005) “On the role of some interactive D-items in different genres of spoken English”. In: Čermák, J., Klégr, A., Malá, M., Šaldová, P. (eds) Patterns. A Festschrift for Libuše Dušková. Prague: Charles University. 169-181. ISBN: 80-7308-108-3. Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., Svartvik, J. (1985) A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman. ISBN: 0-582-51734-6. Stenström, A.-B. (1994) An Introduction to Spoken Interaction. London: Longman. ISBN 0-582-07130-5. Stenström, A.-B. (1990) “Lexical items peculiar to spoken discourse”. In: Svartvik, J. (ed.) The London-Lund Corpus of Spoken English. Description and Research. Lund Studies in English 82. Lund: Lund University Press. 137-175. ISBN: 91-7966-126-2. Svartvik, J. (ed.) (1990) The London-Lund Corpus of Spoken English. Description and Research. Lund Studies in English 82. Lund: Lund University Press. ISBN: 91-7966-126-2. Thomas, J. (1995) Meaning in Interaction. An Introduction to Pragmatics. Learning About Language. London and New York: Longman. ISBN: 0-582-29151-8. Urbanová, L., Oakland, A. (2002) Úvod do anglické stylistiky. Brno: Barrister & Principal. ISBN: 80-86598-33-0. Tárnyiková, J. (2002) From Text to Texture. An Introduction to Processing Strategies. 3rd ed. Olomouc: Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci. ISBN: 80-244-0438-9. Wardhaugh, R. (1985) How Conversation Works. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. ISBN: 0-631-13939-7.


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Reviews Povolná, R. – Navratilova- Dontcheva, Olga. (Eds.): Discourse and Interaction 2. Brno: Masarykova Univerzita, Pedagogická Fakulta, 2006. The collections of papers Discourse and Interaction 2 tries to present the outcomes of current research into aspects of negotiation of meaning in language and related stylistics and socio-pragmatic variation. Additionally, this second volume pays a tribute to a distinguished and well- known linguist Josef Hladký. Discourse and Interaction consists of two parts – the first part reflects on Hladkýۥs research interests (L. Dušková: A Pragian View of Professor Josef Hladkyۥs work) and his academic qualities from the point of view of one of his students (J. Ondráček: In honour of Professor Josef Hladký). It concludes with a detailed bibliography of Hladkyۥ s works. The contributors in Part two present issues from the fields of discourse analysis, semantics, and pragmatics and politeness strategies. The contributors share an understanding language as a dynamic and heterogeneous system mediating interaction in different social and cultural aspects. The paper by Gabriela Miššíková (Politeness and Interaction in a Talk Show) concentrates on the exploration of implicatures of politeness and the politeness principle in the discourse of The Oprah Winfrey Show. The author introduces preliminary findings achieved in the introductory phase of more complex research on politeness strategies in mass media communication. Discourse and Interaction 2 also hosts four contributions which are part of ongoing research – Comparing and conceptualizing coherence and complexity in English texts and teaching, a Czech – German project between Masaryk University in Brno and the Technical University in Chemnitz. These are the articles by Josef Schmied, Christopher Haase, Renata Povolná and Olga Dontecheva -Navratilova. In her contribution Text Colonies Revisited: Clause Relations in Colony Texts Olga Dontcheva Navratilova comments on the main features and types of colony texts. In her analysis she focuses on matching clause relations in a resolutions colony text. Her investigation into interaction in colony texts confirmed that matching relations between clauses in resolutions colony texts are indicated by lexico-grammatical parallelism. She also emphasizes the fact that the components of hierarchical colony texts should be inter – connected by discourse patterns and patterns of thematic development. An interesting paper on spoken interaction as a dynamic process of negotiation of meaning is presented by Renáta Povolná under the title Interaction in Spoken Discourse. Moreover, Povolná analyses functions of interactive D- items in different genres of spoken English. Based on her previous and also current research, D- items play a crucial role in the establishment of coherence. Not only spoken, but also written discourse plays a significant role in the contribution by Ludmila Urbanová Interaction of Spoken and Written Language in Newspaper Advertising where she analyses the concept of hybrid language in advertising on the sample of three real -life examples. The author looks mainly at printed advertisements where a combination of spoken and written elements tends to occur very frequently. Among other contributors are Martin Adam (A Comparison of Different English Translations of Identical Passages based on FSP Analysis), Gunther Kaltenbıck (Some Comments on Comment Clauses), Nadežda Kudrnáčková (The Locative Inversion Construction and the Character of the Path), Markéta Malá (Contrastive Markers and Dialogicality), Renáta Pípalová (Unfolding a Paragraph Theme), Jaroslava Stašková (Organizational Discourse in University Setting), Miklós Mik Telbisz (Implicatures and Mitigated Utterances), Radek Vogel (Terminological Vagueness and Achieving Referential Accuracy), Jana Vokáčová (Animal Idioms in English and Czech – Where do they come from?) and Sirma Wilamová (Motivations and Impact of Context – Sensitive Politeness Strategies). On the whole, the volume Discourse and Interaction 2 brings a new light to the study of discourse and is inspiring for all those who deal with this issue. The study of discourse and interaction is understood as research into language with relevance to real-world problems and its aim is to reveal the stylistic diversity and socio-pragmatic variety of language in use. Zuzana Kozáčiková


