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TITLE "Rethinking Sequentiality: Linguistics meets conversational interaction"
SUBJECT "Pragmatics & Beyond, New Series, Volume 103"
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Rethinking Sequentiality
Pragmatics & Beyond New Series Editor Andreas H. Jucker University of Zurich, English Department Plattenstrasse 47, CH-8032 Zurich, Switzerland e-mail:
[email protected]
Associate Editors Jacob L. Mey University of Southern Denmark
Herman Parret Belgian National Science Foundation, Universities of Louvain and Antwerp
Jef Verschueren Belgian National Science Foundation, University of Antwerp
Editorial Board Shoshana Blum-Kulka
Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
University of Lyon 2
Jean Caron
Claudia de Lemos
Université de Poitiers
University of Campinas, Brazil
Robyn Carston
Marina Sbisà
University College London
University of Trieste
Bruce Fraser
Emanuel Schegloff
Boston University
University of California at Los Angeles
Thorstein Fretheim
Deborah Schiffrin
University of Trondheim
Georgetown University
John Heritage
Paul O. Takahara
University of California at Los Angeles
Kanzai Gaidai University
Susan Herring
Sandra Thompson
University of Texas at Arlington
University of California at Santa Barbara
Masako K. Hiraga
Teun A. Van Dijk
St.Paul’s (Rikkyo) University
University of Amsterdam
David Holdcroft
Richard J. Watts
University of Leeds
University of Berne
Sachiko Ide Japan Women’s University
Volume 103 Rethinking Sequentiality: Linguistics meets conversational interaction Edited by Anita Fetzer and Christiane Meierkord
Rethinking Sequentiality Linguistics meets conversational interaction Edited by
Anita Fetzer University of Stuttgart
Christiane Meierkord Erfurt University
John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam/Philadelphia
8
TM
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rethinking sequentiality: linguistics meets conversational interaction / edited by Anita Fetzer and Christiane Meierkord. p. cm. (Pragmatics & Beyond, New Series, issn 0922-842X ; v. 103) Based on papers from the 7th IPrA Conference, which was held in Budapest in 2000. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Discourse analysis. 2. Sequence (Linguistics) 3. Social interaction. I. Fetzer, Anita, 1958- II. Meierkord, Christiane, 1964- III. Series. P302.83 R48 2002 401’.41-dc21 isbn 9027253439 (Eur.) / 1588112330 (US) (Hb; alk. paper)
2002074769
© 2002 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands
Table of contents
Introduction Christiane Meierkord and Anita Fetzer
1
Sequences in theory and practice: Minimal and unbounded? Communicative intentions in context Anita Fetzer
37
Cognition and narrativity in speech act sequences Marina Sbisà
71
Recurrent sequences and mental processes Christiane Meierkord
99
Boundaries and sequences in studying conversation Robert B. Arundale and David Good
121
Discourse markers as turns: Evidence for the role of intersubjectivity in interactional sequences Sara W. Smith and Andreas H. Jucker
151
Sequences in discourse: The micro-macro interface Talk on TV: Sequentiality meets intertextuality and interdiscursitivity Roy Langer Culture, genres and the problem of sequentiality: An attempt to describe local organization and global structures in talk-in-situation Friederike Kern Argumentative sequencing and its interactional variation Thomas Spranz-Fogasy
181
207 231
Table of contents
Sequential positioning of represented discourse in institutional media interaction Marjut Johansson
249
Interactional coherence in discussions and everyday storytelling: On considering the role of jedenfalls and auf jeden fall Kristin Bührig
273
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Introduction Christiane Meierkord and Anita Fetzer University of Erfurt, Germany / University of Stuttgart, Germany
The papers collected in this edited volume on ‘Rethinking Sequentiality’ result from a panel we organized on this topic at the 7th IPrA Conference held in Budapest in the year 2000. As was the case with the presentations we invited for the panel, this volume addresses sequentiality from a variety of both theoretical and applied perspectives. Thus, the papers range from functional pragmatics, dialogic theory, narrative theory, cognitive pragmatics, relevance theory, psycholinguistics, represented discourse and critical discourse analysis. The variety of topics which the individual contributions cover allows for a rethinking of the notion of sequentiality that goes beyond inductive approaches. It is the purpose of this introduction to explain our understanding of the concepts of sequence, sequencing, sequential organization and sequentiality, to give an overview on how we see these notions reflected in different – if not sometimes diverging – approaches to interaction and cognition, and to locate the individual papers’ contributions in the overall statement made with this book.
Sequence, sequencing, sequential organization and sequentiality Sequences and sequentiality are central to the research paradigms of pragmatics, discourse analysis, conversation analysis and context, and they have become of great importance to the field of natural-language processing and other frameworks investigating language beyond the level of single phonemes, morphemes, lexical items, particular communicative acts or speech acts, utterances and individual interlocutors. In spite of their omnipresence in the fields of computer science, social science, cognitive science and in almost any field of linguistics, which investigate combinations and other types of syntagmatic re-
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lations, such as assimilation and tone units, derivation and word formation, word order and sentence structure, and the individual and joint construction of a turn, there is hardly any definition which explicitly accounts for both the function and form of a sequence. Rather, a particular notion of sequence is presupposed in these research paradigms, namely the sequence as a discrete and bounded unit. For instance, a formal definition of a text T, which can be interpreted as a large-scale sequence, is spelled out as “T is a sequence of words that comprise the text” (Hobbs 1990, reviewed in Akman 2000: 754). Here, the concepts of a word and a sequence are tacitly presupposed as discrete categories. The premise of discreteness is also reflected in Renkema’s conception of a conversational sequence as “a systematic concession of turns” (1993: 112) and in Kintsch’s conceptualization of cognition as a sequence of cognitive states (Kintsch 1994). Contrary to the formal definition, the functional paradigm bases its conception of the large-scale sequence of a text on the premise of coherence: The functional relation between a clause and its immediate clausal environment in coherent discourse has been traditionally described along semantic or logical dimensions. On the semantic end, one finds traditional rhetorical notions such as temporality, conditionality, causality, concession, purpose, reason and so on. On the logical end, one finds notions such as conjunction, disjunction and conditionality, as well as paraphrase, tautology and contradiction. The utility of these traditional categories goes only a certain distance, most commonly when discourse is confined to two successive propositions. When one considers longer strings of coherent discourse, a more complex notion of discourse connectivity emerges, that of thematic coherence. Thematic coherence is a more global meta-phenomenon, made out of many sub-components or coherence strands. (Givón 1993: 286)
According to Givón, the most important strands are (1) referential continuity, (2) temporal continuity, (3) spatial continuity, and (4) action continuity. But is the formal constraint of a sequence of words supplemented by the functional constraint of coherence, namely a sequence of words which construct a coherent whole, a necessary and sufficient condition for the definition of the large-scale sequence of a text? More precisely, do sequences exist in isolation, or is the concept of a sequence a context-dependent one thus embedding smaller sequences while being embedded in a larger sequence? Moreover, are sequences discrete categories or do they have fuzzy boundaries? And, is there something like a default sequence? Sequences have been investigated in a number of theoretical frameworks from both formal and functional perspectives. In conversation analysis, a se-
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quence represents an empirical concept and is defined by the core units of a pair and a turn: a sequence contains minimally one pair, a pair consists of two turns produced by different speakers, and a turn is defined as everything a speaker says before the next speaker begins to speak (Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson 1974). This formal, structure – and linguistic-surface based definition of a sequence does not explicitly refer to the communicative meaning of a sequence, pair or turn, nor does it account for discourse coherence, as has been pointed out by Jacob Mey, who employs the more general notion of an utterance instead of the conversation-analytic concept of a turn: “[T]he mere fact of utterances following each other is no guarantee of coherence. Yet, sequencing plays an important role in the structuring of our conversations, not only on the level of formal signals, but also on the level of what utterances mean, or how they function.” (Mey 1994: 241). From a semantic viewpoint, the phenomenon of sequencing entails the concept of a sequence. Instead of the product-oriented concept of a sequence, Mey refers to the process-oriented notion of sequencing and anchors it to the interlocutors’ employment of utterances. As a consequence of this, an utterance is assigned the status of a sequence. But is an utterance just a sequence of words, viz. is it only a linguistic surface structure? In the process of sequencing, an utterance is assigned a dual status. On the one hand, utterances which follow each other structure a conversation and construct a sequence. On the other hand, an utterance itself represents a sequence which can be combined to construct a conversation. Contrary to the formal definition of a sequence in conversation analysis, which is based on the linguistic output of two interlocutors, Mey accounts for both the formal structure of a sequence and its sequence-internal structure which he anchors to the level of formal signals or surface structure, and to the levels of utterance meaning and functional meaning. This dual status of a sequence is also implicit in John Gumperz’s definition of sequential organization, in which he signifies that formal signals and functional meaning represent necessary, but not sufficient conditions for the definition of the sequence of a text: “[S]equential organization refers to that property of interaction by virtue of which what is said at any time sets up expectations about what is to follow either immediately afterwards or later in the interaction” (1992: 304). Gumperz stresses the fact that sequential organization is not only a local phenomenon, which is reflected in the immediate linguistic and social contexts. Rather, it is local and global, and prospective and retrospective. But are the concepts of sequence, sequencing and sequential organization synonymous? Do they really index the same phenomenon?
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As regards their semantics, all of the three notions addressed above, index some type of frame, unit or measure which is implicitly compared and contrasted with its background and thus singled out from it. This is also found in Goffman’s differentiation between framing and out-of-frame behavior and his conceptions of primary frameworks, keys and keyings. Accordingly, a strip of activity is perceived in terms of rules which specify the setting of temporal and spatial brackets: “In sum, one relation we have to our immediate surround is that some of its elements have no relation to us” (1974: 292). In spite of their common core, sequence, sequencing and sequential organization highlight different aspects. While a sequence is defined as consisting of minimally one pair in conversation analysis and refined by the additional constraint of discourse coherence in sociopragmatics, it can refer to a tone group, compound, constituent, phrase, clause or sentence in other research paradigms of linguistics. Thus, sequence is a relational concept which manifests itself in a frame (or unit) which is itself constructed of smaller frames (or units). Contrary to this product-oriented concept of a sequence, sequencing refers to the process of singling out one or more frames, units or sequences thereby constructing a larger sequence. The notion of sequential organization is both process – and product-oriented. It refers to the joint construction of one or more sequences and is thus intrinsically linked to the turn-taking mechanism. While sequencing and sequence apply to monadic, dyadic and multi-party settings, sequential organization requires a dyadic or multi-party setting. But how do sequences, sequencing and sequential organization relate to the concept of sequentiality? Sequentiality, the coherent structuring of sequenced utterances, is the fundamental premise of any theory which investigates combinations with regard to the configuration of parts and the configuration of a whole, such as pragmatics, discourse analysis, reasoning, recognition or narration. Sequentiality surfaces in the minimal unit of a sequence, which is examined from a number of diverse, if not diverging perspectives. For instance, a pragmatic investigation of utterance meaning focuses on particular linguistic items and their utteranceinternal order. Here, the calculation of the scope of negation depends on the position of the negative operator in the linear sequence. That is, the calculation of communicative meaning is based on linear ordering and sequential position. Thus, the meaning of the utterance (1) she definitely hasn’t taken the job is different to the meaning of the utterance (2) she hasn’t definitely taken the job: in (1) it is definite that she hasn’t taken the job, and in (2) it is not definite that she has taken the job (Leech & Svartvik 1994: 135). Discourse analysis and narrative theory examine the sequential position of utterances (or turns) with regard to the larger sequence of a text as a whole, and with regard to particular discursive
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sequences or sections. Recognition and reasoning are based on the linear order of propositions, viz. on sequencing and sequences. Linearity is also found in natural-language communication, where, following Grice (1975), a change in their sequential status necessarily leads to a different conclusion. Contrary to formal logic, the meaning of (p & q) in natural-language communication is not identical to the meaning of (q & p): the key referred to in the utterance (3) she picked up the key and she opened the door is not identical to the key referred to in (4) she opened the door and she picked up the key. This dependence on context also holds for argumentation and contradiction where, to employ Zeitlyn’s own words: [a]n ethnomethodological focus on the negotiation of meaning between speakers is of more assistance than formal logic in understanding the manoeuvres adopted, for example, in response to contradiction. Formal logic identifies a contradiction but allows no other solution than the rejection of a premise. It cannot, however, suggest which premise is at fault. Ethnomethodology, on the other hand, identifies the redefinition of a premise as a constructive solution to the problems caused by contradiction. (1995: 195)
Not only pragmatic, discourse analytic and cognitive theories base their research on the premise of sequentiality and the existence of a sequence, but also the fields of syntax, morphology, phonology and semantics which is based on the tacit assumption that a sequence is represented by a discrete category which is itself constructed – or semantically composed – of one or more discrete subcategories. Thus, the meaning of a sentence is composed of the meaning of its constituents, such as a VP, NP or PP, and every node is assigned some node-specific meaning. In syntax, sequences are investigated with regard to their obligatory and optional constituents, and with regard to various kinds of complex dependencies and rules for possible combinations. Here, the basic notion is constituent structure, viz. the grouping of words into phrases of various kinds (categories), and the grouping of phrases into bigger phrases and eventually into a whole sentence. Other grammatical frameworks assign meaning to words, or words decompose into complex semantic structures, which supplement the calculation of propositional meaning. Contrary to the traditional framework anchored to the sequence of a proposition as the highest syntactic node, discourse representation theory (Kamp & Reyle 1993) extend truth-conditional semantics to a discursive framework and the sequence of a main DRS. Again, we have the tacit assumption that sub-sequences construct a sequence, which itself combines with other sequences to construct a super-sequence.
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The underlying principle of embeddedness, which has surfaced in the examination of sequentiality, sequencing and sequence, is also of immense importance to the investigation of linguistic context and social context. But how does context relate to sequentiality, sequencing, sequence and sequential organization? Sequentiality is defined as a relational concept, that is a sequence does not exist as such but only if contrasted with some explicit or implicit background, and its constitutive parts of sequencing, sequence and sequential organization are defined as both process and product. Analogously, context is defined as both process and product (Duranti & Goodwin 1992) and as a relational concept (Fetzer 1999, 2002), which is also described by the onion metaphor (Sperber & Wilson 1996). Thus, both a context and a sequence embed smaller units, such as micro sequences and micro contexts, while being embedded in larger units, such as a macro sequence and a macro context. But what is the difference between context, sequential organization, sequencing and sequence? Following Schegloff (1992), context is both temporal and sequential, and is reflected in the coparticipants’ employment of the turn-taking system. Thus, the turn-taking system and its constitutive part of a turn does not only construct a sequence but also a context. Moreover, the turn-taking system is differentiated into a context-independent and a context-dependent variant. While the former is based on the constraints of the self-selection of (minimally) two different coparticipants producing linguistic output in a consecutive manner adhering to the rules ‘no gap’ and ‘no overlap’, the latter specifies the impact of particular contextual constraints, such as the coparticipant-specific selection and employment of the turn-taking system in a parliamentary debate or in bureaucratic discourse, where there is generally no self-selection and the types of linguistic output are reduced to the question – and answer formats. Not only does the sequential organization of discourse manifest itself on the level of adjacency and local structures, but also on the levels of global structures and interdiscursitivity. As a consequence of this, a sequence represents a contextdependent concept par excellence as, analogously to the gestalt-psychological conception of figure and ground, it is singled out from its immediate context thereby constructing this context. So are figure and sequence, and ground and context two sides of the same coin? As regards the relationship between figure and sequence, a figure can coincide with a sequence – if sequence is employed to denote the minimal unit in an intrasequential investigation. Contrary to a sequence, which can be decomposed, a figure represents a whole which is generally not decomposed into sub-figures. In spite of this difference, both figure and sequence are relational concepts which do not exist without their counterparts of ground or context.
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Viewed from an extended frame of reference, a particular sequence may function as the ground of a particular figure, or the ground of a particular figure may coincide with the context of a particular sequence. That is, if a cognitive concept is assigned the status of a figure, it is compared and contrasted with its immediate cognitive context or ground. For instance, the figure *fire* is generally not decomposed into the sub-figures of flame and smoke, but it may be differentiated with regard to more and less prototypical fires. Yet if the concept of fire is realized in the sequence of an utterance, such as (5) look, there’s a fire or (6) fire, the sequence of an utterance can be decomposed into its constituents in (5), or it is enriched in (6) to flesh out the underlying propositional form. To extend the frame of reference to the macro sequence of discourse, figure, ground and sequence are constitutive parts of a macro sequence, to employ Herbert H. Clark’s (1996: 36) words: “Most joint activities get realized as sequences of smaller actions, many of which are themselves joint actions”. For these reasons, the notions of sequence and figure do not only represent relational, but also relative concepts. But how is a sequence constructed, and is it linear? Only few linguistic dictionaries account for the phenomena of sequence, sequencing or sequential organization, and all of them refer to discursive sequencing, namely “the rule-governed succession of utterances in a discourse” (Crystal 1987), or to conversation-analytic sequential organization (Bussmann 1996), but hardly any mention the intra-sequential structure. In a more recent dictionary entry, however, Crystal refers to intra- and inter-sequential organization and spells out sequence and sequencing as “referring to the observable succession of UNITS in an UTTERANCE or TEXT. This sequence may be LINEAR, where the dependencies are made between successive, adjacent units [. . . ] but it may involve non-linear relationships, as in AGREEMENT between WORDS which are separated by other STRUCTURES” (1997: 348). But what does the formulation observable succession of UNITS actually mean? Does it refer to a temporal succession, viz. a group of things or events following one another in time? Does it refer to a set of quantities in the fixed order 1, 2, 3 etc.? Is the corresponding series continuous or is it connected? And are the elements similar or related, or do they co-occur at random?
Approaching sequentiality Sequentiality has been approached from within most major theories on conversational interaction, be they philosophical, psychological, sociological or
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linguistic. Thus, “the concept of adjacency pair is proposed by sociolinguists, of exchange IR by linguists, and of illocutionary acts by philosophers [. . . ]” (Taylor with Taylor 1990: 37). The following sections address the notion of sequentiality in the research paradigms of conversation analysis, speech act theory, Gricean pragmatics and dialogue grammar, and in a number of models that address cognition from within linguistics, psychology and sociology. They seek to identify similarities and differences and possibilities for powerful cross-fertilizing and synergetic blends of isolated theories.
Sequentiality in conversation analysis Sequentiality seems to be the conversation-analytic concept par excellence. It surfaces in the ethnomethodological premise that conversations and discourse are sequentially organized. Conversation analysis focuses on the investigation of recurring sequences in longer stretches of discourse, where “[a] conversational sequence is a systematic succession of turns” (Renkema 1993: 112). It thus examines, among other things, the turn-taking mechanism, the categorization of turns into adjacency pairs and their classification into preferred and dispreferred seconds. According to Levinson, its purpose is to show “how the functions that utterances perform are in large part due to the place they occupy within specific conversational (or interactional) sequences” (1983: 279). But what is a turn, and is it constructed of utterances? In a conversation-analytic stetting, the minimal unit of investigation is the turn which is construed of one or more turn-constructional units (TCUs). From a bottom-up perspective, one or more TCUs construct a turn, and two turns construct an adjacency pair if they are adjacent and typed. From a topdown viewpoint, however, a conversation is constructed out of minimally two turns, which generally constitute an adjacency pair, which is itself constructed of minimally two TCUs. But are the notions of TCU and utterance synonymous? Both concepts refer to linguistic surface phenomena, viz. to the production of verbal and non-verbal signals (Clark 1996) in a context. Yet they focus on different aspects. While a TCU is an empirical concept and thus restricted to external or observable domains, an utterance refers to both external and internal domains thus including the coparticipants’ communicative intentions and the corresponding inference processes involved. For this reason, TCUs, turns and adjacency pairs are the building blocks for the interactional organization and construction of a conversation. But do these building blocks represent some kind of a sequence? In the previous section, a sequence has been described as a discrete and bounded unit which is composed of dis-
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crete and bounded subunits. If the conditions of discreteness and boundedness are adapted to the conception of a turn, a turn represents a bounded unit and thus a sequence, which is composed of one or more TCUs, while a conversation represents a supersequence, which is composed of more than one turn. What is of relevance for the investigation of sequentiality is the point that extended simultaneous talk has been held to be rare in a dyadic or multi-party encounter and generally restricted to the context of repair. As a consequence of this, the sequence of a turn is generally allocated to one coparticipant only, and turntaking is assigned the status of an organizing principle, which is explicated as follows: First, speaker-change occurs. A single person does not continue speaking indefinitely; instead one person stops talking and another begins. Second, ‘overwhelmingly’, one party talks at a time. Third, in spite of this overwhelming tendency, occurrences of more than one speaker at a time are common, but brief. Fourth, exchanges of turn (transitions from one to the next) with no gap and no overlap are common. [. . . ] Fifth, there are turn-allocation techniques; the person currently speaking can select the next person (for example, by directing a question to a particular individual), or the next speaker may self-select. In addition, there is typically no preplanning: neither the order nor the length of individual speakers’ turns is specified in advance, and the length of the conversation, what will be talked about, how many people participate, or the relative distribution of turns is not predetermined. (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson 1974: 700–701)
This definition of the turn-taking mechanism does not explicitly refer to sequences or sequentiality. Rather, the concept of a sequence is implicit in the notion of speaker-change, which signifies the final point in a string of words and thus a sequence boundary. It is also implicit in the notion of exchanges of turn, which refers to the sequential organization of a conversation. Furthermore, this definition of the turn-taking mechanism applies to conversations in general and is therefore context-independent. The turn-taking system may, however, also be employed in a context-sensitive manner and accommodate the constraints of diverse social contexts. For instance, the discourse genre of a political interview is interactionally organized by the participant-specific employment of the turn-taking system: the interviewer employs the first part of the adjacency pair of a question and answer, and the interviewee employs the second part. Additionally, the interviewer selects the interviewee as a next speaker, but not vice versa. As regards the individual communicative contributions, a political interview is a preplanned event, in which the length of the contributions, the discourse topics, the number of participants and the relative distribution
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of turns are predetermined (Fetzer 2000). This is not the case in small talk, where participants are free to self-select and where there are no restrictions on length, number of participants and relative distribution of turns. There is, however, a preference for so-called safe and non-controversial discourse topics (Meierkord 2000). In spite of the fact that the turn-taking mechanism provides for the reconstruction of the local social and linguistic contexts, a conversation does not occur out of context in natural-language communication. Instead, it is framed by the contextual constraints of both a discourse genre or a communicative project (Linell 1998), such as a political interview, an argumentation, a discussion or small talk, and by the social-context constraints which frame the communicative event. In addition to the primarily structural constraints of the turn-taking mechanism, the two-turn sequence of an adjacency pair also regulates the flow of discourse as regards the right to speak: Adjacency pairs are sequences of two utterances that are: (i) adjacent, (ii) produced by different speakers, (iii) ordered as a first part and a second part, (iv) typed, so that a particular first part requires a particular second (or range of second parts) – e.g. offers require acceptances or rejections, greetings require greetings, and so on and there is a rule governing the use of adjacency pairs, namely: (19) Having produced a first part of some pair, current speakers must stop speaking, and the next speaker must produce at that point a second part to the same pair. (Levinson 1983: 303)
But on which premises is this definition of an adjacency pair based? The conditions (iii), (iv) and (19) define an adjacency pair as a sequence of two adjacent utterances or turns. For this reason, a definition of an adjacency pair can not be based on pure linguistic-surface phenomena only. Rather, the condition of an ordered sequence, which must additionally be typed, requires the accommodation of the semantics and pragmatics of linguistic-surface phenomena. This is also implicit in the conversation-analytic principle of conditional relevance and in Levinson’s refined definition of adjacency as adjacency position, adjacency relation and adjacency pair: “What the notion of conditional relevance makes clear is that what binds the parts of adjacency pairs together is not a formation rule of the sort that would specify that a question must receive an answer if it is to count as well-formed discourse, but the setting up of specific expectations which have to be attended to” (1983: 306). But how are these expectations attended to? In natural-language communication, coparticipants act in accordance and in disaccordance with adjacency expectations and mark their communicative contributions respectively: in the former case, they employ the preferred for-
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mat, which is not marked by additional language, and in the latter case, they employ the dispreferred format, which is marked by additional language and can be delayed (Pomerantz 1984; Fetzer 1998). Here, pre-sequences are understood as “psychologically motivated structures to avoid loss of face from one or both participants resulting from a dispreferred second having to be performed“ (Coulthard 1985: 71). Both the preferred and the dispreferred formats attend to the adjacency expectations and therefore do not disrupt the flow of discourse. If one or more adjacency expectations are not attended to, the flow of discourse is disrupted. This is interpreted as an “‘observable’ absence from which conclusions can be drawn” (Renkema 1993: 112). This phenomenon is referred to as ‘noticeable absence’ by Tsui (1991), who explicates it as follows: “The violation of the rules [governing adjacency pairs and thus coherent sequences] results in incoherent discourse which is noticed and attended to by interlocutors, and [. . . ] the violation of these rules can usually be accounted for” (1991: 111). However, these accounts are not only based on the premise of adjacency, but also on the felicity conditions of a speech act and its illocutionary intent, the felicity conditions of a speech-act sequence and its illocutionary intent, and the felicity conditions of the macro sequence of a discourse genre or a communicative project and its felicity conditions. Thus, to account for a coherent sequential structure, the principle of conditional relevance is refined to cover the domains of pragmatic presuppositions, coparticipants’ rights and obligations, and discourse genre. The integration of a sequence going beyond the level of two turns is required in order to account for expansions going beyond the minimal or core form of a sequence consisting of an adjacency pair only. These expansions, that is pre-, insertion- or post-expansions, generally function as an action projection by indexing the domain of felicity conditions, as an action modification by indexing the domain of illocutionary intent, or as an action recontextualization by indexing a prior sequential slot. These extensions of frame, viz. the supplementation of the empirical notion of adjacency by first, a semantic interpretation of coherence, viz. anaphora resolution and representation of a discourse topic; second, by pragmatic presuppositions and felicity conditions; and third, by macro constraints and sequential organization, is further refined by Emanuel Schegloff, who stresses the relevance of social interaction: “The organization of sequences is an organization of action, action accomplished through talk-in-interaction, which can provide to a spate of conduct coherence and order which is analytically distinct from the notion of topic” (1990: 53). To summarize and conclude, in spite of the fact that sequentiality has been predominantly equated with turn-by-turn organization (cf. Psathas 1995: 13),
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the turn-taking model fails to capture a number of phenomena observable in everyday interaction, e.g. within-turn pauses and overlap. Especially crosscultural comparative studies of conversational structures have documented that the model is not universally applicable. Szatrowski (1993) has shown that Japanese interlocutors commonly co-produce conversational sequences in casual conversation. For this reason the conversation-analytic conception of sequentiality is intrinsic to the notion of conditional relevance, which is a rather complex and can not be investigated properly without the accommodation of both linguistic and social contexts, and reasoning strategies: What makes some utterances after a question constitute an answer is not only the nature of the utterance itself but also the fact that it occurs after a question with a particular content - ‘answerhood’ is a complex property composed of sequential location and topical coherence across two utterances, amongst other things; significantly there is no proposed illocutionary force of answering. (Levinson 1983: 193)
In the following section, the status of sequentiality is investigated in speech act theory, Gricean pragmatics and dialogue grammar.
Sequentiality in speech act theory, Gricean pragmatics and dialogue grammar In the research paradigm of pragmatics, sequences and sequencing do not only manifest in discourse and in intentional and rational action, but also, following Searle, in intentional perception and in intentional causation. That is, intentional states “do not function in an independent or atomistic fashion, for each Intentional state has its content and determines its conditions of satisfaction only in relation to numerous other Intentional states“ (1983: 141). As a consequence of this, intention can no longer be examined in a context-independent manner. Rather, intention is a relational concept, which is anchored to a network of conditions of satisfaction. Thus, external stimuli, such as verbal and non-verbal signals, are not perceived at random but rather in a purposeful manner with a specific intention or goal in mind. This premise of the intentionality of action, perception and causation also holds for the fuzzy notion of experience which is neither stored in an unsystematic manner, as has been shown by Erving Goffman in his seminal work on frame analysis (1974). So how do intentions manifest in discourse, and are they sequentially organized? In natural-language communication, intentions manifest themselves in the performance and interpretation of speech acts or communicative acts (Clark
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1996) as regards the coparticipant-intended production and interpretation of utterance meaning. This is based on the premise that “the communicative intention is intrinsic to the communicative act and cannot be divorced from it” (Recanati 1986: 235). But is the premise of intentionality necessarily inherited to the sub-acts which constitute the communicative act? In intentionality (1983), Searle differentiates between a prior intention and an intended action. As the notion of a prior intention entails a subsequent intention, intentions must be arranged in some kind of order. But is this a linearly ordered sequence? In speech act theory, locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts, respectively propositional and illocutionary acts, are performed simultaneously, “they are not means to ends; rather, utterance acts stand to propositional and illocutionary acts in the way in which, e.g., making an ‘X’ on a ballot paper stand to voting” (Searle 1969: 24). More precisely, the constitutive acts of a particular speech act are only meaningful as a whole, its parts, i.e. the individual acts (or sub-acts) do not express any communicative meaning. This is also implicit in Recanati’s claim that “an utterance act [. . . ] manifests an underlying communicative intention” (1986: 214). However, the simultaneous performance of the constitutive acts of a particular speech act only holds for a frame of reference which investigates one particular speech act only. Here, interpersonal, interactional and discursive aspects, such as the coparticipants’ face wants and their status in the participation framework, the level of exchange as regards the postulation and ratification of a communicative act, or the sequential position of the individual acts regarding a particular section of discourse, may be neglected. However, as soon as intercultural and discursive phenomena have to be accounted for, the picture changes completely. As regards intercultural communication, different speech communities realize particular speech acts, such as an apology or a request, in culture-specific modes as has been shown by a project on cross-cultural speech act realization patterns (Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper 1989). In addition to the culture-preferential mode of realizing a particular speech act in a particular language, culture also constrains the performance or non-performance of a certain speech act in a given situation. Thus, e.g. Apache parents do not use greetings to re-establish social relationships when their children return home after a year in boardingschool, but rather assess the relation in complete silence and only resume talk after proper assessment has been completed (cf. Basso 1970). Individual speech acts may even not exist on a universal level such as the ‘gesture of revulsion’ realized by the emotive interjection yuk in English, which does not seem to exist in Polish (Wierzbicka 1991: 302). For these reasons, the question whether a cross-cultural or even universal investigation of speech acts will yield appro-
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priate results remains controversial (cf. Wierzbicka 1985 or Wolfson, Marmor & Jones, 1989). Moreover, speech acts or communicative acts are necessarily ordered in time, space and discourse in a discursive framework. But how can this constraint be accounted for? A discursive frame of reference requires both a bottom-up and a top-down approach. While the former focuses on the investigation of communicative meaning as regards the production and interpretation on the micro level of communication, i.e. the meaning of a communicative act in an actual communicative situation, the latter looks at institutional communication and discourse genres. Following Thomas Luckmann, “[c]ommunicative genres operate on a level between the socially constructed and transmitted codes of ‘natural’ languages and the reciprocal adjustment of perspectives, which is a presupposition for human interaction” (1995: 177). From a top-down perspective, [h]uman communicative acts are predefined and thereby to a certain extent predetermined by an existing social code of communication. This holds for both the ‘inner’ core of that code, the phonological, morphological, semantic and syntactic structure of the language, as well as for its ‘external’ stratification in styles, registers, sociolects, and dialects. In addition, communicative acts are predefined and predetermined by explicit and implicit rules and regulations of the use of language, e.g., by forms of communicative etiquette. (Luckmann 1995: 77)
In spite of the inherent regulative function of a discourse genre regarding predefined and predetermined production and interpretation strategies on the one hand, and the coparticipant’s potential freedom of formulating and interpreting communicative acts in the coparticipant-intended manner on the other hand, [s]ocial interactions in general, and communicative acts in particular, are only in part a matter of situation-bound intersubjective reciprocal attunement and interactive planning; a planning which originates in subjective projects of action and their step-by-step adjustment to the actions of others. But in part they are just that. The degree of interactional ‘freedom’ inherent in situationally negotiated adjustment of perspectives varies historically from society to society, and it varies within a society in any given epoch from one social domain to another. Intersubjective adjustment of perspectives, anticipatory communicative interaction planning and socially constructed ‘plans’ in the form of communicative genres converge at the intersection of ‘freedom’ and ‘constraint’ in communicative action. (Luckmann 1995: 178,179)
This interplay between the individual coparticipant and the regulative function of a discourse genre is also implicit in Jens Allwood’s notions of own commu-
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nication management and interactive communication management (2000: 68), which accommodate (1) the formulation of a communicative contribution, (2) the sequential organization of discourse, and (3) repair. But how does the interaction between individual freedom and discursive constraints manifest itself in discourse, and how can it be accounted for? Analogous to the research paradigm of speech act theory, H.P. Grice’s approach to natural-language communication is based on the intentionality of action. In Logic and Conversation (1975), he compares and contrasts formal logic and conversational logic, and convincingly shows that logical operators and their corresponding natural-language connectives express different types of meaning. The meaning of a logical operator is determinate, whereas the meaning of its natural-language counterpart is retrieved through a process of inferencing based on the cooperative principle (CP) and the maxims, and is therefore – to some degree – indeterminate. The distinction between different types of meaning inferred through deductive and non-monotonic reasoning, viz. between the discrete operators of a formal language and their naturallanguage counterparts, is further refined by Stephen Levinson (1995: 238): Conversational inferences have a number of very special properties: they are speedy, they are non-monotonic (the same premises can give different conclusions in different contexts), they are ampliative (you get more information out than went in) and they are subjectively determinate.
