Issues of Pragmatics 1

Introduction____________________________________________

1. INTRODUCTION

I. DEFINING PRAGMATICS

There are different definitions of pragmatics given by different

pragmaticians, but they all share the basic idea that pragmatics is ‘the

study of language in use’ (Verschueren, 1999:1), or ‘the science of

language in relation to its users’ (Mey, 1993:5). As you can notice,

pragmatics studies the way in which people use language (in different

contexts). Dealing with issues of language use, pragmatics also focuses

on how people create ‘meaningful’ communication, or, ‘meaning in

interaction’ (Thomas, 1995). For a better understanding of the relation

between pragmatics and other disciplines of linguistics, we will look at

Verschueren’s (1999) view on the place of pragmatics within the field

of linguistics.

Linguistics, according to Verschueren (1999:1-5), is traditionally

divided into component disciplines, such as phonetics, phonology,

morphology, syntax and semantics. Each of them is related to a specific

unit of analysis. Thus, phonetics and phonology deal with speech

sounds. Phonetics identifies constituent parts of a continuous stream of

sound and focuses either on the physical properties of the sounds, or on

their manner of production, whereas the basic unit of analysis for

phonology is the ‘phoneme’. Morphology investigates ‘morphemes’ the

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Issues of Pragmatics____________________________________________

minimal linguistic signs in the sense that they are the minimal units

carrying a conventional meaning or contributing to the meaning of

larger units, and the ways in which they combine to form words.

Syntax studies sentence formation processes in accordance with

language-specific rules, starting from words or ‘lexical items’.

Semantics explores the meaning of linguistic units, typically at the

level of words (lexical semantics) or at the level of sentences or more

complex structures.

The question that we ask ourselves is ‘What do all these branches have

in common?’ According to Verschueren (1999:2), they share a focus on

language resources (the ingredients that make up a language as a tool

that people use for expressive and communicative purposes). Units of

analysis are identified, thus leading to a manageable division of labour.

As implied in the above definition, pragmatics cannot be identified with

a specific unit of analysis. Then what is pragmatics? The linguistic

phenomena to be studied from the point of view of their usage can be

situated at any level of structure. The question pragmatics asks is: How

are the language resources used? Thus, in Verschueren’s view

(1999), pragmatics is not an additional component of a theory of

language, but it offers a different perspective.

There are no linguistic phenomena, at any level of structure that a

pragmatic perspective can afford to ignore:

EXAMPLES:

a. The level of speech sounds: Most speakers of languages who

have grown up with a local dialect, for example people born in

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Introduction____________________________________________

villages in Banat region, but who were socialised into the use of

a standard variety through formal education, will find that the

Romanian they use sounds quite different depending on whether

they are in their professional context or speaking to their

parents.

b. The level of morphemes and words: there are pragmatic

restrictions on and implications of aspects of derivational

morphology. Consider the derivational relationship between

pleasant and unpleasant or kind and unkind. The reason why

this relationship is not reversed, with a basic lexeme meaning

“unpleasant” from which a word meaning “pleasant” would be

derived by means of the negative prefix, is related to a system

of social norms which emphasises the need for being pleasant

and kind with people.

c. Grammatical choices of morhemes are also subject to pragmatic

constraints. Consider the recent changes in socio-political

awareness which led to the use of he/she instead of the generic

he.

TASK: THINK OF OTHER EXAMPLES OF THE SAME KIND.

d. At the level of syntax: the same state of affairs can be described

by means of very different syntactic structures:

Mary broke the glass

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The glass was broken by Mary

The glass was broken

The glass got broken.

Note for example (cf. Verschueren, 1999:5), the progressive reduction

of emphasis on the person responsible for the breaking of the glass,

which starts with the full passive formula that still includes mention of

the agent (Mary), and which ends with a formula that may even suggest

complete absence of (or ignorance about) any responsibility.

Also note another usage aspect, that involved in the speaker’s

assessment of whether it is more relevant to the hearer to be told

something about Mary (in which case the sentence starts with Mary) or

about the glass (in which case The glass will be the subject).

e. At the level of word meaning (lexical semantics), more than what

would be regarded as ‘dictionary meaning’ has to be taken into

account as soon as a word gets used. Many words cannot be

understood unless aspects of world knowledge are invoked.

For example (Verschueren, 1999:5), understanding the meaning of

topless district requires ‘knowledge about city areas with high

concentration of establishments for (predominantly male)

entertainment where scantly dressed hostesses or performers are the

main attraction’.

Mental midwives ‘which appears in a newspaper headline, cannot

be understood until after reading the article, which describes

4

Introduction____________________________________________

patients in a mental hospital (a term which requires institutional

knowledge) assisting a fellow patient when giving birth.’

II. PRAGMATICS CONTRASTED WITH SEMANTICS

Semantics, as we have already seen, is a branch of linguistics devoted

to the study of meaning. Since both semantics and pragmatics deal with

‘meaning’, the question that can be raised is then: What is meaning?

TASK: paraphrase the various meanings of the noun ‘meaning’ and the

verb ‘to mean’ in the examples below:

a. I did not mean to do it.

b. Life without love has no meaning.

c. A red light means stop.

d. A flower behind the right ear means that the person is not

engaged.

e. What is the meaning of ‘axiology’?

f. The sentence James murdered Max means that ‘someone called

James deliberately killed someone called Max’.

g. By ‘my best friend’ I meant Sue Carter not Sally Brown.

Pragmatics is the study of all those aspects of meaning not captured in

semantic theory.

1. Semantic meaning is truth conditional, whereas in pragmatics

there are felicity conditions.

Example: The sentence ‘Sam is a man’ has to fulfill the following

conditions to be true:

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a. Sam is a person.

b. Sam is an adult.

c. Sam is a male.

d. Sam is an adult male person.

Notice that semantics is interested in the conditions that make the

sentence ‘true’.

In pragmatics, the utterance ‘I promise to be back early’ means a

promise on condition a future action is involved: ‘I’ll come back

early’ (SEE the Speech act theory). In this case we are interested in

those conditions which make the promise ‘felicitous’, i.e, be a

promise and not a threat for instance.

2. In semantics, meaning is a dyadic relation: “X means Y”; in

pragmatics, meaning is a triadic relation: “Speaker means Y by X”.

Example:

Shall we see that film tonight?

I have a headache.

The speaker means NO (Y) by saying I HAVE A HEADACHE

(X).

3. In semantics we refer to sentence meaning; in pragmatics we refer

to utterance meaning.

Sentence meaning is predictable from the meaning of the lexicon

items and grammatical features of the sentence. Utterance meaning

consists of the meaning of the sentence plus considerations of the

intentions of the Speaker (the speaker may intend to refuse the

invitation to go to the film), interpretation of the Hearer (the Hearer

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Introduction____________________________________________

may interpret the utterance as a refusal, or not), determined by

context and background knowledge.

4. Semantics deals with meaning out of context; pragmatics deals with

meaning in context.

Traditionally there are three categories of context referred to in the

literature:

a. setting or spatio-temporal location of U (utterance): that is, the

particular moment and place at which Speaker utters U, and the

particular time and place at which H (hearer) hears or reads U.

b. the world spoken of in U: that is, the world evoked in the utterance.

c. The textual environment (the utterance is the result of what has

been said before).

It is particularly important to remember that meaning, as a defining

feature of what pragmatics is concerned with, is not seen as a stable

counterpart to linguistic form. Rather, it is dynamically generated in

the process of using language (see Thomas, 1995, Verschueren,

1999). Also, pragmatics as the study of ‘meaning in context’ does

not imply that one can automatically arrive at a pragmatic

understanding of the phenomena involved just by knowing all the

extralinguistic information, because ‘context’ is not a static

element.

For example, here is a short dialogue (taken from Mey, 1993:8-9)

with contextual information in brackets, where the classical concept

of ‘context’ does not help.

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(Two linguists, call them Jacob and Mark, are coming out of a

lecture hall at a university which is neither’s home territory, but

where Jacob has been before; so he thinks he knows the campus,

more or less)

Jacob: Do you know the way back to the dining hall? We can go in

my car.

(Marks gets into the car; after the first turn, he starts giving

directions, which greatly amazes Jacob, and irritates him a little –

he was under the impression that ‘he’ needed to guide the other, not

the other way round. After several more turns – which Jacob is

taking at greater and greater speeds, so the other doesn’t get a

chance to interfere – Marks says:)

Mark: Oh, I thought you didn’t know the way to the campus.

Jacob: I thought you didn’t know!

(whereupon they both start laughing)

Clearly (cf. Mey’s interpretation), in this case Mark takes Jacob’s

original utterance not as a ‘real question’, but as a ‘pre-request’

(preparing the ground for the request to be given instructions on how to

get to the dining hall). Jacob. On the other hand, who really wanted to

know if Mark was familiar with the campus, because otherwise he

wanted to give him directions, or a ride, doesn’t understand the other’s

reaction. The moment the situation is resolved, we can look back and

understand what has happened. But the function of the first utterance,

or its ‘illocutionary force’ could not be predicted on the basis of what

had happened before.

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Introduction____________________________________________

If the concept of ‘context’ is established independently of the ongoing

interaction between interlocutors, it is completely useless. It is precisely

the dynamic development of the conversation that gives us a clue to

understanding.

Pragmatics serves as a point of convergence for interdisciplinary fields

of investigation. Thus, pragmatics, as a notion, was proposed by Morris

(1938), in his endeavour to outline a consistent theory of signs

(semiotics); philosophy and the sociological tradition of

ethnomethodology have provided fertile ideas in pragmatics. In the

field of philosophy, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,

Philosophical Investigations (1958) has had an important influence on

pragmatics through the suggestion that understanding a language

involves knowing the nature of the activity in which the utterances play

a role (See chapter on Activity types). This is part of the doctrine of

‘language games’, which produced two of the main theories in

pragmatics: Speech Act Theory (Austin and Searle) and Logic of

Conversation (See chapter on Conversational Principle: Cooperation).

The main idea in Speech Act Theory is that utterances have certain

functions, so when we speak we ask for information, give information,

make requests, apologise, make suggestions, etc.

The sociological tradition of ethnomethodology produced the wider

field of Conversation Analysis (See chapters on Conversation

Analysis). Though conversation analysis focuses on the minute details

of interactions, it has shown how face-to-face interaction can become

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the subject of investigation in order to provide an understanding of

human experience and behaviour.

As a conclusion, pragmatics serves as a latch between interdisciplinary

fields of investigation and the components of language resources.

III. SUMMARY

Pragmatics is:

‘the science of language in relation to its users’ (Mey, 1993)

‘meaning in interaction’ (Thomas, 1995)

‘the study of language in use’ (Verschueren, 1999)

Meaning, as a defining feature of what pragmatics is concerned with,

is not seen as a stable counterpart to linguistic form. Rather, it is

dynamically generated in the process of using language (Thomas, 1995,

Verschueren, 1999).

Pragmatics is the study of those aspects of meaning which are not

captured by semantics:

meaning is a triadic relation: speaker means Y by X

utterance meaning consists of the meaning of the sentence plus

considerations of the intentions of the Speaker, interpretation of

the Hearer, determined by context and background knowledge.

for an utterance to mean something it has to fulfill certain

‘felicity conditions’.

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Introduction____________________________________________

IV. TASKS

1. Examine the description of a part of a linguistic day in Langford’s

life (as a university teacher) and identify the situations in which he is a

producer (speaker) of language, the situations in which he is a

consumer (hearer) of language, and the situations in which he is both.

(Source: Langford, 1994:2-7)

‘I wake with my alarm. I say to myself, but not out loud, a word or two

that should perhaps not be printed here. I stagger to the bathroom,

shave and generally prepare myself for the first phase of the day. […]

Having prepared myself for the day, I go down to the kitchen

and there, in the process of preparing my breakfast, encounter yet more

written messages as they silently scream at me from food

manufacturers packets, bottles and cartoons. I turn on the portable

television set, strategically placed on a worktop so as not to miss any

vital bit of breakfast television whilst standing guard over slowly

simmering porridge. I now encounter not my language, but the

language of other people specifically produced by them as a means of

communicating something to me along with several million others.

The language these people produce is mostly spoken language

and whilst sometimes it is directed at me as if I were a partner in a

conversation they are holding, at other times the language is directed

at actual conversational partners, either present in the studio or linked

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by microphones, TV monitors and other electronic wizardry. But the

odd thing is that whilst the talk is produced, for example, as part of a

conversation involving just those who are indeed in the studio, I

nevertheless get the impression that the conversation is being produced

specifically for me, and millions like me, as a potential overhearing

audience. Furthermore, the participants in such talk somehow make it

clear through the way that they talk, that this is precisely the sort of

impression they want me to be having.’

2. Imagine a continuation of Langford’s linguistic day in which he is a

producer and consumer of language.

3. Describe a similar linguistic day in your life.

4. Provide different contexts for the following utterances to have

different functions:

It’s hot in here.

Can you pass me the salt?

There’s a pencil on the table.

I’ll talk to you tomorrow.

It’s a beautiful day today.

5. Try to interpret the functions of the following utterances

recorded during a basketball game (Levinson,, 1994:67):

Alright Peter

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Introduction____________________________________________

Here!

C’mmon Peter.

Beautiful tip!

6. Read the following excerpt from Morris’s Foundations of the

theory of signs (1938:6) and explain in your own words what

you have understood:

‘In terms of the three correlates (sign vehicle, designatum,

interpreter) of the triadic relation of semiosis, a number of other

dyadic relations may be abstracted for study. One may study the

relations of signs to the objects to which signs are applicable. This

relation will be called the semantical dimension of semiosis […];

the study of this dimension will be called semantics. Or the subject

of study may be the relation of signs to interpreters. This relation

will be called the pragmatical dimension of semiosis, […] and the

study of this dimension will be named pragmatics.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Mey, L. J., 1993, Pragmatics. An Introduction,

Blackwell

Thomas, J., 1995, Meaning in Interaction, Longman

Verschueren, J., 1999, Understanding Pragmatics, Arnold,

London

Yule, G., 1996, Pragmatics, Oxford University Press

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Introduction____________________________________________

2. MICROPRAGMATICS

DEIXIS AND IMPLICIT MEANING

The term ‘micropragmatics’ is used by some pragmaticians (e.g. Mey,

1993) to refer to the pragmatics of lesser units of human language use,

such as questions of deixis, anaphora, implicature or speech acts, in

other words micropragmatic contexts.

For the beginning, let’s suppose (with Mey, 1993:89) that you are in a

foreign country, sitting in your hotel room at night. There is a knock at

the door. You don’t open the door, but ask: ‘Who’s there?’. The visitor

answers: ‘It’s me’. What do you do then?

There are two possibilities. Either you recognise the visitor’s voice, and

then decide whether or not to open the door. If you don’t, then what do

you do with a voice that refers to a ‘me’, when you don’t know who

that ‘me’ is. Since the ‘me’ always refers to ‘I’, and every ‘I’ is a

‘speaking me’, the utterance ‘It’s me’ is always necessarily true, but

totally uninformative to establish a speaker’s identity.

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In more technical terms, there is no known ‘referent’ for ‘me’ by virtue

of the linguistic expression alone. We are dealing here with a problem

that is basically philosophical, but which has serious consequences both

for theoretical linguistics and for our use of language.

We use language to refer to persons or things, directly or indirectly. In

the first case (direct reference), we have names available that lead us to

persons or things. In the second case (indirect reference), we need to

have recourse to other, linguistic as well as non-linguistic, strategies in

order to establish the correct reference. For example, ‘Me who’ or

‘Who’s talking?’

I. DEIXIS

“Deixis” is a technical term (from Greek) for one of the most basic

things we do with language. It means “pointing” via language, and any

linguistic form used to accomplish this pointing is called deictic

expression or indexicals. They are among the first forms to be spoken

by young children and can be used to indicate

people via person deixis (‘me’, ‘you’), or social deixis

location via spatial deixis (‘here’, ‘there’)

time via temporal deixis (‘now’, ‘then’)

and discourse via discourse deixis (referring expressions in texts)

Person deixis

The distinction described above involves person deixis, with the

speaker ‘I’ and the addressee ‘you’. To learn these deictic expressions,

we have to discover that each person in a conversation shifts from

being ‘I’ to being ‘you’. According to Yule (1996:10), all young

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Micropragmatics: Deixis and implicit meaning____________________________________________

children go through a stage in their learning where the distinction

seems problematic and they say things like ‘Read you a story’ (instead

of ‘me’).

Person deixis operates on a basic three part division, the speaker (I), the

addressee (you) and other(s) (he, she, it). As Yule (1996) observes, in

many languages these deictic expressions are elaborated with markers

of social status. Expressions which indicate higher status are described

as honorifics (social deixis).

For example, in French and Romanian there are two different forms

that encode a social contrast within person deixis, ‘tu’ (tu) and

‘vous’(dumneavoastra). This is known as T/V distinction.

In deictic terms, third person is not a direct participant in basic

interaction, and being an outsider, is more distant. Using a third person

form, where a second person would be possible, is one way of

communicating distance. This can also be done for humorous or ironic

purposes, as in the following examples given by Yule (1996:11):

‘Would his highness like some coffee?’

The distance associated with third person forms is also used to make

potential accusations less direct, as in:

Somebody didn’t clean up after himself.

There is also a potential ambiguity in the use in English of the first

person plural. There is an exclusive we (speaker plus others, excluding

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addressee) and inclusive we (speaker and addressee included), as in the

following possible reply to the accusation:

We clean up after ourselves around here.

The ambiguity present here provides a subtle opportunity for a hearer to

decide what was communicated. Either the hearer decides that he/she is

a member of the group to whom the rule applies, or an outsider.

Temporal deixis

Deixis is a form of referring tied to the speaker’s context, with some

basic distinctions being ‘near speaker’ versus ‘away form speaker’. In

English, the ‘near speaker’, or proximal terms are ‘this, ‘here’, ‘now’.

Proximal terms are typically interpreted in terms of the speaker’s

location, or the deictic centre, so that ‘now’ is generally understood as

referring to some point or period of time that has the time of the

speaker’s utterance at its centre. The psychological basis of temporal

deixis is that we treat events and objects that move towards us (into

view) or away from us (out of view).

One basic type of temporal deixis in English is in the choice of verb

tense, which has only two basic forms, the present and the past (the

proximal and the distal). The past tense is always used in English in

those if-clauses that mark events presented by the speaker as not being

close to present reality.

E.g. If I had a yacht…(source: Yule, 1996:15)

The idea expressed in the example is not treated as having happened in

the past. It is presented as deictically distant from the speaker’s current

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situation. So distant, that it actually communicates the negative (we

infer that the speaker has no yacht).

Spatial deixis

The concept of distance is relevant to spatial deixis, where the relative

location of people and things is being indicated. Contemporary English

makes use of two adverbs, ‘here’ and ‘there’, for the basic distinction.

Some verbs of motion, as Yule (1996:12) observes, such as ‘come’ and

‘go’, retain deictic sense when they are used to mark movement toward

the speaker (‘Come to bed’) or away the speaker (‘Go to bed’).

It is important to remember that location from the speaker’s perspective

can be fixed mentally as well as physically. Speakers temporarily away

from their home location will often continue to use ‘here’ to mean the

(physically distant) home location. According to Yule (1996:13),

speakers also seem to be able to project themselves (deictic

projection) into other locations prior to actually being in those

locations.

E.g.: I’ll come later (=movement to addressee’s location).

I’m not here = would be nonsense if ‘here’ means the place of

speaker’s utterance. It ceases to be so if we know that the utterance is

produced by an answering machine. In this case, I am projecting

presence, for future audience, to be in the required location.

A similar deictic projection is accomplished via dramatic performance

when using direct speech to represent the person, location, and feelings

of someone else.

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E.g.: I was looking at this little puppy in a cage with such a sad look on

its face. It was like, ‘Oh, I’m so unhappy here, will you set me free?’

(from Yule, 1996:13)

Discourse deixis refers to forms of expressions that point at earlier,

simultaneous or following discourse (Verschueren, 1999:21), such as

linkers.

All indexical expressions refer to certain world conditions, either

subjective or objective in nature. The following story, borrowed from

Levinson (1983:68) is meant to illustrate the importance of having the

right point of view, and how one can anticipate the way people will

construe the world in terms of their point of view.

‘A melamed (Hebrew teacher) discovering that he had left his

comfortable slippers back in the house, sent a student after them with a

note for his wife. The note read: “Send me your slippers with this boy”.