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Grammatical Structures in English: Meaning and Context. Olga Dontcheva-Navratilova. Brno: PF MU, 2005. ISBN 80-210-3849-7. Grammatical Structures in English: Meaning and Context is a revised and extended version of a textbook published under the same title in 2000. This new edition enlarges considerably the theoretical preliminaries provided for the study of English grammar from a discourse perspective and adds some new insights borrowed from sociolinguistics, pragmatics and discourse analysis. The basic aim of the book is to present grammar as a tool which enables users of English to achieve their purposes in communication and tries to help language learners to realise that grammar is used in a different way in spoken and written interaction and is further modified by the context of language use. The textbook consists of three parts: In Part one – From Sentence Grammar to Discourse Aware Grammar the author deals with varieties of English, functions of language, semantic representation of sentences, linking devices and grammatical cohesion, formal, informal, polite, familiar, personal and impersonal language, spoken and written language. In Part two – Analysing Sentence Structure main focus is on giving and requesting information, expressing attitude and opinion, expressing feelings and emotions, and many others. Part three – Practicing Sentence Structure combines theoretical discussion with practical exercises which focus on practising various (stylistically marked) sentence patterns, such as fronting, extra position of clausal subject, cleft sentences, etc. The textbook also provides a Glossary of Linguistic Terms and an English-Czech Dictionary of Linguistic Terms. The answers to questions asked in part three are also provided. An extensive and carefully selected list of reference books is very useful and represents a valid part of the publication. The textbook Grammatical Structures in English: Meaning and Context written by Olga Dontcheva-Navratilova, PhD. represents an invaluable study material which has been prepared for university students studying English language in teachers´ or translators´ programmes. The textbook can be used effectively in teaching linguistics-oriented courses, namely syntax, stylistics, semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics and translation seminars. As such the textbook should be available in each philologically-oriented university library. Gabriela Miššíková


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Addresses Martin Adam Katedra anglického jazyka a literatury Pedagogická fakulta Masarykovy univerzity Poříčí 7, 602 00 Brno Czech Republic Phone: 549 463 696 E-mail: [email protected] Magdaléna Bilá Katedra anglického jazyka a literatúry Fakulta humanintých a prírodných vied Prešovská univerzita Ulica 17. novembra 1 081 16 Prešov Slovak Republic Piotr Cap Department of Pragmatics Institute of English, University of Łódź Al. Koœciuszki 65, 90-514 Łódź Poland Phone: +48 42 6655220 E-mail: [email protected] http://www.geocities.com/strus_pl/piotr_cap Jan Comorek Budova 5, místnost 52010 Víta Nejedlého 573 Hradec Králové Czech Republic E-mail: [email protected] Phone: 493331526 Milan Ferenčík Inštitút anglistiky a amerikanistiky Filozofická fakulta Prešovskej univerzity Ul.17.novembra 1 080 06 Prešov Slovak Republic Phone: 051 757 0801 [email protected] Monika Gyuró University of Pécs Faculty of Health Sciences H-7623 Pécs, Rét u. 4. Hungary [email protected] Christoph Haase Chemnitz University of Technology English Language and Linguistics 09126 Chemnitz Reichenhainer Str. 39 Germany Phone: +49-371-531-34253 E-mail: [email protected] Adriana Halušková Katedra anglického jazyka a literatúry Univerzita Komenského v Bratislave Pedagogická fakulta Račianska 59 813 34 Bratislava Slovak Republic Phone: 0907 139 827 E-mail: [email protected]

Juraj Horváth Inštitút anglistiky a amerikanistiky Ul.17. novembra č.1 080 78 Prešov Slovak Republic Phone: 051/7570 801 Petra Jesenská Department of English & American Studies Faculty of Humanities, Matej Bel University Tajovského 40 974 01 Banská Bystrica Slovak Republic E-mail: [email protected] László I. Komlósi University of Pécs Faculty of Humanities H-7624 Pécs, Ifjúság u. 6 Hungary E-mail: [email protected] Mark W. Lencho University of Wisconsin - Whitewater HE 415 800 West Main Street Whitewater, WI 53190 USA Office Phone: (262) 472-5062 Gabriela Miššíková Department of English and American Studies Faculty of Arts Constantine the Philosopher University Štefánikova 67 949 74 Nitra Slovak Republic Phone: +421 37 77 54 209 E-mail: [email protected] Olga Dontcheva-Navratilova Department of English Language and Literature Faculty of Education, Masaryk University Poříčí 9 603 00 Brno Czech Republic E-mail: [email protected] Renata Povolná Department of English Language and Literature Faculty of Education, Masaryk University Poříčí 9/11 603 00 Brno Czech Republic Phone: 549496383 E-mail: [email protected] Henry G. Widdowson Department of English and American Studies Universitätscampus AAKH, Hof 8 Spitalgasse 2 A-1090 Wien Austria Phone: +43-1-4277-42401

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