As a consequence of this, conversational implicatures can be canceled if a more relevant premise is added. Yet sequentiality is not only relevant to the distinction between monotonic and non-monotonic reasoning. It is also implicit in the Gricean cooperative principle (CP), the maxim of manner with regard to being orderly and the maxim of relation with regard to being relevant. That is, coparticipants can only be orderly if there exists a set of elements which are sequentially organized in a particular manner. Only then is it possible to put them in some kind of ordered sequence. Analogously, a coparticipant can only be relevant with regard to some other communicative contribution since relevance is also a relational concept. As regards the CP, sequentiality is implicit in the constraint that coparticipants should make their “communicative contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs” (Grice 1975: 45). Again, for a communicative contribution to occur at a particular stage, it must be embedded in a sequence of one or more contributions. More precisely, it must be anchored to a sequence of minimally two communicative contributions. For this reason, the Gricean conception of a communicative contribution is necessarily a discursive one. Moreover, the constraint of “such as is required”
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does not only refer to the content of the communicative contribution on the micro level and the discourse genre on the macro level, but it also refers to its appropriateness as has been pointed out by Thomas Luckmann (1995: 181): An essential element of genre-related knowledge is the knowledge about its appropriate use, including knowledge about alternative options and the degree of constraint for the employment of a particular genre in a particular situation.
H. P. Grice himself specifies the discursive constraint of “such as is required” by the notion of dovetailed, i.e. communicative contributions are linked by one or more common goals manifest in prior and succeeding talk (1975: 48). So how does the notion of dovetailedness manifest itself in discourse? Coherence and dovetailedness are intrinsically linked to the conversationanalytic conception of conditional relevance and to the sequence of an adjacency pair, which, following Mey, “is a case of coherent sequencing, but not all sequencing needs to be defined strictly in terms of adjacency” (1994: 249). This is due to the fact that coherence and dovetailedness are additionally related to the felicity conditions of a communicative contribution regarding its illocutionary force and illocutionary point, to a discourse topic and its subtopics, and to the ratification of a communicative contribution, which manifests itself in its acceptance or rejection. Yet coherence and dovetailedness are not restricted to the research paradigms of pragmatics. They are also manifest in the field of semantics, where sequentiality is a constitutive part of coherence, and coherence ties show in coreference, conjunctive relation, substitution, ellipsis, reiteration and lexical cohesion. However, sequentiality is not only found in the fields of semantics and pragmatics. It is also a fundamental premise of dialogue grammar (Linell 2001), which is based on the dialogical principles of (1) sequentiality, viz. parts of the meaning and form of utterances are dependent on their sequential positioning: they respond to prior utterances and project possible next utterances; (2) co-authoring, i.e. the individual speaker’s utterance is built upon understandings and reactions to the other’s utterance, and the speaker often borrows words and meanings from the other; and (3) act-activity interdependence. In dialogue grammar, sentences are examined in their linguistic and social contexts as regards the completion of other’s utterance as a means of understanding. Due to the integration of social and linguistic contexts, dialogue grammar differentiates between responsive and projective constructions, and constructions with responsive and projective properties. Contrary to the modular frameworks of linguistics, a grammatical construction is a configuration of formal components and dimensions (morpho-syntax, phonology) which are associated with some kind of communicative, semantic-functional
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potential. More precisely, grammatical constructions contain an outer syntax, a core syntax, pragmatic properties and abstract functional semantic potentials. They are often locally organized and thus essentially related to activity contexts. While the grammatical form of a responsive construction reflects dependence on one or more prior utterances through an elliptic or reactive construction, projective or elicitative constructions contain grammatical forms which reflect the anticipation of a more or less specific contribution whose conditions are defined. Contrary to the field of semantics, this frame of reference assigns word order the status of a communicative tool. For this reason, the intrasequential position of a particular construction in a communicative act is interdependent on its communicative meaning. This does not only hold for the employment of pragmatic particles, but also for the category of aspect: [t]he progressive perspective on an event is often established through bringing the observer onto the scene in the middle of the event, when it is already going on. This is most commonly accomplished by depicting in an adjacent clause the entry of a witness onto the scene. (. . . ) This juxtaposition of two event clauses, the one compact and representing the observer’s entry or perspective, the other depicted event-in-progress, indeed involves a pragmatic dimension of the progressive aspect. The feature of simultaneity – to contrast with sequentiality – of the two clauses is ‘pragmatic’ in the sense that it cannot be defined without reference to another clause, i.e. to the discourse context. (Givón 1993: 155)
These more recent developments in the field of dialogue grammar, which focus on the employment of language, are firmly anchored to the Birmingham School which bridges the gap between the conversation-analytic and the speech-act-theoretic research paradigms. The Birmingham School, for instance, Sinclair and Coulthard (1975), Montgomery (1977) or Stubbs (1983), investigate the question of how illocutionary acts are sequenced in connected speech. They conceive discourse as consisting of a series of exchanges between participants. The exchange, in turn, minimally comprises two sequenced moves, an initiation and a response. This IR-analysis is further elaborated on by Edmondson and House (1981: 80), who state that The underlying structure of a conversational episode is an interactional structure – i.e. it is the sequential relevance of interactional acts which gives coherence to a conversation, and this is reflected in the textual cohesion of the substance of the conversation – i.e. what is said.
Furthermore, they account for speech act sequences as rule-governed units, which are well-formed and coherent, or ill-formed and incoherent, for instance
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Labov and Fanshel (1977) and Edmondson (1981). Tsui (1994) approaches responding acts from the notion of ‘preferred’ versus ‘dispreferred’ second pair parts of adjacent turns. She reinterprets both as being “[. . . ] two types of responding acts. One which responds positively and the other negatively” (1994: 58). This allows her to combine conversation-analytic findings with the I-R-F (initiate-response-feedback) model of Sinclair and Coulthard (1975). To summarize and conclude, sequentiality is not only a constitutive part of semantics, pragmatics and discourse or conversation, but also of grammar and dialogue constructions as regards the embeddedness of sequences and constructions. Due to the premise of an act-activity interdependence, utterances and their embedding activities implicate each other and are only understood from within an activity and its embedding genre and culture. Sequentiality is thus both process, i.e. sequences are being constructed, and product, viz. a construction is assigned the status of a sequence. Following Levinson (1995: 231), the following problem remains to be addressed: However, there is an overwhelming problem in equating understanding with ‘upside down’ practical inference, namely the very great difference between an actor-based account of actions (in terms of plans, goals and intentions) and an interpreter-based account (in terms of heuristics of various kinds). For the nature of logical inference in general, and practical reasoning in particular, is that there can be no determinate way of inferring premises from conclusions. Inferences are asymmetrical things. [. . . ] Simple though the point is, it establishes a fundamental asymmetry between actor-based accounts and interpreter-based accounts, between acting and understanding others’ actions.
Sequentiality in mental representations and processes Just as speakers sequence utterances, acts or turns on the linguistic surface, sequentiality is also a crucial factor in cognition in the form of sequencing of individual cognitive states, intentions and interpretations, which is inextricably linked to participants’ sequencing of shared knowledge and contexts to construct a basis for the interpretation of each other’s utterances. Cognition has always been implicitly addressed from within most of the theoretical approaches discussed above. Within speech act theory, this is clearly demonstrated in the notion of communicative intention assigned to a single illocutionary act. However, cognition is also inherent to accounts of speech act sequences offered from proponents of this theory. For instance, Edmondson and House (1981: 81) assume that participants in conversation have some sort of “familiarity” with possible configurations of acts and moves in a given in-
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teraction. This assumption indicates that sequencing of acts or moves is experientially shaped. Within early conversation analysis, cognition has figured prominently in e.g. Goffman’s (1971) work that has informed ethnomethodology to a large extent. Especially his notion of ‘virtual offence’ stresses the fact that social, and thus conversational, interaction is interpreted by the recipient participant, who, following a potentially offensive act, “has these worst possible readings in mind as that which he must respond to and manage” (Goffman 1971: 109). Thus, conversational behavior is seen as resulting in cognitive processes which, in turn, determine further behavior. Cognitive monitoring of sequencing is especially reflected in the notions of sequential relevance and sequential implicativeness (cf. Schegloff & Sacks 1973: 296), i.e. “the notion that conversational turns make sense because they are interpreted in sequence” (Eggins & Slade 1997: 29; our italics). Also, the notion of adjacency pair is usually linked to expectations (e.g. Levinson 1983: 329) in that it has been proposed that some “rule of operation” exists, which states that if a participant recognizes a first pair part, then “on its first possible completion its speaker should stop and a next speaker should start and produce a second pair part from the pair type of which the first is recognizably a member.” (Schegloff & Sacks 1973: 296). Schegloff (1977) holds that participants will regard the non-occurrence of the second pair part as an ‘observable’ absence and interpret this absence and react accordingly. And Sacks (1992, lecture 12: 95) states – on a more general level – that there are ‘rules of sequencing’ and ‘objects that will be handled by the rules of sequencing.” To him, certain activities can only be done at certain places in a sequence, i.e. “certain activities are accomplished by a combination of some item and some slot” (Sacks 1992, lecture 2R: 262). It seems that from the very beginning, conversation analysis has often implicitly based its analyses on positions held within psycholinguistics and cognitive linguistics. Although findings are generally derived inductively after careful analyses of large corpora of naturally occurring data, and without any a priori defined categories, argumentation generally assumes that speakers have some predetermined expectation about what occurs in conversation at what place and time. Thus, the quote above reveals that individuals participating in a conversation are assumed to have expectations regarding what will follow next in a sequence. Without this assumption, participants could simply not be held to recognize a given utterance as being the first pair part of an adjacency pair. Such expectations, however, can only result from knowledge stored in long-term memory, which is experientially shaped. The study of experientially shaped structures and their influence on both the processing and produc-
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tion of conversation has often been eschewed by ethnomethodological studies and positions. However, they are reflected in a number of remarks by scholars working within this paradigm. Thus, e.g. Psathas (1995: 18) labels adjacency pairs occurring in openings and closings as being conventional and providing “readymade methods for achieving specific outcomes”. Methods can of course only achieve a specific outcome, when they have been agreed to do so by a larger group of people. Furthermore, the concept of floor, which Hayashi (1996: 31) conceives as a “means of communicative attention orientation”, “a cognitively oriented interactional space [. . . ] that the participants jointly create during the course of a conversation” is seen to be related to the concepts of script, plan and schema (ibid.: 34). Floor coherently sequences discourse components in a global structure, and the interplay of conversational interaction and cognitive processes underlying this sequencing is evident in the notions of sync time (Hall 1984) and interactional synchrony (Condon & Ogston 1971). Basing assumptions regarding interlocutors’ motivation for a certain conversational behavior on underlying mental processes requires, however, the study and appreciation of just these processes. Mental processes have traditionally been studied from within the subdiscipline of psycholinguistics. As is the case with theoretical and empirical research on conversational data, studies in this field have addressed the sequence on all levels of linguistic production and comprehension. It has been shown how listeners perceive strips of sequenced sounds and analyze them to break to stream of speech into phonemes and larger units such as morphemes and words. Thus, e.g. Marslen-Wilson and Tyler (1980) assume that word recognition proceeds sequentially from one phoneme to the next, successively restricting the number of possible candidates until finally only one remains. Structures larger than the single sentence have traditionally been examined in the frameworks of text linguistics and artificial intelligence. While there is generally no controversy about the fact that a sequence is represented by some linear construct, there is neither agreement about the impact of this linear structure on the interpretation of the whole sequence, nor is there agreement about the impact of the constitutive elements. That is, are the ‘subsequences’, viz. words, phrases, clauses or turn-constructional units, bounded or unbounded? And is the meaning of a sequence calculated in a summative manner by adding the meaning of its constituents, or is it calculated in a topdown manner, in which the whole structure determines the meaning of its constituents? Moreover, does a random selection of sub-sequences constitute a se-
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quence, or what are the necessary and sufficient conditions for the definition of a sequence? How speakers construct meaning out of a text, i.e. interpret subsequent sentences or utterances as being coherent, has been discussed largely by Teun van Dijk and Walter Kintsch (1983). They argued that in order to connect two sentences of a text, readers need to construct what they call a textbase and a situation model. To account for larger units of coherent discourse, the concept of the episode has been proposed: In a cognitive model, episodes appear to function mainly as further organizers of the text base in short-term memory processing and long-term representation, allowing the strategic derivation and application of a macroproposition, and restrict information search in local coherence strategies, as well as better recall due to this more elaborate organization of discourse. (van Dijk 1982: 192)
Whereas the textbase is constructed out of the individual sentences’ proposition, the situation model serves to explain coherence across sentences that reveal no link via their individual propositions. To account for the inferences which are necessary for discourse comprehension in this latter case, a number of models have been proposed, each reflecting diverging beliefs as to the amount of inferences and the ways these inferences are constructed. The situation model “is the content or micro world that the text is about. In stories, the situation model includes the characters, objects, spatial settings, actions, events, knowledge states of characters, emotional reactions of characters, and so on” (Graesser & Tipping 1998: 325). It is constructed from both explicit information contained in the textbase but also from background world knowledge and other representational levels such as autobiographic memory, and it serves to connect sentences which are not cohesive by supplying plausible information. But coherence has also been found to be determined by mental representations governing the whole conversation, as is reflected in the concepts of schema, script and frame. Whereas Schank and Abelson (1977) and other scholars working in the research paradigms of computer linguistics and artificial intelligence assume that inferences necessary to comprehend discourse are generated by using information stored in scripts, – or in less rigidly organized memory organization packets (cf. Schank & Burstein 1985) – which mentally represent coherent events, Kintsch and van Dijk hold that participants will only rely on inferences whenever the meaning of a sequence cannot be computed from the propositions of the utterances in that sequence.
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Applying the above conceptualizations to conversational data is based on the premise that a specific relation hold between the notions of text, discourse and conversation. As is the case with Halliday (1973), van Dijk (1972, 1977) employs the notion of text to refer to both written and spoken language. Contrary to the concept of discourse, the conception of text is taken to denote an abstract, semantic entity which lacks the situational component (cf. Vitacolonna 1988). To account for the fact, that conversation is social and situationbound, Graesser et al. (1994: 328f.) propose a connectionist model of inference generation, holding that inferences are determined by comprehension goals, the need to satisfy the constraints imposed by diverse information sources, the search for explanations of why a certain action or event takes place, and the search for both local and global coherence. The notions of scripts and other long-term-memory stored structures have, however, largely been eschewed by conversation analysis. Thus, Psathas (1995: 17) claims that the order discovered in interaction “was ongoingly produced in and through the actions of the parties. It was not imposed on them, nor was it a matter of their following some sort of script or rules. They were freely involved in that production and were themselves oriented to that production.” However, script theory never denied that individual solutions to situational communicative problems exist. Edwards (1997: 143) criticizes that “script theory assumes that events themselves [. . . ] are more or less ordered and predictable, such that competence to perceive, recall, and take part in those events rests on our capacity as individuals to draw generalized abstractions across variations in experience, learning from exceptions, and updating our mental representations as we go.” What is explicitly rejected is the idea put forward by script theoreticians that participants learn from deviant experiences and update individual scripts accordingly. Edwards claims that Sack’s conceptualization of participants in conversation assuming order and recognizability in conversation is different from script theory, in that he holds cultural knowledge or scripts to be robust and normative (cf. Edwards 1997: 164) and “protected against induction” (Sacks 1992/1: 62) in that events which are not immediately characterized by the cultural script do not necessarily lead to its modification. However, such a position might be difficult to sustain given our knowledge regarding the influence experience exerts on human cognition. Just as conversational behavior is refined and changes across a human being’s lifespan, so do the associated mental representations. Different from psycholinguistics which restricted its interests to the isolated linguistic knowledge of its subjects, cognitive linguistics approaches mental processes during speech production and comprehension as being just one specific
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instance of information processing and thus of human cognition in general. As a consequence of this, linguistic topics are studied from an interdisciplinary perspective regarding language and cognition as being a specific property of the human mind and as a mental knowledge system integrated in the overall cognitive system (cf. Schwarz 1992: 37). Most models developed from within psycholinguistics and cognitive linguistics take the individual as the locus of their theories, and seem to regard participants in conversation as self-oriented (cf. Levinas 1961 & Jaszczolt 1996). Talk between two interactants is held to take place between conversational partners who are conceived as separate individuals, with the speaker leaving the hearer not only the freedom to interpret the other’s utterances, but also the freedom to create assumptions regarding the other’s intentions. Sequentiality would, thus, emerge between participants, not so much through joint construction. From within these theoretical frameworks social interaction among conversationalists was not addressed, which has always been a serious point of criticism these models met when applied to natural conversation. They contrast with those conceptualizations that take interaction as their starting point. Most noticeably, Clark (1993) analyzed the way participants negotiated mutual knowledge via e.g. the use of back channels. Recent models, e.g. Linell and Karolija (1997: 168) take “conversational interaction as the locus for negotiating and constructing coherence, but at the same time stress that “coherence is [. . . ] not a property of the conversational text itself, but something which emerges in the minds of the conversationalists.” Building this coherence between discourse and the different types of context (co-text, situation and background knowledge) is essential for participants in conversation to make sense of the conversation. Thus, a lack of coherence at the local level can be overcome through coherence at a more global level, e.g. a framing activity type such as an interview. The authors stress the need to include topic progression analysis of structures above the local level of single turns and conclude that context and contextual resources “provide the links of coherence, when the textual flow of discourse is fractured as a result of conversationalists’ moves to introduce new topics and activities into their ongoing interaction” (ibid.: 199). Somewhat differently, a number of recent approaches – mainly in the area of social psychology and its interface with cognitive psychology more specifically take social interaction as their starting point and as the basis for an explication of sequential cognition. Interpretation of interaction and communication is taken as being made possible through “cooperative intersubjective background” (Levinson 1995: 253). In consequence, sequential organization of
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talk is thus linked to the notions of socially shared cognition (Schegloff 1991) and intersubjectivity, i.e. a “participant’s public reading of, or treating as, whatever action that prior [utterance] performed” (Edwards 1997: 100), revealed through the way a given utterance attends to the context created by its prior. A similar reasoning has informed scholars applying the notion of common ground to conversation. In focussing on participants’ active construction of shared information or knowledge, e.g. Clark (1985: 183) conceives common ground to be what interactants “mutually know, believe, and suppose”. Common ground is achieved through the process of grounding, which means that we as participants in conversation “need to assure ourselves that it [our message] has been understood as we intended it to be” (Clark & Brennan 1991: 147). Similarly, Engeström and Middleton (1996) take cognition to partly emerge through joint interaction in the form of distributed cognition in that “several agents sharing information between themselves can accomplish tasks that could not otherwise be done” (Corsini 1999: 290). A similar reasoning seems to inform those approaches that link the use of human language to social intelligence, such as the notion of anticipatory interactive planning (AIP): [. . . ] effective social living requires anticipation of the actions of others, calculation of short- and long-term costs and gains, and close attention to signals about the consequences of one’ s own behaviour. The higher primates, and man, have the ability to model this interdependence of one’s own and others’ behaviour at the cognitive level. (Goody 1995: 2)
Social learning is accepted to take place via establishing routines through joint activity by “novice and expert”. These routines form the basis for mental schemata. Thus, it is socially interactive cognitive processes that shape schemata in the first place before they become internalized in the individual’s mind (cf. Vygotsky 1978). Studies extending this notion to conversational analysis mainly follow the ethnomethodological approach. As Goody (1995: 21) puts it [. . . ] analyses of conversational sequences raise a number of critical issues for understanding the fit between individual cognitive modelling and the interaction between two (or more) different people. One such issue is the location of the synchronization of individual cognitive modelling within the interdependence of joint conversation routines and processes. It would seem that procedures for conversational sequences are culturally framed and also linguistically patterned.
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Within this approach, sequences are regarded to be emergent in conversation on the one hand, but are at the same time some sequences are available as routines. AIP accounts for the participants cognitive strategies to carry out their plans and achieve their goals in such a sequence. This modelling is seen as being complemented by communicative micro-strategies allowing for the fine-tuned adaptation to each others turns, which seems to present the most comprehensive approach towards sequential cognition in conversation. Yet, most of the theoretical approaches discussed above have been developed from within an Anglo-American perspective. However, conversational behavior associated with specific situation in the Anglo-American culture does neither necessarily translate into other cultures regarding the underlying formfunction relationship of an utterance, nor does the same situation result in the same speech act across different cultures. As Coulmas (1981: 70) points out: It cannot be taken for granted that interactional routines are defined in an identical manner in different cultures. The consequence for the analysis of linguistic acts is clear. The question of how a given communicative function is verbally realized in another speech community must always be conjoined with the question of how this function itself is defined by the members of the community in question, and what status it has in the framework of its overall communicative pattern.
Rethinking sequentiality Although the notion of sequentiality is inherent to many different and often diverging theories, individual approaches have often remained within their respective domains. The papers presented in this volume cross methodological borders to arrive at an operational definition of the sequence, which extends the local notion of sequentiality and adds to it further components – culture, genre, intention and cognition – to account for participants’ behavior in interaction. The first part of this volume, “Sequences in Theory and Practice: Minimal and Unbounded?”, discusses the theoretical premises, which further empirical study ought to take into consideration, and exemplify these by detailed data analyses. The contributions illuminate our understanding of possible reanalyses of early approaches to sequential phenomena in that they address the fuzziness of the concept of a sequence thus refining its boundaries. The first two papers fall in the domains of speech act theory and action theory. After investigating the status of communicative intentions in the
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frameworks of speech act theory and ‘Logic and Conversation’ (Grice 1975), Fetzer proposes to systematize intentions in the collective category of the dialogue act of a plus/minus-validity claim, which she bases on the contextualization of Jürgen Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action, where communication is defined by speakers postulating and hearers ratifying validity claims. In the second part of her contribution, Fetzer argues for an analysis of communicative intentions from both a bottom-up and a top-down perspective, encompassing both individual I-intentions, individual presuppositions and individual sense-making as well as collective WE-intentions, collective co-suppositions, dialogue common ground, collective coherence and collective communicative projects. She thus achieves a description of sequenced communicative intentions from both a micro, i.e. bottom-up, and a macro, i.e. top-down, perspective. While Fetzer focuses on the coparticipants’ intentions, Sbisà places the emphasis of her contribution on the effects utterances achieve, and, thus, on reception rather than on production. The first part of her paper approaches the issue from within a speech act theoretical perspective, where she opposes the view that speech acts generally have cognitive effects in that their meaning and force are recognized by the hearer. Instead, she holds that speech acts have conventional effects, such as assignments of obligations or entitlements, that obtain only on the basis of the interlocutors’ implicit or by-default agreement, which involves recipient’s decision to ‘take’ the speech act in a certain way. For this reason, action plays a more important role than cognition. In the second part of her contribution, Sbisà supplements this position with narrative semiotics as offered by Greimas and adapts their scheme to the classification of speech acts into the categories of manipulation, action and sanction. She comes to the conclusion that we make sense of what is around us thanks to speech act sequences and the general form provided by the narrative scheme. While remaining on the theoretical side of the topic, the two following papers shift the focus towards psycholinguistic considerations and address the mental processes operating during processing of sequenced discourse, albeit from two rather different positions taking up the dichotomy individual versus collective indicated in Fetzer’s contribution. Whereas Arundale and Good incorporate recent insights from psychological sciences’ research on distributed cognition into a model of conversation, Meierkord examines the explanatory power of textlinguistic and artificial intelligence models for an analysis of the cognitive processes at work during the comprehension of individual utterances within a recurrent sequence, i.e. conversational closings. Meierkord focuses on the mental processes within the cognitively autonomous individual speaker.
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Whilst acknowledging that utterances do, in general, both attend to the context generated by previous utterances, and do also create the context for the next utterance, the position taken in her paper is that processing routine sequences, such as closings, is intriguingly complex due to the non-propositional nature of a number of their central constituting utterances. Her analyses of think-outloud protocols reveal that during cognition of such conventionalized sequences bottom-up and top-down processes combine in reflection of participants’ experientially shaped expectations that guide their interpretation of the ongoing discourse as well as of their locally fine-tuned adjustment towards each other and each other’s utterances. Her contribution, thus, links sequential cognition to the sociolinguistic notions of recurrence, norm and tradition and demonstrates the multitude of factors influencing participants’ interpretation of each other’s contributions. In contrast, the conceptualization of conversation as the co-constructed product of a dyad is inherent to the proposal made by Arundale and Good. They take the dyad as the minimal unit of analysis for studying talk-ininteraction, and hold that using language is fundamentally a conjoint activity, involving the continuing co-constructing of a stream of talk and its meanings. Different from ethnomethodology, however, they incorporate psychological accounts to capture participants’ anticipation and hindsight, i.e. the fact that participants’ cognitive processes involve both anticipatory planning and, at the same time, retrospective interpretation of what has just happened. Focusing on the interdependence of dyadic cognizing Arundale and Good rethink the concepts of units and boundaries which are inherent to the notion of the sequence. They propose a reorientation in research away from product-oriented units to the processes of unitizing, i.e. the interactional construction of units and their boundaries. Intersubjectivity is exemplified in the paper contributed by Smith and Jucker, who investigate the effect of conversational turns consisting of the discourse maker well alone. Although discourse markers have traditionally been denied propositional meaning and have – from within relevance theory – been claimed to mainly convey procedural meaning, the authors’ analysis reveals that interlocutors interpret the turn as proposing a counterclaim and take it as a signal to reframe their position when well is employed in reaction to questions, assessments, invitations and advice. They propose a canonical and an elided sequence with well. Through careful data analysis, Smith and Jucker demonstrate convincingly how participants anticipate each other’s mental states and monitor their beliefs and assumptions about their common ground, which is revealed in the turns following well. Their data, thus, provide an example
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of evident intersubjectivity and their discussion provides evidence for participants’ sequencing of contexts to create an optimal cognitive environment for the negotiation of common ground in conversation where beliefs are constantly re-constructed. The necessity to extend the notion of sequentiality beyond a local concept is best documented in the contributions collected under the heading “Sequences in Discourse: the Micro-Macro Interface”. They examine genrespecific constraints on individual sequences and indicate the benefits of supplementing the microanalytic concept of sequentiality with powerful macroanalytic notions. Langer argues for an integrative approach to media studies accommodating both the intertextual and interdiscursive orientation of critical discourse analysis and the structural component of conversation analysis. In his contribution, he demonstrates that a strictly local understanding of sequentiality illuminates our understanding of individual contributions with regard to the immediate interpersonal interaction. On the macro level, however, this rigid local focus faces difficulties in accounting for media specific, pre-conceptualized talk on TV, where consensual images in national discourse communities are reconstructed through sequential organization, participant roles and role scripts. Langer exemplifies this in a case study of two Danish TV programs in which he explicates the impact of intertextuality and interdiscursivity. To capture these context-dependent phenomena, he proposes a re-conceptualization regarding both the size of the stretch of discourse to be analyzed and the extent to which context should be integrated in the analysis. A different type of methodological blend is suggested by Kern, who examines question-answer series in the discourse genre of a job interview. Concentrating on questions about the candidate’s job experience and on how they account for it, she observes that global orientations towards genre-specific rules and towards patterned, rhetorical strategies play an important role for both candidate and interviewer. For successful self-presentation, the candidates must construct their answers in accordance with genre-specific strategies and goals in mind. To incorporate these constraints, Kern broadens the concept of sequentiality beyond a merely local understanding of interlocutors’ verbal performance and adapts Luckmann’ s theory of genre to a conversation analytic microanalysis. Discourse, genre and culture are assigned the status of global structures which constrain the participants’ verbal performance. An attempt to describe a particular sequence consisting of more than two turns is made by Spranz-Fogasy, who approaches argumentation from a conversational rhetorical perspective. Due to this contextual implementation, ar-
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gumentation is seen as comprehensive conversational work in and through which thematic deficits are repaired in order to allow for further ongoing conversational work. Argumentation does not only operate as an expansion of adjacency pairs, but is also sequentially organized over several steps. He postulates a prototypical argumentative sequence which consists of the components of triggering, marking dissent, presenting new explanatory information, acceptance and ratification, and which may be expanded as regards insertion sequences or serialization, or it may be compressed. These sequential structures provide an organizational frame which may be supplemented by the macro category of thematic features. The next two papers present detailed accounts of the function particular verbal strategies or lexical items fulfill in the construction of sequentiality. Johansson studies sequentiality in the framework of represented discourse (RD) with regard to the speaker’s construction of the linguistic object and its positioning in the discursive and interactional context, and with regard to intra- and intertextual and interdiscursive chaining. She investigates the textual sequence of explanation with regard to turn-taking and topical development in the framework of the discourse genre of a political interview, where RD is employed to state events or to refocus the topic. Johansson’s analyses reveal that represented discourse is used by the interviewer as an intertextual device in order to create links with the political media scene, whereas the politician uses RD for counter-argumentation and evaluation, thus creating a political position. Johansson concludes that a comprehensive description of the use and effect of RD in the construction of meaning requires a frame of reference that goes beyond the microanalysis of turn-taking and the unit of an adjacency pair, and that includes larger sequences such as explication. Sequentiality in the sense of local coherence is, as has been stated above, often achieved through individual lexical items. Supplementing microanalytic methodology with the tools offered by functional pragmatics, Bührig accounts for the intra-turn concatenation of speech actions as well as for speech action sequences across turns. She investigates the use of auf jeden Fall and jedenfalls in everyday story telling and in academic discourse as devices for a reorientation of the listener towards a specific position inherent in the speaker’s role. From within this framework she analyses those instances in which the listener is led astray and the speaker needs to re-orient the listener as to a specific position. After a detailed data analysis she concludes that both markers index previously verbalized discourse knowledge thus synchronizing the interlocutors’ mental and linguistic activities that had strayed in different directions during the conversation. Both auf jeden Fall and jedenfalls create interactional
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coherence, e.g. by indicating the return to the central topic of a conversation of by confirming the content of an utterance.
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Communicative intentions in context Anita Fetzer University of Stuttgart, Germany
The pearls are there, but they will not hang together till someone provides the string (Givón 1989)
Introduction Linguistic communication is an extremely complex endeavour, which is investigated from a number of different perspectives. The functional-grammar and discourse-analytic paradigms identify regularities with regard to the linguistic representation of social actors and social actions (Fairclough 1996; Halliday 1996; Kress 1996; Wodak 1996), and conversation analysis identifies recurring patterns and sequences, and categorizes them into a preferred and a dispreferred format (Pomerantz 1984; Atkinson & Heritage 1984). While these research paradigms base their investigations on a sociosemiotic approach to language, which does not account for a speaker’s or a hearer’s intention, the sociopragmatic framework is anchored to the premises of rationality, intentionality and cooperation (Habermas 1987; Searle 1969; Cohen et al. 1990). It thus accommodates the categories of a coparticipant, a communicative intention and a dialogue sequence. But what status does the sociopragmatic paradigm assign to these categories? And how is the relationship between language, social action, coparticipant, communicative intention and dialogue sequence accounted for? Action theory is based on the premise that social actors act in a rational, intentional and cooperative manner and perform social actions, such as speech acts, accordingly. Contrary to a more traditional conception of rationality, which is generally restricted to the dichotomy of truth and falsehood, Jürgen Habermas postulates a sociocultural interpretation of rationality in his theory of communicative action (1987). Here, rationality manifests itself in the
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performance and interpretation of a communicative action in accordance with sociocultural values and norms which are defined in a tripartite system of truth represented by the objective world, normative rightness represented by the social world, and subjective truthfulness represented by the subjective world. As regards the concept of action, Habermas differentiates between the one-world based concepts of teleological action and strategic action, and the concepts of norm-regulating action and communicative action which are anchored to the objective and social worlds. But are the concepts of a communicative action and a speech act synonymous? Habermas defines communication as speakers postulating validity claims which are ratified by hearers by an acceptance or by a rejection. And it is this hearer ratification, which is a necessary condition for felicitous communication. Thus, Habermas’s conception of communicative action is based on the minimal unit of an exchange and is therefore explicitly anchored to a dialogue sequence. The concept of a speech act also accounts for the category of a coparticipant. However, only the speaker performs a social action, while the other coparticipants are only assigned a presuppositional status and allocated to the level of felicity conditions. As a consequence of this, a speech act is predominantly speaker-oriented and firmly tied to monologue. In natural-language communication coparticipants perform social actions by postulating and ratifying communicative contributions which are ‘done with words’. So, what status does the social-action paradigm assign to the production and interpretation of language? While the interpretation of a speech act has been explicitly accounted for in the research paradigms of speech act theory, Gricean pragmatics and relevance theory, the production of a speech act has hardly been investigated. But is the language employed to perform a speech act, or to postulate a validity claim, picked at random, or is it selected? That is, can the formulation or linguistic representation of a speech act, the utterance act (Searle 1969: 24), already be classified as an intentional act? Or, is the linguistic representation of a speech act in a context, viz. the postulation of a validity claim, a necessary condition for its classification as an intentional action? In natural-language dialogue, coparticipants do not only postulate validity claims by linguistically representing them, but they also ratify them by an acceptance or a rejection. But what do they actually ratify: the social action or the linguistic representation? And on what premises do they base their ratification? Generally, validity claims are not postulated in isolation, but are embedded in a dialogue sequence and therefore not only ratified with regard to the appropriateness as an individual claim, but also with regard to one or more higher-order goals, such as discourse coherence or communicative project (Linell 1998).