When the student asked why he had written ‘your’ slippers, the

melamed answered: ‘Yold! (Fool) If I wrote ‘my’ slippers, she would

read ‘my slippers’ and would send her slippers. What could I do with

her slippers? So I wrote ‘your’ slippers, she’ll read ‘your’ slippers and

send me mine.” ‘

II. IMPLICIT MEANING

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Pragmatics looks at language as a form of action – when we say

something we also perform an action (we make requests, ask for

information, apologise, order, etc) - It is anchored in a real-world

context, and it pays attention to types of meaning that go beyond what

is ‘given’ by the language form itself, or what is literally said. Thus,

implicit meaning becomes a topic of investigation. There are three

things involved here: the impossibility of complete explicitness,

conventional linguistic means to cope with this impossibility, and

strategies to exploit it. We will next look at the impossibility of

complete explicitness, and at presuppositions as a carrier of implicit

meaning.

1. The impossibility of complete explicitness

Let’s take the following example, adapted from Verschueren (1999:25-

26): imagine that Debby and Dan are at a dinner party and Debby asks

Dan ‘Go anywhere today?’

The difference between what people usually say and what they mean,

and the impossibility of complete explicitness, can be seen if we

imagine what Debby would have to say to clarify in completely explicit

linguistic terms what she means when asking the above question.

‘Assuming that we are sitting close enough together for you,

Dan, having normal hearing capabilities and a workable knowledge of

English, to understand me, I am addressing you. I also assume that we

share some knowledge about where we are, and why we are here.

Further, I guess that you, like me, do not want us to sit here silently but

that we both want to interact socially and sociably by means of a

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conversation. Since we also share the knowledge that it is now dinner

time, that the main part of the day is over, and that during a day like

there are many things one can do, a basic option being either to remain

here or to leave, it seems reasonable for me to start a conversation by

asking you whether you went somewhere today. So I am asking you:

‘Did you go anywhere today?’ And I would very much appreciate it if

you could say something in response to the question’ (from

Verschueren, 1999:26)

The world of unexpressed information which an utterance carries along

is called background information (common knowledge or common

ground). Because of the impossibility of full explicitness, and the need

to ‘explicate’ aspects of general background information to achieve full

understanding of any instance of language use, the term explicature

has been introduced. For example, the School is closed during

Holidays, requires as ‘explicatures’ a further specification or which

‘School’ it is that one is talking about, of whether ‘Holidays’ is meant

to be Holidays of a specific year or of every year, and of whether

‘closed’ means closed for every living creature or only for students.

Explicatures are simply representations of implicit forms of meaning.

2. Conventional means for conveying implicit meaning

Language provides numerous conventionalised carriers of implicit

meaning, which are tools for linking explicit content to relevant aspects

of background information.

Presuppositions

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A presupposition is something the speaker assumes to be the case prior

to making an utterance. Speakers, not sentences, have presuppositions.

Thus, we can identify some of the potentially assumed information that

would be associated with the following utterance (Yule, 1996:25):

Mary’s brother bought three horses.

In producing the utterance, the speaker will normally be expected to

have the presuppositions that a person called Mary exists and that she

has a brother. The speaker may also hold the more specific

presupposition that Mary has only one brother and that she has a lot of

money. All of these presuppositions are the speaker’s and all of them

can be wrong.

According to Verschueren (1999:27), there are linguistic forms as

indicators of potential presuppositions, which can only become actual

presuppositions in contexts with the speakers.

1. Existential presuppositions presuppose the existence, at a given

place and/or time, of entities in a ‘real’ world. Examples would be

possessives (‘your car’ presupposes ‘you have a car’), and more

generally any definite noun phrase. The following example

(Verschueren, 1999:27):

The King of France is talking to Napoleon

said at this time in history and using the present tense, is devoid of real

meaning because the existential presuppositions carried by the referring

expressions ‘The King of France’ and ‘Napoleon’ are not satisfied.

2. Factive presuppositions

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A number of verbs, such as know, realise regret, or phrases involving

be aware, be glad, have factive presuppositions. The following

examples have been taken from Yule (1996:28-29):

E.g.:

She didn’t realise he was ill. (He was ill)

We regret telling him (We told hem)

I wasn’t aware that she was married. (She was married)

I am glad that it’s over (It’s over).

3. Non-factive presuppositions

There are examples of non-factive (presuppositions assumed not to be

true) presuppositions associated with a number of verbs: dream,

imagine, pretend.

Eg:

I dreamed that I had a lot of money (I didn’t have a lot of money)

We pretended that we knew what it was all about (We didn’t know)

4. Lexical presuppositions

The use of one form with its asserted meaning is conventionally

interpreted with the presupposition that another (non-asserted) meaning

is understood. For example verbs like manage (presupposing tried),

stop, start.

E.g

He managed to repair the car (He tried hard)

She started smoking (She wasn’t smoking before)

5. Structural presuppositions

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Some sentence structures have been analysed as conventionally

presupposing that part of the structure is already assumed to be true.

For example, the wh-question constructions in English are interpreted

with the presupposition that the information after the wh-form is

already known.

E.g. (Yule, 1996:29):

When did you leave? (You left)

Where did you buy the bike? (You bought the bike).

We have seen that what people say carries a whole world of

unexpressed information, and that it would be impossible to

communicate with complete explicitness. Presuppositions are one form

of conveying aspects of implicit meaning, and we say that speakers

hold a number of presuppositions when producing utterances.

III. SUMMARY

The term ‘micropragmatics’ is used by some pragmaticians (e.g. Mey,

1993) to refer to the pragmatics of lesser units of human language use

such as deixis.

Deixis means “pointing” via language, and any linguistic form used to

accomplish this pointing is called deictic expression or indexical.

Indexicals are among the first forms to be spoken by young children

and can be used to indicate:

people via person deixis (‘me’, ‘you’), or social deixis

In many languages these deictic expressions are elaborated with

markers of social status. Expressions which indicate higher status are

25


described as honorifics (social deixis). In deictic terms, third person is

not a direct participant in basic interaction, and being an outsider, is

more distant. Using a third person form, where a second person would

be possible, is one way of communicating distance. There is also a

potential ambiguity in the use in English of the first person plural.

There is an exclusive we (speaker plus others, excluding addressee) and

inclusive we (speaker and addressee included).

time via temporal deixis (‘now’, ‘then’)

‘Now’ is generally understood as referring to some point or period of

time that has the time of the speaker’s utterance at its centre.

location via spatial deixis (‘here’, ‘there’)

It is important to remember that location from the speaker’s perspective

can be fixed mentally as well as physically. Speakers temporarily away

from their home location will often continue to use ‘here’ to mean the

(physically distant) home location. Speakers also seem to be able to

project themselves (deictic projection) into other locations prior to

actually being in those locations.

discourse via discourse deixis (referring expressions in texts)

Conventional means for conveying implicit meaning

Pragmatics pays attention to types of meaning that go beyond what is

‘given’ by the language form itself, or what is literally said.

Presuppositions

A presupposition is something the speaker assumes to be the case prior

to making an utterance. Speakers, not sentences, have presuppositions.

Existential presuppositions presuppose the existence, at a

given place and/or time, of entities in a ‘real’ world.

Factive presuppositions

26


A number of verbs, such as know, realise regret, or phrases

involving be aware, be glad, have factive presuppositions.

Non-factive presuppositions

Presuppositions assumed not to be true associated with a number of

verbs: dream, imagine, pretend

Lexical presuppositions

The use of one form with its asserted meaning is conventionally

interpreted with the presupposition that another (non-asserted) meaning

is understood. For example verbs like manage (presupposing tried),

stop, start.

Structural presuppositions

Some sentence structures have been analysed as conventionally

presupposing that part of the structure is already assumed to be true.

For example, the wh-question constructions in English are interpreted

with the presupposition that the information after the wh-form is

already known.

IV. TASKS

1. Deixis (Mey, 1993:106-107):

An hour before dawn on March 7-th, 1974, Kaspar Joachim Utz

died of a second and long-expected stroke, in his apartment at No. 5,

Siroka Street, overlooking the Old Jewish cemetery in Prague.

Three days later, at 7.45 a.m., his friend Dr. Vaclav Orlik was

standing outside the Church of St. Sigismund, awaiting the arrival of

the hearse and clutching seven of the ten pink carnations he had hoped

27


to afford at the florist’s. He noted with approval the first sings of

spring. In a garden across the street, jackdaws with twigs in their beaks

were wheeling above the lindens, and now and then a minor avalanche

would slide from the pantiled roof of a tenement.

Ehile Orlik waited, he was approached by a man with a curtain

of grey hair that fell below the collar of his raincoat.

‘Do you play the organ?’ the man asked in a catarrhal voice.

‘I fear not’, said Orlik

‘Nor do I ‘, the man said, and shuffled off down a side-street.

Bruce Chatwin, Utz, 1988)

QUESTIONS

a. What types of deixis are found in the excerpt?

b. Make an inventory, and try to establish a preliminary classification

(you can proceed either by looking at the ‘type’ of deixis, or at what

deictic elements refer to in the text).

2. Analyse the following utterances in terms of presuppositions

(Verschueren, 1999:28):

I regret the year of prosperity and peace has ended.

The UN managed to bring about peace.

A time of prosperity and peace will return.

What the UN did was to bring about peace in Bosnia.

1996, which was a year of prosperity and peace, will be remembered

forever.

3. Study the following sign, appearing at selected private parking sites

throughout the Greater Chicago area (Mey, 1993:15)

28


ALL UNAUTHORIZED VECHICLES

WILL BE TOWED BY LINCOLN

TOWING SERVICE TO 4884 N.CLARK

FEE $80.00 CASH,

VISA & MASTER CHARGE ACCEPTED

PHONE 561-4433

QUESTIONS:

a. What does this sign tell you explicitly? And implicitly?

b. Who do you think is the sender of the message?

The owner of the parking lot?

The owner of the phone number?

The police?

(Argue your point of view)

c. Judging from the text of the message, would you say that illegal

parking is a criminal act in Chicago?

(Justify your answer).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Keenan, E., O., 1976, The universality of conversational

implicature, in Language in Society, 5, 67-80

Verschueren, J., 1999, Whose discipline? Some critical

reflections on linguistic pragmatics, in Journal of Pragmatics,

31, 869-879

29


3. SPEECH ACT THEORY

It is important to realize that pragmatics, as mentioned in the

introductory section, is a different view on the same linguistic resources

as the other components of linguistics look into. To understand the

meaning of a linguistic message we certainly rely on the syntactic

structure and lexical items, but it is a mistake to think that we operate

only with this literal input to our understanding. We can recognize, for

instance, when a writer (speaker) has produced a perfectly grammatical

sentence from which we can derive a literal interpretation, but which

we cannot say to have understood, simply because we need more

information.

To illustrate this, let’s take the following example (from Levinson,

1980:8), where the conjunction because is not only used to connect two

clauses in a complex sentence. It is also used to introduce the reason for

asking a question:

E.g.

What’s the time, because I’ve got to go out at eight?

30

Speech act theory____________________________________________

We can safely say that (cf. Levinson, 1980:8), in the example above,

the structure of the sentence is not that normally associated with

because as a logical connector. In other words, our understanding of the

example is based, not on an interpretation of the sentence on the page,

but on our assumption that a reason is being expressed for an action

performed in speaking

We will next look at the speech act theory, which is basic to any

pragmatic approach to language.

I. LANGUAGE AS ACTION

Inferring the function of what is said by considering its form and

context is an ability which is essential for successful communication.

Speech Act Theory provides us with a means of establishing the

function of what is being said. The theory was developed from the

basic belief that language is used to perform actions. Thus, its

fundamental insights focus on how meaning and action are related to

language. This is a position in which we shall be able to examine the

structure of discourse both in terms of surface relations of form, and

underlying relations of functions and acts.

Speech Act theory was formulated by the philosopher John Austin in a

series of lectures now collected in a short book: How to Do Things With

Words (1962). These ideas were further developed by the philosopher

John Searle (1967, 1975), who added to them and presented them

more systematically, and subsequently developed by other thinkers

31


Austin, his almost equally influential pupil H.P.Grice and a group of

other philosophers working at Oxford came to be known as ‘ordinary

language philosophers’.

The ordinary language philosophers reacted against the view of such

Oxford-based philosophers as Russell, (cf. Thomas, 1995:29) who

believed that everyday language is somehow deficient, full of

ambiguities, imprecision and contradictions. Their aim was to refine

language, removing its perceived imperfections and to create an ideal

language. The response of Austin and his group was to observe that

ordinary people manage to communicate extremely efficiently with

language just the way it is. Instead of striving to rid everyday language

of its imperfections, he argued, we should try to understand how it is

that people manage with it as it is.

II. DECLARATIONS AND PERFORMATIVES

Speech acts are actions performed via utterances (apology, complaint,

compliment, etc.) They apply to the speaker’s communicative intention

in producing an utterance. The speaker normally expects that his/her

communicative intention will be recognized by the hearer. Both

speaker and hearer are usually helped in this process by the

circumstances surrounding utterances. These circumstances, including

other utterances, are called speech events. In many ways, it is the

nature of the speech event that determines the interpretation of an

utterance as performing a particular speech act.

32


For example, the utterance This tea is really cold (Yule, 1996:48),

functions as a complaint if it is uttered on a winter day, when the

speaker reaches for a cup of tea, believing that it has been freshly made.

It may also function as a praise if it is uttered on a really hot summer’s

day, with the speaker being given a glass of iced tea by the hearer.

Speech Act theory begins with the observation that there is a class of

highly ritualistic utterances which carry no information about the world

outside language at all because they refer to themselves.

E.g.:

a. I swear to… .

b. I sentence you to death.

c. I hereby open the Theater House.

d. I hereby name this ship ‘Aurora’.

In the utterances above, saying the words and doing the action are the

same thing. By uttering them, we perform the acts of swearing an oath,

sentencing a criminal to death, opening a building, and naming a ship.

In other words, the function of the utterance is created by the form.

They are called declarations.

However, the utterance succeeds only if certain external conditions, or

expected, appropriate conditions are fulfilled. For example (Cook,

1989:35) ‘I sentence you to death’ has to fulfill the following felicity

conditions for the utterance to succeed:

33


the words must be uttered by someone with the necessary authority

(a judge), in a country where there is death penalty, to a person who

has been convicted of a particular crime;

they must be spoken not written, at the right time (the end of a trial),

in the right place (in court)

Declarations are only a special case of a much commoner group of

utterances called performatives for which saying is doing. Unlike the

declarations, in the performatives, the related verbs (vow, arrest,

declare, etc.) are not actually said. For example, in ordering someone to

do something you can use the verb ‘order’, thus the utterance becoming

an explicit performative:

E.g.I order you to clean your boots.

(Source: Cook, 1989:36)

But you can also use the imperative instead, and this is called implicit

performative:

E.g.

Clean your boots!

The assumption is that underlying every utterance (U) there is a clause

containing a performative verb (Vp) which makes the function explicit.

The basic format of the underlying clause is:

I (hereby) Vp you (that) U

I hereby order you that you clean your boots.

34


the subject must be first person sg., + the adverb ‘hereby’, indicating

that the utterance counts as an action by being uttered + a

performative verb in the present tense + indirect object in the 2-nd

per.sg. This underlying clause will always make explicit what may

be implicitly expressed.

III. FELICITY CONDITIONS

As we have already seen in the section above, for an utterance to

perform a certain act, some appropriate conditions have to be fulfilled.

Technically, they are called ‘felicity conditions’. Speech act theory

defines underlying conditions that must hold for an utterance to be used

to realize a certain speech act.

Here is an example taken from Yule (1996:50-51): In everyday

contexts among ordinary people, there are preconditions on speech acts.

These are called general conditions on the participants, for example,

that they can understand the language being used. There are also the so-

called content conditions. For example, for a promise, the content of

the utterance must be about a future event. The preparatory

conditions for a promise require first, that the event will not happen by

itself, and second, that the event will have a beneficial effect. Related to

these conditions is the sincerity condition that, for a promise, the

speaker genuinely intends to carry out the future action. Finally, there is

the essential condition, which covers the fact that by the act of uttering

a promise, I thereby intend to create an obligation to carry out the

action as promised. In other words, the utterance changes the state from

non-obligation to obligation.

35


Here is another example of the felicity conditions required by the act of

‘ordering’ (they are not detailed here in types of conditions) (cf. Cook,

1989:36):

1. the sender believes the action should be done

2. the receiver has the ability to do the action

3. the receiver has the obligation to do the action

4. the sender has the right to tell the receiver to do the action

If any one of these conditions is not fulfilled, the utterance will not

function as an order. If the conditions do hold, then any reference by

the sender to the action will be perceived as an order even if it is

implicitly made.

Cook (1989:37) illustrates how a sergeant, speaking to the private, can

utter any of the following and they will be perceived as an order:

E.g.

I think your boots need cleaning, Jones (Condition 1)

I’m bloody sure you can get your boots cleaner than that, Jones!

(Condition 2)

You’re supposed to come on to parade with clean boots, Jones!

(Condition 3)

It’s my job to see you’ve got cleaner boots than this! (Condition 4)

The private, for his part, may try to challenge the felicity conditions

invoked, and, if he succeeds, he will take away the status of ‘order’

from the utterance:

E.g.:

Don’t you think having a well-oiled rifle is more important?

I’ve been scrubbing all morning and they won’t come any cleaner.

36


I didn’t see that in the standing orders, sergeant.

The Captain told me it was all right.

In armies the power relations are so clear, and the rights and obligations

of the participants so firmly established that these comments are likely

to be punished. It rarely happens that explicit ordering and challenging

take place.

IV. UNDERLYING FORCE (AUSTIN)

Austin has shown that on any occasion, the action performed by

producing an utterance will consist of three related acts:

1. locutionary act: the basic act of utterance, producing a meaningful

linguistic expression. At this level, the locution is what the words say.

2. illocutionary act: performed via the communicative force of an

utterance, the function that we have in mind when we produce an

utterance, what the words do. This is also known as the illocutionary

force of an utterance.

3. perlocutionary act: the effect you intend your utterance to have on

the hearer. For example, the perlocutionary effect of the utterance It’s

hot in here might be the hearer going to the window and opening it.

This is also known as the perlocutionary effect of an utterance.

Austin suggests in fact that the words are determined by the intention

of the speaker. He also gets into extremely fine detail as to certain

37


verbs that can be used to perform a specific act. So, for a speech act to

succeed, all three levels have to be taken into consideration: it must be

minimally understood by hearer, the words uttered do something, and

the words are determined by the intention of the speaker.

The most discussed dimension is that of the illocutionary acts, because

the same locutionary act can have different illocutionary force, or

function, as we have already seen.

An important implication of taking the speech acts as the basic unit of

language analysis is that it allows researchers see that there is no one-

to-one match between function (illocutionary force) and grammatical

form (type of clause). For example, one can ask for a glass of water

using an interrogative (‘Can I have…?’), an imperative (‘Give me…!’),

a declarative (‘I want…’).

Speech Act theory has had a tremendous impact upon communicative

language teaching and syllabus design. Thus, communicative

competence includes not only the mastery of grammar and lexicon but

also how speech acts, such as greetings, compliments, apologies,

invitations and complaints are to be given, interpreted and responded

to.

Moreover, the upshot is not always confined to words. Here is an

example (Cook, 1989:40) from a court in Oxford, which heard a case

concerning a fight in a Chinese take-away. A man picked up a bottle of

sauce on his way out, without paying for it. The owner picked up a

metal rolling pin, whereas the man took off his metal belt. The jury

38


were asked to decide whether either or both of these actions could be

interpreted as a threat.

V. TAXONOMY OF SPEECH ACTS (SEARLE)

The practical problem with any analysis based on identifying explicit

performatives is that, in principle, we simply do not know how many

performative verbs there are in any language. That is why, some

general classification of types of speech acts are usually used.

Discovering the number and categories of illocutionary acts is an

important part of speech act theory.

Searle proposes five classes of speech acts: declarations (e.g.,

appointing), representatives (e.g. asserting), expressives (e.g. thanking),

directives (e.g. requesting), and commissives (e.g. promising). The

principle according to which he differentiates the five categories

concerns the illocutionary force of the act. This is derived from the

essential condition of an act (the condition that defines what the act

‘counts’ as). We thus have the following categories of speech acts

(examples taken from Yule, 1996:53-54):

Declarations: speech acts that change the world via their utterance.

E.g.:

Priest: I now pronounce you husband and wife.

Referee: You’re out.

Jury Foreman: We find the defendant guilty.

39


Representatives: speech acts that the speaker believes to be the case or

not.

For example,

statements of fact (The earth is round)

assertions (Pragmatics deals with language in context)

descriptions (It was a rainy day)

In using a representative, the speaker makes words fit the world (of

belief).

Expressives: speech acts that state what the speaker feels

(psychological states). For example, expressing pleasure, pain, likes,

dislikes, joy, sorrow, etc. They can be caused by something the speaker

does or the hearer does, but they are about the speaker’s experience:

E.g.

a. I’m really sorry.

b. Congratulations!

c. Oh that’s delicious!

In using expressives the speaker makes the words fit the world (of

feeling).

Directives: speech acts that speakers use to get someone else do

something. They express what the speaker wants. For example,

commands, orders, requests, suggestions, etc. and can be positive or

negative:

E.g.

a. Gimme a cup of tea. Make it strong.

b. Could you lend me a pencil, please.

c. Watch the step.

40


In using a directive, the speaker attempts to make the world fit the

words (via the hearer).

Commissives: speech acts that the speakers use to commit themselves

to some future action. They express what the speaker intends. For

example, promises, threats, refusals, pledges and can be performed by

the speaker alone or as a member of a group:

E.g.

a. I’ll be back.

b. I’m going to get it right next time.

c. We will not do that.

In using a commissive, the speaker undetakes to make the world fit the

words (via the speaker).

VI. DIRECT AND INDIRECT SPEECH ACTS

A different approach to distinguishing types of speech acts can be made

on the basis of structure, provided by the three basic sentence types in

English which relate to the three general communicative functions

(Yule, 1996:54):

______________________________________________

Utterance Sentence type Function

______________________________________________

You wear a seat belt. Declarative Statement

Do you wear a seat belt? Interrogative Question

Wear a seat belt! Imperative Command/Request

________________________________________________

41


Whenever there is a direct relationship between a structure and a

function, we have a direct speech act. Whenever there is an indirect

relationship between structure and function we have an indirect speech

act.

For example, in English most requests are done by using declaratives:

E.g.

It’s cold outside:

The utterance above, used as a statement, is a direct speech act (I

hereby tell you that it is cold outside), used as a command/request, it is

an indirect speech act (I hereby request you that you close the window).

One of the most common types of indirect speech acts in English has

the form of interrogative, which is not typically used to ask a question

(we don’t expect only an answer, we expect an action).

E.g.:

Could you pass the salt?

Would you open this?

Indirect speech acts are generally associated with greater politeness in

English than direct speech acts.

The usefulness of speech act analysis is in illustrating the kinds of

things we can do with words and identifying some of the conventional

utterance forms we use to perform specific actions. However, there are

several problems with the speech act theory. For example, many speech

act theorists fail to take proper account of indeterminacy (i.e. by

leaving the force of an utterance unclear, the speaker may leave the

42


hearer the opportunity to choose between one force and another). Thus,

the utterance If I were you I’d leave town straight away, can be

interpreted according to the context as a piece of advice, a warning, or a

threat.

Also, speech acts are often played out over a number of turns, so we

need to look at more extended interaction to understand how these

actions are carried out and interpreted within speech events.

In this chapter we have seen how utterances perform actions, how

speakers can mean considerably more than their words say. In the next

chapter we shall address the question of how hearers get from what is

said to what is meant.

VII. SUMMARY

Speech acts are actions performed via utterances (apology, complaint,

compliment, etc.) They apply to the speaker’s communicative intention

in producing an utterance. The speaker normally expects that his/her

communicative intention will be recognized by the hearer. Both

speaker and hearer are usually helped in this process by the

circumstances surrounding utterances. These circumstances, including

other utterances, are called speech events.

For an utterance to perform a certain act, some appropriate conditions

have to be fulfilled. Technically, they are called ‘felicity conditions’.

Speech act theory defines underlying conditions that must hold for an

utterance to be used to realize a certain speech act.

The communicative force of an utterance

43


locutionary act: the basic act of utterance, producing a

meaningful linguistic expression.

illocutionary act: performed via the communicative force of an

utterance, the function that we have in mind when we produce

an utterance.

perlocutionary act: the effect you intend your utterance to have

on the hearer.

Taxonomy of speech acts

Declarations: speech acts that change the world via their

utterance.

Representatives: speech acts that the speaker believes to be the

case or not.

Expressives: speech acts that state what the speaker feels

(psychological states).

Directives: speech acts that speakers use to get someone else do

something. They express what the speaker wants.

Commissives: speech acts that the speakers use to commit

themselves to some future action. They express what the

speaker intends.

Direct and indirect speech acts

Whenever there is a direct relationship between a structure and a

function, we have a direct speech act. Whenever there is an indirect

relationship between structure and function we have an indirect speech

act.

44


VIII. TASKS

1. What are the felicity conditions for the following utterances to

function and to what extent do they vary from culture to culture?

(Source: Cook, 1989)

1. I pronounce that they be Man and wife.

2. I name this ship Queen Elisabeth.

3. You are under arrest.

4. I absolve you from all your sins.

5. I declare the said person duly elected to Parliament.

2. Look at the following utterances and try to determine what might

have been their illocutionary force:

1. Open the window, will you?

2. It’s very cold in here, isn’t it?

3. I’m sorry for having broken the glass..

4. I promise to come tomorrow.

5. Somebody’s messed up my things in here.

3. How does an explicit performative differ from an implicit

performative? In what circumstances might one be used as opposed to

the other?

45


4. Look at the following transcripts of exchanges between a husband

and a wife. How does A exploit ambiguity in the illocutionary force of

what is said? Do the utterances which explicitly formulate the upshot

refer to the illocutionary or perlocutionary force? (Source: Cook, 1989)

Exchange 1.

A: Are you planning to do it this afternoon?

B: (angrily) Well WHEN this afternoon?

A: (with injured innocence) I’m just asking whether you’ll be able to

do it this afternoon.

Exchange 2.

B: Oh no, we haven’t got the TV programme.

A: Go and get one then.

B: Go and get one! I’ve just come in.

A: Well if you don’t go I’ll go.

B: That’s blackmail.

A: It’s not blackmail, it’s just a FACT.

5. Comment on the following utterance. Does it qualify as a promise?

Why (not)? (Source: Mey, 1993:127)

I promise not to keep this promise.

6. Suppose you come across a street sign whose text says: (Source:

Mey, 1993:127)

46


DO NOT READ THIS SIGN

What speech act are we dealing with?

Can one take this seriously? Why not?

7. What is the problem with the following speech acts. Do they all

suffer from the same irregularity, or are they irregular different

ways? Can you think of any conditions that make any of these

speech acts acceptable? (Source: Mey, 1993:127)

I promise (hereby) to set fire to your house.

I hereby warn you that you will be awarded the Nobel prize in

literature.

WRNING: Your lawn will turn brown in November

8. Consider the following text, found on a package of American

brewers’ yeast in the 1920s: (Source: Mey, 1993:127)

Do not mix the contents of this package with 2 qts of lukewarm

water

Do not add 1 lb of sprouted barley

Do not put in a warm spot (74 degrees) for 7-10 days

Do not skim

Do not put mixture in copper pot and heat

Do not condense vapors

Do not consume end product

Do not get caught

47


What speech acts are these (if any)

9. The following exchange occurred during an English lesson where the

teacher had asked his pupils to write complimentary notes to each

other. M, one of the students, is reading aloud the message he had

received. Comment on the speech acts involved in the exchange, and

how the other participants (T=teacher; Ser=pupil) interpret the message

(Source, Coposescu, 2003:165):

CR 338-343

M: somebody tells me that er Mihai means who’s the king. Ok, and

er somebody tells me sometimes I have to know what to say

because I might hurt someone. OK, thank you.

T: wow, that wasn’t very nice. What about (.) are there some

complimentary ones?

Ser: no, they’re actually nice

T: oh really? […]

48


10. In groups, take a textbook for teaching English and look for

ways in which language functions are dealt with.

11. Think of ways of expressing apologies and request in

Romanian and in English.

49


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blun-Kulka, S., 1987, Indirectness and politeness in

Requests: same or different?, in Journal of Pragmatics, 11, 131-

146

Gibbs, R., W., 1988, Conversational sequences and

preference for indirect speech acts, in Discourse Processes, 11,

101-116

Trosborg, A., 1987, Apology strategies in natives/non

Natives, in Journal of Pragmatics, 11, 147-167

50

Conversational principle: Cooperation____________________________________________

4. CONVERSATIONAL PRINCIPLE:

COOPERATION

People are interpreting other people’s language - and expecting other

people to interpret their own - all the time, apparently with a surprising

degree of accuracy. This happens, as we have seen in the previous

chapter, because words and sentences are used by people in certain

contexts to do something. They have certain functions.

For example, depending on who is speaking to whom and in what

context, the following sentence has different functions:

The window is open (Source, Cook, 1989)

Thus, it may be an expression of worry if it is uttered by wife to

husband in the middle of the night. It may be an order, if it is uttered by

the head-teacher to a student. It may also be an interpretation if it is

uttered by a detective to the assistant.

However, as we have seen in the previous chapter, there are problems

with the functional interpretation of the language, because not all

functions can be neatly labelled, and because there is not always a neat

correspondence between a single utterance and a single function. Thus,

the following questions might be asked:

51


1. If people can mean different things with the same words, how do

human beings interpret what is meant from what is said?

2. Why is there a divergence of function and form, or why do not

people speak directly and say what they mean?

For an answer we have to look at the work of Paul Grice, who

attempted to explain how, by means of shared rules of conversations,

competent language-users manage to understand one another.

Like Austin before him, Grice was invited to give lectures at Harvard

University, and it was there in 1967 that he first outlined his theory of

implicture. A shorter version of these lectures was published in 1975

in a paper Logic and conversation. Later, Grice expanded upon his

earlier work and it proved to be one of the most influential theories in

the development of pragmatics. Grice’s theory is an attempt at

explaining how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant, from

the level of expressed meaning to the level of implied meaning.

I. CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURE: IMPLICATURES

AND INFERENCES

The basic assumption in conversation is that (according to Grice,

1975), unless otherwise indicated, the participants are adhering to some

shared rules of conversation, which he calls the Co-operative Principle.

Let’s have a look at an example (Levinson, 1983) :

E.g. A: I hope you brought the bread and the cheese.

B: Ah, I brought the bread.

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In order for A to understand B’s reply, A has to assume that B is co-

operating, and has given B the right amount of information. But he

didn’t mention the cheese. If he had brought the cheese he would have

said so. He must intend that A infer that what is not mentioned was not

brought. In this case B has conveyed more than he said via a

conversational implicature.

Before going into Grice’s theory of conversational implicature, we

shall try to clarify two terms, implicature and inference, and the

corresponding verbs to imply and to infer. The verb to imply is used

when the speaker generates some meaning beyond the semantic

meaning of the words. Implicature (term devised by Grice) refers to the

implied meaning generated intentionally by the speaker.

Infer, on the other hand, refers to the situation in which the hearer

deduces meaning from available evidence. Inference is the inferred

meaning deduced by the hearer, which may or may not be the same as

the speaker’s intended implicature.

Here is an example which illustrates the distinction between

implicature and inference:

E.g.

The following example is taken from a children’s book, set in Holland

under William the Silent, during the war with Spain. Maurice was a

boy caught up in the events; Theo was a manservant:

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Tears filled his eyes; he cried easily in these days, nor having full

control of himself, and Theo’s fate caused him great grief. The Duchess

had told him that she had been able to discover nothing, and therefore

it was assumed that he head been released as entirely innocent.

Maurice was convinced that nothing of the kind had happened, and

assumed that the Duchess had found out that Theo was dead and had

invented the agreeable solution in order not to distress him. He could

not do anything about it and had accepted the statement in silence, but

he fretted a great deal over Theo’s death.

(source: Thomas, 1995:58-59)

Here, the Duchess implied that Theo was all right. Maurice understood

what she had implied, but nevertheless inferred the opposite (that Theo

was dead).

Here is another example (source: Thomas, 1995:59):

Some years ago, Jenny Thomas went to stay with her brother

and his family, including his son, aged 5. She had had with her an

electric toothbrush, into which she had recently put new batteries. Her

brother asked to see the toothbrush, but when he tried to operate it, it

would not work:

J.T.: That’s funny. I thought I put in some new batteries.

Nephew: (Going extremely red): The ones in my engine still

work.

Here is Thomas’s interpretation of what was going on in the above

conversation:

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J.T’s remark had been a genuine expression of surprised irritation,

addressed to the family at large and she did not expect any response.

However, her nephew misinterpreted the force of her utterance as an

accusation and inferred (wrongly) that he was a suspect. According to

Thomas, we can spell out the interpretation of the boy’s contribution as

follows:

‘Step 1 The first step in any interpretation is to assign sense and

reference to the words. In this case, this was not difficult; the

boy was asserting that he had batteries in the engine of his toy

train which were in working order.

Step 2: The hearer works out the speaker’s intention in uttering

those words; they understood him to have implied that he was

not responsible for the fact that the batteries were flat. The

pragmatic force of his utterance was to deny guilt.

Step 3: Nevertheless, everyone present inferred from the

evidence (from their knowledge of how little boys behave, from

the fact that he blushed, from the attempt to deflect attention

from his toy, and from the fact that he spoke at all) that he had

in fact switched the batteries.’

Grice’s theory is designed to explain how hearers get from level 1 to

level 2, from what is said to what is implied. Steps 1 and 2 fall within

the realm of pragmatics; the third step depends on more than just

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linguistic factors and needs to be explained within a more general

theory, that of social interaction.

II. CO-OPERATIVE PRINCIPLE

Let’s consider the following scenario (from Yule, 1996:36). 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 bite’s the man’s

hand)

Man: Ouch! You said your dog doesn’t bite.

Woman: He doesn’t. But that’s not my dog.

The problem here is the man’s assumption that more was

communicated than was said. In other words, the man assumed that the

woman, by saying NO, meant that the dog lying at her feet was her dog,

and it didn’t bite.

From the man’s perspective, the woman’s answer provides less

information than expected: she might be expected to provide the

information stated in the last line (But that’s not my dog}.

The concept of there being an expected amount of information

provided in conversation is just one aspect of the more general idea that

people involved in a conversation will co-operate with each other. In

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most circumstances, the assumption of co-operation is so pervasive that

it can be stated as a co-operative principle, which was elaborated by

H.P.Grice (1975) in four sub-principles or maxims.

Grice’s principle is formulated as follows: ‘Make your contribution

such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted

purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged’.

According to this principle we interpret language on the assumption

that its sender is obeying (observing) four maxims:

1. Maxim of quantity: Make your contribution as informative as is

required for the current purpose of the exchange. Do not make your

contribution more informative than is required.

2. Maxim of quality: Do not say what you believe to be false; Do not

say that for which you lack evidence.

3. Maxim of Relation: Be relevant

4. Maxim of Manner: Avoid obscurity of expression; Avoid

ambiguity; Be brief; Be orderly.

Using this assumption, combined with the knowledge of the world, the

receiver can reason from the literal, semantic meaning of what is said to

the pragmatic meaning and infer what the sender is intending to do with

his/her words.

E.g.: A neighbour to you:

Sorry, dear. I saw you were home. My cat got stuck in the tree over

there.

(Adapted from Cool, 1989)

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The hearer (you) starts from the knowledge and experience of the

world, that a cat is likely to be very unhappy stuck in a tree, that a

human is able to free such a cat, etc.

According to the co-operative principle the hearer assumes that the

neighbour is telling the truth (not playing a joke); that she is being

relevant (compare with: The tree is in blossom). So, the utterance is

interpreted as a request for help in freeing the cat. The pragmatic

meaning would be: Come and free the cat which is stuck in the tree.

The maxims are unstated assumptions we have in conversations. We

assume that people are normally going to provide an appropriate

amount of information; we assume that they are telling the truth, being

relevant, and trying to be as clear as they can. Because these principles

are assumed in normal interaction, speakers rarely mention them.

However, there are certain expressions used to mark that speakers may

be in danger of not fully adhering to the principles. These expressions

are called ‘hedges’. The following examples are taken from Yule

(1996:38-39):

E.g.:

Quality:

a. As far as I know, they’re married.

b. I may be mistaken, but I thought I saw a wedding ring on her

finger.

c. I’m not sure if this is right, but I heard it was a secret ceremony in

Hawaii.

d. He couldn’t live without her, I guess.

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Quantity:

a. As you probably know, I am afraid of dogs.

b. So, to cut a long story short, we grabbed our stuff and ran.

c. I won’t bore you with all the details, but it was an exciting trip.

Relation:

a. I don’t know if this is important, but some of the files are missing.

b. This may sound like a dumb question, but whose handwriting is

this?

c. Not to change the subject, but is this related to the budget?

Manner:

a. This may be a bit confused, but I remember being in a car.

b. I’m not sure if this makes sense, but the car had no lights.

c. I don’t know if this is clear at all, but I think the other car was

reversing.

There are cases in which not all four maxims can be observed. Brevity

and truth often pull in opposite directions (a short answer is often

simplified to the point of distortion). Legal discourse and scientific

discourse often sacrifice the maxim of quantity to the maxim of quality.

Maxims of quantity and manner are often at odds. To be clear one

sometimes needs to be long-winded.

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III. FLOUTING THE MAXIMS (GENERATING

IMPLICATURE)

The situations which chiefly interested Grice were those in which a

speaker blatantly, deliberately, fails to observe a maxim, not with any

intention of deceiving or misleading, but because the speaker wants to

prompt the hearer to look for a meaning which is different from the

expressed meaning. These are intended violations of the maxims; the

sender intends the receiver to perceive them as such. If the sender does

not intend violations to be perceived as such, or if the receiver does not

realise that they are deliberate, then communication degenerates into

lying, or simply breaks down.

1. Flouts exploiting maxims of Quality

Flouts which exploit the maxim of Quality occur when the speaker says

something which is blatantly untrue.

E.g. (source, Thomas, 1995:55)

Late on Christmas Eve 1993 an ambulance is sent to pick up a man

who has collapsed in Newcastle city centre. The man is drunk and

vomits all over the ambulanceman who goes to help him. The

ambulanceman says:

‘Great, that’s really great! That’s made my Christmas!’

Here an implicature is generated by the speaker’s saying something

which is patently false. According to Grice (cf. Thomas), the deductive

process might work like this:

i) The ambulanceman has expressed pleasure at having someone

vomit over him.

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ii) There is no example in recorded history of people being

delighted at having someone vomit over them.

iii) I have no reason to believe that the ambulanceman is trying to

deceive us in any way.

iv) Unless the ambulanceman’s utterance is entirely pointless, he

must be trying to put across some other proposition.

v) This must be some obviously related proposition.

vi) The most obviously related proposition is the exact opposite of

the one he has expressed.

vii) The ambulanceman is extremely annoyed at having the drunk

vomit over him.

2. Flouts exploiting the maxim of Quantity

A flout exploiting a maxim of Quantity occurs when a speaker blatantly

gives more or less information than the situation requires. We have

already seen one instance of a person giving less information than

required, in the example with the dog that has bitten the man. Here is a

similar one:

E.g. A: How are we getting to the party?

B: Well, we’re getting there by car.

B blatantly gives less information than A needs, thereby generating the

implicature that, while she and her friends have made arrangements, A

will not be travelling with them.

3. Flouts exploiting the maxims of Relation

The maxim of Relation is exploited by making a response which is very

obviously irrelevant to the topic at hand.

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E.g.

A: Would you like a pizza?

B: Ask a child if he would like a pie. (the English version of the

Romanian Vrei calule ovaz?)

In this example, B does not provide a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer and he

appears to flout the maxim of relation. B’s response implicates that the

answer to the question is ‘Obviously yes’. The additional meaning here

is that, because the answer is so obvious, the question did not need to

be asked in the first place.

4. Flouts exploiting the maxim of Manner

The following is an example of flouting the maxim of Manner:

E.g. (taken form Thomas, 1995:71)

This interaction occurred during a radio interview with an un-named

official from United States Embassy in Port-au-Prince Haiti:

Interviewer: Did the United States Government play any part in

Duvalier’s departure? Did they, for example, actively

encourage him to leave?

Official: I would not try to steer you away from that conclusion.

The official could simply have replied Yes. The actual response is

extremely long-winded.

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Flouting the co-operative principle in order to make a point more

forcefully also explains:

metaphors (‘Queen Victoria was made of iron’)

hyperbole (‘I’ve got millions of beers in my cellar’)

irony and sarcasm (‘I love it when you sing out of key all the time’)

humour (e.g. puns)

5. Other ways of not observing the maxims:

Opting out, i.e refusing to answer, is another way of non-observing the

maxims Such an example is Bill Clinton’s response to a journalist who

was asking him about the Whitewater affair, a scandal in which Bill

and Hillary were involved. When the journalist asked the question,

Clinton took his microphone off, got out of his seat, told the journalist

he’d had his two questions and went off.