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The goal of this contribution is to investigate the pragmatic premise of intentionality of social action in a dialogical framework and contextualize it by accounting for the dialogue constraints of cooperation and collective WEintention, sequentiality and communicative project, and discourse topic and coherence. In Section I, Intentions in speech act theory, the status of intention is investigated in Austin’s and Searle’s conceptions of speech act theory with regard to (1) intentionality and coparticipants, (2) intentionality and language, and (3) intentionality and context. Section II, The Gricean cooperative principle and communicative intentions, discusses the status of intention with regard to language and sequential organization by comparing and contrasting the cooperative-principle results with F. Recanati’s (1986) conception of communicative intentions and ethnomethodological reasoning. Section III, Plus/minus-validity claims and communicative intentions, systematizes the results obtained in the framework of the dialogue act of a plus/minus-validity claim which accommodates both bottom-up and top-down perspectives by distinguishing between micro and macro communicative intentions. It argues for a differentiation between individual I-intentions, individual presuppositions and individual sense-making on the one hand, and the dialogue categories of collective WE-intentions, collective co-suppositions and collective coherence on the other hand.
Intentions in speech act theory Speech act theory has paved the way for an investigation of ordinary language in pragmatics by shifting the focus of investigation from the rigid framework of formal semantics to the action-theoretic premises of rationality, intentionality and communication. But how are these basic premises accounted for in speech act theory, and how do they manifest themselves in communication? Do they manifest themselves in the actual performance of a speech act regarding locution, illocution and perlocution, respectively propositional and illocutionary acts, or are they already manifest at the level of language production and utterance formulation? In the following, the status of intention is examined in Austin’s and Searle’s conceptions of speech act theory with regard to the constitutive parts of (1) coparticipants, (2) language, and (3) context and sequentiality.
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How to do things with words or a set of necessary and sufficient conditions In speech act theory, speakers, and, of course, hearers as Grimshaw (1980) convincingly argues, act in a rational manner by performing intentional actions, such as speech acts and other social acts. As speech acts are done with words, language is assigned the status of a relational concept anchored to the coparticipants and to linguistic and social contexts. For this reason, an investigation of language has to account for speakers, hearers and the world, in which and about which they exchange information. But how do coparticipants exchange information? What kind of information do they exchange? And what is the minimal unit for the exchange of information? Contrary to Austin’s conception of a speech act based on his 1955 lectures, which is anchored to conventions, Searle’s speech act theory (1969) is set in a framework of necessary and sufficient conditions regarding language, semantics and convention. Here, a speech act is the minimal unit of communication and consists of an illocutionary force and a propositional content. It is defined by a list of constitutive rules, which realize underlying conventions. In this framework, the use of language is regular and systematic. Thus, speaking a language is engaging in a (highly complex) rule-governed form of intentional behavior, and the performance of a speech act is carried out in accordance with a conventional procedure defined by a set of necessary and sufficient conditions. In order to achieve some conventional effect, the procedure must be executed sincerely, correctly and completely. Analogous to Searle’s conception of ordinary-language communication, the minimal unit of linguistic communication in Austin’s framework consists of a speech act. Contrary to Searle’s definition, interlocutors exchange speech acts by performing locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts (Austin 1980). While the locution and the illocution, whose force can be made explicit by a performative formula, are defined in a framework based on conventions, the perlocution is defined by the achievement of non-conventional effects. From a sequentialorganization viewpoint, locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts, respectively propositional and illocutionary acts, are performed simultaneously. While the locutionary act determines sense and reference, the illocutionary act bridges the gap between the individual coparticipants by the illocution’s “invited response” (1980: 118). The perlocutionary act, however, manifests itself in the “achievement of a perlocutionary object (convince, persuade) or the production of a perlocutionary sequel” (ibid.). The Searlean conception of a speech act is even more explicit about the internal sequential organization of utterance, propositional and illocutionary acts:
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I am not saying, of course, that these are separate things that speakers do, as it happens, simultaneously, but rather that in performing an illocutionary act one characteristically performs propositional acts and utterance acts. Nor should it be thought from this that utterance acts and propositional acts stand to illocutionary acts in the way buying a ticket and getting on a train stand to taking a railroad trip. They are not means to ends; rather, utterance acts stand to propositional and illocutionary acts in the way in which, e.g., making an ‘X’ on a ballot paper stand to voting. (1969: 24)
But what status do Austin and Searle assign to a coparticipant and how do they account for language and context? Austin’s conclusion that ordinary-language utterances, which are produced by a speaker and directed at a hearer, do not simply describe the world, but are employed to perform a speech act was very radical at that time. Contrary to Searle’s unilateral conception of a speech act, Austin’s notion is not restricted to the speaker’s domain. Rather, he stresses the dialogical and thus sequential nature of a speech act which manifests itself in the speaker’s intention to achieve some effect: “a effect must be achieved on the audience if the illocutionary act is to be carried out. (. . . ) Generally the effect amounts to bringing about the understanding of the meaning and of the force of the locution” (1980: 116). Thus, speech acts are directed at one or more coparticipants in order to achieve and secure uptake. This dialogue-orientation of a speech act is also implicit in Austin’s differentiation between intended and unintended effects, and between attempt and achievement. But on what premises are these distinctions based? And do they refer to any action in particular? In a simplified semiotic setting, a speaker encodes a message and sends signals to a hearer who decodes them. If this is adapted to a speech-act scenario, a speaker performs a social action by formulating one or more utterances thereby realizing locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts. While the locution is attributed to the speaker’s domain only, the illocution, due to its conventional status, fulfils a bridging function between the speaker’s and hearer’s domains. Because of its non-conventional status, the perlocution can neither be anchored to the speaker‘s or the hearer’s domain, nor can it be assigned a bridging function. Instead, it is anchored to the set of a speaker and a hearer, and therefore represents a dialogue principle par excellence, as is illustrated below. In the following dialogue, which is adopted from Levinson (1983: 292), speakers A and B exchange four speech acts, namely the assertion (A-1), the acceptance (B-1), the assertion (A-2), and the apology and indirect speech act of a rejection (B-2):
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(1) A-1: B-1: A-2: B-2:
I have a fourteen year old son Well that’s all right I also have a dog Oh I’m sorry
In (A-1), speaker refers to her/himself by the indexical expression I and predicates that s/he has a fourteen year-old son. Due to the assertive force, s/he bridges the gap between herself/himself and speaker B by inviting hr/him to respond. This is complied with by speaker B in her/his communicative contribution (B-1), in which s/he refers to the previous communicative contribution by the indexical expression that and predicate that s/he does not object to the information transmited through (A-1); this is also manifest in B’s employment of the discourse marker well in (B-1), which establishes local coherence by signifying some kind of contrast, such as a different set of assumptions. As the communicative contribution (B-1) does not contain any further information, it invites uptake and initiates another sequel, namely (A-2), in which speaker A provides further information about her/his family. From a linguistic-surface viewpoint, the communicative contribution (B-2) seems to realize a prototypical apology – but is this really the case? To answer this question in a satisfactory manner, we have to adopt Searle’s differentiation between direct and indirect speech acts (1975), Morgan’s distinctions between speech acts and the performance of a speech act, and language and language usage (1990), and Austin’s differentiation between intended and unintended effects. That is, we have to extend the frame of investigation from a unilateral speech act to dialogue and conversation (Grice 1975; Searle 1975, 1992), and differentiate between local sequentiality manifest in the conditional-relevance concepts of adjacency position and adjacency pair (Levinson 1983), and non-local sequentiality manifest in the concept of adjacency relation, such as between a topical-sequence section and an opening or closing section, and relations between discourse topics and subtopics. Futhermore, we need to distinguish between local perlocutionary effects anchored to the immediate linguistic and social contexts, and non-local perlocutionary effects anchored to more remote linguistic and social contexts. As regards the dialogue examined above, the perlocutionary effects anchored to the immediate context of the communicative contribution (B-1), which is represented by (A-1), (A-2) and the immediate physical environment shared by speakers A and B, consist of the response to the information provided and the coparticipants’ attitudes towards the communicative contribution exchanged, for example. In successful communication, these local perlocutionary effects are generally not explicitly related to the global social and linguistic contexts
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represented by the discourse genre, the political system, ideology or gravity;1 they may, however, be explicated in a negotiation-of-meaning sequence, where the validity of a specific reference, predication or presupposition is at stake. But does the framework of speech act theory allow for the accommodation of the differentiation between micro and macro domains? In his conception of felicity conditions, Searle specifies the immediate linguistic and social contexts required for the felicitous performance of a speech act with regard to normal input and output conditions, propositional content and preparatory conditions, and the sincerity and essential conditions. These rules are supplemented by the following two requirements: firstly, that the speaker intends that her/his utterance will produce in the hearer a belief that the sincerity and essential conditions obtain by means of the recognition of the intention to produce this belief, and that the speaker intends this recognition to be achieved by means of the recognition of the sentence as one conventionally used to produce such beliefs. Secondly, that the semantical rules of the dialect spoken by the speaker and hearer are such that the utterance is correctly and sincerely uttered if and only if all of the previous conditions obtain. But do these rules constitute an internal sequence? According to Searle, these rules are ordered. For this reason, Searle’s felicity conditions and Austin’s differentiation between intended and unintended effects are based on the implicit premise that a speech act is part of an exchange, if not embedded in a larger sequence. Moreover, a speech act is always anchored to a specific set of felicity conditions and is therefore context-dependent. But are there further speech-act-theoretic premises which are relevant to a dialogical frame of reference?
Attempt and achievement, and process and product Austin offers another very promising aspect to the investigation of dialogue sequences, namely the differentiation between attempt and achievement. If these notions are compared and contrasted with the dialogical conception of discourse as process and discourse as product (Duranti & Goodwin 1992), the notion of achievement focuses on the actual outcome of the speaker-intended speech act and is thus retrospective and both product- and dialogue-oriented, while the notion of attempt is prospective and speaker- and process-oriented. But on what premises are the differentiations between attempt and achievement, and between discourse as process and discourse as product based? From a semantic viewpoint, the concept of achievement presupposes an attempt to achieve some goal. But ‘what’ is actually being achieved or attempted in dialogue? And how is this calculated? As regards the local level of exchange,
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coparticipants generally attempt to achieve a micro communicative goal by realizing a micro communicative intention through one or more speech acts in a single dialogue exchange. As regards the non-local level of a communicative project, coparticipants generally attempt to achieve a macro communicative goal by realizing a macro communicative intention through the realization of a set of necessary and sufficient speech acts which constitutes the largerscale communicative project. Thus, the differentiation between attempt and achievement is based on the higher-order principles of communicative goal and communicative intention, which can not be defined in the framework of a single speech act. Instead, they require a dialogical frame of reference, in which speech acts are not only performed but also taken up by the hearer’s response(s). Only then is it possible to conclude whether a communicative goal has been achieved through the realization of one or more communicative intentions, or whether the attempt has been unsuccessful. But are the notions of locution, illocution and perlocution, respectively propositional act and illocutionary act, the differentiation between discourse as process and discourse as product, and the distinction between micro and macro communicative intentions sufficient conditions for a dialogical setting?
Speech act theory and language In the discussion of the locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts, we have distinguished between speech acts and the performance of a speech act, and language and language usage. Despite the fact that speech acts are generally performed through language, the status of language in speech act theory has not been explicitly accounted for. So, what status do Searle and Austin assign to language? According to Austin, to say anything is to perform a phonetic act through which utterances or phones are produced. Additionally, a phatic act, viz. the “act of uttering certain vocables or words, i.e. noises of certain types belonging to and as belonging to a certain vocabulary, in a certain construction, i.e. conforming to and as conforming to a certain grammar, with a certain intention, & c.” (1980: 92) is performed. The phonetic and phatic acts are used with a “certain more or less definite ‘sense’ and a more or less definite ‘reference”’ (1980: 93). Analoguously, Searle explicates the status of language by postulating an utterance act which consists of uttering words, which are composed of morphemes, and words compose sentences. Thus, speaking a language, according to Searle, means formulating utterance acts and performing propositional and illocutionary acts: “Thus, in performing different utterance acts, a speaker may perform the same propositional and illocution-
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ary acts. (. . . ) Utterance acts consist simply in uttering strings of words. Illocutionary and propositional acts consist characteristically in uttering words in sentences in certain contexts, under certain conditions and with certain intentions,” (1969: 24, 25). Even though Searle is rather explicit about the fact that a speaker may perform one specific illocutionary act through different utterance acts, he is not very precise about how a speaker designs or formulates her/his utterance acts. But is the uttering of strings of words really an appropriate description of an utterance act? How are these strings of words put together? Do coparticipants perform illocutionary acts by randomly picking strings of words? In the frameworks of functional grammar (Givón 1993; Halliday 1996) and sociolinguistics (Holmes 1991; Wardhaugh 1998) language is investigated with regard to linguistic and social contexts, and defined by a set of paradigmatic and syntagmatic choices or by sociolinguistic variation, which states that the employment of specific ‘bits-and-pieces’ of language or of specific grammatical constructions transmits a specific semantic and social meaning. This is due to the fact that language usage is anchored to social and linguistic contexts. For instance, the address terms sir or madam signify both formal and institutional contexts, whereas the forms of endearment mate or sugar are restricted to informal and non-institutional contexts.2 This is also manifest in the employment of other lexical items, such as intensifiers and nouns, which can also be classified with regard to fairly neutral contexts, such as very, quite or rather, and police officer, and fairly informal contexts, for instance, friggin or absolutely, and cop. If the principle of sociolinguistic variation is adapted to the social-action paradigm, coparticipants may, in principle, realize their communicative intention and perform an illocutionary act by formulating an infinite number of utterance acts. If adapted to the Searlean premise that constitutive rules create the possibility of new forms of behavior, this refined principle of sociolinguistic variation is of even greater importance. That is, new forms of behavior do not only manifest themselves on the local level of an illocutionary act, but also on the more remote level regarding the reconstruction of social context. So, do coparticipants really pick strings of words at random for realizing their communicative intentions? To perform an indirect speech act or to get in a conversational implicature (Grice 1975), coparticipants frequently exploit the semantic meaning of one or more lexical expressions or grammatical constructions by assigning them the function of an inference trigger. Furthermore, coparticipants may also select to spell out the force of an illocutionary act to signify a specific institutional context, where the explicit representation of force is a constitutive part of discourse, such as a courtroom interaction or
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a wedding ceremony. Or, they may select to spell out implicit meaning in a negotiating-of-meaning sequence, where the appropriateness of a specific lexical item, a grammatical construction or a social action is at stake. For these reasons, strings of words or grammatical constructions are not picked at random. Rather, they are selected with regard to the linguistic representation of a communicative intention which is, of course, interdependent on the contextual constraints of a higher-order communicative goal. So, how are things done with words? Austin’s and Searle’s conceptions of speech act theory assign a presuppositional status to rationality and intentionality. For this reason, speakers – and, of course, hearers – are ideally rational and competent, and know how to perform speech acts in a rational manner. However, speech acts do not only consist of illocutionary and propositional acts but also of utterance acts. As has been pointed out in the discussion above, it does not seem reasonable to assume that utterance acts are formed by picking words or grammatical constructions at random. Instead, utterance acts are composed of more or less grammatically correct sentences. As a consequence of this, interlocutors are not only ideally rational, but also have a linguistic competence, which contains rules for syntactical, morphological, phonological, semantic and pragmatic well-formedness. However, speech acts are not performed in isolation but instantiated in social and linguistic contexts. For this reason, coparticipants have to accommodate the corresponding contextual constraints and requirements when performing a speech act in context. For instance, the employment of an indirect speech act to express acceptance in a wedding ceremony seems quite inappropriate, if not infelicitous. So, there have to be rules, maxims or guidelines, which explicate when and where an explicit or an implicit representation of a speech act is appropriate. But how do coparticipants calculate whether a speech act has been performed in an appropriate manner? Following Hymes (1972), interlocutors are not only linguistically but also socioculturally competent. This is manifests in their knowledge of how to produce appropriate utterances and of how to interpret utterances in an appropriate manner. While linguistic competence manifests itself in the production and interpretation of a sentence, sociocultural competence manifests itself in the production and interpretation of appropriate utterances and is therefore anchored to sequentiality and dialogue. This is due to the fact that the appropriateness of an utterance is not calculated with regard to the linguistic representation of propositional content and illocutionary force only, but also with regard to where and when the speech act is performed, for instance, as a slot in the opening section of a communicative project or as a reformula-
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tion in a negotiation-of-validity sequence. Thus, an investigation of a speech act in context requires the accommodation of (1) the selection of appropriate linguistic items and constructions for the production of an utterance act, (2) sequentiality, and (3) social and linguistic contexts. To summarize and conclude, Austin’s frame of reference is characterized by the interdependence between individual participants and conventions with regard to procedures and conventional effects, procedures and execution of social actions, and their correct and complete performance by sincere and responsible coparticipants. Thus, he implicitly accommodates the notion of sequentiality with regard to the concepts of conventional effect, responsible coparticipant and their obligations concerning social consequences. In Searle’s frame of reference, the meaning of a sentence is determined by rules specifying the conditions of utterance, and what the utterance counts as. Here, the meaning of a speech act is calculated with regard to the intended effects on a hearer, what the speaker means, what the sentence uttered means, what the speaker intends and what the hearer understands: “S intends to produce IE in H by means of getting H to recognize S’s intention to produce IE.” (1969: 47). Both Austin and Searle provide theoretical frameworks for the investigation of how to do speech acts with words by explicating how the performance of an utterance act, respectively a phonetic, phatic and rhetic act, is specified with regard to the domains of speech and language. Neither, however, specifies how a coparticipant constructs an utterance act in order to perform a specific speech act. In the following, the status of intention with regard to language and sequential organization is examined in the Gricean cooperative principle and supplemented by relevance-theoretic and ethnomethodological reasoning strategies.
The Gricean cooperative principle and communicative intentions Analogous to speech act theory, the Gricean approach to natural-language communication is based on the premise of rationality and intentionality. Contrary to speech act theory, the Gricean approach postulates cooperation as the fundamental premise of communication. His cooperative principle (CP) is the foundation, on which the calculation of intersubjective meaning is based. It reads as follows: “Make your conversational 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.” (1975: 45). In this framework, cooperation is manifest in the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange. But on
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what premise is the notion of accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange based? Is it based on the concept of a unilateral speech act? Or, is is anchored to dialogue? From a sequential-organization viewpoint, the notion of accepted purpose can not be defined with regard to one coparticipant only. Instead, it presupposes a set of a speaker and a hearer, who somehow must have agreed to accept a – more or less specific – direction of the talk exchange. And it is this acceptance which presupposes an already postulated and ratified speech act and thus the minimal unit of an exchange, if not a larger dialogue sequence. As a consequence of this, the cooperative principle is anchored to the principle of sequentiality as regards the micro level of an exchange – but is it restricted to the micro level? The CP does not explicitly differentiate between micro and macro domains. However, Grice’s reference to the stage, i.e. the points in time, place and discourse, at which a communicative contribution occurs presupposes an extended frame of reference, in which a talk exchange is embedded in a larger dialogue sequence, such as the dialogue category of a communicative project or the discursive category of a genre. Thus, the purpose or direction to which communicative contributions are anchored does not only require local coherence, but also communicative-project-oriented or macro coherence. For these reasons, the Gricean CP represents a dialogue principle par excellence, which does not only account for the sequential organization of discourse on the micro level of an exchange, but also on the macro level of a communicative project. In the following, the status of intention and the notion of dovetailed are examined with regard to (1) coparticipants, (2) language, and (3) context and sequentiality.
Cooperation: A dialogue principle par excellence The Gricean approach to natural-language communication is based on the premise that conversations are rational endeavours and cooperative efforts, in which participants realize and recognize a common purpose or set of purposes, or, at least, some mutually accepted direction. The CP is the solid base of rational dialogue and therefore, by definition, not open for negotiation; interlocutors may, however, employ the strategy of opting out, which is generally accompanied by explicit references to some higher-order moral principle, such as confidentiality or trust, and thus spell out the reasons for the noncompliance. In action theory and pragmatics, some notion of the CP, if not the CP itself, has been widely accepted (Cohen et al. 1990). In spite of this tacit agreement, there is some controversy about the status of the implicature and
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the number of maxims required for the calculation of the implicature.3 Following Levinson (1979), Grice’s maxims are interpreted as specifications of some unmarked communicative context where they represent the pillars on which the conversational implicature is calculated. For this reason, deviations, however common, are seen as a special or a marked instance of communication, in which the speaker signifies that s/he intends to communicate conversationally implicated meaning. Conversational implicatures are manifest in the exploitation of one or more of the maxims of quality, quantity, relation and manner, or when the coparticipant is faced with a clash. In these cases, the speaker intends a conversational implicature and communicates something beyond what has been said, which is calculated through a process of inferencing in which the speaker’s communicative intention is reconstructed. Thus, the calculation of the communicative meaning of a contribution is not only based on the observance of the maxims, but also on possible infringements. But what does Grice’ a notion of such as is required actually mean? In his definition of a conversational implicature, H.P. Grice explicitly refers to context, which is specified as linguistic and otherwise, and to background knowledge, which is required for the calculation of a conversational implicature. Following Levinson (1983), a conversational implicature is characterized by some degree of indeterminateness as it is, by definition, defeasable, nondetachable, calculable and non-conventional. As has already been pointed out above, communicative contributions and conversational implicatures are not produced at random in natural-language conversation. Rather, they are expected to be dovetailed, i.e. linked by one or more common goals manifest in prior and succeeding talk (Grice 1975: 48). Thus, Grice specifies the constraint of such as is required by the concept of dovetailed-ness, which is also implicit in the textlinguistic and discursive concept of coherence (De Beaugrande & Dressler 1981; Halliday 1996). Furthermore, dovetailedness manifests itself in the interactional-organization principles of adjacency and turn-taking, and in the micro- and macro-semantic phenomena of discourse topic and subtopics, and cataphoric and anaphoric references, and is therefore assigned the status of a dialogue constraint regarding both local and global coherence. But are the sequential phenomena of turn-taking, adjacency, and micro and macro coherence sufficient conditions for the definition of the dialogue constraint of dovetailedness? In the research paradigm of mainstream linguistics, sentences are either well- or ill-formed, which is calculated with regard to phonological, morphological, semantic and syntactic constraints. Contrary to these discrete linguistic categories, the sociolinguistic notion of appropriateness and the concept
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of pragmatic well-formedness represent fuzzy categories, which are calculated with regard to (1) social context, (2) linguistic context, (3) social action, (4) propositional content and (5) linguistic representation. As a consequence of this, a communicative contribution does not only have to be such as is required with regard to interactional and semantic coherence, but also with regard to the linguistic representation of the social action and the propositional content. In the following, the calculation of pragmatic well-formedness and sociolinguistic appropriateness is investigated in the conversation between speakers A and B, which has already been examined in a speech-act scenario. There, as has been pointed out above, the exchange (A-1/B-1) must be embedded in a larger sequence, such as an interview, in which the identity of speaker A has already been identified and assigned a presuppositional status. In the research paradigm of speech act theory, the communicative contribution B-1 (“Well that’s all right”) realizes an acceptance of the contribution A-1 (“I have a fourteen year old son”), in which the propositional content and the assertive force are accepted. If the speech-act scenario is supplemented by the Gricean paradigm, the contribution (B-1) additionally accepts (A-1) as is required at the stage at which occurs. Moreover, it does not infringe on any of the maxims and gives the information that s/he has only one child, not more. The response (B-1) does not query the validity of (A-1) and therefore accepts the social action of an assertion, and the appropriateness of the linguistic representation. Furthermore, it signifies discourse coherence: the discourse marker well indexes the previous communicative contribution (A-1) and indicates that (B-1) is commenting on A’s family status. Thus, well is an instance of anaphoric reference regarding the exchange level of dialogue. The indexical expression that refers to the previous communicative contribution’s proposition, and B’s acceptance of this proposition is realized by the predication is all right. This acceptance does not only accept the utterance, viz. the actual linguistic representation, but also the underlying presuppositions and communicative intention. In the communicative contribution A-2 (“I also have a dog”), speaker A comments on her/his family status and elaborates on it. This is signified by A’s employment of the adverbial also, which introduces the additional family member of a dog. From a local-coherence viewpoint, this elaboration is dovetailed. But does this also apply to the domains of social context, social action and linguistic representation? From a ratification viewpoint, B-2 (“Oh I’m sorry”) acknowledges the communicative contribution (A-2) as regards the exchange level by the employment of the indexical oh. As there is no explicit rejection referring to the social context, social action or linguistic representation, such as the animal you are referring to is a wolf, I don’t know why you’re saying that, what do
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you mean by ‘also’ or is this supposed to be a compliment, the communicative contribution is accepted as such as is required. But what does speaker B intend to communicate with her/his contribution (B-2)? Generally, the indexical oh does not signify unequivocal acceptance, but rather some kind of unexpectedness (Schiffrin 1987) as is manifest in the second turn-constructional unit of the communicative contribution, namely I’m sorry. But what is the intersubjective meaning of this communicative contribution? The calculation of intersubjective meaning is a context-dependent concept by definition and can thus no longer be based on a single speech act. Instead, it requires the dialogical framework of the CP. As regards the intersubjective meaning of (B-2), there is neither a reference to a higher-order moral principle, nor does B give any reasons for terminating the conversation in order to opt out. Thus, the CP and the accepted purpose obtain. But are the maxims of quality, quantity, relation and manner observed? There is no reason to assume that the information contained in (B-2) is not true, informative and perspicuous. Thus, there is no infringement on quality, quantity and manner. However, if we calculate the communicative meaning of (B-2) with regard to relation, the communicative contribution does not really constitute a relevant response because a relevant response to an assertion is either its acceptance as true or its rejection as false. That is, it is not relevant how the speaker feels about the information postulated as it is expressed by (B-2). As a consequence of this, the nonrelevant response (B-2) triggers the following process of inferencing in which the conversationally implicated meaning is retrieved: A ‘person’ who, by (in, when) saying (or making as if to say) that p [speaker is sorry. AF] has implicated that q [hearer’s communicative goal can not be realized. AF], PROVIDED THAT (1) he is to be presumed to be obeying the conversational maxims, or at least the cooperative principle; (2) the supposition that he is aware that, or thinks that, q is required in order to make her/his saying as if to say p (or doing so in THOSE terms) consistent with this presumption; and (3) the speaker thinks (and would expect the hearer to think that the speaker thinks) that it is within the competence of the hearer to work out, or grasp intuitively, that the supposition in (2) IS required. (Grice 1975: 49)
As a result, the communicative contribution (B-2) is assigned the status of a rejection. But what is actually being rejected: the proposition that A has a dog or the assertive force? This question can only be answered if the linguistic and social contexts, and the macro communicative intention, to which the communicative project is anchored, are taken into consideration, namely the interview
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setting regarding the question whether speaker A qualifies for the tenancy of the appartment. To summarize, in the Gricean framework coparticipants are represented by rational agents who base their communicative performance on the CP, the maxims of quantity, quality, relation and manner, and on the conversational implicature. Here, coparticipants perform social actions in linguistic and social contexts, and their performance is constrained by the dialogue principle of the CP and the constraint of dovetailedness regarding both micro and macro domains. But how is the concept of communicative intention accounted for in logic and conversation? Francois Recanati’s article on defining communicative intentions (1986) critically investigates the Gricean conception of communicative intention and distinguishes between three subintentions and their respective premises and perlocutionary effects, namely (1) the intention (G1) that the utterance produce in the addressee a certain response, (2) the intention (G2) that the addressee recognize the intention (G1), and (3) the intention (G3) that the fulfilment of (G1) depend on its recognition. Contrary to the Gricean frame of reference, Recanati refines the concept of communicative intention by explicating the interdependence between utterance act and communicative intention as follows: “an utterance act (. . . ) manifests an underlying communicative intention” (1986: 214). As a consequence, “the communicative intention is intrinsic to the communicative act and cannot be divorced from it” (1986: 235). In other words, it is not possible to communicate without having, or making manifest that one has the communicative intention, and for this reason, verbal communication is intentional. And Recanati goes even further by spelling out the reflexive orientation of communicative intentions as follows: “S’s intention is default reflexive if and only if S has no intention inconsistent with any of the (infinite number of) intentions that his intention would entail if it were genuinely reflexive.” (1986: 239) This differentiation between reflexive intention, namely the intention to be recognized, and default reflexive intention, namely not to have a certain type of intention, does not only accommodate the dialogue principle of ratification, which claims that communicative acts are either accepted or rejected (Fetzer 1999), but also Searle’s sincerity condition. Moreover, it indicates that communicative intentions are not anchored to unilateral speech acts, but rather are performed in context, which is spelled out by Recanati’s revised or contextualized account of the Gricean commmunicative intention and the three subintentions: (1) the intention (G2a) that the utterance provide the addressee with reason to believe that the prototypicality conditions obtain, (2) the intention (G2b*) that the communicative intention be
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recognized and that the addressee recognize the intention as open, and (3) the intention (G2c) that the fulfilment of (G2a) depend on its recognition. Thus, the interdependence between communicative intention and context is explicitly accounted for by the introduction of the notion of reason to believe and by the prototypicality conditions, which anchor the cognitive concept of intention to internal context(s), where the ‘reasons to believe’ are stored. Furthermore, the cognitive concept of intention is anchored to the social concept of communicative action. But when is a communicative act successfully performed? According to Recanati, “a communicative act is performed by means of an utterance U if and only if U makes such a complex intention manifest; a communication succeeds when this intention is actually recognized by the hearer” (1986: 239). Again, Recanati differentiates between the unilateral performance of a communicative act and the dialogue-oriented interpretation of successful performance, which depends on the hearer’s recognition of the communicative intention, but not on their actual compliance. To conclude, the Gricean CP represents a dialogue principle par excellence. To account for both social action and cognition, it needs to be supplemented by Francois Recanati’s conception of communicative intentions, in which the gap between unilateral speech acts and dialogue is bridged by the interdependencies between communicative intention and utterance act, and context and communicative act. In the following, the status of language is examined in the Gricean framework.
Cooperation and linguistic acts In his seminal work on the philosophy of language, H.P. Grice not only elaborates on cooperation and social action, but also on the relationship between social action and language. In utterer’s meaning and intentions (1989) he explicitly refers to the “hideous oversimplification” (1989: 87) in the examination of intentions and “doing a linguistic act” (ibid.). But what does the notion of ‘doing a linguistic act’ actually refer to? In the investigation of the relationship between language and speech act theory, ‘doing a linguistic act’ was interpreted as consisting of a number of sub-acts, such as a phonetic act, a rhetic act and a phatic act, or an utterance act. In ‘logic and conversation’, Grice does not explicitly refer to any phonetic, morphological. syntactic or lexical ‘acts’. However, his maxim of manner can be interpreted as referring to language usage as it carries the assumption that linguistic expressions and constructions can be employed to obscure the speaker’s communicative intention:
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Finally, under the category of MANNER, which I understand as relating not (like the previous categories) to what is said but, rather, to HOW what is said to be said, I include the supermaxim- ‘Be perspicuous’- and various maxims such as: 1. Avoid obscurity of expression. 2. Avoid ambiguity. 3. Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity). 4. Be orderly. (1975: 46)
But how does an utterance act manifest an underlying intention? Is the communicative intention assigned a presuppositional status; or, is it calculated in the process of communication and thus both process and product? Again, there is no explicit account of the status of language and language usage with regard to the intentional or non-intentional production and interpretation of utterance acts in spite of the fact that utterance acts are performed by the coparticipants’ producing and interpreting language in context. So, does language usage entail the performance of an utterance act? And is the language employed to perform one or more utterance acts selected with regard to the realization of a specific communicative intention, or are the linguistic items employed picked at radom? If language was picked at random, any linguistic surface structure could, in principle, represent any communicative intention. For instance, the communicative intention of requesting someone to open the door could be realized by colourless blue dogs bark at midnight. However, if language usage is defined as coparticipants performing social actions in context, language can no longer be defined as an autonomous system only. Instead, the employment of language is anchored to the paradigm of social interaction, where interlocutors employ language in a strategic manner to realize their communicative intentions and achieve their communicative goals. Thus, they perform utterance acts by selecting appropriate surface structures composed of specific linguistic items linearized in specific linguistic constructions in accordance with their communicative goals. If language is defined with regard to both the linguistic system and language usage in the framework of strategic interaction, language constitutes a primarily social construct. But which consequences does this have for the investigation of natural-language communication? In the section ‘speech act theory and language’, the functional-grammar concept of choices and sociolinguistic variation have been discussed and supplemented by Searle’s premise that constitutive rules can create new forms of behavior. If this is adapted to the realizations of communicative intentions in context, coparticipants have an almost infinite number of possible linguistic surface structures for the realization of their communicative intentions at their disposal. For instance, the communicative intention of rejection realized by
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the communicative contribution B-2 (“Oh I’m sorry”) could also have been realized by (2) You can not have the apartment (3) A dog (sarcastic tone) (4) The apartment is a pet-free zone (5) Excellent (sarcastic tone) (6) I really love dogs but the neigborhood is not very open-minded
But are these utterances interchangeable? From a social-context viewpoint, they are definitely not interchangeable as they transmit different types of social meaning, such as different degrees of formality, solidarity, social distance or power. That is, the communicative contributions (2), (3) and (5) signify social distance and power by attributing the status of a powerless tenant to the coparticipant (A). In contrast, the contribution (4) shifts the responsibility for the non-acceptance to some indeterminate authority in context, and contribution (5) signifies solidarity by shifting the responsibility for the refusal to some anonymous authority. Thus, the premise of the intentionality of a social action does not only entail the intentionality of an utterance act, but also the intentional selection of a linguistic representation in accordance with a specific communicative intention and a specific communicative goal. This is implicit in Recanati’s availability principle which is based “on a specific cognitive hypothesis, according to which what is said is consciously accessible” (1989: 328). Furthermore, it is implicit in the ethnomethodological concept of accountability of social action, which states that social agents know, at some level, what they say and what they mean by their social actions. Or, to employ Garfinkel’s own words: If the above description is correct, decision making in daily life would thereby have, as a critical feature, the decision maker’s task of justifying a course of action. The rules of decision making in daily life, i.e., rules of decision making for more or less socially routinized and respected situations, may be much more preoccupied with the problem of assigning outcomes their legitimate history than with the question of deciding before the actual occasion of choice the conditions under which one, among a set of alternative possible courses of action, will be elected. Several fugitive remarks are thereby in order: 1. The procedure of deciding, before the actual occasion of choice the conditions under which one, among a set of alternative possible courses will be elected, is one definition of a rational strategy. (1994: 114)
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Thus, interlocutors do not only select the most appropriate strategy for realizing their communicative intentions and achieving their communicative goal(s), but also the most appropriate linguistic surface for the representation of their communicative intention to achieve this goal. But how do they select the most appropriate surface structure, and on what features do they base their calculation? The following section systematizes the results obtained in the framework of the dialogue act of a plus/minus-validity claim, which is based on a micro analysis and contextualization of Habermas’s theory of communicative action (1987), and supplemented by the results of the face and politeness research (Brown & Levinson 1987; Goffman 1974) and the conversation-analytic research on sequentiality (Atkinson & Heritage 1984; Duranti & Goodwin 1992).