Suspending the (universality of) maxims

There are occasions/situations/cultures when it appears that there is no

expectation that all the maxims will be observed. Compare, for

instance, an interrogation, where we would not expect that the maxim

of Relation should be observed by the defendants, with a confessional,

where we expect the opposite.

Infringing:

A speaker who, with no intention of generating an implicature and with

no intention of deceiving, fails to observe a maxim is said to ‘infringe’

the maxim. For example, a speaker may fail to observe a maxim

because of imperfect linguistic performance (foreigners, young child

speaking, nervous speakers, etc.)

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In this chapter we have explored one approach to explaining how

people interpret indirectness. Before going on to the next chapter, we

should mention some of the problems with Grice’s theory. The main

problems are:

It can be difficult to distinguish between different categories of non-

observance

Sometimes it can be difficult to determine which maxim is being

invoked, since maxims seem to overlap sometimes;

Sometimes an utterance has a range of possible interpretations. How

do we know which implications are intended?

Grice’s four maxims are not all of the same order, they seem to be

rather different in nature.

IV. SUMMARY

In 1967, Grice outlined his theory of implicture. Grice’s theory is an

attempt at explaining how a hearer gets from what is said to what is

meant, from the level of expressed meaning to the level of implied

meaning.

Implicature (term devised by Grice) refers to the implied meaning

generated intentionally by the speaker. Infer, on the other hand, refers

to the situation in which the hearer deduces meaning from available

evidence. Inference is the inferred meaning deduced by the hearer,

which may or may not be the same as the speaker’s intended

implicature.

Grice’s co-operative principle is formulated as follows: ‘Make your

contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the

64


accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are

engaged’.

Maxim of quantity: Make your contribution as informative as is

required for the current purpose of the exchange. Do not make

your contribution more informative than is required.

Maxim of quality: Do not say what you believe to be false; Do

not say that for which you lack evidence.

Maxim of Relation: Be relevant

Maxim of Manner: Avoid obscurity of expression; Avoid

ambiguity; Be brief; Be orderly.

The maxims are unstated assumptions we have in conversations. We

assume that people are normally going to provide an appropriate

amount of information; we assume that they are telling the truth, being

relevant, and trying to be as clear as they can.

Flouting the maxims generates implicatures

The situations which chiefly interested Grice were those in which a

speaker blatantly, deliberately, fails to observe a maxim, not with any

intention of deceiving or misleading, but because the speaker wants to

prompt the hearer to look for a meaning which is different from the

expressed meaning.

V. TASKS

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1. Which maxims of the co-operative principle are being flouted in the

following, and why?

a. I think I’ll go for a W-A-L-K (spelling the word letter by letter in

front of a dog)

b. [At a dinner party]: Is there anywhere I can powder my nose?

c. This meal is delicious (said by a guest who finds the food disgusting)

d. Child: I’m going to watch Match of the Day now.

Parent: What was that Maths homework you said you had?

(Source: Cook, 1989)

2. Which are the maxims flouted and he implicatures generated in the

following examples:

[A is working at a computer in one of the department’s lab when she

experiences a problem]

A: Can you help me?

B: Graeme’s office hour is in five minutes

3. [A is a 14 year boy and has just come back from school; B is his

mother]

B: How was school today?

A: Oh, I scored two goals during the football match.

[Victor has been buried up to his neck in the back garden by an irate

builder. His wife, Margaret, comes out]

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M: What are you doing?

V: I’m wallpapering the spare bedroom, what the hell do you think

I’m doing?

(One Foot in the Grave, BBC 12/11/96)

[This is part of the queen’s speech at the anniversary of her 40th year

on the throne. It had been a bad year for the queen - marital difficulties

of her children, the Windsor Palace had gone up in flames]

Queen:1992 is not a year which I shall look back with undiluted

pleasure.

3. Analyse the following extract in relation to the Co-operative

Principle:

[Context: a television serial, called ‘Boys from the Blackstuff, follows

the lives of a group of men facing unemployment in Liverpool. This

scene takes place in a Department of Employment. Chrissie is under

suspicion for illegally claiming unemployment benefit.]

Clerk: It seems from your files, Mr. Todd, that one of our inspectors

has visited your house on two separate occasions during the past

ten days without receiving an answer.

Ch.: Ah, what a shame

C: You were out?

Ch: Looks that way doesn’t it?

C: Can you tell me where you were?

Ch: I might be able to if you tell me when you called.

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C: It’s the...morning of Tuesday the third, and...the afternoon of

Thursday the 12th

[There is a pause]

Ch: Haven’t a clue.

C: Were you employed during those days?

Ch: Who, me?

C: Look, have you got a job, Mr. Todd?

Ch: Oh yeah, I just come here for the company and the pleasant

surroundings.

C: (patiently, and not without sympathy) You haven’t answered my

question.

Ch: [Looking away] I haven’t worked in over a year.

C: Right, Mr. Todd, that’s all.

(Chrissie stands)

C: We will, however, be making further visits to your house in due

course.

Ch: I’ll bake a cake.

4. Discuss the following exchanges in terms of the CP and implicatures

1. ( Thomas, 1995:65):

The speaker is Rupert Allason (author, M.P. and expert on the British

intelligence services). He is discussing the identity of the so-called

‘Fifth Man’:

It was either Graham Mitchell or Roger Hollis and I don’t think it was

Roger Hollis.

2. (Thomas, 1995:68)

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B was on a long journey and wanted to read her book. A was a fellow

passenger who wanted to talk to her:

A: What do you do?

B: I’m a teacher.

A: Where do you teach?

B: Outer Mongolia

A: Sorry I asked.

5. In groups, imagine short dialogues in which the maxims are flouted

and implicatures are created.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cameron, R. & Williams, J., 1997, Sentences to Ten Cents;

A Case Study of Relevance and Communicative Success in

Non-native/Native Speaker Interaction in a Medical Setting, in

Applied Linguistics, 18: 415-445

Clark, H., H., & Gerrig, R., J., 1984, On the Pretense

Theory of Irony, in Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol.

113, nr.1: 121-126

Sarangi, S., and Slembrouck, S., 1992, Non-cooperation in

Communication: a reassessment of Gricean pragmatics, in

Journal of Pragmatics, 17: 117-154

Sperber, D., 1984, Verbal Irony: Pretense or Echoic

Mention?, in Journal of Experimental Psychology, vol. 113,

nr.1: 130-136

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Issues of co-text and context_____________________________________________________________________

5. ISSUES OF CO-TEXT AND CONTEXT

Context as means by which we reach understanding has been widely

referred to in the literature, and we have already seen some elements of

contexts, such as shared knowledge held by participants, or the physical

context (the actual setting where the interaction takes place).

According to Mey (1993:181), a truly pragmatic view on language

cannot, and should not, restrict itself to such micropragmatic issues of

context as deixis, speech acts and implicit meaning. There is more to

language use, from the perspective of its contribution to generating

meaning, than the issues discussed so far. In particular, the idea that

speech acts would be the basic units in terms of which all linguistic

action could be understood is no longer accepted. Pragmaticians have

turned, instead, to the study of chunks of linguistic interactions, usually

conversations of various types and to a ‘macropragmatic’ view of

context.

I. CONTEXT

The term ‘context’, as we have seen, apparently has a limitless range of

potentially relevant objects, and ‘context’ seems to be a vague notion.

However, we can understand the concept looking at it in an extensional

way, i.e. enlarging the scope of the units we are looking at: rather than

examining isolated sentences or utterances, we consider those same

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utterances placed in the contexts in which they belong. According to

Mey (1993:182), this can be understood in two ways:

either as extending the individual utterances making up the text =

co-text;

or, alternatively considering those utterances in their natural

‘habitat’. In this case we are dealing with the larger context in

which people use language.

The approaches to context below follow Mey’s view (1993:184-188)

From speech acts to conversation (co-text)

Speech acts normally and naturally occur in interchanges between two

or several conversationalists. Such a context should not be restricted to

what, technically speaking, is a co-text. It will not only have to go

beyond the individual speech act, but beyond the two-utterance

interchange (A says something to which B replies), which is the

framework of speech act theorists.

In the framework of Conversation analysis (CA), the various

mechanisms determining people’s use of language in an extended, open

conversational setting, are explored:

Who holds the right to speak (the ‘floor’)

What kinds of rules are there for either yielding or holding on to the

floor

What makes a particular point in the conversation particularly

appropriate for a ‘turn’ (one speaker leaving the floor, another

taking it)

Though CA has got a wealth of insights into these matters and has

elaborated an impressive arsenal of techniques for the description and

explanation of the mechanisms of conversation, it leaves out the larger

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context in the sense given above. In particular, the social aspects of the

extended context have no place in such a framework (e.g. they are not

interested in issues of social status, gender, age, etc. of the

participants).

Society and context (social context)

Linguistic behaviour is social behaviour. People talk because they want

to socialise, in the widest possible sense of the word: either for fun, or

for some serious purposes, such as closing a deal, solving a problem.

This basic fact implies two other basic facts:

one, that we have to look at what people really say when they are

together

that any understanding that linguists can hope to obtain of what

goes on between people using language is based on a correct

understanding of the whole context in which the linguistic

interaction takes place.

The following example and analysis have been taken from Mey,

1993:186: on the face of it the following conversation is quite strange:

A: I have a fourteen year old son

B: Well that’s all right

A: I also have a dog

B: oh I’m sorry

It makes no sense at all unless we know what the context is: A is trying

to lease a flat, and mentions the fact that he has a child. The landlord

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doesn’t mind children, but when he hears about the dog, he indicates

that A’s prospects as a future lease-holder are rather dim. Now, the

question can be asked, what exactly the landlord is sorry about. It is

clearly not the fact that A has a dog. Rather it has something to do with

the fact that regulations for the block of flats do not allow tenants to

have pets. So, the landlord is either sorry for A if A has to give up the

dog, or for himself (if A looks like a good future tenant) in case A

renouncing getting a lease.

Society and discourse

The social context naturally presupposes the existence of a particular

society, with implicit and explicit values, norms, rules and laws, and

with its particular conditions of life.

The term ‘discourse’ is used in this section to indicate not only the

social occasion in which the linguistic interaction takes place (e.g. job

interview, medical consultation, conversation, etc.), but also how

people use the language in their respective social contexts.

Discourse is different from ‘text’, in that it embodies more than just the

text understood as a collection of sentences. It is also different from

conversation. Conversation is one particular type of text, governed by

special rules (SEE CA). Thus, while it is natural to use the term

‘discourse’ specifically in connection with conversation, discourse and

conversation are not the same.

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EXAMPLE: Let’s look at the following case to show the difference

between a discourse-oriented approach and one that is exclusively

based on speech acts (example and analysis taken from Mey, 1993:187)

A: I bet you $500 that Swale will win the race.

B: Oh?

In this conversation some speech act linguists will claim that A has

performed a speech act of betting, just by uttering the words ‘I bet’.

Yet, in another, equally valid, pragmatic and discourse-oriented sense,

he has not: B has not ‘risen to the bet’, by uttering for example ‘you’re

on’. Instead, B utters a non-committal ‘Oh’. Consequently, there has

been no ‘uptake’, because one of the felicity conditions has not been

fulfilled, and so there has been no bet.

We will further look at two approaches that offer specific criteria or

features of context that may help the analyst in describing the context

and what is going on in interactions.

II. TWO APPROACHES TO THE DESCRIPTION OF

CONTEXT

1. The ethnographic approach

The sociolinguist Dell Hymes (1964) puts forward a useful acronym,

i.e SPEAKING, to cover the factors that must be taken into account

when trying to describe what happens when people use language:

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S= the Setting and Scene of the exchange; the setting refers to the

concrete physical circumstance in which speech takes place, e.g.

courtrooms, classrooms, telephone conversations, passing

acquaintances in the street, etc. The scene refers to the

psychological and cultural circumstances of the speech

situation, e.g. consulting, pleading, conferring. The settings and

scenes do not necessarily remain constant throughout a

particular language exchange, although it appears to be easier to

shift scenes than to shift settings, e.g. a speaker’s attempt to tell

a joke to dispel a tense atmosphere.

P= the Participants may be of various kinds and may be referred to

as Speaker, Hearer and audience, or Addressor, Addressee.

E= Ends, i.e. the conventionally recognised and expected outcomes

of an exchange as well as the personal goals that each of the P

seeks to accomplish. Some speech events have conventional

outcomes, e.g. ‘diagnosis’, ‘verdict’.

A= Act sequence, i.e the actual language forms that are used, how

these are used. It refers to message for, i.e. topics of

conversation and particular ‘ways of speaking’. In a given

culture, certain linguistic forms are conventional for certain

types of talk.

K= Keys refers to the tone, manner in which a particular message is

conveyed, e.g. light-hearted, serious, precise, etc.

I= Instrumentalities, i.e, the choice of channel: oral/written,

general/specialised language, formal/informal

N= Norms of interpretation, i.e.interpretation which would

normally be expected for the speech event in question; norms of

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interaction, interpretation in relation to the conventions of the

conversation (e.g. who usually talks, for how long)

G= the Genre that has to be recognised, e.g. novels, poems, lecture,

advertisement, etc.

Strengths and limitations of the Ethnographic Approach.

Dealing with rituals, ethnography seems very good in that it makes

conscious the unconscious rules of our society. But even here it does

leave some problems, especially the question: from whose angle are we

describing things? It cannot, however, explain the many variations in

performance in less ritualistic situations. Moreover, it does not enable

us to explain why it is that one person performs very differently from

another in the ‘same’ linguistic situation (for example, why one person

emerges form a job interview having succeeded in gaining the job,

while another does not).

2. A pragmatic approach: activity types

A possible way forward is suggested by Levinson’s notion of activity

type. He defines an activity type as:

…a fuzzy category whose focal members are goal-defined,

socially constituted, bounded, events with constraints on

participants, setting, and soon, but above all on the kinds of

allowable contributions. Paradigm examples would be teaching,

a job interview, a jural interrogation, a football game, a task in a

workshop, a dinner party and so on. (1992:69)

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Because of the strict constraints on contributions to any

particular activity, there are corresponding strong expectations

about the functions that any utterance at a certain point in the

proceedings can be fulfilling’[…] Activity types help to

determine how one says will be ‘taken’ – that is, what kinds of

inferences will be made from what is said.’

The difference between a speech event approach and an activity type

approach is that the former has an outside view on context, whereas the

latter looks at how language shapes the event.

Thomas (1995:187-194, slightly adapted) provides a very useful

checklist, which will help us describe an activity type:

‘The goals of the participants: notice that we are talking about the

goals of the individuals rather than the goals of the whole speech event.

The goals of one participant may be different from those of another.

For example, the goal of a trial is to come up with a fair verdict, but the

goals of the prosecution lawyer (to get a verdict ‘guilty’) are

diametrically opposed to those of the defense lawyer and the defendant.

An individual’s goals may also change during the course of an

interaction.

Allowable contributions: some interactions are characterised by social

or legal constraints on what the participants may say. For example, in

courts of law the prosecution is not allowed to refer to a defendant’s

previous convictions; in the British House of Commons members may

not use certain abusive terms. What is pragmatically interesting is the

78


way in which people will work round these restrictions. Coulthard

(1989), for example, relates how one prosecution lawyer was able to

indicate that the defendant had previous convictions by referring to the

circumstances in which the defendant had injured his foot (it had been

broken during a burglary); Churchill (prohibited from calling an

opponent a ‘liar’), famously came up with the phrase ‘guilty of a

terminological inexactitude’.

The degree to which Gricean maxims are adhered to or suspended:

the expectation of the way in which the maxims will be observed varies

considerably from culture to culture and from activity type to activity

type (e.g. in Parliament, in media interviews with politicians, or in the

law courts), there is a very low expectation that what is said (or

implied) will be the whole truth; in other activity types (such as going

to a Confession) the expectation that the speaker will tell the whole

truth is extremely high. Some inferences can only be drawn in relation

to the activity type. For example, the actor Nigel Hawthorne, talking

about unsuccessful plays he had been in before he became famous,

said:

‘Friends would come backstage and talk about the weather’.

The irrelevance of the friends’ comments can only be judged in relation

to an activity type in which there was a powerful expectation that they

would congratulate Hawthorne on the excellence of his performance.

Turn-taking and topic control: to what degree can an indvidual

exploit turn-taking norms in order to control an interaction, establish

his or her own agenda (topic of conversation), etc.

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Language is not simply a reflection of the physical or social context,

but language is used in order to establish and then change the nature of

the relationship between A and B and the nature of the activity type in

which they are participating.. In other words, context cannot be seen

only as ‘given’, as something imposed from outside. The participants,

by their use of language, also contribute to making and changing their

context.

III. SUMMARY

The term ‘context’ apparently has a limitless range of potentially

relevant objects. However, we can understand the concept looking at it

in an extensional way. According to Mey (1993:182), this can be

understood in two ways:

either as extending the individual utterances making up the text =

co-text;

or, alternatively considering those utterances in their natural

‘habitat’. In this case we are dealing with the larger context in

which people use language.

Two approaches to the description of context

1. An ethnographic approach (Dell Hymes)

Factors that must be taken into account when trying to describe what

happens when people use language:

S= the Setting and Scene of the exchange; the setting refers to the

concrete physical circumstance in which speech takes place, e.g.

courtrooms, classrooms, telephone conversations, passing

acquaintances in the street, etc. The scene refers to the

80


psychological and cultural circumstances of the speech

situation, e.g. consulting, pleading, conferring.

P= the Participants may be of various kinds and may be referred to

as Speaker, Hearer and audience, or Addressor, Addressee.

E= Ends, i.e. the conventionally recognised and expected outcomes

of an exchange as well as the personal goals that each of the P

seeks to accomplish.

A= Act sequence, i.e the actual language forms that are used, how

these are used.

K= Keys refers to the tone, manner in which a particular message is

conveyed, e.g. light-hearted, serious, precise, etc.

I= Instrumentalities, i.e, the choice of channel: oral/written,

general/specialised language, formal/informal

N= Norms of interpretation, i.e., interpretation which would

normally be expected for the speech event in question; norms of

interaction, interpretation in relation to the conventions of the

conversation (e.g. who usually talks, for how long)

G= the Genre that has to be recognised, e.g. novels, poems, lecture,

advertisement, etc.

2. The activity-type approach (Levinson)

Factors that contribute to characterizing a certain activity type

The goals of the participants: notice that we are talking

about the goals of the individuals rather than the goals of

the whole speech event. The goals of one participant

may be different from those of another.

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Allowable contributions: some interactions are

characterised by social or legal constraints on what the

participants may say. What is pragmatically interesting

is the way in which people will work round these

restrictions

The degree to which Gricean maxims are adhered to

or suspended: the expectation of the way in which the

maxims will be observed varies considerably from

culture to culture and from activity type to activity type.

Some inferences can only be drawn in relation to the

activity type.

Turn-taking and topic control: to what degree can an

indvidual exploit turn-taking norms in order to control

an interaction, establish his or her own agenda (topic of

conversation), etc.

IV. TASKS

1. Take a Romanian wedding ceremony as a speech event and describe

it

in terms of the SPEAKING grid.

2. Referring to the Thomas’s checklist, describe your expectations for

the activity type of a job interview in Romania.

3. Analyse the following two excerpts, both taken from the same

speech event – a PhD supervision to observe the choices made by

82


participants, at a linguistic level, in order to systematically reduce the

social distance between A and B, emphasising common ground and

shared values. Look specifically at phonetics, syntax, vocabulary, turn-

taking (how it is distributed between the two participants):

In the two examples (taken from Thomas, 1995:192-193) speaker A is

a male academic, speaker B a female research student. They have

known each other for several years and are good friends. The

interaction took place in A’s office and the two examples occurred

within a few minutes of one another. The symbol / is used to indicate

overlapping speech.

Example 1

A: That’s right. But then, there’s a difference between that and

what your um ultimate sort of social if you like purpose or

objective is in the encounter. Okay? Now, would there be…

would there be a further subdivision…I mean that’s a question,

would there be a further subdivision between, as it were tactical

goal-sharing and long-term goal-sharing and would the tactical

goal-sharing be equivalent to what we’re calling ‘observance of

the conventions of the language game’ or not? Because it did

seem to me when I was reading this that I could see the

difference you were drawing between linguistic cooperation and

goal-sharing but I wondered whether there wasn’t a further

sub-division within goal-sharing between the tactical and the

strategic?

B: Okay well/

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A: /and that the ‘tactical’ might be…might be in harmony

with ‘observance of the conventions of the language game’ but

might not, actually.

B: Well um er um what I was trying to get at here was why so

many otherwise intelligent people have completely and utterly

rejected Grice and they have and it seems to me that why

they’ve done it is because they do not see man as a

fundamentally cooperative animal. Now…

Example 2

A: Oh, e’s back is’e? From Columbia?

B: Mm and I snapped off his fl…you know how I fidget when I’m

nervous and there was this ‘orrible looking thing and I thought

it was a spider on the end of a cobweb and I snapped it off and

apparently he’d been nurturing it in his breast for about two

years.

A: What was it?

B: I don’t know. Some silly plant but he was obviously/

A: /our plants got nicked.

B: Really?

A: In the last week yeah we’ve had all our plants knocked off.

B: What where from?

A: Here.

B: Really?

A: Must’ve been stolen from here and the Institute and the

Literature Department.

B: How strange. Oh and a bird shat on my head and then/

A: /I thought that was good luck!

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B: Yes. You wouldn’t’ve if it had happened to you. And and I

thought all that remains is for me drawers to fall down and my

happiness is complete. Well the lecture went very well indeed

and er there was him there was a man called somebody or other

Charles or Charles somebody.

A: Chalr…No. I don’t know him.

B: And he said he’s got a good friend in Finland and apparently

she heard this lecture I gave over there. She’s doing her bloody

PhD on it.

A: Is she?

B: Yeah. On pragmatic failure. Anyway.

A: Anyway, it went all right?

KEY *cf. Thomas: 1995)

Phonetics:

Although both speakers clearly can pronounce /h/ and both do so all the

time in Example 1 (harmony, here, have), both drop their h’s

and used the forms: ‘e’s back is ‘he and ‘orrible looking thing

in Example 2

Syntax

- the grammatical structure of Example 1 is more

formal, e.g use of do not, compared with the

informal wouldn’t’ve in Example 2

- more complex syntax in Example 1 – in A’s first

contribution there is a large number of subordinate

85


clauses, as compared with A’s contribution in

Example 2, where there is simple coordination.

Vocabulary: - in Example 1 is formal and technical, while Example 2

has a lot of

examples of informal, slang and taboo terms (drawers, nicked,

knocked off, shat, bloody)

The turn-taking and topic control are different. In Example 1, A

controls both, while in Example 2 the turns are very evenly distributed

and both participants have their own topic (B wants to talk about the

lecture she had just given, A wants to talk about the theft) which each

develops successfully, although in the end B’s topic is jointly

developed by both speakers.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Levinson, St., 1992, Activity types and language. In

P.Drew and J. Heritage (eds), 66-100.

Pomerantz, 1998, Multiple interpretations of context : how

are they useful?, in Research on Language and Social

interaction,31(1): 123-132

Wieder, D., L., 1999, Ethnomethodology, Conversation

Analysis, and the Ethnography of Speaking: resonances and

basic issues, in Research on Language and Social Interaction,

32:163-171\

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Activity types_____________________________________________________________________

6. ACTIVITY TYPES

INTERCULTURAL GATEKEEPING ENCOUNTERS

In this teaching unit we shall look at ‘gatekeeping encounters’, more

specifically ‘selection interviews’ as activity types. The focus will be

practical, starting with the identification of some features of selection

interviews as an activity type, with the aim of exemplifying troubles in

the interaction between participants coming from different cultural

backgrounds. It is based on research that has been done and is being

done on institutional interaction.

I. GATEKEEPING ENCOUNTERS

Gatekeeping encounters is a term that has been first used by Erickson

and Shultz (1982) in their research on counseling interviews in

academic advising. Gatekeepers have been identified as individuals

who have been given the authority to make decisions on the behalf of

institutions that will affect the mobility of others. Examples of

gatekeeping encounters are:

Job interviews

Legal trials

Counseling sessions

Selection interviews (interviews involving the selection of

applicants for training courses)

87


Because gatekeeping encounters have been seen as critical for the

institution in controlling access and mobility and critical for the

individual in determining major aspects of life experience, many

institutional and legal constraints have been placed on their operation.

These encounters are designed to be as objective as possible.

However, most of the studies of intercultural gatekeeping encounters

have shown that differences in expectations about the event (the

structure of the activity type) may result in negative outcome for the

applicant.

II. SELECTION INTERVIEWS AS ACTIVITY TYPE

A selection interview can be analysed as an ‘activity type’ with specific

norms and role-relationships which are different from those of, say,

casual conversation. Here are some ‘typical’ characteristic features of

selection interviews, according to Verschueren (1999:153)

The interlocutors are typically one interviewee and one or more

interviewers. The goal of selection interviews is to assess the

candidates’ potential for the training course on the basis of

educational qualifications and previous work experience. The

interviewer’s questions therefore focus on two specific things:

background information about the applicant’s education and work

experience, and his/her motivation for applying for the course

The interviewee comes to the interview with the intention to present

him/herself in such a way as to maximise chances of being selected.

The interviewer’s goal is to elicit the information needed to take the

decision

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Activity types_____________________________________________________________________

One of the central features is their scheduled nature: interviews,

unlike casual conversation, are arranged at certain times and places

and the interviewers come to the interview with a pre-set agenda

The social context is asymmetrical, with an amount of power on the

part of the interviewer, i.e. the interviewer legitimately establishing

a ‘right-to-know’ persona, whereas the interviewee displays his or

her abilities for judgement. In interethnic contexts, aspects of

cultural background may enter the picture as well.

Different types of temporal references are involved depending on

the topical segment of the interview. There is usually some talk

about past events in the candidate’s educational background, and an

exploration of skills and attitudes.

The positioning of the interlocutors in physical space is typically

face-to-face. The interviewee’s physical appearance, gestures and

gaze are carefully monitored.

Given that one of the goals of such interviews is to assess the suitability

of the candidates for the course applied for, it follows that the

interviewers’ questions and the interviewees’ answers should appear

‘acceptable’ both in terms of content and the manner in which they are

presented.

In intercultural selection interview context interviewees are likely to

face two major obstacles: first, a lack of knowledge of the rules and

procedures of the activity type; secondly a lack of adequate linguistic

knowledge (which will not be discussed here). We shall next look at the

case of ‘dispreferred answers’ in selection interviews.

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a. The case of dispreferred answers (Sarangi, 1994)

This section is based on research done by Sarangi on intercultural

selection interviews. In the case of selection interviews, the

interviewer’s questions have to be provided with preferred answers in

order that the interviewee would stand a fair chance of being

successful. For example, the expected, or preferred answer to the

typical question like ‘Why do you want to join this course?’, would be

for the interviewee to talk enthusiastically about the course applied for,

but with a certain amount of modesty. If the expectations of the

interviewer about the acceptable answer do not match the interviewee’s

expectations we can talk about activity-type mismatches

In the following example, the Asian interviewee gives a ‘dispreferred

response:

I: right, Jalal you’ve applied for eh an electrical course

J: yes

I: could you tell me why?

J: mhm because I came from Pakistan one year ago and I don’t know

any other job about in England. I want some training and I choose for

electrician because I went sometime in Pakistan with my friend for

wiring for little time

(from Sarangi, 1994: ‘Mismatches in intercultural selection

interviews’)

The answer provides no particular commitment on the candidate’s part

(‘I don’t know any job about in England’) and no reference to past

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Activity types_____________________________________________________________________

experience as a strength (‘because I went sometime in Pakistan…’).

However, both statements appear to be ‘true’ and ‘correct’.

The question is how do we, as analysts, detect the occurrence of

‘dispreferred’ responses in these interview situations? If we adopt a

perspective of how the activity type of interview is structured, we can

assume that the simple factual questions give way to a series of other

questions designed to discover the underlying ability of the applicant

for the course (job).

A possible guide is the interviewer’s reaction. For example:

the interviewer changes or abandons the topic to signal the

dispreferred answer.

Eg.:I: can you remember anything you did in physics is there

anything that you can remember electrical wires did you wire

bulbs [unclear]

J: no [laughs] ten years ago I forgot everything

I: you’ve forgotten, I see, not likely to remember anything about it,

yeah, fair enough, let me see I won’t question any longer with

that erm do you read anything eh like do you

J: yes yes

I: what sort of magazines you read

J: sometimes the telegraph

I: do you buy books on electric on electrical work?

J: no I don’t.

(Sarangi, 1994)

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If Jalal were to be admitted into an engineering course, he

would need not only to have some background in physics but

also to display some knowledge of physics. Jalal’s response can

be seen as dispreferred, although honest and true. The

interviewer drops the topic but immediately afterwards

introduces a topic about Jalal’s current reading habits, which is

also geared at finding out the interviewee’s commitment to

gaining knowledge in the field of physics. Once again Jalal

misinterprets this question and provides information about his

general reading habits.

Interviewers may reformulate the initial question to force the

interviewee to expand or clarify the previous response until it

passes as ‘satisfactory’.

E.g. I: yes, you’re applying for a course as a motor mechanic

R: yes I I like it

I: yes why do you want to be a motor mechanic

R: eh because I interested with it and eh I like it to learn motor

mechanic

I: why?

R: why I say because I interest that’s why I learn it

I: erm do you know what a motoc mechanic does?

R: yes something I know something I like to learn some more

I: uhm yes tell me what a motor mechanic does

(Sarangi, 1994)

This is another case of activity-type-specific mismatch, because in

selection interview context R’s response is ‘unacceptable’. For R., the

fact that he is interested in this particular course is an adequate

response. But from the interviewer’s point of view, R’s interest in a

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Activity types_____________________________________________________________________

motor mechanics course is ‘given information’, as he has applied for

one. The interviewee’s minimal response (‘yes I like it’) is therefore

followed by the I’s extended questioning. R’s response, taken

cumulatively, - ‘I interested with it’, ‘I like it to learn’, ‘I know

something I like to learn some more’ – is regarded by the interviewer as

inadequate, as R has failed to calculate the inference implied by the

question. On R’s part, he may have felt that a sensible answer would

have been possible if the purpose of the question was made explicit, as

for example, ‘what is the job of a motor mechanic?’

The above examples show how interviewers’ questions can be indirect

and inexplicit with a hidden agenda, thus offering no clue, initially as to

what would count as ‘preferred’ response. A candidate who routinely

participates in the ‘interview game’ may be able to distinguish between

what is asked and what is intended and thus focus on the

interviewer’s intended question. A further question that we could ask is

‘What are the potential sources which cause these mismatches?” Here

are some possible classifications of sources (cf. Sarangi, 1994):

b. Sources of activity-type-specific mismatches

1. Lack of knowledge of the interview agenda

Given that selection interview is a highly structured event, the range of

topics to be covered is normally pre-defined by the interviewer. An

interviewee with a reasonable experience of attending interviews will

always expect a long march of questions, which are, normally, basically

the same kinds of questions. The inexperienced interviewee, however,

93


may lack knowledge about the potential agenda. For example, they may

encounter difficulties if unexpected questions are asked.

2. Lack of awareness of speaker rights

Selection interviews are characterised by what might be called an

‘unequal distribution of speaker rights’ to carry out actions such as

initiate topic, interrupt, etc. The unequal distribution of speaker rights

becomes apparent in the interviewer’s questioning, which regulates the

interviewee’s answer. Question and answers may also appear in a

casual conversation, but the difference is that in casual conversations

there is no necessity for one participant to remain a questioner and

another the answerer.

An example of awareness of the speaker rights is when a candidate is

not aware that he may ask questions at the end of the interview.

3. Slippage from one ‘activity type’ to another

Analysts agree that there is a distinction between all types of interview

and casual conversation, with the interview lying at the formal end of

the speech continuum. In this regard, some of the mismatches can be

accounted for as attempts to slip into other, more informal, modes of

talk. For instance, the interviewee may provide a response which may

be perfectly acceptable in a casual conversation but inappropriate in the

interview context.

E.g.:

I: do you know what wage a motor mechanic could earn?

R: [pause] no I don’t know about this

I: how much money would you need?

R: I need a lot of money [laughs]

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Activity types_____________________________________________________________________

I: motor mechanics don’t earn a lot of money

R: eh I know but I interested with it

(Sarangi, 1994)

The question about wages recurs as a fairly common theme in these

interviews. The ‘preferred’ answer in this respect would be the

candidate’s awareness of the exact amount he/she will be paid if

successful. R. seems to have no idea, but he chooses to provide a light-

hearted response. The interviewer does not share his laughter, but,

instead, shows irritation at R’s reply. As a result, the interview at this

point appears to be ‘conversational’.

An alternative explanatory framework is offered by Gumperz (1984),

and is called the ‘discourse strategy’ framework. Gumperz refers to the

notion of ‘discourse strategy’ to different ‘contextualisation cues’ and

‘sociocultural knowledge’, which are learned in previous interactive

experiences. He claims that mismatches in intercultural job interviews

can be explained because of:

Different cultural assumptions

Different ways of structuring information

Different ways of speaking

For example, in the following example SN, an Asian, is being

interviewed for a librarian position by a panel of three British

interviewers. At this point in the interview NS is asked a ‘typical’

question about duties in his present job:

I: you say you’re very busy in your present job, what exactly do

you do, I mean what are your duties day by day?

95


SN: well, we’ve to receive the visitors, show them around and then

we have to go out er to the factories you know, sometimes to

attend the classes, how to do er cataloguing classification

(Gumperz, 1984)

Here is how Sarangi (1984) analyses the above sequences. The

interviewer’s question has a two-fold function, but SN chooses to focus

on one aspect ‘what exactly do you do’-, although he moves to answer

the second question (what are your duties day by day) rather

marginally. This raises the question whether SN’s reply is ‘relevant’ or

‘satisfactory’ from the interviewer’s point of view. (Note that the

interviewer’s question is a conflation of two different questions).

According to Gumperz, SN’s answer moves from general, irrelevant

information, to more specific, relevant information. This is a clear

indication of Asian’s speakers’ different ways of structuring an

argument. Gumperz argues that, at a rhetorical level, it is a

characteristic for Asian speakers to begin a response in a general way

since a more direct answer is considered by them to be rather impolite.

In other words, here is a case of Asian speakers’ ‘different ways of

structuring information’, and an example of the clash between two

conflicting norms: the British interviewer preferring a ‘direct and

relevant answer’ and the Asian interviewee opting for an ‘indirect and

polite’ response.

From the above data it emerges that the ‘activity-type’ allows us to be

quite precise in identifying sources of mismatch in intercultural

selection interviews. However, Levinson’s framework puts the

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Activity types_____________________________________________________________________

responsibility for the mismatch with the speaker who deviates and thus

encourages analysts to cast mismatches in terms of ‘ignorance’ of the

‘rules of the game’. Gumperz’s alternative framework seems to be

more culturally sensitive.

III. SUMMARY

Gatekeeping encounters is a term that has been first used by Erickson

and Shultz (1982) in their research on counseling interviews in

academic advising. Gatekeepers have been identified as individuals

who have been given the authority to make decisions on the behalf of

institutions that will affect the mobility of others.

Selection interviews as activity type

A selection interview can be analysed as an ‘activity type’ with specific

norms and role-relationships which are different from those of, say,

casual conversation. Here are some ‘typical’ characteristic features:

The goal of selection interviews is to assess the candidates’

potential for the training course on the basis of educational

qualifications and previous work experience.

The interviewee’s goal is to present him/herself in such a way as to

maximise chances of being selected. The interviewer’s goal is to

elicit the information needed to take the decision

The social context is asymmetrical, with an amount of power on the

part of the interviewer.

Different types of temporal references are involved depending on

the topical segment of the interview. There is usually some talk

about past events in the candidate’s educational background, and an

exploration of skills and attitudes.

97


Sources of activity-type mismatches in intercultural selection

interviews:

Lack of knowledge of the interview agenda

Lack of awareness of speaker rights

Slippage from one ‘activity type’ to another

The ‘discourse strategy’ framework.

Gumperz refers to the notion of ‘discourse strategy’ to different

‘contextualisation cues’ and ‘sociocultural knowledge’, which are

learned in previous interactive experiences. He claims that

mismatches in intercultural job interviews can be explained because

of:

Different cultural assumptions

Different ways of structuring information

Different ways of speaking

IV. TASKS

Analyse the following transcripts from selection interviews taken by

two Native speakers of English (NS1 and NS2) two Romanian

interviewers (RI1, RI2), to Romanian candidates (RC) for a post

graduate course on social work. (source: Coposescu:2003)

You may want to look specifically for dispreferred answers and sources

of activity-type mismatches:

I.

→ NS1: had you expected, if you got a place on this course that you go

abroad, for practice? on placement? are you familiar…?

130 RC3: if I like to go?

NS3: mhm

RC3: yes.(laughs) of course I’d like.

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Activity types_____________________________________________________________________

→ NS1: and er are you happy with your English?

RC3: not so happy because

135 for three years, for almost three years I didn’t practice and I feel it.

→ NS1: so what would you do…

RC3: at the university and at the faculty I had English courses.

→ NS1: and and how would you bring it up to a standard if it were

necessary?

RC3: if I were in this kind of situation?

140 RI2: how would you improve your English?

RC3: improve my English? I think my English will be improved

through the discussions, I’ll be more motivated

er to to learn at home. I have some books.

→ NS1: if if it wasn’t possible to offer you a place this year,

145 on this particular course,

what would you do?

RC3: if I don’t get a place on this course, what I will do?

about what? (laughs)

what can I do?

150 NS1:if we said unfortunately we cannot offer you a place this year

RC3: ah, then what?

NS1: yes, what would you do then?

RI1: no

RI2: no if

155 NS1: if if if if

RC3: yes, I understand

RI2: nobody knows yet.

RC3: I would work, maybe I’ll try next year.

NS1: yes, yes

160 RC3: I tried once to a master course in Cluj, I cum se spune a

pica?

99


II.

26 RI2: how do you think you’ll manage

from the time point of view

to do social service?

RC3: from my time? I understand that the course will be up to a

year,

30 RI2: you work only er eight hours? start with eight until four?

→ RC3: I don’t understand

RI2: you have always only eight hours work ?

RC3: yes.

RI2: not more?

35 RC3: sometimes, now I I have to…

RI1: you have any financial support?

III

75 NS2: if you were the mayor of Brasov,

RC5: if I were …?

NS2: the mayor of Brasov,

RC5: ah, yes.

NS2: if you had all the money that you needed

80 RC5: (laughing) I don’t know if that’s possible

IV.

1 NS1: ok. just one more question. er

what you’re doing now in the social system.

what what do you actually do

that is what is your work ?

5 RC3: yes. our er serviciu cum se spune?

RI1: office

RC3: our office. I work in the office,

NS1: you said you had your office

RC3: we’re six,

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Activity types_____________________________________________________________________

10 we’re six people who are working in this institution in this

department.

er in an office

NS1: in an office, yes.

RC3: I I have to to to make an assessment about the institution,

to give a situation, er at the client,

15 to find er to, with the client, solutions

and er third, to try to prevent children (unclear) in these

institutions.

→ NS1: but your primary goal,

RC3: primary goal, yes,

to to keep the children in a family, or to put them into other

families.

20→ NS1: and you do that through counseling and

RC3: yes yes through counseling er we can er not too much,

we can support them in a way.

NS1: yes, yes, yes

RC3: to support with clothes and er to get (unclear)

NS1: ah that’s fine. yes, thank you very much. E?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Coposescu, L., 2003, The construction of meaning in the

Interaction between native speakers of English and Romanians,

Editura Universitatii Transilvania din Brasov, Chapter 6:185-

237

Sarangi, S., 1994, Accounting for mismatches in

intercultural selection interviews, in Multilingua,

13(1/2):163-194

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7. CONVERSATION ANALYSIS

PRELIMINARY ISSUES

In its most basic sense, CA is the study of talk. More particularly, it is

‘the systematic analysis of the talk produced in everyday situations of

human interaction: talk-in-interaction’ (Hutchby and Wooffitt,

1998:13). Conversation as a discourse type has been defined by Cook

(1989) in the following way:

1. It is not primarily necessitated by a practical task.

2. Any unequal power of participants is partially suspended.

3. The number of participants is small.

4. Turns are quite short.

5. Talk is primarily for the participants and not for an outside

audience.

Although the field has adopted the name ‘conversation analysis’,

practitioners do not engage solely in the analysis of everyday

conversations. The range of forms of talk-in-interaction that have been

the subject to study within CA is far larger than the term ‘conversation’

alone would imply. Here are some important issues that CA addresses

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Conversation analysis: Preliminary issues_____________________________________________________________________

I. WHAT CA DOES

1. CA is the study of recorded, naturally occurring talk-in-

interaction.

That is, the most distinctive methodological trait of CA is that research

is based on transcribed tape-recordings of actual interactions. What is

recorded is ‘naturally occurring’ interaction, i.e. the activities that are

recorded are situated in the ordinary unfolding of people’s lives, as

opposed to being set up or pre-arranged.

2. CA is only marginally interested in language as such, but first

and foremost in language as a practical social accomplishment.