Plus/minus-validity claims and communicative intentions Analogous to the pragmatic and ethnomethodological research paradigms examined above, Habermas’s conception of natural-language communication is based on the premise that social agents act in a rational and intentional manner. That is, speakers postulate validity claims which are ratified by hearers. In Habermas’s frame of reference, the hearer’s ratification of a postulated validity claim is a constitutive part of communicative action and therefore a necessary condition for felicitous communication. This extension of frame from monologue to dialogue anchors a communicative action explicitly to a speaker and a hearer, who are both assigned the status of a necessary condition. However, the ratification of a validity claim is not a sufficient condition for dialogue because validity claims are not only postulated and ratified but also accepted or rejected. In the case of an acceptance, the validity claim is attributed to the dialogue common ground, and in the case of a rejection, a negotiation-of-validity sequence is initiated in which the non-accepted claims and presuppositions are explicated (Fetzer 1999). In spite of the fact that Habermas investigates communicative action from a macro perspective, his theoretical framework can be adapted to the contextual constraints and requirements of a micro analysis and account for ‘what’ is postulated and negotiated in a face-to-face encounter, namely the dialogue act of a plus/minus-validity claim. The definition of the dialogue act of a plus/minus-validity claim is based on the premise of the rationality and intentionality of social action which manifests itself in its performance in context, viz. its production, interpretation, ratification and acceptance or rejection in accordance with the corresponding
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sociocultural norms and conventions. As a consequence of this, the postulation and ratification of a validity claim is intrinsically linked to its linguistic representation and can not be separated from it. However, the concept of a validity claim is not synonymous to an utterance: an utterance refers to a linguistic surface structure through which a speech act is performed. For instance, the communicative contribution (A-1) does not only consist of the linguistic surface ‘I have a fourteen year old son’ but also of the social action of an assertion. In contrast, a validity claim is a dialogical concept which manifests itself in a plus-validity claim or a minus-validity claim. In the case of an acceptance, the plus-validity claim and its presuppositions are attributed to the dialogue common ground, which is not the case if the validity claim is rejected. Here, the non-accepted claim is assigned the status of a minus-validity claim and a negotiation-of-validity sequence is initiated in which the non-accepted claims, references and presuppositions are explicated and negotiated. Only then is it possible to attribute them to the dialogue common ground. As regards the postulation and ratification of a validity claim, the dialogue act of a plus/minusvalidity claim is anchored to an interactive tripartite system of objective, subjective and social worlds and their presuppositions, which can be represented in the explicit and implicit modes. That is, the plus-validity claim (A-1) consists of an accepted claim referring to the objective world based on the dichotomy of truth and falsehood, viz. a reference to her/himself by the personal pronoun I and the predication have a son. This claim interacts with another accepted claim referring to the subjective world based on sincerity, namely A’s communicative intention is meant as uttered and interpreted as meant. Additionally, the plus-validity claim (A-1) entails another accepted claim referring to the social world based on the appropriateness of the social action. This is calculated with regard to the appropriateness of the interactional presuppositions, namely the sequential slot of (A-1) in the conversation, with regard to the interpersonal presuppositions, viz. the fairly neutral degree of face work communicated by (A-1) and A’s and B’s interactional and participant roles, and with regard to the textual presuppositions, namely the linguistic representation of the claims in accordance with the Gricean maxims of quality, quantity, relation and manner. From a sequentiality perspective, interlocutors do not postulate their claims to the three worlds in a consecutive manner by representing them linguistically in a consecutive manner, such as ‘I hereby refer to the current speaker and predicate that s/he has a son. I predicate that this son is fourteen years old. I also refer to the place and time in discourse, i.e. to the first part of a question and answer sequence . . . ’. Instead, they postulate claims referring to three worlds and their presuppositions simultaneously by representing them linguistically in the ex-
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plicit and implicit modes, as has been demonstrated for the communicative contribution (A-1). The interactive framework of the dialogue act of a plus/minus-validity claim is defined as follows: –
The objective world is determined by the dichotomy of true/false. References to this world are characterized by theoretical claims represented in the propositional format, i.e. reference and predication. Their mode of linguistic representation is direct/explicit. The non-acceptance of a validity claim’s references to the objective world is represented by syntactic and semantic negation.
As regards the conversation examined above, validity claims referring to the objective world are realized by speaker has a son, communicative contribution is all right, speaker has a dog and speaker is sorry. –
The subjective world is determined by the premise of sincerity, i.e. speaker’s communicative intention(s) meant as uttered, and interpreted as meant. References to this world represent emotive information and their mode of representation is non-linear, i.e. simultaneously explicit/implicit, e.g. nonor paraverbal behavior. While the acceptance of a validity claim’s reference to the subjective world is manifest in sincere communication, a nonacceptance is generally referred to as lying.4 The subjective-world premise of sincerity is also implicit in Recanati’s definition of reflexive intention, which is defined by default reflexivity and refers to not a certain type of intention, namely deception or insincerity (Recanti 1986: 234). Furthermore, it is implicit in the ethnomethodological principle of the sanctioned use of doubt (Garfinkel 1994).
As regards the conversation (1), references to this world have not been accounted for explicitly. In general, they are realized by the interlocutor’s tone of voice and other paralinguistic and nonverbal signals. –
The social world is determined by the paradigm of appropriateness. References to this world are represented both explicitly and implicitly.
The social world categorizes into another tripartite system of textual, interpersonal and interactional presuppositions: –
The textual subsystem is governed by the Gricean maxims and the conversational implicature. It covers both explicit and implicit modes of linguistic representation. While an explicit representation does not infringe
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on the maxims of quality, quantity, relation and manner, an implicit representation infringes on one or more of the maxims thus generating a conversational implicature in order to retrieve the speaker-intended meaning, which additionally feeds on the interpersonal and interactional subsystems. As regards the conversation examined above, validity claims referring to the textual system are realized explicitly by a fourteen year old son, that’s, I’m and implicitly by also. –
The interpersonal subsystem is determined by the production and reception format (Goffman 1974; Levinson 1988) and the participants’ face wants/needs (Brown & Levinson 1987), which are represented by the employment of on-record and off-record strategies. Analogous to the textual subsystem, meaning represented off-record is retrieved through a process of inferencing. The participation format covers the participants’ production, reception and participant roles. Implicit references are represented by personal pronouns and proper names, and explicit references spell out the corresponding participant roles. The participants’ face wants/needs manifest themselves in references to positive face and negative face, which are represented in the explicit and implicit modes. In general, implicit references to the participants’ face wants are manifest in conversationally implicated meaning and in the employment of communicative strategies which attenuate the pragmatic force of a social action.
As regards the exchange examined above, validity claims referring to the interpersonal system are realized by the indexical I referring to the individual coparticipants and their status in the participation format as speaker and hearer, and their participant roles as interviewer (or landlady/landlord) and interviewee (or tenant). They are also realized by the predications be all right and be sorry which refer to the participants’ face wants. While the rather informal expression all right indexes the participant’s positive face and establishes solidarity, the latter indexes the participant’s negative face. –
The interactional subsystem is governed by the sequential organization of discourse. It is based on the principles of conditional relevance and adjacency (Levinson 1983), and is only explicitly referred to in a negotiationof-validity sequence. References to this subsystem are represented implicitly by a validity claim’s sequential position and by discourse markers, and explicitly by references to the constraints and requirements of specific adjacency pairs or communicative projects regarding the macro level.
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As regards the dialogue examined above, validity claims referring to the interactional system are realized by the indexicals well and oh referring to the prior communicative contributions (A-1) and (A-2) thus establishing local coherence; and they are also realized by the individual contributions’ sequential slots. References to the textual, interpersonal and interactional subsystems are not only represented explicitly, but also implicitly by the following subsystemspecific contextualization cues (Fetzer 1994, 1999): hedges refer to the textual subsystem and trigger a process of inferencing to retrieve the corresponding intersubjective meaning. While less-fuzzy hedges (e.g. strictly speaking, the reality of it is) generally boost the pragmatic force of a validity claim, more-fuzzy hedges (e.g. sort of, something like) attenuate it. Interpersonal markers refer to the interpersonal subsystem and are differentiated with regard to participant orientation. Speaker-oriented interpersonal markers either attenuate or boost the pragmatic force of a validity claim, e.g. I (don’t) think/suggest/assume attenuate the pragmatic force, while I (don’t) believe boosts the pragmatic force. Hearer-oriented interpersonal markers, e.g. with (all due/due) respect, and collective markers, such as let us, generally attenuate the pragmatic force. Interactional markers refer to the interactional subsystem. They are differentiated with regard to cataphoric reference, such as the discourse marker now, and anaphoric reference, for instance, the discourse markers well and but. The former has the function of focusing the participants’ attention on upcoming talk, while the latter initiates a negotiation-of-validity sequence thus signifying that the validity of a prior communicative contribution is at stake. Subsystemspecific contextualization cues and metalinguistic comments, such as this is off the record, represent indexical validity claims. They index the corresponding subsystems and trigger a process of inferencing to specify the speaker’s communicative intention(s) with regard to textual, interpersonal and interactional meaning. In natural-language communication, coparticipants postulate, ratify and negotiate the communicative status of a validity claim anchored to the three worlds and their presuppositions. Contrary to Habermas’s conception of the postulation and ratification of a validity claim, which can consist of a single reference to the objective world only, coparticipants in natural-language communication postulate at least three validity claims in their communicative contribution: claims referring to the objective, social and subjective worlds; and each validity claim requires ratification. In the case of accepting all of the references to the three worlds, the overall validity claim is assigned the status of a plus-validity claim and attributed to the coparticipants’ dialogue common ground. Moreover, it is not only the overall validity claim, which is attributed
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to the dialogue common ground, but also the validity claims referring to the individual worlds and their presuppositions. In the case of rejecting one or more references to the three worlds, the overall validity claim is assigned the status of a minus-validity claim and not attributed to the dialogue common ground. Instead, a negotiation-of-validity sequence is initiated, in which the non-accepted claims are made explicit. Only then is it possible to negotiate and reject them (Harnish 1991). Once agreement has been reached about their status, it is possible to re-establish the dialogue common ground and attribute the accepted claims and their presuppositions to it. In the framework of the dialogue act of a plus/minus-validity claim, the speaker’s and the hearer’s communicative intentions represent the pillars of the individual interlocutors’ subjective worlds. However, communicative intentions do not only manifest themselves at this level, but also at the level of an utterance formulation in a context regarding the selection of an appropriate style, register and their explicit and implicit modes of linguistic representation. So, is a communicative intention a social-world construct?
Communicative intention: A subjective-world concept or a social-world construct? In Habermas’s frame of reference, actions are always anchored to the objective world and the premise of truth. They may, however, also be anchored to the social world and the premise of normative rightness. In contrast, the dialogue act of a plus/minus-validity claim requires references to all of the three worlds because natural-language communication is not only characterized by the transmission of information but also by the coordination of social actions. Thus, speakers postulate validity claims by linguistically representing their references to the constitutive systems of objective, subjective and social worlds in the explicit and implicit modes. As regards ratification, hearers interpret and ratify the postulated claims by explicating their contextual references thereby calculating the speaker’s communicative intention and, following Habermas, the reason(s) of why the social action has been performed. Even though intentions are generally allocated to an individual’s cognitive domains, that is, to their subjective worlds, they manifest themselves in the dialogue principles of cooperation and ratification. So, does a communicative intention represent a subjective-world concept or does it represent a social-world construct? There is no clear-cut answer to this question. Rather, the status of a communicative intention as a subjective-world construct or as a social-world construct is interdependent on the frame of reference employed. If communica-
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tive actions are defined as unilateral acts, a communicative intention is represented by a subjective-world concept, and its performance is anchored to the social world. But is this distinction, which is based on discrete categories, really valid? In his work on speech acts, Austin’s concepts of securing uptake, taking effect and inviting a response display an implicit hearer orientation and indicate a speech act’s orientation towards dialogue. Similar concepts are implicit in Searle’s definition of illocutionary effect, i.e. to get the hearer to recognize S’s intention to produce the illocutionary effect. For these reasons, the concept of a speech act can not be unilateral. Instead, it is based on speakers performing speech acts and on hearers interpreting speech acts. Or, to employ Searle’s terminology, the meaning of a sentence is determined by rules: rules specifying (1) the conditions of utterance, and (2) what the utterance counts as. But ‘counts as’ for whom: the speaker, the hearer, or the set [speaker, hearer]? In their cognitive-science oriented relevance theory, Sperber and Wilson explicate the status of an intention as follows: “From a psychological viewpoint, intentions are mental representations capable of being realised in the form of actions” (1996: 31). From an interlocutor-domain oriented viewpoint, their concept of intention is anchored to an individual interlocutor and thus to their subjective world. In order to accommodate the requirement of intersubjectivity, Sperber and Wilson refine the concept of intention with regard to the first-order concept of informative intention, namely “the intention to make manifest or more manifest to the audience a set of assumptions” (1996: 58), and the second-order concept of communicative intention, viz. “the intention to have the informative intention recognised and to make it mutually manifest to the audience and the communicator that the communicator has this intention” (1996: 61). Thus, the bridging point between their psychological construct of intention and the social construct of action consists of making manifest a set of assumptions to the social construct of an audience, and to make the intention mutually manifest to the audience. Moreover, if Sperber and Wilson’s reference to the set [audience, communicator] is adapted to the constraints and requirements of a dialogical framework, both the speaker and the hearer do not only represent individual categories, but also the social-world construct of a set [speaker, hearer] or a collective WE (Searle 1999). But can a communicative intention also refer to a set of communicative acts postulated by a collective WE?
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Micro and macro communicative intentions In the examination of the conversation above, the relevance of the macro category of a communicative project and its constitutive constraint of a discourse topic has already been shown as regards the intersubjective meaning of the communicative contribution of B-2 (“Oh I’m sorry”). Here, the macro constraints of the discourse topic of qualifying for the tenancy of the apartment canalizes and filters the production and interpretation of the intersubjective meaning of (B-2) as the realization of a rejection. In contrast, the utterance “how nice” would signify an acceptance if produced by B, and would indicate positive emotions if uttered by A; or A’s employment of a proper name would indicate the introduction of another family member. But does the macro category of a communicative project and its constitutive constraint of a discourse topic have any consequences for a dialogue conception of communicative intention? Natural-language communication has been defined by individual interlocutors, their individual I-intentions and their performance of unilateral speech acts, and by coparticipants exchanging, ratifying and negotiating the communicative status of validity claims. So far, the dialogue act of a plus/minus-validity claim has been defined by its references to the immediate context. However, context represents a relational concept and therefore can not be restricted to a micro context. Rather, context is represented by interdependent layers, to employ the onion metaphor (Sperber & Wilson 1996), or by interdependent frames (Goffman 1974). For this reason, the retrieval of a validity claim’s micro contextual references and its status as a plus- or a minusvalidity claim is also interdependent on the macro category of a communicative project and its constitutive discourse topic(s) as well as on other macro constraints. This extension of frame and the change of perspective from a microcontextual, viz. bottom-up, to a macrocontextual, top-down, approach, in which the macrocontextual references are specified, has the necessary consequence that the coparticipants’ production and interpretation of intersubjective meaning can no longer be restricted to individual intentions only. Rather, the production and interpretation of communicative meaning is also calculated with regard to the Searlean conception of a WE intention (1990, 1992, 1999) and Dascal’s (1991) conception of a collective WE-intention. Thus, coparticipants negotiate micro validity claims by explicating their contextual references; they do not explicate these references at random, but rather in accordance with the constraints of a communicative project. In other words, the negotiation of validity claims and their constitutive contextual references is interdependent
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on the negotiation of a communicative project (or a macro validity claim) and its specified macro contextual references, which filter the production and interpretation of intersubjective meaning. But are communicative projects also performed intentionally? A communicative project is interactionally organized in accordance with the specified sequential organization regarding opening, closing and topicalsequence sections, with the communicative-project specific degree of face work and participation roles, and with the communicative-project specific textual specifications regarding style, degree of explicitness and discourse topics. For these reasons, a communicative project is performed in an intentional and rational manner. But is it sufficient to define a communicative project by a sequence of intentionally performed actions? As has been demonstrated above, the calculation of intersubjective meaning can not be restricted to single validity claims. Rather, it is based to the contextual constraints of a communicative project, according to which the coparticipants perform social actions. Moreover, this communicative project, which also makes manifest an accepted purpose (Grice 1975: 45), must have been – tacitly – agreed upon for coordinated action and felicitous communication. Thus, the performance of a communicative project requires a higher-order communicative intention than the performance of a micro communicative action, namely a collective WE-intention. This collective WE-intention is anchored to the category of a communicative project, whereas an individual I-intention is anchored to the dialogue act of a plus/minus-validity claim. And it is this extension of frame to dialogue, which requires the accommodation of further collectively oriented categories, such as, collective inferencing and reasoning strategies, practical reasoning, the accounting practices of ad-hocing (Garfinkel 1994) and abduction, which allow the coparticipants to reason from instances or general rules to their wider contexts (Givón 1989: 238). To summarize and conclude, collective WE-intentions, collective inferencing strategies and collective coherence require the accommodation of collective co-suppositions (Linell 1998) or dialogue presuppositions, a collective dialogue common ground and one or more collective communicative goals. In the following, the unilateral phenomena of individual I-intention, unilateral speech act and individual sense-making, and the dialogue categories of collective WE-intention, dialogue act and collective coherence are compared and contrasted in the framework of the conversation examined above. In speech act theory, the communicative contributions A-1 (“I have a fourteen year old son”), A-2 (“I also have a dog”) and B-1 (“Well that’s all right”) are representatives, and the communicative contribution B-2 (“Oh I’m sorry”) represents an expressive. This categorization is the result of individual sense-
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making which is based on the allocation of individual I-intentions to unilateral speech acts. That is, providing information about one’s family, as is the case with the communicative contributions (A-1) and (A-2), is anchored to the act of asserting the truth about the information provided, and agreeing with the information provided, as is the case with the communicative contribution (B-1), is anchored to the act of concluding. The act of expressing the psychological state of apologizing is realized in the communicative contribution (B-2). In general, these speech acts are not investigated in a social context. Rather, their definition is based on the postulation of a default context, which is defined by the speech act’s felicity conditions. Contrary to the unilateral speech-act perspective, the communicative contribution (A-1) also ratifies a previous communicative contribution (B-0) in a dialogical framework, which either refers to an actually realized communicative contribution, or it ratifies the collective WE-intention of the communicative project. This is due to the conditionalrelevance criterion of adjacency. As regards the dialogue examined above, the communicative contribution (A-1) ratifies (B-0).5 Since (A-1) does not contain any negation particles or any other negative cohesive links, no negotiationof-validity sequence is initiated, in which the non-accepted claims and their presuppositions are made explicit. Instead, the validity of (B-0) is accepted and (B-0) is allocated to the dialogue common ground and assigned a cosuppositional status. Additionally, the communicative contribution (A-1) postulates information about A’s family, which is ratified, interpreted and accepted by the communicative contribution (B-1). Thus, (A-1) and its presuppositions are attributed to the dialogue common ground and assigned a co-suppositional status. But does the communicative contribution (B-1) accept the validity of the communicative contribution (A-1) only? From an intersubjective-meaning viewpoint, (B-1) also requests the coparticipant A to provide further information regarding their communicative project, which A complies with. The communicative contribution (A-2) postulates further information about A’s family by extending the set [parent, child] to the set [parent, child, dog]. Again, the intersubjective meaning of the communicative contribution (A-2) is ratified and interpreted by (B-2). But does the communicative contribution (B-2) accept or reject the validity of (A-2)? From an intersubjective-meaning perspective, (B-2) realizes a non-acceptance, as has been shown in the previous sections. But is the validity of the intersubjective meaning postulated by (A-2) really rejected and therefore not allocated to the dialogue common ground? From a linguistic-surface viewpoint, the communicative contribution (B-2) does not contain any negative particles or negative operators which refer to A’s extended family set. That is, there are no explicit cohesive links referring to the addi-
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tional family member of a dog, such as that the animal ‘dog’ referred to does not exist. Thus, the communicative contribution (B-2) does not reject the validity of (A-2), which is added to the dialogue common ground and assigned a co-suppositional status. But what is not being accepted by (B-2)? Since there is no explicit rejection of the communicative contribution (A-2) as regards the criterion of local adjacency, the rejection must be anchored to some deeper level and some additional constraint, namely to the collective WE-intention and communicative project. As regards their communicative project, the coparticipants discuss possible disqualifications for the tenancy of the apartment. And it is this additional constraint, viz. the discourse topic of qualifying for the tenancy of the apartment, which ‘filters’ the production and interpretation of the intersubjective meaning of the communicative contribution (B-2) accordingly. That is, an applicant with one child still qualifies for tenancy of the apartment whereas an applicant with one child and one dog does not qualify for the tenancy of the apartment any longer. Furthermore, the collective WE-intention and the corresponding communicative project specify which types of speech acts are acceptable in a communicative project, and which ones are not. For instance, an exchange of explicitly or implicitly realized questions and answers, as is the case with the interview setting of the exchange (1), is acceptable whereas an exchange of compliments would not be acceptable. However, not only are there constraints regarding the employment of specific types of speech acts but there are also constraints regarding the employment of discourse topics. For instance, in a qualifyingfor-the-tenancy-of-an-apartment setting the set of acceptable questions asked by the landlord or landlady generally refers to the domains of family, pets, profession, income or smoking habits, and not generally to the domains of politics, personal diet or religious beliefs. As regards the prospective tenant, the set of acceptable questions covers the domains of rental cost or additional expenses. Generally, questions about the capital of France, the status of the maxims in the Gricean CP, or the fact whether some child was born on a Thursday or a Friday seem quite inappropriate. This also applies to metapragmatic aspects, such as the correction of A’s pronunciation of the back vowel in ‘dog’. Contrary to the inconsistencies resulting from the collective WE-intention and the communicative-project constraints, individual sense-making of individual speech acts does not result in these kinds of inconsistencies. Thus, the construction of coherence goes beyond the attribution of sense by individual speakers. Rather, the concept of coherence is anchored to the set of interlocutors, intersubjective meaning, collective WE-intention, communicative project and dialogue-common ground.
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To conclude, communicative intentions are interdependent on both social antecedents and social consequences and can no longer be interpreted in the frameworks of single individuals and single speech acts only. Rather, they are a basic prerequisite for achieving coordinated social action and therefore require both a bottom-up approach manifest on the level of a single exchange, and a top-down approach manifest on the level of a communicative project and its contextual constraints, which filter the production and interpretation of intersubjective meaning accordingly.
Conclusions Communicative intentions in context have been investigated in a dialogue framework based on the premises of rationality, intentionality, cooperation and ratification. In this framework, unilateral speech acts, individual Iintentions, individual presuppositions and individual sense-making no longer represent sufficient conditions for felicitous communication. Instead, an investigation of dialogue requires both bottom-up and top-down perspectives in order to account for the dialogue categories of a dialogue act, coparticipant, co-supposition, dialogue common ground, communicative project, collective WE-intention and collective coherence. Contrary to the concepts of presupposition and common ground, the dialogue categories of dialogue common ground and co-supposition are context-dependent and thus valid in restricted domains only. Here, they represent a filter, which canalizes what-has-been-said accordingly by guiding the interpretation and production of intersubjective meaning in the prespecified manner.
Notes . M. E. Bratman (1990) discusses the complexity of intentional and unintentional effects with regard to the question of how to differentiate between the intended and unintended casualties of a ‘strategic bomber’. . This is not to say, that these terms of endearment do not occur in institutional or formal contexts. If they occur in such settings, they generally indicate a shift of frame, e.g. a momentary informal episode. . Lakoff (1973) postulates additional politeness maxims, Leech (1983) postulates an additional politeness principle, Levinson (1987) refines the maxim of quantity with regard to an I-Principle and a Q-Principle, and Horn (1984) postulates Q-based and R-based implicatures.
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. This contrast with the common-sense meaning of lying as not telling the truth which is anchored to the objective world. . From a sequential-organization viewpoint, the communicative contribution (B-0), or some prior contribution, has to contain information about the speaker B’s identity.
References Atkinson, J. M., & Heritage, J. (1984). Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Austin, J. L. (1980). How to Do Things with Words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bratman, M. E. (1990). What is intention. In P. R. Cohen, J. Morgan & M. E. Pollack (Eds.), Intentions in Communication (pp. 15–32). Cambridge: MIT Press. Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cohen, Ph., Morgan, J., & Pollack, M. E. (1990). Intentions in Communication. Cambridge: MIT Press. Dascal, M. (1991). On the pragmatic structure of conversation. In J. Searle et al. (Eds.), (On) Searle on Conversation (pp. 35–56). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. De Beaugrande, R., & Dressler, W. (1981). Einführung in die Textlinguistik. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Duranti, A., & Goodwin, D. (1992). Rethinking Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fairclough, N. (1996). Technologisation of discourse. In C. R. Caldas-Coulthard & M. Coulthard (Eds.), Texts and Practices (pp. 71–83). London: Routledge. Fasold, R. (1990). The Sociolinguistics of Language. Oxford: Blackwell. Fetzer, A. (1994). Negative Interaktionen. Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang. Fetzer, A. (1999). Non-acceptances: re- or un-creating context. In P. Bouquet, P. Brezillon & L. Serafini (Eds.), 2nd International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Modeling and Using Context (Context’99) (pp. 133–144). Heidelberg: Springer. Fetzer, A. (2000). Negotiating validity claims in political interviews. Text, 20(4), 1–46. Garfinkel, H. (1994). Studies in Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gibbs, R. W. (1999). Intentions in the Experience of Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Givón, T. (1993). English Grammar: a Function-Based Introduction. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Givón, T. (1989). Mind, Code and Context. Hillsdale: Laurence Erlbaum. Goffman, E. (1974). Frame Analysis. Boston: North Eastern University Press. Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In M. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and Semantics, Vol. III (pp. 41–58). New York: Academic Press. Grice, H. P. (1989). Utterer’s meaning and intentions. In H. P. Grice, Studies in the Way of Words (pp. 86–116). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Grimshaw, A. D. (1980). Mishearings, misunderstandings, and other nonsuccesses in talk: a plea for redress of speaker-oriented bias. Sociological Inquiry, 50, 31–74. Habermas, J. (1987). Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp. Halliday, M. A. K. (1996). Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Arnold.
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Harnish, R. (1991). Logical form and implicature. In S. Davis (Ed.), Pragmatics: a Reader (pp. 316–364). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Holmes, J. (1992). Introduction to Sociolinguistics. London: Longman. Horn, L. R. (1984). Toward as new taxonomy for pragmatic inference: Q-based and Rbased implicature. In D. Schiffrin (Ed.), Meaning, Form and Use in Context: Linguistic Applications (pp. 11–42). Washington: Washington University Press. Hymes, D. (1972). Foundations in Sociolinguistics. London: Blackwell. Kress, G. (1996). Representational resources and the production of subjectivity: questions for the theoretical development of Critical Discourse Analysis in a multicultural society. In C. R. Caldas-Coulthard & M. Coulthard (Eds.), Texts and Practices (pp. 15–31). London: Routledge. Lakoff, R. (1973). The logic of politeness: or minding your p’s and q’s. Papers from the 9th Regional Meeting of the Linguistic Society of Chicago, 279–305. Leech, G. (1983). Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman. Levinson, S. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levinson, S. (1988). Putting linguistics on a proper footing: explorations in Goffman’s concepts of participation. In P. Drew & A. Wootton (Eds.), Erving Goffman. Exploring the Interaction Order (pp. 161–227). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Levinson, S. (1979). Activity types and language. Linguistics, 17, 365–399. Linell, P. (1998). Approaching Dialogue. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Pomerantz, A. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In J. Atkinson & J. M. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of Social Action (pp. 57–101). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Recanati, F. (1986). On defining communicative intentions. Mind & Language, 1(3), 213– 242. Recanati, F. (1989). The pragmatics of what is said. Mind & Language 4(4), 295–329. Schiffrin, D. (1987). Discourse Markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Searle, J. (1969). Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Searle, J. (1975). Indirect speech acts. In Cole, M. & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and Semantics, Vol. III (pp. 59–82). New York: Academic Press. Searle, J. (1985). Expression and Meaning. New York: Academic Press. Searle, J. (1990). Collective intentions and actions. In P. R. Cohen, J. Morgan & M. E. Pollack (Eds.), Intentions in Communication (pp. 401–416). Cambridge: MIT Press. Searle, J. (1992). Conversation. In J. Searle et al. (Eds.), (On) Searle on Conversation (pp. 137–147). Amsterdam /Philadelphia: Benjamins. Searle, J. (1999). Mind, Language and Society. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1996). Relevance. Oxford: Blackwell. Wardhaugh, R. (1998). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Blackwell: Oxford. Wodak, R. (1996). The genesis of racist discourse in Austria since 1989. In C. R. Caldas-Coulthard & M. Coulthard (Eds.), Texts and Practices (pp. 107–128). London: Routledge.
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Cognition and narrativity in speech act sequences Marina Sbisà University of Trieste, Italy
Premise One of the recognized faults of received speech act theory (Searle 1969, 1979) is its inability to account for sequential phenomena in language use (noted for example by Levinson 1983 & Schegloff 1988, and even recognized by Searle 1992). There is no speech-act analysis of conversation as such: speech act assignments seem to be tied to a sentence-level analysis. But when faced with such shortcomings of speech act theory, should we definitely put aside the idea that in using language we perform actions? This was Austin’s original insight – although its subsequent developments have stressed the speaker’s intentions rather than the production of effects which should intuitively characterize action. Whoever still finds the idea attractive that in using language we perform actions should reconsider the cognitive and interactional dynamics by which speech act sequences are produced and understood. This paper aims at offering a contribution to such a reconsideration. By the way, I am not only convinced that the connection between language and action is sound, but also that it has not been sufficiently exploited by standard speech act theory. I will try to foreground some features of speech acts as actions which are often neglected and supplement speech act theory with a conception, inspired by narrative semiotics, of an action as a move in a sequence. In my reconsideration of the cognitive and interactional dynamics of speech act sequences, I will reassess the role of action (as opposed to that of cognitive representation), but also concede a role to a factor that may be called cognitive, which contributes both to our understanding of actions and
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to the successful performance of those linguistic actions that have been called illocutionary acts. I will argue that: 1. the cognitive component in speech act sequencing is secondary to and dependent on action; 2. one cognitive factor relevant to the understanding of speech act sequences is the so-called “narrative scheme”, proposed by A. J. Greimas (1983) in the framework of narrative semiotics, that analyzes sequences of events in three main steps: Manipulation, Action and Sanction.
Speech act sequencing and the production of effects In order to make the analysis of speech act sequences viable, we should consider what kind of a bond can make a sequence out of a few speech acts uttered in a row. Much depends on what we understand as the output, or final state, of a move in a speech act sequence, namely, how we define the effects of speech acts. In dealing with this problem I will introduce the Austinian idea of a “conventional” effect characteristic of illocutionary acts. Then I will consider the recognition on the part of the analyst of the effects brought about by illocutionary acts, and the role that speech act sequencing is to play in such recognition.