That is, words used in talk are not studied as semantic, syntactic or

morphologic units, but as objects used in terms of the activities being

negotiated in the talk: as requests, proposals, accusations, complaints,

etc.

3. Its object of study is the interactional organization of social

activities.

In other words, CA aims at discovering how participants understand

and respond to one another in their turns at talk, with a central focus on

how sequences of actions are generated. Throughout the course of a

conversation or talk-in-interaction, speakers display in the ‘next’ turns

an understanding of what the ‘prior’ turn was about. That

understanding may turn out to be what the prior speaker intended, or

not. This is described as next-turn proof procedure and it is the most

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basic tool used in CA to ensure that analyses explicate the way in

which the participants themselves orient to talk, not based on the

assumptions of the analyst.

EXAMPLE: Consider the following utterance, which is from an

exchange between mother and her son, about a forthcoming parent-

teachers’ association meeting (Based on Schegloff, 1988):

1. Mother: Do you know who’s going to that meeting?

Mother’s question in 1 can be interpreted as doing one of two types of

action. It could represent a genuine request for information about who

is attending the meeting; or she could be using it as a ‘pre-

announcement’ (a preliminary to some information she wishes to

announce about who is going. In the first case the response would be an

answer to the question, in the second, the response would provide the

opportunity for the news to be announced.

Now look at the whole interaction and comment on how participants

display their understanding of what is going on.

1.Mother: Do you know who’s going to that meeting?

2. Rus: Who?

3. Mother: I don’t know!

4. Oh, probably Mr. Murphy and Dad said Mrs. Timpte an’ some of

the teachers.

In the next turn, line 2, Russ responds with ‘Who?’, thereby displaying

that his interpretation of Mother’s first utterance is as a pre-

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announcement. But Mother’s next turn, ‘I don’t know’, displays that

Russ’s inference was in fact incorrect.: she was actually asking an

information-seeking question. Notice that following this turn, Russ

responds with the information his mother was seeking, thereby

displaying even more powerfully that he interpreted line 1 as a pre-

announcement, because he in fact knows quite a lot about who’s going

to the meeting. (Example and interpretation from Hutcby and Wooffitt,

1998).

II. ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT TALK

1. Order at all points

CA emerged in the pioneering researches of Harvey Sacks into the

structural organization of everyday language use, carried out at the

University of California (between 1964 and 1975 when he was killed in

a car crash). Sacks (cf. Hutchby and Wooffitt, 1998:17) ‘originated a

research programme which was designed to investigate the levels of

social order that could be revealed in the everyday practice of talking’.

The hypothesis with which the programme was begun was that

ordinary conversation may be a deeply ordered, structurally organized

phenomenon. At first, his data was made up of a corpus of telephone

calls to a ‘suicidal prevention centre’.

He observed that, in the majority of the cases, if the person taking the

call within the organization started off by giving their name, then the

‘suicidal’ person who was calling would be likely to give their name in

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reply. But in one particular call, Sack noticed that the caller (B) seemed

to have trouble with the name of the answerer:

A: This is Mr. Smith, may I help you?

B: I can’t hear you.

A: This is Mr. Smith.

B: Smith.

(Sacks, 1995, Lectures on conversation)

Sacks observed that, for the rest of the conversation, the agent taking

the call had great difficulty in getting the caller to give a name. His

question then was: ‘where in the course of the conversation could you

tell that somebody would not give their name’?

Sacks noted that, on the one hand, it appears that if the name is not

forthcoming at the start it may prove problematic to get. On the other

hand, overt requests for it may be resisted. Then he remarked that it is

possible that the caller'’ declared problem in hearing is a methodical

way of avoiding giving one’s name in response to the other’s having

done so. In his analysis, Sacks shows that by ‘not hearing’, the caller is

able to set up a sequential trajectory in which the agent finds less and

less opportunity to establish the caller’s name without explicitly asking

for it. Thereby, the caller is able to begin the conversation by avoiding

giving a name without actually refusing to do so.

The main concern of CA is to show how conversational devices exhibit

general features and function in essentially the same ways across

varying contexts.

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2. Social activities are observable- ethnomethodology

Working within the same field as Sacks, Garfinkel (1967) developed a

form of sociology which became known as ethnomethodology (see also

Hutchby&Wooffitt, 1998:30-37). For Garfinkel, members of society

are capable of rationally understanding and accounting for their own

actions. The aim of the researcher would be then to describe methods

that people use for accounting for their own actions and those of others.

These are the ‘ethno-methods’, or the commonsense knowledge that

members are using.

One of the problems that ethnomethodology encounters is that of how

to gain analytic access to the level of the commonsense knowledge

which it seeks to study. Garfinkel’s earliest research consisted of

‘breaching’ experiments in which taken-for-granted routines of

ordinary life were intentionally disrupted in order to observe how

people dealt with their sudden lack of certainty. For instance, he would

instruct his student ‘experimenters’ to engage others in interaction and

then to repeatedly request the subject of the experiment to clarify

whatever he or she said. Thus, on being asked ‘How are you’, the

experimenter would ignore the routine or expected use of the question,

and respond instead:

S: How are you?

E: How am I in regard to what? My health, my finances, my school

work, my peace of mind, my…

S: (Red in the face and suddenly out of control) Look! I was just trying

to be polite. Frankly, I don’t give a damn how you are.

(Garfinkel, 1967:44)

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Basically, by his experiments Garfinkel observed that subjects would

find some way of accounting for the ‘strange’ behaviour of the

experimenters. They did this by treating the experimenters as rational

agents who had actively chosen to behave in this way, or who had some

underlying reason for doing so. The main points the

ethnomethodologists wanted to make were that:

Conversational talk was not incoherent or irregular and was rule-

governed

Such rules are ‘people’s rules’, rather than linguists’.

III. BASIC NOTIONS

1. Turn-taking mechanism:

The starting point is the observation that conversation involves turn-

taking and that the end of one speaker’s turn and the beginning of the

next latch on to each other with almost perfect precision. Overlap of

turns (when two or more participants talk at the same time) occurs in

about 5% of cases and this suggests that speakers know how, when and

where to enter. They signal that one turn has come to an end and

another should begin.

The turn-taking model has two components:

a) turn construction units

Turns at talk can be seen as constructed out of units which broadly

correspond to linguistic categories such as sentences, clauses, single

words (e.g., ‘Hey!’, ‘What ?’) or phrases.

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Features of turn-construction units

projectability – it is possible for participants to project, in the

course of a turn-construction unit, what sort of unit it is and at what

point it is likely to end.

Transition relevance place – at the end of each unit there is the

possibility for legitimate transition between speakers.

b) Turn distribution (e.g. who dominates the conversation in terms of

number of turns taken, length of turns)

There is no strict limit to turn size, given the extendable nature of

syntactic turn-constructional units;

There is no exclusion of parties;

The number of parties can change.

The rules operating for turn units (see Sacks, Schegloff, and

Jefferson, 1974/1978):

a) if C (current speaker) selects N (next speaker) in current turn, then C

must stop speaking, and N must speak next.

c) if C does not select N, then any other party self-selects, first speaker

gaining rights to the next turn

d) if C has not selected N, and no other party self-selects, then C may

(but need not) continue.

Where, despite the rules, overlapping talk occurs, studies revealed the

operation of a system:

1. one speaker drops out rapidly

2. as soon as one speaker thus ‘gets into the clear’, he typically

recycles precisely the part of the turn obscured by the overlap.

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3. If one speaker does not immediately drop out, there is available

a competitive allocation system, whereby the speaker who

‘upgrades’ most, wins the floor. (uppgrading = increased

amplitude, slowing tempo, lengthened vowels, etc.)

EXAMPLE: how do you explain the overlap in the following

conversation?

1. Rose: Why don’t you come and see me some/times

2. Bea: / I would

3 like to

4. Rose: I would like you to

(Hutchby and Wooffitt, 1998)

Bea is able here to recognise Rose’s utterance as a form of invitation,

and to respond to it with an acceptance before it has actually finished

(line 2). By starting to talk when she does (not waiting for instance to

end of the unit which might have been different, - e.g. sometime this

week – triggering a different kind of response), Bea not only projects

the end of a particular turn-construction unit, but also displays an

understanding of what kind of invitation that unit represents.

2. Basic turn-type: adjacency pairs and ‘preference’

Adjacency pairs

One of the most noticeable things about conversation is that certain

classes of utterances conventionally come in pairs.

Example:

Question/answer

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Greeting/greeting

Invitation/acceptance(declination)

Offer/acceptance (refusal)

These sequences are called adjacency pairs because, ideally, the two

parts should be produced next to each other. The point is that some

classes of utterances are conventionally paired such that, on the

production of a first pair part, the second becomes relevant and

remains so, even if it is not produced in the next turn. The next turn in

an adjacency pair ‘sequence’ is a relevant second pair part. But that

need not be the next turn in the series of turns making up some

particular conversation.

Example of an insertion sequence: (Levinson 1983)

1. A: Can I have a bottle of Mich? Q1

B: Are you over twenty-one? Ins 1

A: No. Ins.2

B: No. A1

The reason this is an insertion sequence is because the question in line

2 does not ignore or propose not to answer the question in line 1.

Rather, it serves to defer the answer until further relevant information

(in this case, whether the speaker A is old enough to buy beer) has been

obtained. As we see, speaker A orients to that deferral by answering the

inserted question in line 3, rather than, for example, asking his initial

question again, or complaining that it has not been answered. Once the

insertion sequence is completed, B shows that he is still orienting to the

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relevance of the original adjacency pair by moving on, in line 4, to

provide the relevant part.

This example illustrates a further aspect of adjacency pairs. The

participants, by ‘orienting’ to the relevance of the adjacency pair,

display to one another their understandings of what each utterance is

aiming at accomplishing. The, participants can use adjacency pair

mechanisms to display to one another, and to the analyst also, their

ongoing understanding and sense-making of one another’s talk.

The absence of a second pair part is most often treated participants as a

noticeable absence, and the speaker of the first part may infer a reason

for the absence.

Example in a question/answer sequence:

1 Child: Have to cut these, Mummy. (1.3) Won’t we

2 Mummy.

3 (1.5)

4. Child: Won’t we.

4. Mother: Yes

(Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998:42)

The child asks his mother to confirm her observation that they will

‘have to cut these’, then getting no response in the 1.5-secon pause in

line 3, makes an issue out of the absence of an answer by repeating the

question.

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This shows that talk-in-interaction is not just a matter of turn-taking but

also a matter of accomplishing ‘actions’. Within this framework, failure

(or perceived failure) to take a turn in an appropriate place can itself be

interpreted as accomplishing some type of action.

Preference

Another inferential aspect of adjacency pairs stems from the fact that

certain first pair parts make alternative actions relevant in second

position. In some adjacency pairs there is a choice of two likely

responses, of which one is termed preferred response (because it

occurs more frequently), and the other dispreferred (because it is less

common).

Examples:

1. Offer A: Like some coffee?

-acceptance (preferred) B: I’d love some.

-refusal (dispreferred) B: Thanks, but I’m

waiting for my friend

2. Compliment A: That’s a nice skirt.

-acceptance (preferred) B: Thanks

-rejection (dispreferred) B: Well, it’s quite old

-agreement (preferred) B: It’s nice, isn’t it?

-shift B: My friend found it for me

-return B: Thanks, I like

yours too.

3. Blame A: You broke the plate.

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- denial (preferred) B: I didn’t do it.

- admission (dispreferred) B: Sorry, I didn’t see

it.

4. Complaint A: You ate the cake I

left in the fridge.

- apology (preferred) B: Sorry

- denial (dispreferred) B: No, I didn’t. It

must have been somebody else.

- excuse B: You shouldn’t

have left it there.

- challenge B: So what!

A dispreferred response is usually marked by: a slight pause, a preface

(like ‘Well’, ‘You see’) or by an explanation or justification.

The concept of preference is not intended to refer to psychological

motives of individuals, but rather to structural features of the design of

turns associated with particular activities, by which participants can

draw inferences about the kinds of action a turn is performing. So,

initial actions can be designed to invite particular kind of response. For

example, the phrase ‘isn’t it?’ might be appended to an assessment,

thereby inviting recipient’s agreement.

EXAMPLE:

1 Jo: T’s-it’s a beautiful day out isn’t it?

2 Lee: Yeh it’s gorgeous.

(Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998:44)

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Speakers may design first parts in particular ways in order to get certain

social actions done.

In general, CA work has focused more on micro-structured issues

rather than on the larger, macro-structures of conversations, i.e., a lot of

work has been done on adjacency pairs and preference organization of

talk. From this perspective, the major drawback is that, while focus on

small excerpts of talk has been responsible for CA’s discoveries about

conversation, it is limited in its ability to deal with sustained

interactions (cf. Eggins and Slade, 1997:32).

IV. SUMMARY

CA is the study of recorded, naturally occurring talk-in-

interaction.

CA is only marginally interested in language as such, but first

and foremost in language as a practical social accomplishment.

Its object of study is the interactional organization of social

activities.

In other words, CA aims at discovering how participants understand

and respond to one another in their turns at talk, with a central focus on

how sequences of actions are generated. Throughout the course of a

conversation or talk-in-interaction, speakers display in the ‘next’ turns

an understanding of what the ‘prior’ turn was about. That

understanding may turn out to be what the prior speaker intended, or

not. This is described as next-turn proof procedure and it is the most

basic tool used in CA to ensure that analyses explicate the way in

115


which the participants themselves orient to talk, not based on the

assumptions of the analyst.

Basic notions

1. Turn-taking mechanism:

The turn-taking model has two components:

a. turn construction units

Turns at talk can be seen as constructed out of units which broadly

correspond to linguistic categories such as sentences, clauses, single

words (e.g., ‘Hey!’, ‘What ?’) or phrases.

Features of turn-construction units

projectability – it is possible for participants to

project, in the course of a turn-construction unit,

what sort of unit it is and at what point it is likely to

end.

transition relevance place – at the end of each unit

there is the possibility for legitimate transition

between speakers.

b. Turn distribution

There is no strict limit to turn size, given the extendable

nature of syntactic turn-constructional units;

There is no exclusion of parties;

The number of parties can change.

2. Adjacency pairs are utterances that are conventionally paired so that,

on the production of a first pair part, the second becomes relevant and

remains so, even if it is not produced in the next turn. The next turn in

an adjacency pair ‘sequence’ is a relevant second pair part.

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3. Preference organization

In some adjacency pairs there is a choice of two likely responses, of

which one is termed preferred response (because it occurs more

frequently), and the other dispreferred (because it is less common).

A dispreferred response is usually marked by: a slight pause, a preface

(like (‘Well’, ‘You see’) or by an explanation or justification.

V. TASKS

1. Let’s consider a facsimile of the typescript of the words of a

conversation actually produced between a hearing woman and her

deaf daughter-in-law, Niki. Identify who says what in this typed

conversation. This will give you some idea of the problem of

recognizing when a speaker’s turn ends (Langford, 1994:73-74):

HELLO HI MOM HERE IS NIKI TODAY IM FINE MY ARM IS

SORE YES THE DOCTOR SAID IT WOULD BE HOW IS

YOUR TUMMY I THINK IT IS FINE ARE YOU STILL IN

PAIN NO I DON’T HAVE PAIN THAT IS GOOD TELL IAN TO

BRING OVER THAT BILL YOU GOT FROM THE BANK

AND AN OLD ONE SO I CAN SEE HOW MUCH DIFFERENCE

YOU HAVE TO PAY MORE I HAVE TO KNOW HOW MUCH

MORE YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO PAY THEM SO I

KNOW WHAT IM TALKING ABOUT WHEN I CALL THEM

YES MY MUM JUST TOLD ME THAT U WANTED HIM TO

BRING THE BILL I’LL TELL HIM WE HAD XX HAVE TO

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PAY 16$ MORE OK I WILL CALL AND FIND OUT MORE

THAT TOLD YOU IT WOULD GO UP A FEW DOLLARS

RIGHT YES BUT THEY GAVE US MORE I KNOW I WILL

CALL AND SEE WHAT THEY CAN DO WAIT TO SEE WHAT

HAPPENS ANYWAY OK WHEN I DRINK TEA AND IT

TASTES FUNNY IN MY STOMACH I THINK I HAVE BLEED

IN MY THROAT OH WELL THE DOCTOR SAID IT WOULD

FEEL FUNNY

2. Explain what is going on in the following sequence (discuss the

types of adjacency pairs) (Mey,1993:224)

Father (on the phone to university): So I think I’ll be in

tomorrow, when Peter is a little better. And if you could tell the

ethics committee…

(in a loud voice): HEY STOP THAT RIGHT AWAY

Secretary: You want me to stop WHAT

Father: Sorry I was talking to the cat –

hold on

Secretary:

Father: The damn cat was fixin’ to sit on the

baby’s face.

3. Can you elucidate the misunderstanding(s) involved in the

following conversation between a Western tourist in a museum

in Japan and a Japanese attendant (Mey,1993:266):

Tourist: Is there a toilet around here?

Attendant: You want to use?

Tourist: Sure I do.

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Attendant: Go down the steps.

4. Discuss the following exchange (Mey,1993:300):

(Two secretaries meet in the hallway of their common office):

A: Would you like a piece of apple cake?

B: Have you got some?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lazaraton, A., 1997, Peference organization in oral proficiency

interviews: the case of language ability assessments, in

Research on Language and Social Interaction, 30(1): 53-72

Schegloff, E., A., 1980, Preliminaries to preliminaries: ‘Can I ask you a

question?’ in Sociological Inquiry, 50 (3-4): 104-52.

____ 1988, Presequences and indirectness, in Journal of Pragmatics,

12: 55-62

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8. REPAIRS AND

OVERALL ORGANISATION OF

CONVERSATIONS

Repair is a generic term used in CA to cover a wide range of

phenomena, from seeming errors in turn-taking, such as overlapping

talk, to any of the forms of what is commonly called ‘corrections’ –

that is, substantive faults in the contents of what someone has said.

The area of repair has generated a large amount of work in CA, the aim

being that of showing how repair illustrates participants’ orientations to

the basic turn-taking rules. There are two main ways in which this is

done:

First, the turn-taking itself, as Schegloff, Jefferson and Sacks(1977)

have noted, has its own means of repairing faults. That is, in cases of

overlapping talk there is a violation of the ‘one speaker at a time’ ideal.

But this is repaired by a practice that is itself a transformation of a

central feature of the turn-taking system: namely, one

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Repairs; Overall organization of conversations_____________________________________________________________________

speaker tends to stop speaking before the completion of a first turn-

construction unit.

Second, CA has identified a certain organization of repairs done by

participants in conversation.

I. THE ORGANISATION OF REPAIRS

There is a large variety of problems in conversations:

incorrect word selection,

slips of tongue

mis-hearings

misunderstandings

However, the analytic strategy of CA was to identify and describe the

general properties of an organisation for repair which allows

participants to deal with the whole range of troubles. It is for this

reason why the term repair is preferred to that of ‘correction’.

Repair types

(All the examples and interpretations below are taken from Hutchby

and Wooffitt, 1998:61-63)

The repair system embodies a distinction between the initiation of

repair (marking something as a source of trouble), and the actual repair

itself. There is also a distinction between repair initiated by self (the

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speaker who produced the trouble source), and repair initiated by other.

Consequently, there are four varieties of repair:

Self-initiated self-repair. Repair is both initiated and carried out

by the speaker of the trouble source.

E.g.:

1. I: Is it flu: you’ve got?

2.→ N: No I don’t think- I refuse to have all these things

Here speaker N starts to produce an answer to the question (‘No I don’t

think-‘) and then terminates that in mid-production in order to instead

assert ‘I refuse to have all these things’.

Other-initiated self-repair. Repair is carried out by the speaker of

the trouble source but initiated by the recipient.

E.g.:

1 Ken: Is Al here today?

2 Dan: Yeah.

3 (2.0)

4.→ Roger: he is? Hh eh heh

5 Dan: Well he is.

Roger’s turn (4) is an example of what is called a ‘next-turn’ repair

initiator (NTRI). Other NTRIs may be words like ‘What?’, or even

non-verbal gestures, such as a quizzical look.

NTRIs perform several tasks in interaction. Consider the following

extract, in which NTRI takes the form of partial repeat of prior turn:

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1 A: Hey (.) the first time they stopped me from selling

cigarettes was this morning.

1. (1.)

2. .→B: From selling cigarettes?

3. A: Or buying cigarettes.

In this case it transpires that the first speaker has made a ‘slip of the

tongue’. However, the co-participants do not simply proffer the correct

word. Nor do they explicitly announce that a mistake has been made.

They provide a partial repeat of the prior turn and thereby recycle the

trouble source. The first speaker, then, can infer that there was a

problem connected to his earlier utterance, and the partial repeat of the

earlier turn identifies for them the precise source of trouble.

Furthermore, as a trouble source has been identified but nor repaired,

the possibility is offered for the speaker who has produced the trouble

source to repair it.

Self-initiated other-repair. The speaker of a trouble source may

try and get the recipient to repair the trouble – for example if a

name is proving troublesome to remember.

E.g.:

In the following example the first speaker’s reference to his trouble

remembering someone’s name initiates the second speaker’s repair.

1 B: He had this uh Mistuh W-m whatever, I can’t think of his first

name, Watts on, the one that wrote /that piece

2 A: / Dan Watts.

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Other-initiated other-repair. The recipient of a trouble-source

turn both initiates and carries out the repair. This is closest to what

is conventionally understood by ‘correction’.

E.g.:

In the following example there is an explicit correction which is then

acknowledged and accepted in the subsequent turn:

1 Milly: and then they said something about Kruschev has

leukemia so I thought oh it’s all a big put on.

2.→ Jean: Breshnev.

3 Milly: Breshnev has leukemia. So I don’t know what to think.

Repairs tend to occur in close proximity to the trouble source. One

reason for this has to do with structural requirements: a system that

required speakers to recall a trouble source from several turns before

would be prone to immense organisational problems. Moreover, trouble

sources which are not addressed close to their occurrence can quickly

lead to significant problems in an exchange. Schegloff (cf. Hutchby and

Wooffitt, 1998) provides an example of a call to a talk radio show in

which the host and caller fail to identify and deal with a

misunderstanding about what each is referring to. Without realising,

they both continue to talk about different event. The resulting confusion

soon leads to disagreement which then escalates to hostility and by the

end of the call both parties are practically shouting at each other.

In this sense, one important function of the repair system is the

maintenance of mutual orientation to common topics and fields of

reference. Work on repair system has shown that there is a ‘preference’

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for self-repair over other-repair. The source of evidence comes from

analysis of interaction during repair sequence.

II. OVERALL ORGANISATION OF CONVERSATIONS

Overall organization of conversations refers to the organization of the

totality of the exchanges within some specific kind of conversation.

One kind of conversation with a recognizable overall organization that

has been much studied is the telephone call. They tend to have clear

beginnings and carefully organized closing. Thus in telephone calls we

may recognize the following typical components:

Opening section:

1. Summons – the telephone rings and the person at the receiving end

almost invariable speaks first (‘Hello’)

2. Answer – the caller produces a greeting in response, usually with a

self identification

3. Reason for summons

The main body of a call

It is usually structured by ‘topical constraints’: the content of the first

slot is likely to be understood as the main reason for the call, and after

that topics should by preference be ‘fitted’ to prior ones. Topics

therefore are often withheld until a ‘natural’ location for their mention

turns up. Evidence for this preference for linked transitions from one

topic to another can be found in the common experience of having

things to say that one never manages to get in. Unlinked topic ‘jumps’

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are therefore usually marked by such signals as increased amplitude,

raised pitch, hesitancy.

It has been suggested that topic can be characterized in terms of

reference: A and B are talking about the same topic if they are talking

about the same things or sets of referents. But co-referentiality is

neither sufficient nor necessary to establish topical coherence. Rather, it

is something constructed across turns by the collaboration of

participants.

Closing section

Techniques for topic closing are intimately connected to the

introduction of the closing section, or the shutting down of a

conversation.

The general schema for closing sections:

a). a closing down of some topic which includes making arrangements

(also called closing implicative topic)

b) one or more pairs of passing turns with pre-closing items such as

OK, All right, So

b) a final exchange of terminal elements (Farewells)

E.g. :

A: I’ll ring you on Sunday night then

B: all right ring me Sunday

A: I will

B: bye bye then

A: bye

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This structure avoids abrupt closure (construed as rudeness), and give

option of re-opening after the pre-sequence, thus ensuring that neither

participant is deprived of the right to add something forgotten.

We are now in the position to give a more technical characterization of

what a conversation is. We must first distinguish the unit a

conversation from conversational activity. The latter is something

characterizable in terms of local organizations, and especially the

operation of turn-taking system. There are many kinds of talk (sermons,

lectures) that do not have these properties and which we would not

want to consider conversational. There are many other kinds of talk (eg.

classroom interrogation) which exhibit features of conversational

activity like turn-taking, but which are clearly not conversations.

Conversation as a unit, on the other hand, is characterizable in terms of

overall organization of the sort sketched here, in addition to the use of

conversational activities like turn-taking.

III. SUMMARY

Repair is a generic term used in CA to cover a wide range of

phenomena, from seeming errors in turn-taking, such as overlapping

talk, to any of the forms of what is commonly called ‘corrections’ –

that is, substantive faults in the contents of what someone has said.

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Repair types

The repair system embodies a distinction between the initiation of

repair (marking something as a source of trouble), and the actual repair

itself. There is also a distinction between repair initiated by self (the

speaker who produced the trouble source), and repair initiated by other.

Consequently, there are four varieties of repair:

Self-initiated self-repair. Repair is both initiated and carried out by

the speaker of the trouble source.

Other-initiated self-repair. Repair is carried out by the speaker of

the trouble source but initiated by the recipient.

Self-initiated other-repair. The speaker of a trouble source may try

and get the recipient to repair the trouble – for example if a name is

proving troublesome to remember.

Other-initiated other-repair. The recipient of a trouble-source turn

both initiates and carries out the repair. This is closest to what is

conventionally understood by ‘correction’.

Work on repair system has shown that there is a ‘preference’ for self-

repair over other-repair

Overall organization of conversations refers to the organization of the

totality of the exchanges within some specific kind of conversation.

One kind of conversation with a recognizable overall organization that

has been much studied is the telephone call.

Opening section:

1. Summons – the telephone rings and the person at the receiving

end almost invariable speaks first (‘Hello’)

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2. Answer – the caller produces a greeting in response, usually

with a self identification

3. Reason for summons

The main body of a call

It is usually structured by ‘topical constraints’: the content of the first

slot is likely to be understood as the main reason for the call, and after

that topics should by preference be ‘fitted’ to prior ones. Topics

therefore are often withheld until a ‘natural’ location for their mention

turns up

Closing section

The general schema for closing sections:

a). a closing down of some topic which includes making arrangements

(also called closing implicative topic)

b) one or more pairs of passing turns with pre-closing items such as

OK, All right, So

c) a final exchange of terminal elements (Farewells)

Conversational activity is something characterizable in terms of local

organizations, and especially the operation of turn-taking system.

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IV. TASKS:

1. Identify types of repairs in the following extracts (Hutchby and

Wooffitt, 1998):

1.

N: She was givin’ me a:ll the people that were gone

this year I mean this quarter y’ /know

Y: / yeah

2.

L: an’ but all of the door ‘n things were taped up=

=I mean y’ know they put up y’know that

kinda paper stuff, the brown paper.

3.

A: Lissana pigeons

(0.7)

B: Quail I think

4.

A: Have you ever tried a clinic?

B: What?

A: Have you ever tried a clinic?

2. In the following conversation, identify repairs (Source:

Coposescu:2002:206)

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(NS1 stands for a native speaker of English who is interviewing a

Romanian candidate –RC3 - for a post university course on social

work)

NS1: ok, do you know what is supervision in social work?

RC3: supervision

NS1: supervision for you as a ∕ worker.

RC3: ∕ my

NS1: ∕ do you understand the concept?

RC3: supervise myself?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Schegloff, E. A. & Sacks, H., 1973, Opening up

Closings, in Semiotica, 7: 289-327.

Schegloff, E., A., Jefferson, G., Sacks, H., 1977, The

preference for self-correction in the organization of repair in

conversation, in Language, vol 53, No. 2, 361-382

131


9. ISSUES OF TRANSCRIPTION

CA, who place a great emphasis on the use of naturally occurring data,

view transcripts as ‘representation’ of the data, while the tape itself is

viewed as the ‘reproduction’ of a social event. The transcription of the

data is considered part of the analysis itself. There is much that we hear

in the stream of speech in addition to the sounds by which we recognise

the individual words. Punctuation marks such as capital letters, full

stops, question marks, commas, were introduced to go some way to

represent the pauses, rhythms and tunes that are such a feature of the

way people talk.

One of the difficulties encountered in trying to organise speech through

the use of punctuation is that it is not always obvious that we are

dealing with sentences. Even when it is fairly obvious that we are

dealing with a sentence-like unit a further difficulty is to decide how it

is being used: to ask a question, make a statement or give an order.

There are also many, subtle ways in which speakers can use their

voices in order to say things in different ways. We can refer to an

individual’s ability to use their voices in different ways as the

individual’s vocal repertoire. There are many aspects of vocal

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repertoire that the punctuation conventions for written texts cannot

capture. Novelists overcome the problem of representing the vocal

133


repertoires used by the characters by the use of a wide range of verbs

and descriptions of ‘saying’.

Examples of words of saying: cried, murmured, whispered, gasped,

insisted, shouted, etc.

Examples of descriptions of how things were said: hesitantly,

brusquely, slowly, quickly, with a smile, with a laugh, emphatically,

etc.

The focus may be primarily on the physical characteristics of what is

heard, or on other matters such as the social, psychological or

conversational context of what is said.

E.g. (from Langford, 1994:38):

‘I love you’, whispered the doctor (focus on physical).

‘I love you’, pouted the doctor (focus on physical = rounding and

protrusion of lips – and social/psychological – are led to assume that

the doctor is female and possibly that the relationship of speaker to

audience is of a sexual kind)).

‘I love you’, replied the doctor (focus on conversational context – we

are led to believe that what the doctor says occurs at a particular

sequential position in the conversation, i.e. following something

another speaker has said.)

These descriptive terms for reported speech have more to do with

interpretation of what is said than with the physical details of how it is

134

Issues of transcription_____________________________________________________________________

said. So, for the purpose of detailed examination of how people actually

talk to one another we need to adapt and extend the standard

orthography.

Researchers working within CA tradition have created a well-defined

system of transcription of spoken data. They usually include such

detailed features of talk as the precise beginning and ending of turns,

the duration of pauses, audible sounds such as breathiness, and stress in

individual words. On the other hand, it is also agreed among

researchers that transcription is a selective process reflecting the

researcher's interpretation of what he/he hears on the tape, and

reflecting theoretical goals and definitions. It is most unlikely that any

two transcribers will pick on precisely the same features to represent.

I. FEATURES OF TALK REPRESENTED IN

TRANSCRIPTIONS

A transcription will be effective to the extent it can clearly and

comprehensibly represent those characteristics of spoken verbal

interaction:

Produced spontaneously

Produced with the intention that there be some response

Designed to show for each utterance that it is either a response, is

meant to elicit a response, or both

Designed to take account, on a moment-by-moment basis, of the

roles the participants, the purposes and the situation in which talk

occurs.

135


The features of talk represented in transcripts are mostly involved with

particular analytical issues. However, in order to capture the

participants’ behaviour, you have to write down such details as:

unfinished words, non-verbal vocalisations, silences (which you feel

are attributable to the current speaker or to other participants). They

may fall into two categories:

1. Turn-taking features

Turn: a turn is the utterance(s) by which a speaker holds the floor and

a new turn starts when there is a speaker change. An utterance may be

made of one or more words, including non-linguistic vocalisations,

such as laughter and back-channeling.

The turn at talk is the main unit of analysis of the interaction. However,

since the page lines are strictly limited in length, whereas turns are not,

whenever the turn takes longer than a line, you could simply continue

the transcription of the turn onto the next line.

However, you may come across cases in which there are long stretches

of uninterrupted talk (for example in story-telling). Then the issue of

marking line boundaries may occur. For reasons of readability and

relevance to the analysis, in the long streteches of uninterrupted talk,

you can use one line for:

A complete informational phrase, that is, a syntactical phrase,

showing a grammatical clause completion (where there are short

clauses you may choose to allow several clauses per line)

136


A phrase which is bounded by rising intonation or falling

intonation.

E.g. (Coposescu, 2003)

100 RC1:I have to resist as many years as possible (.)

er because my work is very important and (.) maybe (.)

so after the Romanian Orphanage Trust left the country,

er the only problem we had (.)

the training was exceptional (.)

105 everything was great

but we still have state institutions (.) care institutions

and the problem was to try to get rid of those institutions

or to offer some alternatives to state institutions.

so the German government with the Romanian government in 1995

(.)

110 er offered to pay a house, (.)

a family house with ten places the Transient House.

the purpose […] is to take children from maternities (.)

small babies, it’s for children from zero to three (.)

er in order to put them into state institutions,

115 in that family house to prepare for reintegration,

or for national adoption

so, I will present the social requirements of that house .

Back-channeling - Non-word vocalisations are transcribed, as

appropriate, with er, erm, mm. These are important to transcribe

because they can be interpreted as acknowledgement tokens, or

‘continuers’, demonstrating that the producer of such tokens recognises

that an extended turn at talk is underway and that the current speaker’s

turn is not yet complete.

137


Laughter: hehehe, or simply (laughter)

Pause: these are defined as intervals between turns, which may show:

1) clause completion) or 2) signals the point where the next speaker can

pick up the floor. Pauses refer to the timing of the participants’ talk

relative to each other. The following speaker’s talk may be latched on

to the prior speaker’s with no gap at all. Sometimes the speakers talk at

the same time and produce overlapping talk. There are inferences that

can be made on the timing of the talk, such as being supportive, pushy,

downright interruptive, etc.

2. Prosodic features

Prosody refers to rhythm and intonation. You may include such

prosodic features as:

Loudness – segments, syllables, words or sequences of words that

are particularly loud relative to the surrounding talk

Stress – segments, syllables, words or sequences of words that have

particularly strong stress relative to surrounding talk

Intonation contour – clause final intonation, clause final rising

intonation

Below are listed symbols and their significance that you could use

when transcribing a piece of conversation:

Symbol Significance

_______________________________________________

Arabic numerals line numbers

. clause final falling intonation

138


? clause final rising intonation

, slight rise

(.) short hesitation within a turn (less than 2

seconds)

(2) inter-turn pause longer than 1 second, the

number indicating the seconds

= = latched utterances, with no discernible gap

between the prior speaker’s and the next

speaker’s talk

/ the onset of overlapping talk

CAPS Segments, syllables, words or sequences of

words that are particularly loud relative to the

surrounding talk;

Underlined item segments, syllables, words or sequences of

words that have particularly strong stress relative

to surrounding talk

: : lengthened syllables or vowels

(words within transcriber’s guesses

parentheses)

[words in square non-verbal information and/or unclear passages

brackets]

(*) unidentified speaker

italics word in Romanian

Other transcription conventions:

Non-transcribable segments of talk. These are indicated as [unclear]

139


Uncertain transcription. Words within parentheses indicate the

guess.

Non-verbal information. I have included in square brackets non-

verbal information, such as the information in the dinner-party

conversation [J comes in], because it is relevant for the change of

topic by J.

Here is a sample of a transcript taken from the dinner-party

conversation to illustrate the level of transcription detail:

J: tried er er a cookery book about vegetarian Romanian FOOD

20 (*): ohh

[laughter]

Ch: it’s just loads isn’t it the vegetables that they make.

J: oh lovely vegetables. yes. I I’ve I mean… I’ve looked for a

Romanian cookery book when er before I came here and

there only one about… er it was sort of 99 percent meat .

[laughter]

25 (*) [unclear] so

M: pork pork and pork.

[laughter]

L: what was the one percent. what was this er the last the one

percent.

J: oh polenta.

30 [laughter]

and even the polenta had had stock meat stock again

[laughing]

Ch: fasole:: fasole a::nd

(*): aubergine

Ch: beans and the egg plant aubergines as well

140


35 (*) mhm

When transcribing recorded conversations, you will have to decide how

detailed your transcription should be, depending on the kind of analysis

you are going to do. You could also create your own system of

transcription, the most important thing being consistency in your

transcription.

II. SUMMARY

Features of talk represented in transcriptions

The features of talk represented in transcripts are mostly involved with

particular analytical issues. However, in order to capture the

participants’ behaviour, you have to write down such details as:

unfinished words, non-verbal vocalisations, silences (which you feel

are attributable to the current speaker or to other participants). They

may fall into two categories:

1. Turn-taking features

Turn: a turn is the utterance(s) by which a speaker holds

the floor and a new turn starts when there is a speaker

change. An utterance may be made of one or more

words, including non-linguistic vocalisations, such as

laughter and back-channeling.

Back-channeling - Non-word vocalisations are

transcribed, as appropriate, with er, erm, mm. These are

important to transcribe because they can be interpreted

141


as acknowledgement tokens, or ‘continuers’,

demonstrating that the producer of such tokens

recognises that an extended turn at talk is underway and

that the current speaker’s turn is not yet complete.

Laughter: hehehe, or simply (laughter)

Pause: these are defined as intervals between turns,

which may show: 1) clause completion) or 2) signals the

point where the next speaker can pick up the floor.

Pauses refer to the timing of the participants’ talk

relative to each other.

Sometimes the speakers talk at the same time and

produce overlapping talk. There are inferences that can

be made on the timing of the talk, such as being

supportive, pushy, downright interruptive, etc.

2. Prosodic features

Prosody refers to rhythm and intonation. You may include such

prosodic features as:

Loudness – segments, syllables, words or sequences of words that

are particularly loud relative to the surrounding talk

Stress – segments, syllables, words or sequences of words that have

particularly strong stress relative to surrounding talk

Intonation contour – clause final intonation, clause final rising

intonation

III. TASKS

142


1 The following is an extract from Nora Ephron’s novel Heartburn.

The extract is a part of a telephone conversation which Betty has made

to Rachel in which Rachel takes the opportunity to start a rumour about

Thelma whom she suspects her own husband of having an affair with.

Betty is unaware of Rachel’s suspicion.

The author mostly uses the verb ‘say’ in reporting speech. Substitute

alternative verbs of saying or descriptions of ways of saying, to indicate

how you think the things might have been said (from

Langford,1994:39-40).

‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter’, said Betty, ‘because I found out who

Thelma Rice is having an affair with’.

‘Who?’, I said.

‘You’re not going to like it’, said Betty.

‘Who is it?’, I said.

‘Arthur’, said Betty.

‘Arthur Siegal?’ I said.

‘Yes’, said Betty. ‘They were having drinks in the Washington Hilton

yesterday afternoon. Nobody has drinks in the Washington Hilton

unless something secret’s going on.’

2. Record any piece of informal conversation (from any source you can

afford) and transcribe a short excerpt. Create your own system of

transcription conventions. Design the transcription system in such a

143


way as to produce transcripts that are accurate at the relevant level of

detail, but accessible to the reader too.

BIBLIOGRAPHY



Editura Universitatii Transilvania din Brasov, Chapter

3.3.1.:70-80

Ochs, E., 1979, Transcription as Theory, in A. Jaworski

and N.Coupland (eds.), The Discourse Reader,

167-183.

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10. TALK IN INSTITUTIONAL SETTINGS

Institutional talk is centrally and actively involved in the

accomplishment of the ‘institutional’ nature of institutions themselves.

CA has developed a distinctive means of locating participants’

displayed orientations to the institutional contexts. This is done by

adopting a broadly comparative perspective in which the turn-taking

system for mundane conversation is treated as the benchmark against

which other forms of talk-in-interaction can be distinguished.

Two basic types of institutions have been defined (cf. Hutchby and

Wooffitt, 1998). They are described as:

1) formal types – represented by courts of law, many kinds of

interview, especially the broadcast news interviews, but also some

job interviews, some traditional or teacher-led styles of classroom

teaching, and most forms of ceremonial occasions.

2) non-formal types – include more loosely structured, but still task-

oriented, lay/professional encounters, such as: counselling sessions,

various kinds of social work encounters, business meetings, service

encounters in places such as shops, radio phone-in conversations

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I. FORMAL INSTITUTIONS AND QUESTION-ANSWER

SEQUENCES

According to Hutchby and Wooffitt (1998:149), ‘the distinctiveness of

formal types of institutional settings is based on the close relationship

between participants’ social roles and the forms of talk in which they

engage’. Studies of formal settings have focused on the ways in which

participants orient to a strict turn-taking format called turn-type pre-

allocation. It means that participants, on entering the setting, are

constrained (by the existing norms of the institution) in the types of

turns they may take according to their particular institutional roles.

Typically, the format involves chains of question-answer sequences.

But the question-answer pre-allocation format is only a minimal

characterisation of the speech exchange system. In other words, any

range of actions may be done in a given turn, provided that they are

done in the form of a question-answer.