What effects do illocutionary acts bring about? When considering a sequence of moves, it is reasonable to view the output of one move as coinciding with the input for the next. For example, once the move of one chess player modifies the setting of the chess board from an initial state At0 to a resulting state At1 , state At1 becomes in turn the initial state to be modified by the following move of the other chess player so as to yield a further resulting state At2 (see Figure 1). If we were to understand the dynamics of speech act sequences this way, we should first try to achieve a clear understanding of what kind of a state may constitute the output of each move. This involves taking into consideration the effects of speech acts and asking ourselves what kind of states they consist of. Speech acts are generally thought to have cognitive effects, since they bring about the hearer’s recognition of the meaning and force of the speech act. This is usually held to be the only effect essential to the illocutionary act. But an effect which is merely the cognitive reflex of the speaker’s intention does not
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At0
M1
At1 M2
At2
Figure 1.
seem to be a suitable input for the next move in the sequence, at least not in the sense exemplified above. If the recognition of the meaning and force of the speech act were the only output of the illocutionary act, it should coincide with the initial state to be affected by the subsequent move, but this is clearly not the case. A communicative intention has been manifested and recognized, period: if anything else happens, it would seem to fall under the category of perlocution and therefore be suitable for being tackled by psychological or sociological tools rather than by speech act theory. The cognitive state produced in the hearer by the speech act contributes to the speech act sequence only indirectly, by creating the environment in which a new communicative intention and therefore a new speech act will arise, addressed by the hearer to the former speaker (see Figure 2). The ties between each move and the following one are internal to each participant and therefore the moves are not connected with one another in a series. I hold a different view of the effects of illocutionary acts which, to some extent, goes back to Austin (1962: 116–117). According to this view, inasmuch as they are illocutionary acts, it is essential to speech acts to have conventional effects (such as assignments of obligations or entitlements) (see also Gazdar 1981; Sbisà 1987, 1989 & Brandom 1994). According to Austin, the illocutionary act is associated with three different kinds of effects (1962: 116–117): (i) the securing of uptake; (ii) the production of a conventional effect; (iii) the inviting of a response or sequel.
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H
communicative intention1
recognition1
recognition2 communicative intention3
communicative intention2
recognition3
Figure 2.
Effect (i) amounts to bringing about the understanding of the meaning and the force of the utterance and, unless it is achieved, the illocutionary act is not actually carried out. I would like to emphasize that, pace Strawson 1964, Austin does not imply that this is the only kind of effect that any illocutionary act must achieve; instead, there is an implication that this is a necessary step for the successful performance of the illocutionary act, which also comprises effects (ii) and (iii). Effect (ii) consists of bringing about a state of affairs in a way different from bringing about a change in the natural course of events: the act of naming a ship ‘Queen Elizabeth’ makes it the case that ‘Queen Elizabeth’ is the ship’s name, and that referring to it by any other name is henceforth out of order, but these are not changes in the natural course of events, since they involve conventional elements (notably norms, and therefore obligation).1 Effect (iii) amounts to inviting a certain kind of subsequent behavior; if the invitation is accepted, a certain further act by some participant will follow. In my work on speech act theory (Sbisà 1984, 1987, 1989, 2001) I have argued that Austin’s effect (ii), the production of changes not in the natural course of events but in conventional states of affairs, is an essential feature of the illocutionary act and can be detected not only in institutional acts such as the example provided by Austin (the naming of a ship) (1962: 116), but also in illocutionary acts usually performed in verbal interaction (cf. von Savigny 1988). The relevant conventional states of affairs basically consist of the possession or lack of obligations or rights on the part of some agent. In my reading of Austin, the conventionality of illocutionary acts is grounded in the conventionality of effects of kind (ii), and the conventionality of these effects is grounded in their dependency on some kind of agreement between the interlocutors. I am not thinking of explicitly signalled agreement (which may nevertheless sometimes occur): the default situation itself (the ab-
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sence of any manifestation of disagreement) is constitutive of the interlocutors’ agreement. Whenever the hearer does not challenge the felicity of the speaker’s illocutionary act, he or she may be counted as accepting it as felicitous under the characterization that the speaker has provided. Whenever the speaker does not reject the hearer’s uptake, he or she agrees that he or she has done what he or she has been taken to do. In case the hearer happens to have reasons for challenging the felicity of the speech act, he or she may still accept the speaker’s characterization of its force but deem it infelicitous, or take it as having a different force from that suggested by the speaker’s characterization, so as to make it felicitous (in this case it will be up to the speaker to accept or reject the hearer’s uptake). When no agreement between hearer and speaker is achieved, the illocutionary act does not count as having been successfully performed and fails to produce its conventional effect. Imagine an order issued without authority: the hearer accepts the speaker’s characterization of the speech act as an order – after all, the speaker has used the imperative mood and an authoritative intonation –, but once he or she discovers that the speaker does not possess the relevant authority, he or she no longer accepts the order as successfully performed and the purported order turns out not to be binding for him or her. The fact that the bringing about of the conventional effect needs an agreedupon uptake explains why the Austinian conventionality of illocutionary acts goes hand in hand with their being liable to infelicities and even voidability or annulment. If the effects of illocutionary acts are so conceived, especially if illocutionary acts have conventional effects in the sense explained above, there is indeed some intersubjective reality that can work as both output and input of the moves of a speech act sequence. Any speech act in a speech act sequence may be thought of as bringing about an effect on the conventional setting of the interpersonal relationship between speaker and addressee as it ensues from the preceding speech act (if there has already been one). The modified conventional setting provides the input to be acted upon by the following speech act. Thus the production of conventional effects is just what makes speech act sequencing possible.
The role of sequencing in the production of effects I turn now to one of the consequences of the account of illocutionary acts I am proposing as regards the applicability of speech-act theoretical notions to the analysis of discourse. If, while analyzing a certain conversation, we want to tell what conventional effect has been brought about by a certain utterance, and if
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that conventional effect depends on an agreed-upon uptake, that uptake must be taken into consideration. This creates a closer link between each element in a speech act sequence and its preceding or subsequent one than has ever been suggested by standard speech act theory. Firstly, we must consider the response of the hearer and the kind of uptake it manifests, and secondly, we must also consider (at least) the speaker’s response to the hearer’s response, in order to see whether there is agreement between speaker and hearer about the illocutionary act and its felicity and therefore what conventional effect, if any, has been achieved. Consider the utterance of an imperative sentence. If it succeeds in assigning the addressee an obligation (as it should, provided it is taken as a felicitous order), the next move in the sequence will act upon this obligation, for example by either accepting or refusing to comply with it. But how can the analyst tell whether the utterance has succeeded in assigning that obligation to the addressee? If the addressee says “OK, I’ll do it as soon as possible”, or “Sorry, I cannot do it”, we may say that yes, he or she behaves as someone who agrees that he or she has been assigned an obligation. But what if the addressee replies: “Don’t bother me”, or “I’ll do it if I want to”? He or she has replied to the speaker’s utterance, so that a second step in the speech act sequence has been taken. But no authority to assign obligations to the addressee seems to be accredited to the speaker by such replies, even implicitly, so that it is apparent that the hearer does not agree that he or she has been assigned an obligation, and therefore the speech act cannot be said to have succeeded in assigning an obligation to him or her. We could say that the speech act has been taken as a rude request, or as an illegitimate claim to authority, or as a mere expression of will or desire. If the speaker does not initiate a repair procedure, he or she will be counted as accepting the hearer’s refusal of his or her authority and the failure of his or her own purported order. For the sake of simplicity I am not considering here other participants whose responses may be relevant too, for example ratified hearers who are not themselves addressees; indeed, their alignment with the addressee rather than with the speaker or vice versa may in many cases provide a decisive element of intersubjective agreement. In these cases, one of the interlocutors may be said to be wrong about the force of the speech act. Simplifying a bit, the construction of a speech act sequence determines at each of its steps (assuming the next step does not withdraw agreement), the effect brought about by the previous one. Thus we have a two-fold relationship between the conception of the illocutionary act as having conventional effects and the availability of a speech-act theoretical analysis of speech act sequences: the fact that there are conventional
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effects (as has been argued above) makes sequencing possible, but sequencing also makes it possible for an illocutionary act to achieve its conventional effect and even enables the analyst to tell what illocutionary acts have been performed by the participants.
The dynamics of speech act sequences I would now like to exemplify the account of speech act sequences outlined above by discussing a sequence from a recorded conversation.2 The participants, A and B, are both women; A is the hostess and B the guest. B is going to record an interview of B; the recording has already begun, but not the interview itself. A and B are in A’s kitchen but A, as it turns out, wants to have B sit more comfortably in the living room. (1) 1 A: scu:sami B, ‘sorry B’ 2 B: niente ‘it doesn’t matter’ 3 A: speta che ((noise of chairs being moved)) (--) a a ti verrà uno scric *(ˆ uno) eheheh+ ‘wait, I’ll just (--) you’ll get a stiff neck (a) eh’ 4 B: *perché eheheh+ ‘why eh’ 5 A: (xxx) ma (-) no: ((quickly)) se volevi andavamo in salotto che stavamo tanto #più comode/ ‘but (-) no, if you’d wanted we could have gone into the living room we’d have been much more comfortable there’ 6 B: #indiffe/rente (-) portiamo le robe. (-) ‘it’s all the same (-) let’s bring the stuff through’. (-) 7 A: sì dai (-) ti porto io (ˆ questo) ‘yes, OK. (-) I’ll carry this for you.’ 8 B: prendi la maniglia ‘take hold of the handle’
In this example we find both responses that manifest by-default agreement and responses that display a refusal to take the speaker’s act at its face value, sometimes introducing an uptake that diverges from the speaker’s own expectations.
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Among the replies that manifest by-default agreement by taking the preceding speech act at its face value, there are 2 as a standard reply to 1 as an apology, 7 as a reply to the second part of 6 (portiamo le robe ‘let’s bring the stuff through’) taken as a proposal, and 8 as a reply to 7 taken as an offer of help. In 8, B implicitly accepts A’s utterance ti porto io (ˆ questo) ‘I’ll carry this for you’ as an offer to carry her recorder, by telling A how she is to carry it. In none of these cases is the hearer’s uptake further challenged by the speaker. As to responses (and responses to responses) that do not manifest agreement, in the central part of the sequence (from turn 3 to turn 7) at least two interesting cases can be found. B, in turn 4, interrupts A with a question that manifests her taking the second part of A’s turn 3 (a a ti verrà uno scric (ˆ uno) eheheh ‘you’ll get a stiff neck a eh’, henceforth 3b) as an assertion or prediction (the first, truncated part of 3 does not seem to elicit any response). Apparently, 3b bears the mark of prediction (future tense) and a prediction is an act of judgement (a “verdictive” in Austin’s terminology),3 a kind of speech act in response to which it is natural to ask for evidence or reasons. B’s uptake of 3b as a prediction hinders 3b from counting as an explanation of why B should be expected to desire to move elsewhere (giving the grounds for a possible offer to move), or as a warning to B about the consequences of her sitting uncomfortably. But B’s turn 4 (perché eheheh ‘why eh’) is in turn unsuccessful as a question: A doesn’t answer it, rather, she seems to reject its legitimacy or appropriateness by saying, after some words too unclear to be transcribed, ma (-) no ‘but – no’ and going ahead to issue an utterance unrelated to 4. If 4 does not count as a successful question, it is also hindered from making assignments of force to preceding turns on the basis of its being a question. So no force of assertion or prediction is assigned to 3b. A slightly different case is the relationship between the second part of turn 5 (se volevi andavamo in salotto che stavamo tanto più comode ‘if you’d wanted we could have gone into the living room we’d have been much more comfortable there’, henceforth 5b) and B’s reply to it in 6. Here it is possible to observe how sequencing selects one reading for an illocutionarily ambiguous conversational move. 5b might be an offer: the undertaking of a commitment to do something that is desirable for the addressee; or merely a proposal: an act granting the addressee the right to do something with which the speaker agrees to cooperate). But B, in 6, denies having any desire or interest in moving (indifferente ‘it’s all the same’), so that the reading of 5b as an offer does not become effective. The way in which B behaves here is consistent with her ruling out, by issuing turn 4 (discussed above), the reading of 3b as giving grounds for a
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possible offer to move. Utterance 3b does not give grounds for making an offer, since no offer can be made. Utterance 5b, however, manages to become effective as a proposal. The second part of B’s turn 6 (portiamo le robe. ‘let’s bring the stuff through’) is quite appropriate as a reply to a proposal to move. So turn 6 can be viewed as operating a selection among the forces that 5b might have, that of an offer (which is rejected) and that of a proposal (which is accepted, by accepting the proposal itself). At the beginning of turn 7 (“sì dai”), A ratifies what has been done up to that point. A further problem is whether A has managed to do anything with her utterance 3b (a a ti verrà uno scric (ˆ uno) eheheh ‘you’ll get a stiff neck a eh’). Does a process of positively selecting an illocutionary force take place here too? To see this, we have to consider not only turn 4 and the first part of 5 that rejects it as a reply to 3b, but also 5b, and realize that 5b works at least in part as a third position repair,4 clarifying A’s intention to make B feel comfortable, so that turn 3b, as a result, counts as an expression of concern for B’s comfort, indirectly motivating the proposal to move. In all these ways, the conversational sequence contributes to determining what is brought about by the speech acts that compose it. It is once we view the conventional effects of each move as settled, that the conversational sequence can be seen as proceeding by means of moves each of which operates on the output of the preceding one. It could be objected that this analysis is incomplete: there are features in example (1) that cannot be traced back to illocutionary force, and even less to conventional illocutionary effects defined as matters of rights and obligations. For example, it would be quite pertinent to describe A’s behavior as too polite and B’s behavior as impolite (because it expresses uneasiness for A’s attempt at being exaggerately polite). But at least some of the facts that would justify this description are to be looked for in the chain of retrospectively ratified conventional effects I have tried to illustrate, as well as in the negotiation processes that shape them by blocking some assignments of illocutionary force and letting others through.
Cognition vs action in the participants’ agreement I have said that utterances actually produce conventional effects only if there is some kind of agreement between speaker and hearer about the conventional effect to be produced (according to my reading, this was the rationale of Austin’s often misinterpreted claim that the securing of uptake is necessary to the suc-
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cessful performance of an illocutionary act). We have seen how this conception can be put to work in the analysis of speech act sequences. But the nature of the agreement we have been dealing with is still unclear. Is this agreement a cognitive matter, namely, the sharing of a mental representation (to be intended, most plausibly, as the instantiation of identical or very similar representations in the minds of the participants)? Or does it depend primarily on action and even consist of action coordination? We might be tempted to say that illocutionary acts succeed in producing their conventional effects when the hearer’s representation of these effects matches the speaker’s. In this conception, the relevant agreement is a cognitive fact. The speaker must have in mind some representation of the intended effect; the hearer understands the speaker correctly only if he or she constructs a mental representation of the effect intended by the speaker which matches the speaker’s own representation. If the two representations do not match, and the participants realize that this is so, the issue can be solved by negotiation. Negotiation is successful if it leads the hearer to form the correct representation of the effect intended by the speaker, or in any case, if it gets speaker and hearer to work out matching representations. But if the sharing of a representation of the conventional effect were the necessary condition for its production, we could never legitimately consider any such effect as achieved, and no analysis of speech act sequences as chains of conventional effects would be viable. Indeed, what evidence may we ever have for a representation being shared by two participants, or more precisely, for the matching of the representation entertained by one participant with the one entertained by the other? Mental representations (whatever their role in, say, psycholinguistic hypotheses) are not things that can be examined and compared. We might try to infer what mental representations are entertained by the participants from what they say and do, but even such evidence is never final. On the one hand, equivalent representations might for idiosyncratic reasons give rise to different utterances or stretches of behavior; on the other hand, the smooth connection between utterances by different interlocutors and even the use of the same linguistic expressions might hide differences in the corresponding mental representations. There is no way to be sure, and therefore, since the production of conventional effects depends on agreement, there should be no way to tell whether any conventional effect has been produced. But in our analysis of speech act sequences, we can tell that a certain conventional effect is actually achieved whenever subsequent steps in the speech act sequence do act on it.
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As the analysis provided in the preceding paragraph has shown, it is the observation of verbal behavior (utterances, silences, . . . ) that entitles the observer to say that there is agreement between the participants about the effect of a certain speech act. Since behavioral evidence is the only kind of evidence available,5 what’s exactly the point of supplementing the remark to the effect that the participants converge as to their way of dealing with a speech act with the further claim that they share a mental representation of its effect? Such a claim does not seem to play any substantial role with respect to the assignment of force. Thus insofar as assignment of force is concerned, resort to mental representations is at best otiose. Let us consider the issue from the point of view of the participants themselves. There might well be the same mental representation of what has been done both in the speaker who utters the imperative sentence and in the addressee who replies “Sorry, I cannot do it”. But this is not what enables the speech act actually to assign an obligation to the addressee. What is relevant to this effect is that the addressee, by apologizing for not being able to comply, implicitly agrees that he or she has been assigned an obligation. Otherwise he or she would not offer an apology in order to cancel the debt he or she owes the speaker for not complying. He or she is in a position to apologize for not being able to comply exactly because (or insofar as) he or she owes something to the speaker for not complying with the obligation that the speaker has just assigned to him or her. By apologizing for not being able to comply, the addressee has dealt with the speaker’s utterance as assigning him or her an obligation. We may further imagine that the speaker does not say or do anything that implies a rejection of the hearer’s way of dealing with his or her speech act. This again does not coincide with his or her having the same mental representation as the hearer. But it is when the behavior of the speaker converges with (or fails to diverge from) that of the hearer in this way that the conventional effect of the illocutionary act is achieved. And therefore it is the observation of such behavior that enables the analyst to tell whether the participants agree about the obligation-assigning conventional effect of the speech act being examined. So, I conclude that the agreement which determines the actual effect of the speech act is not primarily a cognitive matter: it does not consist of mental representations or of other psychological states, but of interactional processes. The way the speech act is dealt with by the hearer (provided the speaker does not reject it) grants that a certain effect has been brought about and becomes the source of the cognitive appreciation of it as well as of all the possible associated metapragmatic judgements (whether those of a participant who later on reports on what has happened or those of an analyst). Of course this does
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not mean that decisions such as taking the speaker’s utterance in a certain way aren’t made possibile in their own turn by underlying psychological processes. But first, psychological facts as such do not seem to play any part in the ratification of the conventional effects of speech acts; therefore they need not be included in the analysis of the speech act sequence as a chain of effects. Second, the underlying psychological processes that enable speaker and hearer to produce language and to coordinate their action by means of it, might in their own turn be something different from the forming and computing of language-like mental representation, that is, states of the mind/brain representing states of affairs in much the same way in which the sentences of a language may be said to do so.
The role of narrativity in speech act sequencing The claim put forward above that the speech act sequence as a chain of conventional effects comes into being independently of its cognitive appreciation does not rule out every cognitive factor from speech act sequencing and its analysis. So far, I have considered speech act sequences as if they were unstructured. In order for a series of speech acts uttered in a row to be considered as making up a sequence, I have posed the sole requirement that the effect of each speech act on the conventional aspects of the relationship between the participants serves as the initial state to be acted upon by the following speech act. But this says nothing about where a sequence begins or ends; it does not explain why certain co-occurring non-verbal actions count as part of the chain while others do not; and it is not always enough to tell what other speech act a certain speech act is responding to. The analysis of speech act sequences is in need of some kind of criterion for discerning a structure in apparently unstructured and undelimited series of moves. Moreover, participants themselves might have to possess and apply such a criterion, insofar as responding to a certain move involves collocating it in a sequence and identifying a sequence is no trivial matter. At this point, I propose taking into account a factor that might be considered as cognitive, which contributes to our understanding of action in the framework of structured sequences of events. Narrative semiotics (more specifically, the semiotic methodology for analyzing the narrative dimension of texts, elaborated by A.J. Greimas and his school: Greimas 1983; Greimas & Courtés 1979) has provided an analysis of action (considered as an agent’s bringing about of a state of affairs) which contextualizes any event that is to count as somebody’s action between an initia-
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tive move (manipulation) and a reactive move (sanction). Such a three-fold structure, called the “narrative scheme”, can be viewed as a part of the competence by which we understand sequences of events in general and should therefore apply to speech act sequences too. I have already claimed elsewhere (Sbisà 1989, 1998) that it can be applied quite successfully to the analysis of speech act sequences.6 According to the narrative scheme hypothesis, the first move in a sequence creates the conditions out of which the agent’s action will arise. For example, an agent loses something or is robbed of something, and therefore becomes desirous to find it again; or else, somebody assigns the agent a task, and he or she thereby acquires the obligation to carry it out. The subsequent move in the narrative scheme is the performance of the action, namely, the carrying out of the envisaged “narrative programme” (finding the lost or stolen object; performing the assigned task). Such a performance consists of the bringing about of a state of affairs and presupposes that, previously to the performance itself, the agent is assigned the necessary “competence”. In fact, the agent will find the lost object only if he or she remembers where it has been lost, or will manage to fulfil the task assigned to him or her only if he or she first appropriates, say, a magic tool. The third move in the narrative scheme is a reactive or sanctioning move. After the agent has carried out his or her performance, whether successfully or not, his or her behavior will receive an implicit or explicit evaluation, in consideration of the extent to which it meets the requirements set by the manipulating move. Sanction may take a variety of forms: it may consist of an explicit assessment and reward (or punishment), but also of any reaction which implicitly manifests an assessment of what the agent has done or failed to do. As is known by all those who have used narrative semiotics in the analysis of narratives, the sanctioning authority is formally the same “actant” as the manipulating authority (the “destinant”), but can be manifested in discourse by an actor (i.e., character) other than the one manifesting the manipulating authority.7 Sanction may be positive or negative; when it is negative, it may be so in various degrees. It might consist merely of some criticism of some aspect of the agent’s performance, of a radical rejection of the purported action as not responding to the initial manipulation, or of a refusal to recognize the agent supposedly responsible for the performance as really responsible for it. Such an analysis of (narrated) action can be used to make the following general point, which may be taken to hold also as regards the analysis of social interaction: whenever we want to consider a piece of behavior as an “action”, we should expect to find the manipulating move that has stimulated the agent into behaving that way, as well as the sanctioning move which assesses
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the performance that has been carried out. It should be noted that in the case of speech act sequences, if the description I have given of the way speech acts produce their effects is sound, the sanctioning move is not a mere comment on (or reward of) something which has already been done independently of the sanctioning move itself, but contributes to defining and making effective the very speech act it sanctions. Should we expect the sequential positions of manipulation, action and sanction to be regularly occupied by different kinds of speech acts? A regular association has sometimes been claimed to hold between kinds of speech acts and sequential positions. This is the case, for example, with “initiative” and “reactive” speech acts as discussed by Weigand (1989, 1994) in the context of a dialogically oriented reformulation of speech act theory. I share some of Weigand’s intuitions, for example the idea that illocutionary acts should be defined and identified not in isolation, but with reference to a dialogic sequence. For Weigand, though, there exist inherently initiative and inherently reactive speech act types: whether an illocutionary act is initiative or reactive depends on its linguistic form. While I admit that some linguistic forms (such as the interrogative form or the imperative mood) are more suitable for initiating a sequence and others (such as indicative sentences) for sanctioning a previously performed action, in my view the narrative scheme can in principle be applied at any point of any sequence for heuristic aims, that is, for the sake of clarifying the connections between the speech act we want to consider as action and the preceding and subsequent moves in the sequence. This does not mean that there are not preferred points for such an application: the narrative scheme is most useful when such preferred points can be detected. But the fact that it can in principle be applied at any point accounts for the availability of multiple readings of what appears to be the same sequence or even the same speech act. We can better make sense of some of the intriguing complexities of example (1) if we consider the various readings at issue as related to the construction of different manipulation-action-sanction (henceforth: M-A-S) sequences. Let us consider the relationship between A’s utterance 3b a a ti verrà uno scric (ˆ uno) eheheh ‘you’ll get a stiff neck a eh’ and B’s reply 4 perché eheheh ‘why eh’. Let us focus on either of these moves as filling in the action slot in a M-A-S sequence (see Figure 3). 1. If we focus on 3b as filling in the action slot, what performs the function of a manipulating move is the non-verbal situation, that is, the fact that B is sitting in A’s kitchen and A as a hostess owes B as much comfort as possible. So 3b appears as an attempt of A to fulfil her obligations as a hostess (by
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showing concern for B, or perhaps, by warning B about the negative consequences of her sitting uncomfortably). In many ways, it is an inappropriate attempt: basically, it is not enough to repair A’s debt. It is no surprise that B’s utterance 4 sanctions it negatively, not even recognizing it as such an attempt: in fact, in 4 B asks A to provide reasons for her remark 3b, and asking for reasons is clearly not the kind of response that an attempt of fulfilling one’s role as a hostess may elicit. 2. If we focus on 4 as filling in the action slot, we have to take 3b as the manipulating move. So 4 appears as the action of asking for evidence or reasons, prompted by 3b taken as a verdictive speech act of prediction. But the next move, A’s utterance 5a (ma (-) no: ‘but (-) no’) sanctions 4 negatively by failing to accept it as the performance of an action appropriately responding to the manipulating move in 3b. The negative sanction consists of A’s implicit refusal to consider 4 as a felicitous question: B does not answer it or in any way recognize her obligation to do so; A gives up defending the right to receiving an answer, which she would have were her question felicitous. This indirectly undermines the assignment of the force of a prediction to 3b. The resort to the narrative scheme (with respect to the sequence described in 2) suggests that 3b as a manipulating move is not exhausted by B’s uptake and, moreover (with respect to the sequence described in 1), adds to the previously outlined analysis a reason for connecting the utterance of 3b with A’s desire to act appropriately as a host, which constrains its possible readings. It should be noted that 4 remains fairly effective as a negative sanction of 3b even though, as an action in the sequence described in 2, it receives a negative sanction in its own turn and is therefore unable to redefine the force of 3b in a positive way. Another pair of moves that is worth discussing are 5b (se volevi andavamo in salotto che stavamo tanto #più comode/ ‘if you’d wanted we could have gone into the living room we’d have been much more comfortable there’) and 6 (#indiffe/rente (-) portiamo le robe. ‘It’s all the same (-) let’s bring the stuff through’).
Figure 3.
m
a
s(–)
NV
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4
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m
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We have already seen that 6 selects for 5b the force of a proposal rather than that an offer. Here too, however, we can focus either on 5b or on 6 as filling in the action slot (see Figure 4). 1. If we focus on 5b as filling in the action slot, we must once again consider the manipulation slot as filled in by the non-verbal situation in which B is sitting in A’s kitchen and A as a hostess owes B as much comfort as possible. The action might be either offering or proposing to B to move to the living room. Turn 6 gives a selective but essentially positive sanction to 5b as a proposal. 2. If we focus on 6 as filling in the action slot, 5b plays the role of the manipulating move. B is invited to do something, and has to accept or reject the proposal. In fact, she accepts by making a further, related proposal. The way in which 6 accepts the proposal made in 5b is not fully explicit, but since 6 is sanctioned positively by 7, it can be counted as a successful proposal acceptance. That is, in 7, A not only accepts the proposal made by B in 6, but also accepts that proposal (portiamo le robe. ‘let’s bring things through’) as a satisfactory response to the manipulating move 5b. Here, the interesting contribution provided by the narrative scheme is that, since 5b cannot be construed as manipulated by 4, the narrative scheme suggests that it should be connected to the same non-verbal situation to which also 3b had to be connected if focused upon as filling in the action slot (cf. previous example, reading 1). So 5b appears as an attempt on the part of A (stronger than 3b) at fulfilling the role of hostess. This might lead us to a closer consideration of the ties between 3b and 5b. If B had not interrupted A’s turn 3 by uttering 4, would A have gone ahead immediately, offering to B to move to the living room? It seems very likely. Moreover, the first part of turn 6 (indifferente ‘it’s all the same’) responds to 3b as much as to 5b, insofar as in both these utterances B’s interests or desires are at issue. This might suggest considering 3b plus 5b as one complex move aimed at fulfilling the role of the hostess, by m NV
Figure 4.
a
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3b +5b
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7
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which A does not succeed in making an offer to satisfy one of her guest’s desires, but succeeds at least in making a proposal motivated by her concern for her guest’s comfort. It might be objected that the heuristic use of the narrative scheme offers the analyst too many possible alternatives: if any three speech acts in a row can be understood as manipulation-action-sanction, we are still considering speech act sequences as unstructured. To this objection, I reply that while the multiple applicability of the narrative scheme to speech act sequences shows that there is no real structure of speech act sequences separate from the interactional play of mutual responses amounting to agreement, this interactional play must itself rely on some abstract form according to which sequences are constructed. It might be the case that the response given to a certain speech act depends at least in part on the sequential slot in which the receiver collocates the speech act he or she responds to. The narrative scheme as a form of the human imaginaire should perhaps be considered as prior to that kind of action coordination which enables human beings to achieve conventional effects. The perspective proposed here stresses that conversational turns do not constitute sequences simply by being produced one after onother in the same physical circumstances. A sequence may consist of steps distant in time, so that the position next to a certain speech act need not coincide with the conversational turn immediately following it (cf. Schegloff 1992). This is one more reason why the analysis of speech act sequences needs to rely on a structured model. Given a certain move and its identification as filling in one of the slots of a M-A-S sequence, not everything is suitable for filling in the neighbouring slots. If the conversational turns immediately preceding or immediately following are unsuitable, the analyst has to consider more distant conversational turns or non-verbal acts, or even (as candidates for the manipulation or the sanction position) events or situations. In order to orient themselves in the interaction, participants too must rely on some appropriate competence, and it would not be surprising if this were the same competence that the analyst can successfully appeal to in an explicit way.
The narrative scheme and the understanding of insisting The multiple applicability of the narrative scheme enables the analyst to explore the relationships into which each move in a sequence enters when considered as filling in the action slot and the ways in which these relationships affect its conventional effects. Thus, the narrative scheme helps us to figure
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out what room a conversation grants to the strategic choices of the participants. But when the analysis aims at spelling out what chain of effects has actually been realized in a given conversational episode, multiple applicability has to be supplemented with criteria for choosing one preferred application. It is in conjunction with these criteria that the narrative scheme enables receivers (whether participants or analysts) to identify those M-A-S sequences that are most relevant to the interactional event. One criterion for choosing where to apply the narrative scheme focuses on the action slot directly: sometimes, the move that is to fill in the action slot is manifestly salient and the M-A-S scheme merely suggests to look for a preceding manipulating move as well as a subsequent sanctioning one. But in other cases, and perhaps more often, contextually preferred applications of the narrative scheme are triggered by the sanctioning move, thanks to the recognizability of its closing function. In such cases, the action is indirectly identified as the move being sanctioned. The manipulating move is then identifiable not only because it precedes the move in the action slot, but also thanks to the correlation between sanction and manipulation (an action can be sanctioned just insofar as it is expected to respond to whatever fills in the manipulation slot). Thus, sanctioning moves work as a kind of narrative punctuation, facilitating both the delimitation of M-A-S sequences and the identification of the action. In all cases in which participants, or analysts, need to recognize when, in a complex conversational episode, the main action is actually performed, it might be a promising strategy to look for a move suitable for being understood as sanction and apply the narrative scheme from that point backwards. The latter strategy proves specially helpful when it is not at first sight clear what is being done in a sequence or whether any performance of an action is achieved at all, as is often the case in sequences where insisting occurs (Sbisà 1998). I will now consider one such sequence: example (2) will consist of two related stretches from one and the same conversational episode, a family therapy session,8 in which at least one of the participants insists on the pursuit of his conversational goal. My aim in discussing this example is not to contrast a semi-formal conversation with the totally informal one in example (1), or to contrast a multi-party conversation with the two-party one in example (1) (although, as is obvious, these features influence the way in which these sequences are structured). I would like to show how insisting can be understood and described with reference to the narrative scheme. The participants in the conversation from which example (2) is drawn are: the therapist (A), the wife (B), the husband (C), and the daughter (D). A has to collect information about the willingness of the family members to
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undertake the therapy and addresses a question (turn 1 from stretch 2a) at all the members of the family (particularly the husband, C, and the wife, B). The ensuing multi-party interaction comprises at least two two-party interactions: that between A and B (mostly smooth) and that between A and C, in which insisting occurs. B and C make various attempts to relate directly to each other, but the mediating role institutionally belonging to the therapist prevents any full-fledged two-party interaction between them from arising. We will be concerned with interaction between A and C in particular. I begin by presenting the first stretch: (2) a.