Levinson (1992:66-100) gives the following example, taken from the

transcript of a rape trial, in order to demonstrate how question/answer

sequences are oriented to the type of activity that is going on:

1 A: You have had sexual intercourse on a previous

2 occasion, haven’t you.

3 B: Yes.

4 A: On many previous occasions?

5 B: Not many.

6 A: Several?

7 B: Yes.

146

Talk in institutional settings_____________________________________________________________________

8 A: With several men?

9 B: No.

10 A: Just one?

11 B: Two.

12 A: Two. And you are seventeen and a half?

13 B: Yes.

As we see the defence attorney (A) and the alleged rape victim (B)

restrict themselves to producing questions and answers, and by this

restriction of turn-taking beahviour, we gain a powerful sense of

context simply through the details of their talk.

However, according to Levinson’s (1992, 100) interpretation, the

questions are of a particular type. They are not ‘real’ questions

(according to Searle), which are designed to inform the questioner

about something which he/she does not know; neither ‘exam’ questions

(Searle) which are designed to test the answerer’s knowledge about

something which the questioner already knows. Rather they are

designed to get B to admit to something: namely, to having had sexual

intercourse with ‘several’ men at the age of seventeen and a half. By

these means the questions are designed to construct a certain social

image of B: as a woman with ‘loose morals'.

One of the most significant implication for the specifically

‘institutional’ character of actions in formal settings, of the pre-

allocated format is the fact that powerful constraints operate to restrict

the distribution of rights to express a personal opinion on the matter

147


being discussed. In courtrooms and broadcast news, questioners are

required to avoid stating their opinions overtly; rather their task is to

elicit the stance, opinion, account of the one being questioned. This is

because in both settings talk is intended to be heard principally by an

audience: the jury in the trial court and the public in broadcast news.

Strategies which are currently used by questioners to undermine these

constraints:

constructing a negative social image of the witness (as in the

example above)

embedding critical or evaluative statements within questions (in

broadcast news)

citing ‘facts’ so as to emphasize the questioners’ contrastive

relationship with an interviewee’s statement

selectively ‘formulating’ the gist of the interviewee’s remarks

The studies on formal institutional talk have illustrated that formal

institutional interactions involve specific and significant narrowings of

the range of options that are operative in conversational interactions.

II. NON-FORMAL INSTITUTIONS

According to Hutchby and Wooffitt (1998), more common are

institutional settings where the interaction is less formally structured

and talk appears more ‘conversational’ than courtroom or interview

talk. Certainly, if we count the number of questions asked by

professionals and by clients in such settings, we find that professionals

ask by far the most, and often clients ask virtually no questions. But

148


unlike in formal settings, there is no norm that says one person ‘must’

ask questions and the other must answer. So, there are other aspects of

talk to be located in order to see where the orientations to context

emerge.

Aspects of asymmetry:

In institutional discourse there is a direct relationship between status

and role, on the one hand, and discursive rights and obligations, on the

other. For instance, analysts of doctor-patient interactions have

observed that doctors typically ask far more questions than their

patients, and those questions tend to be more topic-directing than the

few that the patients ask.. However, it seems that patients are often

complicit in maintaining a situation in which the doctor is able not only

to determine the topics that will be talked about, but also to define the

upshots and outcomes of the discussions.

For example, Frankel (1984, cf. Huthby and Wooffitt, 1998:148)

observes that while there is no institutionalized constraint against

patients asking questions and initiating new topics, overwhelmingly

these two activities are undertaken by doctors and not by patients. His

analysis reveals that this asymmetry emerges from two tacitly

negotiated features of the talk:

doctors tend to ask certain kinds of questions, usually information-

seeking questions which require strictly factual responses. It means

that they open up restricted options for patients to participate in the

encounter. Patients are thus situated as the providers of information

about their current physical state; and not, say, as individuals who

149


can contextualise their physical state within a broader narrative of

life events.

Patients themselves orient to and reproduce this asymmetry when

they seek to offer additional information to the doctor. This

information is offered almost exclusively in turns which are

responses to doctor’s questions.

Patients systematically withhold responses to doctor’s

announcements of a diagnosis. Given that the diagnosis represents a

piece of ‘expert’ knowledge which the doctor passes on to the

patient, then by withholding responses other than acknowledgment

tokens such as ‘yeh’ or ‘um’, patients display their orientation to

the expert status of the doctor.

Here is an example (taken from Fairclough, 1992:145-146) where this

withholding is even done when the patient has an opportunity to

respond through the doctor leaving a gap following the announcement

of diagnosis:

(Physical examination)

1 Dr: Yeah.

2 (0.3)

3 Dr: That’s shingles.

4 (1.2)

5 Dr: That’s what it is:

6 (0.6)

7 Pt: Shingles.

8 Dr: Yes.

150


Notice that the diagnosis is produced over a series of turns alternating

with pauses, in which there is no response from the patient other than a

single-word repetition of the doctor’s conclusion.

III. ASYMMETRY AND POWER

Many asymmetries in institutional discourse can be thought of in terms

of the ‘power’ of institutional agents to establish the participation

opportunities of laypersons (cf. Hutchby and Wooffitt, 1998).

1) One kind of example can be found in Drew’s (in Drew and Heritage,

1992) work on courtroom interrogation. He observes how the pre-

allocated question-answer format of courtroom interaction gives

attorneys a certain discursive power which is not available to witnesses:

the power of summary.

As a questioner, the attorney has ‘first rights’ to pull together evidence

and ‘draw conclusions’: in other words to define the meaning, the terms

and the upshot of a particular set of answers.

This kind of power that is available to anyone, in whatever context,

who asks a series of questions of a co-participant. The added

significance in the courtroom is that the witness is systematically

disabled from asking any questions of her/his own, or of taking issue

with the attorney’s final summary.

2 Another example is the going first and the going second in an

argument. Thus, a basic structural feature of talk radio calls (in

151


which callers introduce topics or issues on which they propose

opinions) is linked to the differences in power between hosts and

callers. The principal activity in these interactions is that of

argument. Callers offer opinions on issues and hosts then debate

those opinions, frequently taking up opposing stances in the

process.

Arguing about opinions is a basically asymmetrical activity. In

whatever context it occurs. There are significant differences between

setting out an opinion (going first), and taking issue with that opinion

(going second). Sacks proposed that those who go first are in a weaker

position than those who get to go second, since the latter can argue with

the former’s position simply by taking it apart (merely by challenging

the opponent to expand on, account for, his/her claims). Thus, while

first position arguers are required to build a defence for their stance,

those in second position do not need to do so.

On talk radio this asymmetry is ‘built into’ the overall structure of calls.

Callers are expected, and may be constrained, to go first with their line,

while the host systematically gets to go second. The fact that hosts

systematically have the first opportunity for opposition within calls thus

opens to them argumentative resources which are not available in the

same way to callers. These resources are powerful, in the sense that

they enable the host to constrain callers to do a particular kind of

activity – to produce ‘defensive’ talk.

Examples of ‘resources for power’ are those which belong to a class of

utterances including So? or What’s that got to do with it?

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E.g.: A caller complaining about the number of mailed requests for

charitable donations she receives (Hutchby&Wooffitt1998:168)

1 Caller:I have got three appeals letters here this week. (0.4)

All askin’ for

2 donations. (0.2). Two from those that I always contribute to

anyway.

3 Host: Yes?

4 Caller:But I expect to get a lot more.

5 Host: So?

6 Caller:Now the point is there is a limit /to

7 /What’s that

got to do what’s that got to do with telethons though.

9 Caller:Because telethons (continues)

Here is Hutchby and Wooffitt’s interpretation of the above example. As

an argumentative move, the ‘So’ achieves two things. First it

challenges the relevance of the caller’s complaint within the terms of

her own agenda (that charities represent a form of ‘psychological’

blackmail). Second, because it stands alone as a complete turn, it

requires the caller to take the floor again and account for the relevance

of her remark. The discursive power of the host emerges here (cf.

Hutchby and Wooffitt, 1998:168) not out of a pre-allocated question-

answer format (because the turn-taking is much more ‘conversational’

than in courtroom, for instance), but as a result of the way calls are

structured overall. (the callers must begin by taking up a position

means that argumentative resources are distributed asymmetrically

between host and caller).

153


The important thing to bear in mind is that one should not seek to treat

power as a monolithic, one-way process. The exercise of powerful

discursive resources can always be resisted by a recipient.

In Drew and Heritage (1992) you can find a collection of articles about

institutional conduct and its underlying orientations, which offer

insights into the ways the interaction is conducted within organizations.

The contributors to the volume show kinds of possibilities that can

emerge when CA techniques are applied to institutional settings.

IV. SUMMARY

Studies of formal settings have focused on the ways in which

participants orient to a strict turn-taking format called turn-type pre-

allocation. It means that participants, on entering the setting, are

normatively constrained in the types of turns they may take according

to their particular institutional roles. Typically, the format involves

chains of question-answer sequences.

One of the most significant implication for the specifically

‘institutional’ character of actions in formal settings, of the pre-

allocated format is the fact that powerful constraints operate to restrict

the distribution of rights to express a personal opinion on the matter

being discussed.

154


Many asymmetries in institutional discourse can be thought of in terms

of the ‘power’ of institutional agents to establish the participation

opportunities of laypersons (cf. Hutchby and Wooffitt, 1998).

One kind of example can be found in Drew’s work on

courtroom interrogation. He observes how the pre-allocated

question-answer format of courtroom interaction gives attorneys

a certain discursive power: the power of summary.

Another example is the going first and the going second in an

argument. There are significant differences between setting

out an opinion (going first), and taking issue with that opinion

(going second). Sacks proposed that those who go first are in a

weaker position than those who get to go second, since the latter

can argue with the former’s position simply by taking it apart.

Thus, while first position arguers are required to build a defence

for their stance, those in second position do not need to do so.

V. TASKS:

1. Look at the following two extracts from two different medical

interviews and see in what ways they are different.

I

Doctor: Hm hm…Now what do you mean by a sour stomach?

Patient: What’s a sour stomach? A heartburn

Like a heartburn or some /thing

D: / Does it burn over here?

P: yeah

155


It – I think it like – If you take a needle

and stick / ya right there’s a pain right here /

D: / hm / hm

hm

P: and and then it goes from here on this side to this side.

D: Hm hm Does it /go into the back/

P: / it’s all up here. No it’s all right up here

in front.

D: Yeah And when do you get that?

P: Well when I eat something wrong.

D: How – How

Soon after you eat?

P: Well, probably and hour…maybe /less.

D: / About an hour?

P: Maybe less…I’ve cheated and I’ve been drinking

which I shouldn’t have done.

D: Does drinking make it worse?

P: Ho ho uh Yes…

Especially the carbonation and the alcohol.

D: Hm…hm…How much do you drink?

P: I don’t know. Enough to make me

go to sleep at night…and that’s quite a bit.

D: One or two drinks a day?

P: Oh no no no hump it’s (more like) ten/….at night

D: / How

many drinks a night.

P: At night.

D: Whaddaya ..What type of drinks?

156


P: Oh vodka yeah, vodka and ginger ale.

D: How long have you been drinking that heavily?

P: …Since I’ve been married.

II

P: but she really has been very unfair to me. Got /no

D: / hm

P: respect for me /at all and I think. That’s one of the reasons

D: /hm

P: why I drank so /much you /know and

D: / hm / hm are you

You back are you back on it have you started drinking /again

P: / no

D: oh you haven’t (unclear)

P: no but em one thing that the

lady on the Tuesday said said to me was that. if my mother did

turn me out of the /house which she thinks she

D: / yes hm

P: may do coz..she doesn’t like the way I’ve been she

has turned me o/ before and em she said that

D: / hm

P: I could she thought that it might be possible for m

me to go to a council / flat

D: /right yes / yeah

P: /but she

Said it’s a very she wasn’t /pushing it because my

D: /hm

157


P: mother’s got to sign a whole /lot of things and

D: / hm

P: she said it’s difficult / and em there’s no rush over

D: / hm

P: it. I I don’t know whether. I mean one thing they say in AA is

that you shouldn’t change anything for a year.

D: hm yes I think that’s wise. I think that’s wise

(5 seconds pause) well look I’d like to keep you

know seeing you keep you know hearing how things are going

from time to time if that’s possible.

(from Fairclough, 1995:144-145)

2. Formulate a statement on a topic of interest and then decide, in pairs,

who is for and who is against the statement. The person who is for the

statement will go first in a debate, while the person against will go

second.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Button, G., 1992, Answers as interactional products: two

sequential practices used in job interviews. In

P.Drew & J.Heritage (eds.), 212-231.

Drew, P., 1992, Contested evidence in courtroom cross-examination:

the case of a trial fro rape, in P. Drew & J. Heritage (eds.), Talk

at Work, Cambridge University Press, 470-520.

Gumperz, J., J., 1992, Interviewing in Intercultural Situations, in P.

Drew & J. Heritage (eds.), Talk at Work, Cambridge University

Press, 302-327.

158

Bibliography_____________________________________________________________________

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Austin, J. 1962, How to Do Things with Words, Oxford,

Oxford University Press

Cook, G.,1989, Discourse, Oxford University Press



Editura Universitatii Transilvania din Brasov

Coulthard, M., 1989, An Introduction to Discourse

Analysis, Longman

Drew, P. and Heritage, J. (eds.), 1992 Talk at Work:

Interaction in Institutional Settings, Cambridge University Press

van Dijk,T.A., 1985, Handbook of Discourse analysis, 4

vols, London, Academic Press

Eggins,S.,& Slade,D., 1997, Analysing Casual

Conversation, Cassell

Erickson, F., and Schultz, J., 1982, The Counselor as

Gatekeeper. Social Interaction in Interviews, New York,

London, Academic Press.

Fairclough, N., 1992, Discourse and Social Change, Polity

Press

________ 1995, Critical Discourse analysis, London and

New York, Longman

Garfinkel, H., 1967, Studies in Ethnomethodology, Inc.

Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, Prentice Hall

Grice, H., P., 1975, Logic and Conversation, in Cole &

Morgan, 1975:41-58)

Gumperz, J., J., 1982, Discourse Strategies, Cambridge

159


University Press

Hutchby, I. & Wooffitt, R., 1998, Conversation

Analysis, Polity Press

Hymes, D., 1962/1974, The Ethnography of Speaking, in

B.Blount (ed.), Language, Culture and Society, Winthrop,

Cambridge, Mass., 189-223

Langford, D., 1994, Analysing Talk, Macmillan

Levinson, St., 1980, Speech act theory: the state of

the art. In Language and linguistics teaching 13.1,

5-24

________ 1983, Pragmatics, Cambridge University Press

________ 1992, Activity types and language. In P.Drew

and J. Heritage (eds), 66-100.

Mey, L. J., 1993, Pragmatics. An Introduction,

Blackwell

Sacks, H., 1995, Lectures on conversation, edited by G.

Jefferson, Oxford UK

& Cambridge USA, Blackwell

Sacks, H., Schegloff, E., and Jefferson, G, 1974/1978, A

Simplest, systematic way for the organization of turn-taking in

conversation. In J. Schenkein (ed.), Studies in the organization

of conversational interactions, New York, Academic Press 7-50

Sarangi, S., 1994, Accounting for mismatches in

intercultural selection interviews, in Multilingua,

13(1/2): 163-194

Schegloff, E., Jefferson, G., and Sacks, H., 1977, The

preference for self correction in the organization of repair in

conversation, in Language,

160

Bibliography_____________________________________________________________________

53:361-82

Searle, J., 1969, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy

of Language, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

Sinclair, J., and Coulthard, M., 1975, Towards an Analysis

of Discourse: the English used by teachers and pupils,

Oxford, Oxford University Press

Thomas, J., 1995, Meaning in Interaction, Longman

Verschueren, J., 1999, Understanding Pragmatics, Arnold,

London

Yule, G., 1996, Pragmatics, Oxford University Press

161


INDEX

A

action: 6, 10, 12, 21, 31-32, 35,

36, 37, 39, 41-44, 71, 94, 103, 104, 107, 113-115, 145, 146, 153

activity-type: 81, 90-93, 96, 98,

adjacency pairs: 119, 111-113,

115, 116-118

asymmetry: 148-151

Austin, J.: 31-32, 37, 52

B

back-channeling: 135, 136, 140

C

constraint: (pragmatic) 3, 77, 78

(legal): 78, 82, 88 (topical) 125, 129, 146-148, 153

context: 1, 3, 6, 7-9, 15, 18, 21,

23, 31, 35, 43, 51, 67, 71-75, 78, 80, 86, 89, 92, 94, 97, 106, 133, 144, 146,

148, 150, 151

contextualization cue: 95, 98

Cook, G.: 33, 34, 36, 38, 45, 46, 51, 56, 66, 102,

co-operative principle: 52, 56

58, 63, 65-67

Coposescu, L.: 48, 98, 101,

136,

Coulthard, M.: 79

D

deixis: 15-20, 25-28, 71

Drew, P.: 86, 150, 153, 154,

E

Eggins, S./Slade, D.: 115

Erickson F./Schultz, J.: 87, 97

ethnography of speaking: 75

77, 81, 86-87,

162

Bibliography_____________________________________________________________________

ethnomethodology: 86, 107

event : 18, 32, 35, 43, 53, 76

78, 81-82, 88, 93, 97, 124, 132, 149

F

Fairclough, N.: 149, 157

felicity conditions: 5, 9, 33, 35

36, 43, 45, 75

G

Garfinkel, H.: 107-108

gatekeeping encounter: 87-88,

97

Grice, H. P.: 32, 49, 52-65, 70,

79, 82, 84

Gumperz, J. J.: 95-98

H

hedge: 58

Heritage, J.: 87, 150, 157

Hutchby, I./Wooffitt, R.: 102,

105, 110, 112, 121, 124, 130, 144, 145, 147, 150, 152, 154

Hymes, D.: 75, 80

I

illocution(nary force): 8, 37-39,

44, 46, 47

implicature: 15, 29, 52-53, 60

66, 68

implicit meaning: 15, 21-22,

25-26, 71

imply: 7, 53, 102

infer(rence): 19, 31, 52-55, 57,

64, 78, 79, 82, 93, 105, 112-114, 123, 137, 141

institutional talk: 144, 147

interviews: 144, 147, (radio):

163


62, 69; (job): 74, 76, 82, 87, 144, (media): 79, (selection): 87, 88-98,

101; (proficiency): 119, (medical): 154

L

Langford, D.: 9, 10, 117, 133,

142

latched (talk-utterances): 137,

138

Levinson, St.: 20, 30, 31, 52,

77, 81, 86, 96, 111, 145, 146

locution: 37-38, 44

M

maxims (Gricean): 57-66, 79,

82, 88

Mey, L.J.:1, 7, 8, 10, 15, 25,

27, 29, 46, 47, 71, 72, 73, 75, 80, 118, 119

mismatches: 90, 93-95, 97, 98,

101

N

N(ext)T(urn)R(repair)I(nitiator

122

O

overall organization (of

conversation): 120, 125

overlap(ping talk): 64, 83, 108-

110, 120, 127, 137, 138, 141

P

performatives: 32, 34, 39

preference: 110, 113-115, 117,

124, 125, 128, 129, 131

pre-alocation: 145, 153

presupposition: 21, 23-28

perlocution(nary effect): 37, 38, 44, 47

S

164

Bibliography_____________________________________________________________________

Sacks, H.: 105-107, 109, 120,

131, 151, 154

Sarangi, S.: 70, 90-93, 95, 96,

101

Schegloff, E.: 104, 109, 119,

120, 124, 131

Searle, J.: 31, 39, 146

sequence: 50, 76, 81, 96, 103,

111, 112, 115, 117, 118, 125, 137, 138, 141, 145, 153, (Pre): 127,

speaking grid (see ethnography of speaking)

speech act: 6, 15, 30-35, 39-45,

48-50, 71, 72, 75

T

talk-in-interaction: 102, 103,

113, 115, 144

Thomas, J.: 1, 7, 9, 14, 32, 54,

55,60, 61, 62, 68, 69, 78, 82, 83, 85, 160

transition relevance place: 109,

116

turn-construction: 109-110,

116, 121

turn-taking: 79, 82, 83, 86, 108,

113, 116, 120, 127, 129, 135, 140, 144, 145, 146, 152, 153, 159

U

utterance: 6-9, 15, 18, 19, 22,

23, 25, 26, 28, 32, 33, 34-38, 4—47, 51, 55, 58, 61, 64, 71, 72, 78, 80, 104,

110, 111, 112, 116, 123, 134, 135, 138, 140, 151

V

Verschueren, J.:1-2, 4, 7, 10,

20-23, 28, 88

Y

Yule, G.: 14, 17-20, 23-25, 33,

35, 39, 41, 58

165

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Issues of Pragmatics 1