1 A: ecco e che: (-) quando vi hanno detto di venire qui tutta la famiglia che cosa avete pensato ‘well and what (-) when they told the whole family to come here what did you all think’ 2 B: io ho pensato che era la cosa giusta perché secondo me i bambini ne risentono tanto della situazione:: tesa in famiglia ((laughter)) ‘I thought it was the right thing because in my opinion the children are very much affected by the tense situation in the family’ 3 (--) 4 A: ((laughter)) e lei che cosa ha pensato (-) cioè del fatto che sua moglie::: ‘and what did you think (-) I mean of the fact that your wife’ 5 (--) 6 C: ((rapidly and in a loud voice)) si: diciamo che avendo:: è logico che ne risentano anche loro della situazione che diciamo così si è venuta a creare: situazione che secondo me così era dovuta alla accentuazione da parte della madre così dentro hh diciamo a questa questione mentre secondo me i bambini dovrebbero essere lasciati fuori: ‘yes let’s say that having it’s obvious that they too suffer a lot from the situation that we might say has arisen: a situation that in my opinion was due to the mother’s accentuating let’s say within this question whereas in my opinion the children should be left out of it’ 7 A: hmm:: e quindi lei che cosa pensa del fatto di venire qui tutti insieme? ‘hmm and so what do you think about the fact of all coming here together?’
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At the beginning of this conversational stretch the imposition of a task takes place. A’s question in 1 is aimed at eliciting information from the family members as to their willingness to undertake the therapy and as a result of A’s asking that question, whose legitimacy is not overtly challenged by anybody, the family members are assigned an obligation to state or otherwise reveal their attitude about the therapy. While the response provided by B in turn 2 does reveal B’s attitude and is immediately accepted by A as an adequate reply to his question (as is shown by A’s laughter at the beginning of turn 4 as well as by the fact that he turns to another participant, C, who has not replied yet), the lack of compliance on the part of C (apparent in the silence in 3) triggers a series of insisting moves on the part of A. So while the series of moves 1, 2 and 4 constitutes a simple M-A-S sequence, the interaction between A and C does not display an overt M-A-S articulation. Already A’s turn 4 is a reformulation of turn 1, addressed at C alone, and may therefore be considered as a first instance of insisting. However, the real problem between A and C arises only later on, after C’s turn 6. That turn is a dispreferred response to 4, as is already made apparent by the pause in 5. It is a dispreferred response in a specially radical sense. It is not an expectationfrustrating reply, nor a refusal to reply; rather, it fails to take 4 at its face value, that is, as an information-seeking question (itself a reformulation of 1). C’s turn 6 displays also features that would permit some receiver to take it as a criticism or even a reproach leveled by C at his wife B (situazione che secondo me così era dovuta alla accentuazione da parte della madre. . . ‘a situation that in my opinion was due to the mother’s accentuating. . . ’; secondo me i bambini dovrebbero essere lasciati fuori: ‘whereas in my opinion the children should be left out of it’). How is C’s turn 6 received by A? In turn 7, after a hesitation, A reformulates his initial question again. This may count as an implicitly negative sanction of 6, showing that A doesn’t accept it as a reply to his questions in 4 and in 1. The negative assessment implicit in A’s turn 7 is only mitigated by the suggestion, due to the adverb quindi (‘so’, which evokes the drawing of a conclusion), that 6 might turn out to be, although not itself a reply to 4 and 1, at least a premise to the real reply. It should be noted that since 7 sanctions 6 only qua expected to reply to A’s question, the features of 6 by which it attempts to affect the relationship between C and B are dropped and remain ineffective. Maybe C was trying to criticize or reproach B, but he doesn’t succeed in redefining the interactional situation as one in which he possesses authority over B or competence to judge her behavior. By reformulating his question (and therefore insisting), A shows
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that C has not answered it yet, and that whatever else he was trying to do was not relevant to the current conversation. The second conversational stretch begins several turns later, but still at a point of the conversational episode at which C has not provided an answer to A’s initial question. I have selected this stretch as a complement to stretch (2a) because there the insisting starting in stretch (2a) comes to an end. (3) b. 1 A: e quindi lei (-) appunto (--) che cosa ha pensato quando sua moglie le ha detto che dovevate venire qui? ‘and so you (-) exactly (-) what did you think when your wife told you that you all had to come here?’ 2 C: bè ovviamente visto che io (-) così (-) sinceramente (-) diciamo (-) vorrei salvare questa cosa anche se mia moglie pensa che non la pensi come lei ma io:: tengo molto ai miei figli cioè non:: (-) non non vorrei che loro diciamo così dovessero soffrire. ‘well obviously seeing that I (-) well (-) to be honest (-) let’s say (-) I’d like to save this thing even though my wife thinks that I don’t think the same way about it as she does but I am very attached to my children in other words (-) I wouldn’t like them let’s say to have to suffer’ 3 B: ma così stanno già soffrendo ‘but like this they’re already suffering’ 4 A: e:: un attimo e quindi lei dice per il bene dei bambini:: ‘and just a moment and so you say that for the children’s sake’ 5 C: diciamo così che se ci fosse un qualcosa che riuscirebbe a farci capire dove stiamo sbagliando:: ((quickly)) bè in fondo in fondo secondo me io sono sempre dell’idea e poi l’ho sempre detto a lei che forse nei nostri colloqui tra me e lei ci vorrebbe un terzo interlocutore che ovviamente ci farebbe capire:: dove stiamo sbagliando dove::: non ci rendiamo conto che ovviamente le cose non possono andare in un modo potrebbero andare in un altro::. ‘let’s say that if there were something that would enable us to understand where we’re going wrong well basically I think I’ve always been of the opinion and I’ve always said to her that perhaps in our conversations between me and her there should be a third person who could obviously enable us to
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understand where we’re going wrong where we don’t realize that obviously things can’t go a certain way they could go in another’ 6 B: bè ma scusa e? ‘Well, excuse me!’ 7 A: aspetti che sentiamo D ((turning to the couple’s daughter)) ‘wait a moment let’s hear what D has to say’
In this second conversational stretch, A insists on asking C the very same question that he has formulated at the beginning of (2a): 1 is a reformulation of that question and also 4 may be so taken. A also keeps taking C’s responses as premises to the real answer: in both 1 and 4 he uses the connective quindi (‘so’) as if C’s turns were premises to a conclusion, implicitly urging him to draw it. The two turns issued by C, 2 and 5, are both ambiguous and it is no surprise that each receives two different responses, by A and B respectively. Turn 2 is taken by A as an argumentative premise to a forthcoming answer to A’s initial question and by B as a (somewhat infelicitous) expression of intention with respect to the couple’s children. Turn 5 is taken by B as reporting (falsely) C’s usual attititude towards the matters at issue and receives no direct reply from A. In both cases deviant side sequences may arise, in which C’s contributions would count as manipulating moves addressed at B and might enable C to play a further sanctioning role with respect to B’s reactions. A prevents these side sequences from arising (notice e:: un attimo ‘and just a moment’ in 4 and aspetti ‘wait a moment’ in 7). Thanks to the authoritative position in which he is collocated by his institutional role, his uptake of C’s turns prevails over B’s. So, 2 is actually dealt with as an argumentative premise to a forthcoming answer. As to 5, I propose to take the fact that A in turn 7 passes over to the next participant as showing he accepts 5 as that response on the part of C he had been trying to elicit all along. Let us consider C’s turn 5 and A’s turn 7 in greater detail. What makes 5 more suitable for counting as a reply to A’s initial question than any turn previously uttered by C? In turn 5 C grants (by presupposition) that he too might be wrong and declares a long-standing agreement with the idea that external help might be useful: in so doing he might be taken either as accepting to undertake the therapy or as merely reporting a usual attitude of his. Under the former interpretation, by uttering 5 he does perform the task assigned to him by turn 1 in (2a). Under the latter interpretation, he might still be said to perform that task insofar as his reported attitude entails an attitude towards therapeutic aid
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(and therefore family therapy). However, whether 5 actually counts as C’s reply to A’s initial question substantially depends on the reception it achieves. In fact, A’s turn 7 seems to ignore 5, but at a more attentive consideration, we may notice it displays two features closely related to its reception. First, A, by uttering the imperative aspetti (‘wait’), stops B, who in 6 has just started protesting against what she takes to be a false report by C of his own attitudes, therefore undermining the effectiveness of her reception of 5. This favours the other possible reading according to which C, in uttering it, accepts to undertake the therapy. Second, 7 is de facto a final move and its very position enables it to play the role of a sanctioning move. If there is no longer a need for A to insist, it means that something in C’s behavior can now be counted as constituting the performance, whether correct or incorrect, of the task assigned to C by A’s initial (and reiterated) manipulating move. From the discussion of example (2), some morals about insisting as a sequential phenomenon can be drawn. Insisting appears to involve: 1. the attempt to get the manipulating function of a certain move to be recognized by the addressee, by reiterating and reformulating it 2. the implicit negative sanction of those responses that do not constitute yet the performance of the action the manipulating move aims at eliciting: whenever the manipulating move is reiterated, this suggests that the assigned task either has not been recognized as assigned or, anyway, has not been fulfilled, or not fulfilled completely; 3. a final sanctioning move that implicitly identifies the move it sanctions as the performance, whether correct or incorrect, of the elicited action. So in insisting, even if the sequence in which it occurs does not consist of three moves, the M-A-S structure is at work and helps us to realize what is going on. It is the narrative scheme which enables us to recognize the borders and the steps of the insisting sequence, however many side sequences or attempts at them are embedded between the initial manipulating move and the move that, thanks to the sanction it receives, eventually counts as filling in the action slot. It may also be noted that by insisting, a speaker attempts at giving the speech act sequence a tendentially rigid M-A-S structure, one that does not allow for multiple applications of the narrative scheme. This follows from the fact that insisting just consists of trying to get the interlocutor to accept a certain move as a manipulating move and therefore perform the task it imposes. Receptions of speech acts belonging to the sequence, that would exploit or enhance applications of the narrative scheme other than the preferred one, have to be neutralized by the speaker who wants to achieve this goal. Since it is natu-
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ral to expect that as soon as the manipulating moves manage to elicit the action, a sanction will follow, in insisting the mere cessation of the production of reiterated manipulating moves may count as a final sanction and help identify the move that counts as filling in the action slot.
Some conclusions In this paper I have contended that sequentiality is a fundamental dimension of speech acts. First of all, no illocutionary act can produce its conventional effect apart from its reception, which is manifested and even constituted by the response it is given. Moreover, there seems to exist some general form of our understanding of sequences of events which contributes to the structuring of speech act sequences and therefore, indirectly, to the production of conventional effects by a given individual speech act. My view presupposes an interactional conception of communication according to which communication is made possible by the participants’ affecting one another by the conventional effects of their speech acts. I have attempted to show that the implicit or by-default agreement about what each participant has done, required for validating conventional effects, does not involve any petitio principii sending us back to cognitive representations of actions, because the participants’ way of reacting to each other’s moves is enough for constituting or failing to constitute the required agreement. I have thus claimed that in speech act sequencing, action itself plays a more basic role than cognition. However, this does not rule out other kinds of cognitive contributions to the structuring and the effectiveness of verbal interaction (or of social interaction in general). I have suggested that whenever a move in a speech act sequence is focused upon as constituting an action, it is also framed between a preceding, eliciting or manipulating move and a subsequent sanctioning one. I have attempted to show that the articulation of sequences of events into the three steps of manipulation, action and sanction, proposed by narrative semiotics, can be applied to speech act sequences quite successfully and contribute to descriptions of both individual speech acts and sequential structure. I have outlined two main kinds of application of the narrative scheme. On the one hand, M-A-S sequences can be applied wherever we want to explore the sequential relationships in which a speech act enters or may be considered as entering, in which case multiple application is possible and even desirable in order to shed light on interpretive potentialities and how participants exploit
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them or negotiate about them. On the other hand, it is sometimes relevant to detect one preferred application of the narrative scheme and univocally identify the moves playing the role of manipulation, action, and sanction respectively. Apart from those cases in which the salience of one move makes it a suitable candidate for filling in the action slot, it is sanction which is most easily recognizable, because of its closing function. Even when sequences do not display any overt M-A-S articulation, as in the case of insisting, the closing function of one move may support the identification of the move it responds to as the action, that is, the performance of the task assigned to the relevant agent by the initial manipulating move. Fruitful application of an analytic device is no proof that it actually belongs to the participants’ competence, rather than merely to the analyst’s metalinguistic equipment. Since, however, in the kind of speech act analysis outlined above the analyst’s way of dealing with speech acts is just a prolongement or deplacement of that of the participants (the analyst, moreover, must rely on the way participants deal with each other’s speech acts in order to tell what counts as having been done by whom), it appears reasonable to suppose that if a given tool proves fruitful, it is because the participants use it themselves, although most often tacitly. Thus my analysis of speech act sequences supports also the suggestion, inspired by narrative semiotics, that we make sense of what happens or is done around us, and of speech act sequences in particular, thanks to the general form provided by the narrative scheme.
Notes . Austin says too little about those effects of illocutionary acts he characterizes as nonnatural. However, it is intuitive that matters such as the assignment of an obligation are not changes in the natural course of events: what should be done does not depend in any simple way on what is the case. Moreover, obligation (as well as commitment, right, entitlement, and the like) is very plausibly connected to the conventionality of the illocutionary act, since it is a conventional matter, or more precisely, a matter that can be set or modified by convention (law, social consensus, intersubjective agreement). This sense of “conventionality” should not be identified with the linguistic conventionality of the performative formula as implied by Strawson (1964). . I have used the following transcription conventions: Beginning of an overlap End of an overlap Latched utterances Short pause (up to 2”)
* or # (in both turns) + or / (in both turns) = (-)
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Pause (between 2” and 5”) Slightly rising or level intonation contour Rising intonation contour Falling intonation contour Lengthened syllables Incomplete words Low volume Emphasis Non-linguistic phenomena and comments Unintellegible words Omissis
(--) , ? . :, :: x(ˆ word) bold ((xxxx)) xxx (. . . )
Pauses are indicated in the English translation too. Puctuation marks in the English translation are only meant to make it readable. . Verdictives are, in Austin’s definition (1962: 151, 153) “the delivering of a finding, official or unofficial, upon evidence or reasons” as to “something – fact, or value – which is for different reasons hard to be certain about.” It is because of such a connection with evidence or reasons that the speaker issuing a verdictive is exposed to being asked why he or she has done so. . A third position repair is a conversational turn that reformulates a preceding turn by the same speaker (considered as occupying the first position) in response to a turn by the interlocutor (occupying the second position) that has given the turn in the first position a reading the speaker is not willing to accept. The three positions are not necessarily occupied by adjacent turns (Schegloff 1992). . In discussing examples from conversations in this paper, I focus on verbal behavior, but of course, the observation of verbal behavior may be usefully completed by the observation of its non verbal accompaniments, such as gestures, non verbal actions, omissions. . It should be noted that my use of tools drawn from narrative semiotics, such as the narrative scheme, is basically heuristic. I do not think that narratives ‘really are’ or ‘should be’ structured (whatever this might mean) exactly like narrative semiotics makes them. But narrative semiotics proves able to yield insightful regimented paraphrases of narrative texts (as well as of narrative aspects in texts of any kind). . Narrative semiotics distinguishes actants qua syntactic roles in the narrative from actors qua full-fledged characters. Actants and actors need not stand in a one-to-one correspondence to each other. . Example 2 is drawn from the corpus that has been collected by Carla Bazzanella, Claudia Caffi and myself while writing Bazzanella, Caffi and Sbisà (1991). Part of the conversational stretch I comment upon here is quoted also by Caffi (1992: 292–293), who discusses it with particular respect to the involvement displayed by speaker C.
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References Austin, J. L. (1962). How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bach, K., & Harnish, R. M. (1979). Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Bazzanella, C., Caffi, C., & Sbisà, M. (1991). Scalar dimensions of illocutionary force. In I. Z. Zagar (Ed.), Speech Acts: Fiction or Reality? (pp. 63–76). Ljubljana: IPrA. Brandom, R. B. (1994). Making it Explicit. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Caffi, C. (1992). Il concetto di coinvolgimento nella linguistica pragmatica. In G. Gobber (Ed.), La Linguistica Pragmatica (pp. 267–297). Roma: Bulzoni. Gazdar, G. (1981). Speech act assignment. In A. K. Joshi, B. L. Webber & I. A. Sag (Eds.), Elements of Discourse Understanding (pp. 64–83). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Greimas, A. J. (1983). Du sens II. Paris: Seuil. Greimas, A. J., & Courtés, J. (1979). Sémiotique: Dictionnaire Raisonné de la Théorie du Langage. Paris: Hachette. Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Savigny, E. von (1988). The Social Foundations of Meaning. Berlin: Springer. Sbisà, M. (1984). On illocutionary types. Journal of Pragmatics, 8, 93–112. Sbisà, M. (1987). Speech acts and context change. In T. Ballmer & W. Wildgen (Eds.), Process Linguistics (pp. 252–279). Tubingen: Niemeyer. Sbisà, M. (1989). Linguaggio, Ragione, Interazione. Bologna: Il Mulino. Sbisà, M. (1992). Affetto e diritto come dimensioni dell’interazione verbale. In C. Galimberti (Ed.), La Conversazione (pp. 183–203). Milano: Guerini. Sbisà, M. (1998). Azione linguistica e status dei partecipanti. In R. Galatolo & G. Pallotti (Eds.), Di Pietro e il Giudice. L’interrogatorio al Tribunale di Brescia (pp. 61–67). Bologna: Pitagora. Sbisà, M. (2001). Illocutionary force and degrees of strength in language use. Journal of Pragmatics, 33, 1791–1814. Schegloff, E. (1988). Presequences and indirection: applying speech act theory to ordinary conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 12, 55–62. Schegloff, E. (1992). Repair after next turn: the last structurally provided defense of intersubjectivity in conversation. Americal Journal of Sociology, 97, 1295–1345. Searle, J. (1969). Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Searle, J. (1979). Expression and Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Searle, J. (1992). Conversation. In J. Searle et al., (On) Searle on Conversation (pp. 7–29). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Strawson, P. (1964). Intention and convention in speech acts. The Philosophical Review, 73, 439–460. Weigand, E. (1989). Sprache als Dialog. Sprechakttaxonomie und kommunikative Grammatik. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Weigand, E. (1994). Discourse, conversation, dialogue. In E. Weigand (Ed.), Concepts of Dialogue (pp. 49–75). Tübingen: Niemeyer.
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Recurrent sequences and mental processes Christiane Meierkord University of Erfurt, Germany
William:
I better leave . . . this is a fairly strange reality to be faced with. To be honest, I didn’t realize. . . Anna: I’m so sorry . . . I don’t know what to say. William: I think goodbye is traditional. Notting Hill (Curtis 1999)
Introduction Whenever speakers interact, they gain experience about the use of language in a certain type of situation, and part of this experience will be stored as knowledge in their long-term memory. The resulting mental representations will constrain their expectations and verbal behavior whenever a similar situation is encountered in the future. If a social group shares similar experiences and expectations through steady practice, a certain kind of verbal behavior may be assigned some regulatory function and associated with socially appropriate behavior. In this case, it has become a convention, and when this convention has been consciously chosen and adopted and passed on by society to further generations, it becomes tradition. And even though obviously no one situation exactly matches another situation an individual has previously encountered – since situations vary with regard to the mental state of the participants, the formality, the power relation, the communicative goal etc. – it seems that even in extremely awkward situations, prototypical patterns stored in long-term memory are recalled. It has been argued in the past (e.g. in the papers presented in Coulmas 1981) that communicative behavior to a large degree consists of such long-
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term memory stored structures/sequences that are referred to as prepatterned recurring linguistic units. These structures are held to be tied to specific, standardized situations and highly predictable in the course of a conversation, and they are commonly referred to as routines. Well known examples include greeting one another, introducing oneself, expressing one’s gratefulness or opening a conversation.1 This paper focuses on conversational closings, which are also usually held to be highly conventionalized sequences. It presents a discussion of think-aloud protocols elicited in an experiment which required subjects to comment on the individual utterances occuring in a fictitious conversational closing. The protocols serve to explicate the mental processes involved in speakers’ processing of the individual utterances in the closing phase of a conversation, questioning the rigid distinction between creative and automatized structures often suggested by traditional research on routines. The focus here will be on the processes within the cognitively autonomous individual speaker’s mind, but not so much on the interactive construction of meaning during conversation.2
Perceiving sequences A sequence, as defined by the Oxford English dictionary (1989/14: 1011) is “the following of one thing after another in succession”. When discussing successive utterances, research has overwhelmingly concentrated on pairs or triplets of utterances. However, it has been stated (Sacks 1992b: 354) that the study of these smaller sequences has little bearing on the study of longer sequences, since larger sequences are not simply the result of adding single utterances. To Sacks, long sequences are mainly characterized by the fact that they are coherent matters (1992b: 355). Coherence has also been emphasized as an important factor in discourse processing in Discourse Analysis, though in a somewhat different vein, placing more emphasis on the structure of conversation, e.g. by Brown and Yule (1983: 224) who stress that the ability to produce coherent discourse is part of the individual’s knowledge about language: We might say that, in addition to our knowledge of sentential structure, we also have a knowledge of other standard formats in which information is conveyed. We also rely on some principle that, although there may be no formal linguistic links connecting contiguous linguistic strings, the fact of their contiguity leads us to interpret them as connected.
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Contiguity, however, is not a sufficient condition for the perception of two or more utterances as being connected. Renkema (1993: 198) claims that a sequence of sentences or utterances “is discourse only when there is [either] cohesion between the sentences which can be put into words or when the listener or reader can derive the connection (coherence).” Thus, one way of perceiving a connection between utterances will be through analysis of the grammatical or lexical items that help achieve cohesion, such as e.g. ellipsis or synonymy. If this is not possible and speakers need to otherwise derive the connection between utterances, we may of course wish to know how participants in conversation achieve this task. To Renkema (1993: 35), coherence “is brought about by something outside the text. This ‘something’ is usually knowledge which a listener or reader is assumed to possess.” A number of models have been proposed to explain how a stretch of utterances is perceived as being coherent and thus as being sequences.
Discourse perception – interaction and cognitive processing Within Conversation Analysis (CA), conversation is understood to be the product of the participants’ interaction and joint activities. Based on the tradition to consider language as being social action “rather than a code for representing thoughts and ideas, as psychologists have generally conceived it, or a grammatical system, as linguists generally conceive it” (Edwards 1997: 84), CA has mostly rejected attempts to explain speakers’ cognitive states during processing and perception of talk. Cognitive Science is, as Saferstein (1998: 391) puts it, regarded as “being primarily a reductivist enterprise imposing mechanistic models of mind derived from computer science.” However, although major findings in psycholinguistics and cognitive science have in fact been derived from computer science and neurobiology with aims that are very different from those of CA, they were found to be relevant for interpreting and supplementing conversational data to explain the basis of interaction (Cicourel 1974). Artificial intelligence attempts to account for suprasentential structures to allow for computers to be built which are able not only to process a sentence but which can react towards an utterance, using schema theory. Against this background, script and frame theory, both of which have been derived from schema theory, have investigated speech perception from the point of an autonomous individual and not so much from an interactional point of view. Most models developed within the psycholinguistic framework (e.g. Kintsch 1994) have attempted to develop a system “by means
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of which the semantic content and structure of a text could be represented in a way that was convenient and useful for psychological experimentation.” To achieve meaning, speakers in a conversation are assumed to create textual content while processing discourse. Besides the assumption that generally a parser turns phrases into propositions, it is commonly acknowledged that recipients can relate the contents of utterances to previous experience by referring to knowledge stored in long-term memory. This allows them to infer information from an utterance although it is not stated explicitly. The following subchapters will provide brief summaries of the positions held by proponents of schema, script and frame theories on the one hand, and, on the other, by scholars working within the text linguistics paradigm.
Schemata, scripts and frames The mental representation of recurring conversational sequences has traditionally been described by schemata, script and frame theory. As Tannen (1993b: 16) points out, these approaches, which have all, in some sense, been derived from Bartlett (1932) “amount to the simple concept of what Ross (1975) calls ‘structures of expectations’, that is, that, on the basis of one’s experience of the world in a given culture (or combination of cultures), one organizes knowledge about the world and uses this knowledge to predict interpretations and relationships regarding new information, events, and experiences.” A schema is a cognitive structure, which represents the most important characteristics of an object (e.g. the human body will be mentally represented as containing a body, head, two arms and two legs). With regard to conversation, schemata contain “a kind of standardized representation of some event or action.” (Prideaux 1984: 189) and specify the default order of a particular linguistic macro-event in a given speech community. Since schemata and frame theory provided only very general models of mental representations, their application to discourse processing encountered a number of difficulties,3 which led Schank and Abelson (1977) to develop the notion of the script, which they define as “a set of ordered components which serve as a prototype or scenario for a class of events.” Embodying knowledge about regularly recurring everyday situations, a script provides a “predetermined, stereotyped sequence of actions [. . . ] made up of slots and requirements about what can fill those slots” (1977: 422). A frequently cited example is the restaurant script, which contains slots such as asking for the menu, ordering drinks and paying the bill.
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Stored in long-term memory, it is argued, scripts facilitate and constrain inferencing processes whenever new information is encountered in discourse; that is, utterances are mapped against internalized structures and their meaning is interpreted accordingly. According to script theory, any new information is matched with stored scripts, which determine which recent propositions are selected to be kept in the short-term memory buffer (cf. below) during discourse processing (cf. Taylor & Taylor 1990: 76), and which also provide the speaker with information about a stereotype situation which often is not expressed explicitly. Script theory assumes that the sequences it seeks to explain are predictable. In its traditional version, the fact that long-term memory representations need to be first created and furthermore are not static has been largely ignored. As Schegloff (1986) points out, sequences perceived as recurring, or as routines, are the result of interactive experience. Scripts are, therefore, characterized by the fact that they are dynamic. They develop by the experience of recurring scenarios and are subject to change over time, as speakers learn from exceptions and update their mental representations accordingly (cf. Edwards 1997). And construction from experience also implies that no two individuals will share completely equal scripts. Despite these reservations it is assumed that during conversation, speakers have access to experiential knowledge stored in long-term memory and the analyses presented in the further chapters will discuss how this knowledge influences discourse processing and how it allows participants to perceive contiguous utterances as a coherent sequence.
Kintsch’s ‘construction-integration model’ The claims made by proponents of script theory, such as Schank’s (1978: 94) statement “that in language understanding, a simple rule is followed. Analysis proceeds in a top-down predictive manner. Understanding is expectation based. It is only when the expectations are useless or wrong that bottom-up processing begins.”4 have been severely criticized. Kintsch (1988: 64) argues, that scripts and frames in their original versions are too inflexible and unable to “adapt readily enough to the demands imposed by the ever-changing context of the environment”,5 and he, therefore, proposes a “minimally organized knowledge system [. . . ] in which structure is not prestored, but generated in the context for the task for which it is needed.” Just as other proponents of minimalist theories of inferencing, he suggests that inferences are made only if necessary to achieve coherence in a conversation.
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Kintsch (1994: 729f.) claims that the processes at work during discourse processing are similar to those of cognition in general, and he goes on to describe cognition as a sequence of cognitive states with individual states conceived as the actual contents of short-term memory, being [. . . ] the result of complex analyses that take place at different levels, from sensory to perceptual, linguistic, and conceptual levels. Various temporary buffers are needed in this processing for the storage of intermediate results, and what is processed is not merely input from the outside world, but also input from long-term memory, ranging from perceptual knowledge, lexical knowledge, to general world knowledge and beliefs.
The basic unit of analysis in his construction-integration model (Kintsch 1988) is the proposition,6 and processing texts is assumed to proceed from proposition to proposition in the form of cycles. Within each cycle, speakers/readers generate mental representations of the individual text segments. To explain how coherence between these segments is achieved, it has been assumed that the most strongly activated elements are carried over into a buffer and further into the next processing cycle (cf. Kintsch & van Dijk 1978; Kintsch 1988), eventually resulting in the propositional representation of a complete text in the form of a text base. After construction of the text base, readers construct a situation model (cf. van Dijk & Kintsch 1983) which consists of elements taken from the text base itself but also from background world knowledge and which allows them to connect sentences which remain incoherent. Evidence for this assumption comes from experiments, in which subjects have been shown to recall a situation model of a text they read rather than the text base. This was evident from their mentioning content that was not explicitly stated in the text. The complete system of mental representations which a reader/hearer constructs from a text can be described as a graph consisting of nodes (these represent a cluster of elements) and links that exist between the nodes (representing relations between elements). This network of representational units and their interrelations may, however, contain irrelevant and even contradictory elements. To get rid of these, during the integration process, “strongly interconnected parts of the network are strengthened, while isolated parts become deactivated. In other words, things that belong together contextually become stronger, and things that do not, die off.” (Kintsch 1994: 732). In contrast to schema and script theoretical models, the ones proposed by Kintsch and van Dijk focus on the propositional content of the speakers’ utterances, which is assumed to be accessed before context conditions inferences.
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The following chapter outlines the most salient properties of conversational closings before both types of models will be assessed in the subsequent chapters by testing them against empirical data, consisting of reactions to the different types of utterances which potentially occur within this conversational phase.
Closings – processing non-propositional socio-pragmatic content Closings are phases of a conversation during which participants conclude a talk or extract themselves from an ongoing conversation. They recur in “closing implicative environments [which] mark that no further newsworthy items are being introduced” (Button 1990: 94). As “there may be no generic way built into the rules of conversational sequencing, that a conversation comes to a close” (Sacks 1992a: 96), closings need to be negotiated. Participants need to design their utterances in a way which allows interlocutors to derive cues to infer their wish to terminate the conversation. Once this agreement has been reached, Schegloff and Sacks (1973) hold that there is something like the prototypical closing, and they consequently propose that “a closing section [. . . ] consists of (at least) four turns”. This structure is said to be subject to politeness norms, and Laver (1981: 303) states that [t]he polite norm in the closing phase, between participants who do not meet often, seems to be to use at least one mitigatory or consolidatory phrase, together with some appropriate formulaic phrase of parting. To omit such reparatory acts entirely is rare, and triggers a somewhat extreme implicature of rejection.7
Thus, the closing phase of a conversation is commonly introduced by some sort of remark which indicates that all or at least one of the speakers wishes to terminate the ongoing conversation. It is as Button (1987: 101) remarks “bereft of topic continuation or initiation features in a turn subsequent to a topic bounding turn”. In the first turn of the closing phase, one participant produces a preclosing8 (really a possible preclosing, since the conversation might not end). This can be an utterance consisting of okay, all right, or so::: that does not make any substantive contribution to the current topic and does not solicit or initiate a new topic. The respective speech acts used to achieve the communicative goal of indicating the transition from the core into the closing phase of a conversation are okays and extractors (in the terms of Edmondson & House 1981), depending on whether speakers agree that the conversation has been completed, or whether they need to cut off an unfinished topic because they
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need to attend to some other matter. Whereas okays “serve to seal and confirm a preceding outcome from a conversational sequence” (Edmondson & House 1981: 193), extractors “appear when an encounter has not yet led to a natural point of closure” (ibid.: 195). The latter are often less conventionalized, and include reiterating arrangements, mentioning the reason for the conversation or citing some urgent requirement that demands that the conversation should be closed. After exchanging preclosings, participants finally terminate the conversation through the exchange of elements such as goodbye or see you. The prototypical four-turn closing has been found to be commonly filled with elements that have acquired socio-pragmatic meaning, and House (1982: 54) claims that the moves occurring in a closing phase “have been reduced in their complexity resulting in routine rituals habitually employed across many different situations.” Routine formulas and less frozen types of conventional speech range somewhere between the two poles of a continuum from propositional to non-propositional language (Yorio 1980: 435).9 Edmondson and House (1981: 59) propose that such utterances, which have been labeled ritual speech acts, “cannot be said to inform about, or express a speaker’s attitude towards some external event or state of affairs”, but rather have “a social meaning, such that the literal meaning of the utterance – if any – is almost incidental to the significance of the utterance for both speaker and hearer.” Regarding the models presented in the above chapters, the processing of these ritual formulas would seem to be difficult to explain in terms of Kintsch’s model, since this is based on the propositional content of the individual utterances and it is exactly this propositional content which formulas lack. The exchange of preclosings does not, however, always result in the exchange of a second pair of utterances, which terminate the conversation. Button (1987 & 1990) describes a number of utterances that serve to lead out of the closing again and stresses that closings are designed in a way which allows for their extension and for movements out of the closing (1987: 133). Since closings can be both extended and moved out of, the sequence can contain many different types of utterances some of which are more formulaic whereas others are genuinely creative sentences. The experiment presented in the following chapters aims at a description of the mental processes taking place upon perception of utterances of both propositional and nonpropositional content within a recurrent – i.e. regularly re-occurring – conversational phase.
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Empirical evidence Against the above background, ten native speakers of both British and American English were asked to take part in an elicitation task which requested them to reveal the thoughts that came to their mind upon having perceived a turn of a dialogue through thinking-out-loud.
Interpreting thinking-out-loud data Thinking-out-loud (TOL)10 assumes that during discourse processing, participants in a conversation process two types of information. Whereas the first is received from outside sensory stimuli in the form of their co-participants’ verbal and non-verbal signals, the second type is available from information stored in and retrieved from long-term memory. Participants are assumed to be able to verbalize at least parts of the current contents of their short-term memory when instructed accordingly. “In case of thinking-aloud instructions, the information verbalized will then be some portion of the information currently being attended to.” (Ericsson & Simon 1980: 225). A number of the cognitive processes taking place during speech comprehension do so subconsciously and can not be verbalized, but it is commonly held that TOL can be used to study e.g. inferences, elaborations and predictions made by subjects.11 Since TOL data obviously cannot be elicited while speakers engage in conversation, turns of a dialogue were presented to subjects on successive computer screens, and participants in the experiment reacted to these written stimuli. This had the advantage of excluding access to any further contextual information and of ensuring that subjects reacted to the actual wording only.
Experimental design The subjects informing this study were first of all shown a scene from the movie “Notting Hill”, which supplied the context for the experiment to follow. The scene starts with the two main characters bumping into each other on the high street, which results in the male character, William, a book-store owner, spilling a cup of orange juice over Anna, a famous movie star. He offers her to change clothes at his house and after some hesitating, she accepts. Both enter his house and he shows her the way to the bathroom. Anna changes, and when she comes back downstairs, he offers her various sorts of drinks, but she declines every one. William then goes on to offer “something to nibble”. The video was stopped right after this offer.
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Subjects were told to continue working on the computer, which presented them with 19 screens, each containing one individual turn of the fictitious continuation of the dialogue between William and Anna. The presentation started with a black screen and subjects were instructed to first of all report what they expected next, i.e. who they thought would speak next and what s/he would say. By pressing the ‘enter’-key, subjects moved to the successive screens. Turns by William were presented against a blue background, those by Anna against a red background. For each of these subsequent screens, subjects were told to concurrently comment, screen by screen, on e.g. the following points: – – – –
What does the utterance mean? Does the utterance meet the expectations you had after the previous turn? How is the utterance linked to the previous conversation? What utterance by whom do you expect next and why?
It might be argued that the data elicited is not expressive with regard to conversational interaction as they represent the cognitive processes in an overhearer who is not considered as a participant in the ongoing conversation (cf. Goffman 1976; McGregor 1986). Schober and Clark (1989) argue on the basis of psychological experiments that overhearers lack access to the common ground that participants establish in conversation. However, since the sequence presented to the subjects and discussed in this paper does not involve the establishment of common ground, it can legitimately be argued that the subjects had the same resources available for processing utterances as the participants interacting in this sequence did. In order not to influence the data, subjects were also reminded to include only those aspects that came to their mind easily, and that there was no need to strictly answer all the points mentioned in the instructions. The screens presented contained the following turns: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
black screen A: Well. . . W: Right. Would you like salted peanuts? A: Actually, crisps would be nice. W: Do you like Salt and Vinegar? A: They’re my favorites. W: Good. I’ll just get you a bowl. A: Oh, I can manage without. A: Thanks, I really need to go now. W: Yes . . . sure.
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
A: W: A: W: A: W: A: W: A: W:
I’m taking your time. It’s been nice meeting you. I’ve enjoyed it too. Well, sorry again for the mess. Well, it ruined your drink. . . I wasn’t really thirsty. Thanks for your . . . help. My pleasure. Bye then. Cheerio.
The TOL reports of all subjects were tape-recorded and transcribed in standard orthography.
Data analyses12 The analyses reported below will concentrate on a selection of screens only to highlight the way different types of utterances as well as their position within the closing sequence condition their processing. Screen 1 consists of the discourse marker well only and presents subjects with a turn that given in isolation lacks propositional content (cf. Smith & Jucker, this volume). In contrast, screens 2 to 5 form an exchange of information regarding Anna’s and William’s likes and dislikes. They do thus convey propositional attitude. Screen 11 is of interest since it occurs at a place in the conversation where a terminal such as goodbye might be expected. Although the utterance has propositional content, its position within the closing sequence might influence the way the actual wording is processed. The two pairs of utterances which will be discussed last, i.e. screens 16/17 and 18/19 both make up adjacency pairs containing preferred second elements. Here, processing might be influenced by their conventional character as well as the likelihood of the preferred second’s occurrence.
Processing a discourse marker The experiment, viz. the PowerPoint presentation, sets in at a point at which the closing of the conversation has not yet been entered in the film itself, but at which it might be expected from the fact that Anna has changed her clothes and is ready to leave. Well. . . in this context could be interpreted in two different ways. Identified as a discourse marker, well is “normally used to mark boundaries in conversation between one topic or bit of business and the next”
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(Carter & McCarthy 1997: 13). In this specific situation it seals off the topic of offering food and drinks from a further topic not known to speakers and subjects at this point of the conversation. Since well has been found to commonly precede extractors used to indicate a speaker’s wish to terminate a conversation that has not yet come to an end (cf. e.g. House & Edmondson 1981: 195), subjects may infer that the closing phase will be entered next. On the other hand, Smith and Jucker (this volume: 174) discuss the function of well as a discourse marker introducing dispreferred seconds and as an autonomous turn. In conclusion they find that Speakers may use a turn consisting of well to introduce a negotiation of a question, assessment, invitation, or advice from the partner. Well seems to signal that speaker’s need for a new context – a reorientation, a reframing, an introduction of a different perspective – before responding to the original speech event.
Taking this into consideration, well in the context presented in the experiment serves to indicate that Anna is not really willing to accept William’s offer of “something to nibble” and that this offer, therefore, needs to be negotiated. Finally, Well. . . might express hesitation and serve to avoid having to once more decline an offer directly. It would then either be followed by a more explicit refusal or be left standing on its own to be interpreted by William. Five out of ten subjects seem to have interpreted this first utterance as a signal that Anna wants to indicate her wish to leave. As there was no element in the present nor in the previous utterances’ propositions pointing at this wish, subjects had to rely on scripted knowledge to infer the function of this utterance. One subject states that Anna ‘s maybe trying to hint to him that she feels uncomfortable with the situation and eh to to get him to move on or just trying to stop @ the conversation. She wants to leave I guess. So and then maybe she’ll continue her part and ehm say that she wants to go.
The subject mentions two points. By stating that Anna “‘s maybe trying to hint to him that she feels uncomfortable with the situation and eh to to get him to move on or just trying to stop @ the conversation. She wants to leave I guess.”, the utterance’s function to extract the speaker from an ongoing conversation is stressed. It is interpreted as serving to avoid having to plainly state one’s wish to terminate the conversation. However, as this is not stated explicitly, it is likely that the subject had previously encountered the same or a very similar utterance in comparable situations, and stored these encounters in long-term memory, causing the utterance to achieve memorized meaning, which allows
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for the above inferences. Furthermore, the utterance is obviously stored as preceding a more explicit expression functioning to terminate a conversation. This is evident from the subject’s statement “So and then maybe she’ll continue her part and ehm say that she wants to go.” Another protocol is also very explicit about this function of the utterance: . . . Well. . . . Ok. That utterance means she’s thinking about it. She thinks about what she could say to him. Ok. She doesn’t want to really just leave.
This report documents that this subject also regards Well. . . as a means to not bluntly end a conversation. This is indicated by the subject’s comment “She doesn’t want to really just leave.”, which suggests that terminating the conversation at this point would be uncommon, since the speakers have not reached a joint conclusion of the talk. Well. . . functions to avoid being too direct, and is this time taken to assume the role of a filler, allowing Anna to “think about what she could say to him”. This is also apparent in another protocol in which the subject comments that Well. . . is “perhaps a way of prolonging this little farewell scene”. In this function Well. . . is held to be typically reciprocated: “then he’ll come around to say ‘Well. . . ’ as well.” Yet another subject interprets Well. . . not so much against the background of the conversation being about to close, but rather in relation to the immediate context of the previous utterance. Well. Uhm . . . I would think that that uh hm. I have no idea what this utterance means. Ehm .. perhaps she’s deciding whether or not she’s going to take something from him. Ehm something to drink or something to eat. Ehm. And . . . I expect he’ll then give her something perhaps.
Her statement that she has “no idea what this utterance means” points towards the fact that well per se does not carry propositional content. In order to process an utterance consisting of well alone, she needs to refer to the previous utterance. Interestingly, another subject referred back to this screen to process screen 2 – Right. Would you like salted peanuts? – obviously aware of what well caused the male protagonist to infer. Right. So she didn’t seem to want something to nibble. She just said ‘Well. . . ’. So then he said/eh made a specific offer of salted peanuts.
In sum, Well. . . often served as a cue to recall the typical preclosing sequence of a conversation. Protocols include mention of the fact that 1) Anna wants to leave, and an appropriate speech act terminating the conversation will follow, and 2) the exchange of leave-taking formulas is commonly preceded by some sort of ‘winding-up’ talk (cf. Stenström 1994: 162). However, well was also in-
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terpreted against the immediate context, taking it to be related to the previous utterances’ propositional content.
Processing propositional content Screens 2 to 5 contain William’s offer of salted peanuts, Anna’s reply that she would prefer crisps, and a more specific offer of Salt and Vinegar crisps, which she accepts. All four utterances displayed on the screens have propositional content and it would therefore be possible to perceive this short sequence as cohesive through overlaps in the argument structure. If Kintsch’s model were to explain discourse processing sufficiently, the subjects’ protocols should not convey reference to scripted knowledge for these four screens. However, the protocols reveal that the subjects refer to other cues apart from the propositions expressed in the separate utterances in order to process these utterances. As for screen 2 – Right. Would you like salted peanuts? –, all subjects related this to the previous exchange of offers and declines. Thus, e.g. one subject stated: Uh. No. He continues on with his list of things that that she could eat. @ OK ehm so then of course she’s gonna say ‘No. I don’t want salted peanuts.’
The utterance is processed as being a continuation of a sequence consisting of similar adjacency pairs, and the forward inference made by the subject who reported the above thoughts expresses her expectation of a further decline. Anna’s previous declines, and thus structure and context, constrain inferences here. Thoughts reported regarding screen 3 – Actually, crisps would be nice. – indicate two aspects: one is that speakers seem to first of all process a proposition if this is possible from the utterance. The second concerns the fact that subjects make reference to knowledge stored in long-term memory in case a connection between utterances cannot be achieved through reference to the propositions as is assumed in Kintsch’s model. Some subjects explicitly mentioned the missing propositional link, expressing that they obviously expected cohesion in this part of the sequence, e.g.: Eh, I forgot to say what she would say eh but, there’s eh not a direct response, cause he was offering peanuts, but she says ‘Actually crisps would be nice’.
Others even reported the actual reasoning that allowed them to interpret the utterance despite the perceived lack of coherence.
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Hm. She says ‘Actually crisps would be nice.’, which had nothing of course to do with the peanuts, but since she been talking all about food it must have fit. ∼∼ Only because it’s related to food. Uh next utterance would be from him.
All subjects’ forward inferences, however, reveal that the situational context also exerts a strong influence on the expectations regarding the next utterance. For example screen 2 resulted in thoughts like: “I expect an utterance from her. Either still thinking about it or finally coming to the decision and leaving.” Obviously, the subject had the overall setting or context – that is Anna having come to William’s house only to change clothes – on her mind and again recalled scripted knowledge about this kind of situation. This makes her expect a final decision and a leave-taking, despite the fact that coherence at this point of the conversation could be achieved through the propositional content of a further contribution.
Processing dispreferred utterances Anna’s utterance I’m taking your time. presented on screen 10 occurs after she and William have exchanged what Schegloff and Sacks (1973) and Button (1987 & 1990) have described as first and second closings which provide the environment for the commonly following terminals. However, Anna ‘opens up’ the closing with her utterance, which presents a “minimal movement” (cf. Button 1990: 95) out of the closing. The turn given on screen 10 can thus be characterized as being unexpected in that it does not match experiential knowledge about the make up of a prototypical closing phase. The TOL data gathered for this screen indicate that this turn is indeed found not to be in accordance with the expectations raised by its context. Subjects describe it as “awkward” and state that it “seems a bit of uhm a surprise” and “doesn’t really fit”. Anna is said to be supplying “pleasantries” and to be “playing for time.” Subjects also infer that this utterance moves out of the closing phase and although Button (1990: 95) states that “the sequence type is closing implicative” they no longer anticipate the next utterance by reference to scripted knowledge about closings. She somehow wants to stay because she’s still standing there and says ‘I’m taking your time.’ Hm. Eh so his response would be to also polite and maybe say ‘No. It’s not trouble’. ‘It’s no problem.’ whatever. ‘I’ve got nothing to do.
Forward inferences of most subjects in this case are built on stored knowledge regarding the exchange of specific polite formulae. Others made no forward
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inferences at all. Thus, this utterance, which is unexpected within a given script and at the same time of socio-pragmatic nature is interpreted with reference to existing societal norms.
Processing adjacent formulas As has been discussed above, closings typically contain pairs of turns which have been described as forming adjacency pairs in that they are adjacent turns constituting a first part that requires a particular second part to follow (cf. Schegloff & Sacks 1973). The second turn in two adjacent turns may be of either preferred or dispreferred nature, i.e. structurally more or less likely to occur (cf. Levinson 1983: 307).13 The structural likelihood results from previous experience of similar pairs which has led to their storage in speakers’ long-term memory. In the experiment, screens 16/17 and screens 18/19 form such adjacency pairs. The first pair contains Anna’s exchange of a thank and Williams reply with a minimize (this pair is described e.g. in Edmondson & House 1983: 163ff.) Subjects’ reports in this case contain hints at normative constraints operating on the further production of utterances. And I guess that as typical English he’ll say again that it was not problem for him to help her or that he enjoyed helping her or that ehm yeah I don’t know, something, some sort of casual response.
Three subjects presumed that the next screen would present “‘It was a pleasure’ or something like that”. At the same time this exchange was also perceived as being ironic regarding the circumstances, i.e. the fact, that help would not have been necessary at all if William had not spilt the orange juice over Anna in the first place. In the case of screens 18 and 19, a leave-take (in the terms of Edmondson & House 1981) is followed by a second leave-take, which is the prototypical exchange of terminals. The two screens contain the actual leave-taking and present, thus, highly conventionalized and also nonpropositional utterances. Because of the nonpropositional content, data should reveal that subjects need to rely on a script to process the utterances. In fact, thoughts indicated that subjects depended on knowledge reflecting their previous experience of leavetakes, which obviously includes the formulas conventionally employed in this phase of a conversation.
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The utterance Bye then. is processed as signaling the final leave-taking, marking the definite end of the conversation as is indicated in the following two pieces of data: So she took up the sign or the hint that the conversation is over and is officially ending with her saying ‘Bye’. And finally says it. ‘Bye then.’. Says the final word which will mean that she’s probably stepping out the door.
Regarding forward inferences upon processing screen 18, protocols contain statements such as “He will probably repeat that, but uh possibly in a downcast way.” This report indicates the fact that leave-takes are commonly reciprocated. The following extract from another protocol also reveals that the subject interpreted screen 18 as an utterance which does not usually allow for any variation in the type of response. ‘Bye then.’ OK. Yeah. She’s finally having her hand on the door knob. And is trying to leave. And he will finally admit defeat and actually have to part from her.
“He will have to admit defeat” here clearly reveals that the subject expects William to accept Anna’s signal and react appropriately by closing the conversation as well. Evidently, both screens 16 and 18 resulted in mental processes which signal that subjects perceive first pairs of adjacency pairs as such and expect speakers to react with reference to structures that are societally agreed to be structurally likely to occur in a closing sequence.
Conclusion This paper has discussed a subset of those utterances which potentially occur within a conversational closing. Analyses of thinking-out-loud protocols have demonstrated that the mental processes during processing are just as heterogeneous as the utterances themselves. Perception was shown to be constrained by the current utterance’s local and global context, by structural likelihood of co-occurrence with another utterance, by propositional content and also by scripted knowledge regarding closings stored in long-term memory. The results were also heterogeneous across subjects. The findings reveal that the perception of utterances in recurring sequences differs across individuals, and that theories need to take into account that the resulting mental processes are not universal, since due to their very nature, long-term memory
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representations are experiential, and no two individuals share exactly the same experiences. Taking these findings into account, it is hardly possible to hold that one specific script determines inferences made throughout the whole sequence of interaction to which the script refers. Also, it is impossible to state that certain types of utterances such as propositional versus nonpropositional are generally processed according to a single theory. This was especially evident in the data representing the processes taking place upon reception of propositional content within a closing sequence. Here, most subjects interpreted the utterance against the background that it occurred within a closing sequence. However, it is also not generally knowledge stored in long-term memory which constrains the perception of the separate utterances within a recurring conversational structure. In case an utterance does not match participants’ expectations, the train of thought that had been triggered by the script is abandoned, and the utterance is processed according to e.g. more general politeness norms.
Notes . Other, more specific examples are the Trick-or-Treat sequence of the Halloween night or the exchange of formulae at a wedding ceremony. . Note, however, that his approach is not meant to claim that interaction is a less important factor in the construction of conversations. Rather, it is felt that speakers are generally both autonomous as well as social beings. . Research by Alba and Hasher (1983) revealed that a piece of information can be selected for a number of reasons, that not only the function but also the form of a piece of information is processed, that a piece of information is not necessarily interpreted all-inclusively, and that a piece of information can be stored in relative isolation. . Proponents of this theory include further: Sanford and Garrod (1981); Johnson-Laird (1983). . Schank himself pointed out, that scripts “work very well for routine events, but tend to break down in novel contexts.” (Long 1989: 33) . The way propositions are constructed is largely determined by lexical information stored in long-term memory, i.e. existing frames, e.g. verb frames which specify the arguments a verb can take, etc. Each sentence or utterance can thus be assigned one or more propositions, depending on its complexity. . An overview concerning conversational openings and closings is given in Meierkord (2000). Their use by native speakers and especially learners of the English language is analyzed in Meierkord (1996).
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Recurrent sequences and mental processes . Nofsinger (1991) distinguishes between a preclosing sequence and a terminal sequence. . Propositional speech, “is made up of newly-created, original, novel utterances. Nonpropositional speech includes conventional and overlearned expressions of all kinds, including idioms, speech formulas, proverbs, expletives, serial lists, rhymes, song titles, sayings, quotations; in fact any expression which a group of native speakers would reliably rate as ‘familiar’.” (VanLancker 1987: 56) Distinctions between creative expressions and routines have been made by Jespersen (1965), DeSaussure (1968), Lyons (1968), Chafe (1968), Weinreich (1969), Fraser (1970), Bolinger (1976), Fillmore (1979) and – most thoroughly – by Pawley and Syder (1980). Traditional linguistic description regarded nonpropositional speech as unproductive and not associated with regular formation processes. These holistic, unanalyzable units were considered to belong to langue, but being of regular syntactic form were also said to interact with parole. Generally, however, their separate analysis was recommended. Generative linguistics has regarded fixed units as ‘transformationally defective’ and separate entries in the lexicon were suggested as their treatment within the generative model posed significant problems. (cf. e.g. Weinreich 1969; Chafe 1968). . TOL is described in detail in Ericsson and Simon (1980) or Olson, Duffy and Mack (1984). . Real-time processing during conversation differs from reading. As e.g. Taylor and Taylor (1990: 41) point out, “the two most salient characteristics of conversational speech are speaker-listener interaction and on-the-spot formulation.” Generating discourse as one speaks implies a certain amount of cognitive pressure, as a speaker needs to organize her thoughts into more or less grammatically well-formed utterances while processing auditory and non-verbal signals she receives from the other participants in the conversation. At the same time, utterances do not need to be as explicit as in written discourse, as all participants have access to contextual cues for interpreting each other’s utterances. . Key to transcripts: (. . . ) indicates unintelligible speech, (text) indicates guesses made by the author, ∼∼ indicates that subjects repeated the instructions, @ indicates laughter. . Within their own framework, Edmondson and House (1981) describe adjacency pairs in terms of initiating turns and turn which satisfy these initiates.
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Nofsinger, R. E. (1991). Everyday Conversation. London: Sage. Olson, G. M., Duffy, S. A., & Mack, R. L. (1984). Thinking-out-loud as a method for studying real-time comprehension processes. In D. Kieras & M. Just (Eds.), New Methods in Reading Comprehension Research (pp. 253–285). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Pawley, A., & Syder, F. H. (1980). Two puzzles for linguistic theory: Nativelike selection and nativelike fluency. In J. C. Richards & R. W. Schmidt, R (Eds.), Communicative Competence (pp. 192–226). London: Longman. Prideaux, G. D. (1984). Psycholinguistics. The Experimental Study of Language. London: Croom Helm. Renkema, J. (1993). Discourse Studies. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Ross, R. N. (1975). Ellipsis and the structure of expectation. San Jose State Occasional Papers in Linguistics, 1, 183–191. Sacks, H. (1992a). Lectures on Conversation, Vol. 1 [ed. by G. Jefferson]. Oxford: Blackwell. Sacks, H. (1992b). Lectures on Conversation, Vol. 2 [ed. by G. Jefferson]. Oxford: Blackwell. Saferstein, B. (1998). Ethnomethodology. In W. Bechtel & G. Graham (Eds.), A Companion to Cognitive Science (pp. 391–401). Oxford, UK & Malden, MA: Blackwell. Sanford, A. J., & Garrod, S. C. (1981). Understanding Written Language. Chichester: Wiley. Schank, R. C. (1978). Predictive understanding. In R. N. Campbell & P. T. Smith (Eds.), Recent Advances in the Psychology of Language – Formal and Experimental Approaches (pp. 91–101). New York: Plenum Press. Schank, R. C., & Abelson, R. P. (1977). Scripts, plans, and knowledge. In P. N.JohnsonLaird & P. C. Wason (Eds.), Thinking: Readings in Cognitive Science (pp. 421–432). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schegloff, E. A. (1986). The routines as achievement. Human Studies, 9, 111–151. Schegloff, E., & Sacks, H. (1973). Opening up closings. Semiotica, 7, 289–327. Schober, M. F., & Clark, H. H. (1989). Understanding by addressees and overhearers. Cognitive Psychology, 21, 211–232. Smith, S., & Jucker, A. (2001). Discourse markers as turns. Evidence for the role of interactional sequence. This volume. Stenström, A.-B. (1994). An Introduction to Spoken Interaction. London: Longman. Tannen, D. (1993). What’s in a frame?: Surface evidence for underlying expectations. In D. Tannen (Ed.), Framing in Discourse (pp. 14–56). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Taylor, I., & Taylor, M. M. (1990). Psycholinguistics: Learning and Using Language. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. The Oxford English Dictionary (1989). (2nd ed. prepared by J. A. Simpson & E. S. C. Weiner; Vol. 14). Oxford: Clarendon Press. van Dijk, T. A., & Kintsch, W. (1983). Strategies of Discourse Comprehension. New York: Academic Press. van Lancker, D. (1987). Nonpropositional speech: neurolinguistic studies. In A. W. Ellis (Ed.), Progress in the Psychology of Language, Vol. 3 (pp. 49–118). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Weinreich, U. (1969). Problems in the analysis of idioms. In J. Puhvel (Ed.), Substance and Structure of Language (pp. 23–81). Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. Yorio, C. A. (1980). Conventionalized language forms and the development of communicative competence. TESOL Quarterly, 14(4), 433–442.
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Boundaries and sequences in studying conversation Robert B. Arundale and David Good University of Alaska Fairbanks / University of Cambridge
Why rethink boundaries and sequences in conversation? Viewed acoustically, conversational sequences involve a continuously varying stream of sound energy, yet people perceive conversations as serial arrangements of distinct units: sounds, words, clauses, and more. Participants are thus continually involved in a process of “unitizing” the sound they hear. Analysts have standardly assumed that unitizing is a process of identifying discrete, bounded units that divide the continuous stream of sound. In particular, they have assumed that the boundaries between these units are well-defined and can be ignored because they are of vanishingly small duration. We question these assumptions in view of recent research, arguing that the standard concepts of boundaries in conversational sequences are untenable. We reconceptualize boundaries as ex post facto phenomena that emerge in the co-constituting of conversation. If boundaries between units are not well-defined and cannot be ignored, then units are not well-defined either, and one must call into question the standard assumptions regarding how unitizing operates in producing language sequences. Reconceptualizing boundaries thus implies reconceptualizing sequences, which demands rethinking issues of sequentiality in examining conversation. We take such rethinking to be an important endeavor, in that we hold with others that conversation is the “primordial site of human sociality” (Schegloff 1987: 101; Jacoby & Ochs 1995). We maintain that the view of boundaries and sequences one adopts in analyzing language use depends fundamentally on whether one views interaction as monadic or dyadic. We develop our argument by noting, first, that the standard model of language use employs an analyst’s perspective, and views con-
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versation as the product of co-present, but psychologically separate monads. In contrast, we develop a conception of talk-in-interaction employing a participant’s perspective, and view conversation as a situated, dyadic phenomenon involving the continuing co-constituting of a stream of talk. Second, we argue that the dyadic or interactional achievement of conversation involves a type of conjoint, dynamic psychological activity we identify as “dyadic cognizing.” Third, we examine the evidence grounding this conceptualization and sketch a model of interactional achievement in talk. Fourth, drawing on the model, we develop the concept of dyadic cognizing by identifying a general principle: each participant’s cognitive processes in using language involve concurrent operations temporally extended both forward in time in anticipation or projection, and backwards in time in hindsight or retroactive assessing of what has already transpired. As participants interact, these concurrent cognitive activities become fully interdependent or dyadic. Fifth, we argue that because both speaker and recipient are engaged in such prospective and retrospective analyses, boundaries and units in language use are not fixed, a priori elements of language, but rather ex post facto properties co-constituted as interaction proceeds. Lastly, we consider certain implications of this reconceptualizing of boundaries and units for rethinking the study of sequences and the concept of sequentiality.
Interaction as monadic or dyadic Consider the following description of how a speaker and a recipient go about producing and comprehending a conversation: a speaker’s intention to perform some action with regard to a recipient leads her to use her knowledge of language structures to assemble words into a sequence that represents her meaning and intention, and to utter that sequence as the first move in a conversational game. A recipient uses his knowledge of language structures to parse the uttered sequence into words, reconstructing the speaker’s meaning and inferring her intention on the basis of his knowledge of the rules governing speech action. The recipient and the speaker then switch roles as he produces the second move in the conversational game, and so on. Though individual scholars elaborate parts of this account somewhat differently, we submit that this view of a speaker’s production and a listener’s comprehension of language is a fair portrayal of the “encoding/decoding” model of language use predominant in research in language pragmatics during the last third of the last century. We submit, as well, that this standard model is an inad-
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equate account of conversational language use in a number of regards. Certain of these inadequacies have been apparent for some time, as in the problematic focus on whole utterances, as in the separate-utterance-by-separate-utterance view of language use inherited from language philosophy (e.g., Brown & Levinson 1978; Schegloff 1984, 1996), and as in the shortcomings of speech act accounts of language use, and more specifically of conversational sequencing (e.g., Good 1989; Levinson 1981, 1983; Schegloff 1984, 1988b). The encoding/decoding model presumes as well that speaker’s meanings and intentions are fixed or determinate (Clark 1997) prior to encoding, and that (as in telegraphy) the listener’s task in decoding is confined to recovery of the original message and is complete when the speaker’s utterance ends (Arundale 1999). These more specific critiques need to be seen, however, against the background of a history of critiques of the individualist or monadic psychology underlying this standard model. More specifically, over the past thirty years scholars in several disciplines have found themselves in agreement that human interaction is a dyadic, not an individual phenomenon. Clinical psychologists Watzlawick, Beavin, and Jackson argued for the dyad in 1967, followed by researchers in human communication (e.g., Krippendorff 1970; Pearce & Cronen 1980; Arundale 1999). Beginning with Sacks’ (1992) lectures during the mid-1960s, conversation analysts have argued that talk-in-interaction is an interactional achievement, with the conversational dyad as the fundamental focus of study. In the same era, many studies of child language development came to focus strongly on interaction in the parent-child dyad (Clark & Clark 1977; Snow & Ferguson 1977), a view reflected more recently in work in psycholinguistics that views conversation as the conjoint, collaborative activity of dyads (Clark 1996). As Jacoby and Ochs (1995) make evident, these positions find parallels in research in other disciplines as well, with the obvious conclusion that human interaction, and more specifically talk-in-interaction, cannot be adequately understood unless it is conceptualized and studied as a fundamentally dyadic phenomenon. Scholars in the dialogic tradition (e.g., Marková 1982; Marková, Graumann & Foppa 1995) take a similar position, and Linell (1998) has offered one of the more detailed discussions of their distinction between dialogism and monologism, specifically rejecting accounts of human communication and of language use that attempt to explain interaction by reduction to the cognitive processes and/or the actions of individual speakers and recipients. These monologic accounts hold to the line that there is an abstract language system that determines sequence and meaning, that individual speakers are sovereign sources of intention, and that language use is secondary to and contingent on
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these features of language (Linell 1998). O’Connell and Kowal (1996: 97–98) have elaborated this critique in reference to psycholinguistics: Psycholinguistics, in the second half of the twentieth century, has been essentially monological. Furthermore, is has been based largely on written-biased, unrealistic demonstration materials which were nearly always engaged on a within-sentential, noncontextualized basis and experimented on in an equally sterile laboratory setting. We are convinced, however, that a viable psychology of language use must be just the opposite: dialogically based, field observational, fully contextualized, and ecologically valid. Language use is always communicative, but that aspect has been essentially lost. . .
We maintain that exactly the same critique applies to research in language pragmatics that has employed the encoding/decoding model of language use. O’Connell and Kowal’s characteristics of a viable study of language use suggest two broad characteristics of an alternative to the standard model. First, what is implied by a “dialogically based” view of language use? Among the accounts that Linell placed in the monologic camp are several that might appear to be dialogical, in that they acknowledge the co-presence of speakers and recipients. Grice (1989) and Searle (1969) explicitly included both speakers and recipients in their work in language philosophy, as have Meyer (2000), Schank (1982), Sperber and Wilson (1986), and others in their work in cognition and language. However, these approaches all employ the standard model, so that speaker and recipient are conceptualized as individualized, isolated monads: the recipient is no more than an entity or a representation in the cognition of the speaker, and vice versa, the assumption being that both speaker and recipient mutually represent one another. While no doubt an accurate assumption, the explanation of language activity provided by these and other variants of the standard model is nevertheless grounded firmly in the cognition (and more generally the psychology) of the monadic individual. Regardless of the speaker’s and recipient’s mutual representing, no approach that employs the standard model is formally capable of explaining conversational activity as anything other than a summative sequence of individual cognitive activities and/or actions. In contrast, the position of many scholars who hold that human interaction, and more specifically conversational activity, is dialogic or dyadic in nature is that conversational sequences are demonstrably nonsummative. “Nonsummativity” is one index of the emergence of new properties in systems comprised of interlinked units, in this case persons, and is evident when “The state of each unit is constrained by, conditioned by, or dependent on the state of
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other units. The units are coupled. Moreover, there is at least one measure of the sum of its units which is larger [or less] than the sum of that measure of its units” (Miller 1965: 200–201). Cappella (1994) and Krippendorff (1970) have provided formal criteria for demonstrating nonsummativity in all forms of interaction. We would note that not all approaches labeled as “dialogic” actually conceptualize and examine talk-in-interaction as a nonsummative activity. To avoid confusion, we employ the term “dyadic,” instead, and hold that no approach can be considered dyadic, nor can it provide an adequate explanation of talk-in-interaction, unless it conceptualizes and demonstrates the nonsummative nature of language use in dyads or groups, or in other terms, unless it understands and provides evidence for language use as an interactional achievement. Second, what is implied by a view of language use that is “field observational, fully contextualized, and ecologically valid?” The approach to conversation as a dyadic activity developed here is consistent in important ways with research in ecological psychology. Beginning in the early 1950s, Barker and Wright (1951, 1955) and their colleagues argued for the necessity of examining human behavior in its ordinary social, embedded, located, and specific aspects, as an antidote to laboratory studies that focused on the individual, isolated, detached, and abstract aspects of behavior. In particular, ecological psychologists drew attention to the fact that everyday activity is comprised of an on-going, dynamically changing, complex “stream” of undifferentiated behaving, and problematized the issue of how this stream was to be divided into recognizable units. Barker distinguished between behavior units and behavior tessare, the boundaries of the former being “points of the behavior stream where changes occur independently of the operation of the investigator” (1963: 1), and the latter being “fragments of behavior that are created or selected by the investigator” (1963: 2) in view of some conceptual scheme external to the behavior. Barker (1963: 17) rejected concern with tessare, arguing that in studying the dynamics of the stream of behavior, there are no external criteria available for research on behavior units; the behavior stream, itself, decrees the boundaries and the properties of its own parts. The only evidence that reported behavior units actually exist, and are, in fact, self-generated, inherent divisions of the behavior stream, . . . can be obtained by replicating the observations and analyses.
Subsequent studies in this tradition examined how perceivers segmented streams of behavior they observed (see Schneider, Hastorf, & Ellsworth
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1979: 27–28), and developed taxonomies for analyzing extended sequences (e.g., an entire day’s talk in Soskin & John 1963). Having called attention to the need to study the complexities and dynamics of the stream of behavior, and having recognized that that stream “decrees the boundaries and properties of its own parts,” ecological psychologists nevertheless examined such streams solely from the perspective of the analyst or observer, rather than taking into account the perspective of the participant or member involved in constituting the stream. Accordingly, though the ecological psychologists attended to the complex details of on-going interaction in ordinary environments, the taxonomies of behavior units they developed reflected the analyst’s, not the participant’s perspective. The on-going process of unitizing the stream of sound energy into the serial arrangement of language units that we perceive as a conversation is an activity carried out first and foremost by participants, hence we maintain that understanding the nature of conversational sequencing requires the analyst to conceptualize the unitizing process from perspective of the participant. Lave’s (1988) more recent research on “situated cognition” shares with the ecological psychologists the emphasis on field observation of the complex activities of persons in ordinary environments, but her explanation frames the cognitive activity in everyday action (doing math) as a participant’s accomplishment. We hold that an adequate explanation of talk-in-interaction not only needs to be ecologically valid in the broader tradition of ecological psychology, but also needs to incorporate the participant’s perspective as in research on situated cognition. A fully contextualized, ecologically valid and dyadic account of conversational activity would thus acknowledge that each participant in talk is immersed in a very rich environment, one part of which is the sequential context that is being dynamically constituted with one’s co-participants.
Dyadic cognizing In taking the position that studying conversation requires viewing it as a dyadic, rather than a monadic phenomenon, we categorically reject attempts to explain the interactional achievement of talk-in-interaction in terms of or by reduction to individual cognitive phenomena. But we also maintain that seeing the dyad as fundamental in studying talk-in-interaction does not entail that one should altogether ignore the place of cognitive activity in interactional achievement. One can eschew concern with cognition on other grounds, but a dyadic focus does not in itself require that step. Indeed, we argue there is ev-
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idence for a hitherto unacknowledged aspect of cognitive processing we term “dyadic cognizing,” which arises in and is integrally bound to the interactional achievement of conversation, and which cannot be studied apart from it. (We use “cognizing,” rather than “cognition,” to emphasize the dynamic nature of these phenomena.) The detailed nature of the achievement of conversation has become apparent in research over the past three decades, as a result of the focus on talk-in-interaction as dyadic. We employ this detailed knowledge reflexively to ground our conceptualization of the cognitive processing associated with conversation. We have chosen the phrase “dyadic cognizing” intentionally because it appears to be an oxymoron, which it would be if one held that the cognitive activity of every individual were independent from that of every other individual. “Dyadic cognizing” points instead to the dynamically interdependent cognitive processing of two individuals engaged in interaction. Such processing exhibits nonsummativity in that it cannot be reduced to a summative sequence generated either through the interleaved, monadic cognitive operations of two individuals producing and responding to verbal stimuli, or through the interlocked playing out of two monadic individual’s scripts or schema for producing or comprehending utterances (cf. Heritage 1984: 307–308). The concept of dyadic cognizing does not conflict with the principle of cognitive autonomy (Krippendorff 1993), which recognizes that no individual has direct access to the cognitive activity of any other individual. That humans are cognitively autonomous, however, does not imply that the cognitive processes of one individual are independent of the cognitive processes of other individuals. In short, “dyadic cognizing” is not an oxymoron. That nonsummative cognitive activity is possible for two cognitively autonomous individuals is not readily apparent, given that the tradition of conceptualizing human beings as living systems (Miller 1965) has led to the presumption that nonsummative properties arise only in systems that incorporate a top-level, self-regulating controller such as the brain/nervous subsystem. But nonsummative properties are not restricted to such systems. We hold with others (Maturana 1980; Pearce & Cronen 1980) that social systems, particularly dyads, have no top-level controlling subsystem at the level of the social unit, but are nevertheless capable of generating complex patterns of behavior that are demonstrably nonsummative. Dyadic cognizing is integral to generating and coincident with such nonsummative social behavior. We do not deny the presence and importance of autonomous or independent cognitive processing surrounding and supporting human interaction, but maintain that com-
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plex dyadic social behavior like talk-in-interaction cannot be explained solely in terms of such monadic processing. Several distinctions may be useful. “Dyadic cognizing” does not refer to one’s cognitive representations of social groups or of other individuals and their actions, nor to the processes that underlie judgments of oneself or of other social actors that are concerns in research on “social cognition” (e.g., Higgins, Herman, & Zanna 1982). Likewise, the terms do not describe the processes by which individuals construct inferences regarding the intentions or cognitive states of others, as in Sperber and Wilson’s (1986) cognitive approach to language use, or as in Frith and Frith’s (1999) examination of understanding and manipulating other’s mental states so as to alter their behavior. Mead (1934), among others, characterized mind as a social phenomenon, and the knowledge held across or among the members of social aggregates could be characterized as “distributed cognition,” but neither of these concepts describes “dyadic cognizing.” Schegloff (1991: 168) uses the general phrase “socially shared cognition,” and more specifically the term “intersubjectivity,” to point to the “shared understanding by the coparticipants in conversation of the import or upshot of an utterance.” In addition, Clark (1996) argues that participants create what he terms “common ground” in initiating and maintaining conversations. To the extent that the achievement of any of these three phenomena is examined as a dynamic process, the phenomenon falls within the scope of “dyadic cognizing,” but to the extent that one of these terms is used to point to a product of interaction, it references a shared, but nevertheless monadic cognition that is distinct from processes of “dyadic cognizing.” Finally, Edwards (1997: 296) has argued that rather than seeing talk as a manifestation of cognitions or emotions, these and other psychological phenomena need to be seen as “ways of talking,” and to be explained “as patterns of discursive acts” (Harré & Gillett 1994). Our concern in developing the concept of “dyadic cognizing” is of a different sort: to provide a theoretical framework for, and hence a basis for research on, an aspect of cognitive processing integral to the interactional achievement of conversation in particular, and of human communication in general. Though we have termed such interdependent cognitive processing “dyadic,” it is in principle not limited to dyads, in that it could occur among a number of individuals actively engaged in interaction as speakers and recipients. In addition, though we have and will continue to discuss dyadic cognizing principally with regard to verbal conversational activity, it is evident both that verbal conversational activity is fully integrated with nonverbal conversational phenomena (as in Goodwin 1979; Streeck 1995), and that such “visible acts of meaning” (Bavelas & Chovil 2000) are also interactionally
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achieved. We maintain, however, both that no examination of human cognitive (or neurological) processes can be considered well grounded apart from a thorough description of the dynamics of the associated behavior, and that at this juncture our descriptions of verbal conversational behavior are more comprehensive than our descriptions of the visible aspects of interaction.
Evidence for a model of interactional achievement in conversation One source of evidence for the phenomena of dyadic cognizing is a series of psycholinguistic studies by Clark and Schaefer (1987) and by Schober and Clark (1989), who showed that persons positioned as overhearers of a conversation, and who therefore have access to the same information as the primary conversants, nevertheless do not interpret the conversation in the same way as the two persons actively engaged in constituting the conversation. Overhearers are involved in monadic cognitive activity, but do not appear to be engaged in dyadic cognizing as we have framed it. However, excepting research such as that of Clark (1996), the predominant focus of research in psycholinguistics is on the monadic comprehension and production of the language structures identified in linguistic theory, rather than on the use of language as it appears in talk-in-interaction. As a consequence, the more compelling empirical evidence for dyadic cognizing is to be found in research in conversation analysis (CA). Research in CA seeks an ecologically valid account of conversational interaction, framed from the participant’s perspective, and grounded in detailed examination of actual talk. CA researchers eschew theory building, especially theorizing in advance of thorough examination of the sequential organization of the specific instances of talk that are the object of study, and especially theorizing that conceptualizes conversational interaction as dependent on or driven by cognitive processes (Heritage 1984: 241–243). Nevertheless, Schegloff (1991: 153–154) has argued that “the world of interaction . . . enters into the very composition, design, and structuring of conduct and is part and parcel of whatever processes – cognitive and otherwise – are germane to the conception and constitution of acts, messages, or utterances.” We agree, and given our perspective on interaction as dyadic, we take the accumulated, detailed descriptions of the achievement of ordinary conversational behavior provided by CA as the primary empirical evidence grounding our conceptualization of the phenomena we have identified as “dyadic cognizing.” In choosing CA research as the key source of evidence, however, we also take on the challenge of summarizing that evidence. Given that Heritage’s 1984
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overview is sixty pages long, and that Levinson’s 1983 introduction is longer, a short, current summary is not feasible. Instead, we present an example of ordinary conversation and a summary of a detailed analysis of it presented elsewhere, and in light of that example sketch a dyadic view of the achievement of conversational sequencing. Building on this dyadic view, we develop a general principle characterizing participants’ cognitive processing of talkin-interaction. The “Janus Principle” not only specifies the nature of dyadic cognizing more fully, but also serves as the basis for rethinking the standard view of boundaries and units that derives from monadic encoding/decoding views. Rethinking boundaries and units leads directly to rethinking sequences in language use. Schegloff presents an extended analysis of the following segment of conversation in two different articles (1987, 1988a: 138–139). The segment is reproduced here using the transcription conventions common in CA research, with the addition of indications of three head movements by Mike, a vertical nod {⇓⇑⇓}, a brief lateral shake{⇐⇒}, and a vigorous vertical nod {⇓⇑⇓⇑⇓}. (1) Auto Discussion 1 Curt: (W’ll) how wz the races las’night. 2 (0.8) 3 Curt: Who w’n [th’ feature.] 4 Mike: [Al won, ] 5 (0.3) 6 Curt: [(who)]= 7 Mike: [ Al. ]= 8 Curt: =Al did? 9 (0.8) 10 Curt: Dz he go out there pretty regular? 11 (1.5) {⇓⇑⇓} 12 Mike: Generally evry Saturdee. 13 (1.2) 14 Phyllis: He wins js about every Saturday too:. 15 Ryan: Bo[: Bo! 16 Curt: [He- He’s about the only regular
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Schegloff focuses on Curt’s utterance in lines 16–18 in his interaction with Mike, who is both knowledgeable about the auto races and has been talking about them. Note that Schegloff bases his characterization of what is occurring at each point in Curt’s utterance on the convergence of several different, formal characterizations of conversational phenomena identified in CA, and so provides a depth of analysis not evident in this summary. Curt’s first turn constructional unit (or TCU) in lines 16–17 begins with his recycling of “He” in view of the environmental interference of Ryan calling to a dog, and ends with “there.” Schegloff argues on the basis of the formal nature of the repair in this first TCU, specifically the insertion of the emphasized upgrade “good” into an otherwise identical assessment, and on the basis of Curt’s starting his second version of the assessment at the last possible point for a repair before a potential transition relevance place (the left arrow indicating that the first “regular” is pronounced with a rush-through), that Curt both references Phyllis’s utterance in line 14 and displays that he had not earlier taken it into account. The repair thus “looks backward,” not only to the initial version of the assessment, but also to Phyllis’s utterance, by means of which Schegloff argues she has introduced a distinction between the matter-of-factness of Al’s winning races (as developed in Curt & Mike’s exchanges in lines 4–9), and the regularity of Al’s competing in them (as in Curt’s question in 10, and Mike’s nonverbal agreement in 11 and verbal clarification in 12). Curt’s emphasis on “out” in his upgrade of his initial assessment, together with other formal aspects of the utterance, allows Mike to project the turn’s immanent completion, and hence the point at which he might begin speaking. However, coincident with Curt’s utterance of “there,” he observes a brief lateral head shake from Mike. Schegloff argues on the basis of several formal features of conversation in general and of this conversation in particular that Mike’s head movement is the gesture of an incipient speaker, and falls into a formal class of features that “look forward” to disagreement. Such “predisagreements” can be seen to afford their recipients the possibility of reformulating their talk to achieve agreement. Curt takes this opportunity by rushing into his second TCU, reducing its opening “Does” to “z,” and proffering “a candidate exception to the assessment offered in the first part of the turn. It is a guess at what, or rather whom, Mike has in mind in projecting the disagreement displayed by his lateral shake” (1988a: 146). Schegloff (1988a: 147) continues: The initial success of this move is striking. Instead of the imminent disagreement of which the lateral shake was a harbinger, we find an apparent agree-
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ment. Mike agrees with, and confirms, Curt’s guess that ‘Keegan’s out there’ and (in keeping with the revised version of Curt’s turn which concerns not only ‘regulars’ but ‘good’ regulars) he adds that he [Keegan] is ‘doin real good this year.’ This agreement-formatted talk is accompanied by a vigorous vertical nod [at line 19, and] . . . it allows the parties to end up in a mutual alignment rather in an opposition.
As Schegloff (1988a: 153) concludes, there is an “interactional basis for the occurrence in this turn at talk of two distinct turn-constructional units, and for the three tries – including two distinct versions – of the first of these units.” Both the turn as a whole, and the units within it, are interactionally achieved. We acknowledge that the demonstration of interactional achievement in lines 16–18 does not by itself warrant the claim that all utterances are co-constituted. That warrant rests on the empirical evidence of three decades of CA research, as in the exemplars that Schegloff, Ochs, and Thompson (1996: 39–40) have identified. In light of this example of the empirically grounded analyses provided in CA research, consider this brief, quite general sketch of a dyadic view of the cognitive operations involved in the interactional achievement of an utterance. Focusing first on producing talk, a given speaker (e.g., Curt in lines 16–18) designs an utterance for a particular recipient (e.g., here Mike as well as Phyllis), that design involving both the projection of that recipient’s future interpreting and subsequent utterance (e.g., Curt’s projecting of Mike’s disagreeing and incipient verbalization at line 17), and the assumption that the utterance will be the presumptive basis for his own and other’s interpreting of whatever utterance follows it (e.g., Mike’s line 19). However, the speaker (e.g., Curt) also knows that the utterance will be placed adjacent to particular prior utterances (e.g., lines 14 and earlier), and so must design his utterance (e.g., the first version of the TCU in lines 16–17) both to be interpretable by others in view of those prior utterances, and to be an indicator of how he has interpreted them. At the same time, the speaker also designs the utterance (e.g., Curt’s upgrade in the first TCU in lines 16–17) so as to address his own concerns (e.g., displaying his interpretation of the import of Phyllis’s contribution in line 14), one central aspect of these concerns being to design the utterance so that as others interpret it, they will see their own or other’s prior utterances as being retroactively confirmed (e.g., Mike’s design of line 19 as confirming Curt’s second TCU in lines 17–18), or as being retroactively redirected (e.g., Curt’s design of his second TCU with respect to the disagreement engendered by his upgrade of his first TCU).
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Focusing second on comprehending talk, a given recipient (e.g., Mike in listening to Curt’s lines 16–18) interprets an utterance using expectations regarding what meanings and action will be conditionally relevant at the point of the current utterance. These expectations are invoked in interpreting other’s prior utterances (e.g., expectations Mike may have that winning will be relevant given Phyllis’s line 14), and/or in interpreting the recipient’s own prior talk (e.g., expectations Mike may have that regularity of competing will be relevant given Curt’s line 12). The recipient’s current interpreting is sequential in nature in that as the utterance unfolds (e.g., across Curt’s first version, upgrade, and second TCU in lines 16–18), the recipient integrates his interpreting of each new utterance component with his still evolving interpreting of the prior utterance(s), adjacent to which the current one has been placed and to which it is presumed to be linked. As the recipient performs the integrating, he assesses the consistency between his current interpreting and his prior interpreting. Assessing leads in some cases to recognition that aspects of the current interpreting are problematic (e.g., Mike’s incipient disagreement at line 17), and in other cases to retroactive change in prior interpreting (e.g., the change in Mike’s interpreting of Curt’s first version of the assessment in line 16 that results as he interprets Curt’s upgrade). Most commonly, however, assessing leads to confirmation of one’s evolving interpreting of one’s own or of other’s prior utterances (e.g., Curt’s interpreting of his second TCU in lines 17–18 as confirmed by his interpreting of Mike’s line 19). In these processes of interpreting and assessing, the recipient also invokes expectations of other’s future interpreting of the recipient’s own next utterance (e.g., the shift in Mike’s expectation for how his own next utterance would be interpreted as Curt utters his second TCU in lines 17–18), and very importantly, develops grounds for inferences regarding the nature of one’s co-participant’s interpretations, to which one has no direct access. Arundale (1999) provides a more detailed examination of the processes of recipient design in producing talk and of sequential interpreting in comprehending it. Nevertheless, this brief sketch of both processes makes apparent that one’s recipient design and sequential interpreting of utterances in conversation are interdependent in real time with the recipient designing and sequential interpreting of others. Recipient design involves projecting both one’s own and other’s sequential interpreting, together with how that interpreting may be employed in retroactive assessing. Sequential interpreting involves not only retroactive assessing of one’s own and other’s sequential interpreting, but also projecting one’s own and other’s interpreting of future utterances. Recipient design and sequential interpreting, projecting and retroactive assessing, are all
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tightly entwined. Our sketch of the cognitive operations involved in the interactional achievement of utterances is consistent with the assumption of cognitive autonomy, but very clearly conversants’ cognitive processes in designing and interpreting talk-in-interaction are fully interdependent, or in our terms, dyadic. Schegloff ’s analysis suggests the type of evidence that CA research provides for interdependence and nonsummativity in conversation. On the basis of that evidence, we maintain that our sketch is a valid, though much oversimplified model of the entwining and emergence that characterize the cognitive processing involved in co-constituting conversation.
Dyadic cognizing and the Janus Principle Contrary to the assumptions in encoding/decoding models, the dyadic model makes evident that conversational participants do not generate their utterances independently of one another, and that whole utterances are not the units out of which conversations are made. The CA research that grounds the dyadic model makes apparent that accounts of conversation as speech act sequences are not adequate, and that conversant’s meanings are not fixed or determinate, whether in designing or interpreting utterances. More central to the present discussion, however, the dyadic model makes evident both that participants project or anticipate the nature of both their own and the other’s future producing of utterances, and that they do so at all levels of linguistic structure from phonemes (Repp & Liberman 1987) to utterances, each level having a different span of projection that would appear to end as production of the relevant unit commences. In discussing anticipation, Good (1995: 144) argues not only that “there is a progression through the production of an utterance in what is being anticipated,” but also that anticipation or foresight takes place only in conjunction with hindsight, or the retroactive assessing of interpretations of what has been produced thus far in the utterance or conversation. The backward limit of hindsight also progresses as the comprehension of an utterance proceeds, each level of structure having a different span of assessment that would appear to commence as the production of the relevant unit ends. We argue on the basis of both our model and the evidence on which it rests that such foresight and hindsight are fundamental to the interactional achievement of conversation, and we refer to the simultaneous and dyadic operation of foresight and hindsight as the “Janus Principle.” The Principle is evident not only in comprehending utterances, but also in producing them, and blurs the traditional distinction between these two processes
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(see Bever 1976; and Clark 1997, on other interdependencies of comprehension and production). The Janus Principle serves to specify more fully our conceptualization of dyadic cognizing. Each participant’s processing in using language involves a set of concurrent cognitive operations that are temporally extended, not only forward in time in recipient design of their own utterances and in anticipation of other’s talk (cf. Clark 1997: 576), but also backwards in time in the retroactive assessing of interpretations of what has already been produced in their own and in other’s utterances (cf. Schegloff 1988b: 59). As two individuals begin to interact, these cognitive operations immediately become fully interdependent, so that in interacting the participants continually both proactively afford and retroactively constrain one another’s comprehending and producing of every utterance. Such dyadic cognizing is reflected in the nonsummativity and interdependence that characterize sequences of language use in conversation. The Janus Principle is also basic to our reconceptualizing of boundaries and units in conversation. Recall that in the framework of the monadic encoding/decoding model, the cognitive state of a speaker causes her to construct a verbal sequence which she utters. A recipient’s reconstruction of that verbal sequence leads him to generate the cognitive state previously held by the speaker. A conversational sequence results simply as the two individuals successively alternate in producing utterances. Given the focus in monadic views on whole utterances as the principal units of conversation, the alternating production of utterances has been conceptualized as a chess-like sequence of moves by the individual participants. Good (1989) argues that the chess-game metaphor of conversational sequencing is implausible, as are “conversational grammars” in general, and maintains that central to the chess metaphor is the idea that each move takes place at a point that has a vanishingly small duration – small enough that it “can be ignored in the same way that the period of time for which a force is applied in an impact is ignored in classical physics” (Good 1995: 145). We note two key points. First, in accounts of conversation built on the standard model, the instant of the move between speakers is taken to constitute the boundary of the utterance unit, such that all cognitive activity prior to that instant is foresight, and all activity that follows it is hindsight. Second, the concept of an instantaneous boundary is a very general one, in that it is part of the structuralist characterization not only of utterances, but also of the components that make up utterances. More specifically, as conceptual entities, clauses, phrases, words, syllables, and phonemes are well-defined structural units. That understanding, together with the pervasive bias in linguistics toward concep-
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tualizing spoken language in terms of written language (Linell 1982: 129–133), grounds the presumption that these components have well-defined boundaries that appear in production and comprehension as vanishingly small instants in time – instants that can be ignored just as readers ignore the empty spaces between letters and words. The dyadic model and the research on which it rests make evident that one cannot adequately characterize conversation as a chess-like sequence of alternating moves or utterances, each generated independently by a monadic participant. The Janus Principle makes evident that there are no instantaneous points that separate either utterances or their components from one another in a way that would distinguish foresight from hindsight. What have been conceptualized as the instants in time at which foresight ends and at which hindsight begins are instead diffuse and continually advancing periods of time – periods that are diffuse for two key reasons: first, because they result from the overlapping of different spans of concurrent projecting and retroactive assessing associated with different levels of structure, and second, because the simultaneous foresight and hindsight of each conversant is interdependent with that of co-conversants. We examine both reasons in turn.
Rethinking boundaries and units If the boundaries seen to separate utterances and their components are not infinitesimal points in time, then the unitizing process in which participants are continually engaged during comprehension is not a process of identifying boundary points that divide the stream of sound energy into units, nor of identifying units that define the boundary points. Likewise, the unitizing involved in production is not a process of concatenating units with well-defined boundaries to create a sequence to be articulated. If conversations are interactionally achieved, and if the units of conversation lack well-defined boundaries, then it appears that the boundaries of utterances and of their components must also be co-constituted, just as are the units they are seen to delimit.
Evidence from turntaking One of the clearest examples of the co-constituting of boundaries and units in conversation is the interactional achievement of turn units. Wilson, Wiemann, and Zimmerman (1984) argue that the 1974 turn-taking model of Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson (SSJ) provides a far more satisfactory explana-
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tion for a broader set of data than any prior model, though the initial model leaves a number of issues unaddressed. Central to the SSJ model are two concepts: TCUs were initially described as language structures, e.g., words, phrases, clauses, though their defining feature is that their completion can be projected by both speaker and recipient. Completion of a TCU opens a “transition relevance place” (or TRP), when a switch to another speaker becomes a possibility, though by no means a necessity. A turn contains at least one TCU, and SSJ provided a set of principles describing how shifts among speakers occur at TRPs, as well as how current speakers continue at TRPs. The model explains why turn switch pauses are normally quite short, why they may vanish to virtually zero, and why they may disappear entirely in overlapping talk. In terms of the Janus Principle, SSJ’s model makes evident not only that speakers and recipients are both engaged in proactive analysis as they project TRPs, but also that they are both involved in retroactively constituting turns. The latter point is frequently overlooked, but the model makes clear that until a new speaker actually succeeds in beginning a new turn (which may not happen despite active efforts), neither the new speaker nor the old speaker knows that the old speaker’s turn has come to an end. Though turns may appear to be constructed independently, the evidence adduced by SSJ reveals that they are actively co-constituted. Recently, Schegloff and other conversation analysts have returned to examining turn-taking phenomena, in part to address issues SSJ left open, as for example regarding turn increments (2000a) and overlapping talk (2000b). In an important chapter on turn organization, Schegloff (1996) focuses particularly on the “grammar” or more precisely the “possible relationships between elements” of TCUs. TCU elements may be verbal, but also more broadly vocal, or even nonverbal actions, and may well involve the absence of talk or action where these have been occasioned (Schegloff 1995). TCUs have beginnings (1996: 77) which link back to prior talk and project what the TCU launches, and they also have endings (1996: 83) which provide for the construction and recognition of TCU completion, but which further subdivide into identifiable “pre-possible closings,” “possible completion points,” and “post-possible completions.” Schegloff shows clearly (1996: 81, 96) that in co-constituting TCUs, participants retroactively link to prior talk, and proactively project talk yet to occur. TCUs are evidently quite complex, with a wide array of elements and of relationships among them that warrant further investigation. Despite appearances, then, they are not well-defined units with specifiable beginnings and endings.
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However the significance of Schegloff ’s discussion for our rethinking of boundaries and units lies not just in his study of the nature of TCUs, but also in a rhetorical move he makes, which he characterizes as a “gestalt switch” (1996: 97). Having examined in depth how TCUs are co-constituted and how they are employed in projecting TRPs, Schegloff (1996: 96–97) turns the table on his readers: While from the point of view of the ‘talk itself ’ the turns themselves are the key elements and the transition spaces merely the boundaries, from the point of view of the organization of the interaction as an event realized in situ in real time, it is at the transition spaces that the determination of next chunks is accomplished, amid dense interactional considerations. Transition spaces are objects too – with their own shape, duration, import and limits – starting somewhere in a prior turn or TCU and lasting until somewhere in a next turn or TCU. Taking turns-at-talk as focal (as is the usual stance), the transition spaces are ‘negative space,’ – what comes in between instances of the units. Taking transition spaces as focal, the turns become negative space – mere respites between episodes of determination of when the action shall pass to another, to whom and for what. . . . it is clear that transition spaces are as organizationally strategic as turns are in the organization of talk in interaction. One should not dismiss on grounds of plausibility (or implausibility) the degree to which the talk in the turns (which we are prepared to treat as central) is shaped by the organization of their interstices (which we sometimes are not prepared to so treat).
In terms of our argument, the co-constituting of TRPs as boundaries is equal in importance and in analytic potential in understanding turn organization to the co-constituting of TCUs as units. TRPs are complex, having both duration, and elements and relationships that warrant further investigation, just as TCUs. Despite the prevalent presumption, TRPs are neither well-defined, nor self-evident in view of the TCUs that surround them. Instead, TRPs as boundaries exist symbiotically with TCUs as units, such that what is interactionally achieved in the boundaries is interdependent with what is interactionally achieved in the units. Though we are biased to attend to the units, the boundaries cannot be ignored. Schegloff ’s concern is entirely with the boundaries and units in turns at talk. We maintain that the symbiotic relationship between boundaries and units is also apparent for phonemes, syllables, words, phrases and clauses in conversation, and that unitizing at each of these levels is an interactional achievement.
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Simultaneous projecting and retroactive assessing The unitizing process is of interest because of the broad agreement that in production and reception, “speech is continuous and not chopped up into discrete stretches of sound” (Clark & Clark 1977: 176; cf. Kent 1997: 382). However, as Linell (1982: 130) notes, “it would be stupid to deny that the idea of underlying segments has some kind of basis in speech production and perception,” given that “there is substantial evidence for units like syllables, syllabic constituents (onsets, nuclei, offsets), vowels and consonants as units of production.” Linell (1982: 131) goes on to argue that because they are represented in written form, vowels and consonants are frequently taken to be discrete segments in a sequence “in the sense that (abstractly stated), their boundaries are straight lines perpendicular to the time axis, so that the terminus of one segment is the beginning of the next segment” (Fowler 1980: 116). Regarding vowels and consonants, Bever (1976: 82) argues that “phonemes are neither perceptual nor articulatory entities. Rather, they are psychological entities of a nonsensory, nonmotor kind. . . . In short, phonemes are behaviorally abstract.” From Bever’s perspective, “the initial and primary step in speech perception is to isolate syllables,” which he argues are “perceptually primary.” Syllables are also represented as strings of letters, and thus presumed to have clear boundaries, but in her overview of research findings, Blevins (1995: 207) defines them in rhythmic terms as “the phonological unit which organizes segmental melodies in terms of sonority,” the sonority peak or nucleus being central in perception, rather than the syllable onset and offset (cf. Clark & Clark 1977: 215). Despite their written representation, then, phonemes and syllables are bounded not by well-defined instants in time, but rather by “fuzzy zones” that “belong as much to what precedes as to what follows” (Guaïtella 1999: 517). If the boundaries of phonemes and syllables are not instants but diffuse periods, then the morphemes and words perceived in the stream of talk do not have instantaneous boundaries either, given that they are complex, rule-governed compositions of phonemes and syllables (Matthews 1991). By extension, the phrases and clauses perceived in speech will also not have clearly delimited boundaries, given that they are held to be syntactically governed compositions of morphemes and words. Clauses have been found repeatedly to be central in perceiving talk, though the click-displacement phenomena (Fodor, Bever & Garrett 1974: 328–344) that are one important form of evidence point only to fuzzy zones of transition between clauses. Perceivers project clause transition zones on the basis of multiple, overlapping spans of projecting that involve syntax and semantics (Clark & Clark 1977), as well as acoustics (Hirsh-Pasek
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et al. 1987: 270). These spans of projection converge, but they converge to a diffuse zone or period, not to a vanishingly small instant in time. Perceivers utilize syntactic, semantic, and acoustic constraints in projecting transition zones between lower level components, as well, consistent with Clark and Clark’s (1977: 219) conclusion that “the perception of running speech is different in certain fundamental ways from the perception of speech sounds in isolation.” Note however that this overview of evidence focuses only on the projecting involved in the unitizing process. The Janus Principle holds that projecting does not occur apart from retroactive assessing, for which there is also evidence at all levels of structure. Studies of ambiguity resolution in comprehension (Clark & Clark 1977: 80–84) provide evidence that one’s evolving comprehension of an utterance can lead to new interpretations of specific prior words, as well as of entire syntactic structures. Similarly, Warren (1970, see also Warren & Warren 1970) shows that perceivers can “restore” earlier, obscured phonemes and syllables using semantic and syntactic constraints that become evident as much as four words later in an utterance. New interpretations or restorations are the more obvious results of retroactive assessing, but normal comprehension would be impossible were it not for the continual retroactive confirmation of what were in effect “guesses” (Linell 1982: 140–141) regarding prior acoustic features, meanings, and syntactic structures. More to the point of this chapter, normal comprehension would be impossible apart from retroactive confirmation of perceiver’s guesses regarding boundaries in the stream of talk, as well as units. Just as there are multiple, overlapping spans of projecting, so too are there multiple, concurrent, and overlapping spans of retroactive assessing associated with different levels of structure, which implies that the backward the scope of assessing is also continually progressing as an utterance proceeds. This continual progressing of overlapping spans of concurrent projecting and retroactive assessing is the first of our two key reasons why there are no instantaneous boundaries between units in conversation, only diffuse and continually advancing periods of simultaneous foresight and hindsight from which boundaries emerge, along with units. As Slobin (1979: 37; cf. Clark & Clark 1977: 210–219) summarizes: There is nothing in the acoustic signal per se which reveals the existence of separate speech sounds and separate words, just as there is nothing in the string of words per se that reveals the underlying combinatorial meanings of sentences. Stored knowledge is necessary for the segmentation of utterances and for interpretation of speech.
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We agree with Slobin, but seen against the framework developed here, his summary has two important shortcomings. First, both Slobin’s summary and our examination of unitizing thus far focus entirely on the comprehension of talk, without regard to its production. Producing talk also involves unitizing processes, and as noted earlier, the Janus Principle indicates that such unitizing is not a process of concatenating units with well-defined boundaries to create the sequence that is articulated. We find evidence for this position in research on production at the acoustic level (Kent 1997), as well as at the semantic and syntactic levels (Clark & Clark 1977; also Levelt 1989 at all levels), though examining that evidence is outside the scope of our chapter. Second, and central, both Slobin’s summary and the research examined above are instructive, but entirely monadic in conception and execution. Monadic “stored knowledge” is necessary to comprehend speech, but it is not sufficient given the argument advanced here for the dyadic nature of talk-in-interaction in general, and for dynamic, dyadic cognizing in particular. Beyond Slobin’s summary, two further shortcomings are that the laboratory context of most research on comprehension and production makes its ecological validity questionable, and that much of this research, together with the theory built upon it, is framed without taking into account the participant’s perspective. In conversation, boundaries and units are dyadicly co-constituted by participants in a rich sequential environment. Against this background, one sees more clearly the second of our two key reasons why there are no instantaneous boundaries between units in conversation: the simultaneous foresight and hindsight or the concurrent projecting and retroactive assessing of each conversant is interdependent with that of co-conversants.
Interdependence in foresight and hindsight The interdependence of projecting and retroactive assessing can be seen in examining the predominant psycholinguistic models of comprehension and production in view of the dyadic model. “Analysis by synthesis” models of comprehending (Clark & Clark 1977: 205–219; Fodor, Bever & Garrett 1974: 306–319) and the research grounding them are monadic because they assume that interpreting arises solely from the recipient’s application of his/her stored knowledge of syntax, semantics, and phonetics to the speaker’s talk. These models fail to take into account that a recipient interprets a speaker’s current utterance not only on the presumption of recipient design (as examined below), but also in view of the utterance’s placement adjacent to prior talk by others, most commonly the talk of the current recipient. With regard to foresight,
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interpreting a current utterance involves projections, arising in the recipient’s interpreting of prior talk, of the actions and meanings that will appear in subsequent talk, those projections presumed to apply to interpreting any talk placed adjacent to that prior talk. Indeed, a speaker must take active steps to block a recipient from interpreting adjacently placed talk in view of such projections (Heritage 1984: 261–262). Interpreting adjacently placed talk using projections from prior talk is both dynamic in that a recipient’s interpreting continually evolves as the speaker’s current utterance evolves, and pervasive in that it occurs across utterances, as well as across components within utterances (Clark & Clark 1977: 43–85). With regard to hindsight, psycholinguistic models also fail to take into account that as a recipient is interpreting the adjacently placed current utterance, he/she is simultaneously assessing the consistency of this current interpreting with his/her evolving interpreting of the prior talk. Inconsistency between current and prior interpreting engenders retroactive change in one’s evolving interpreting, or perhaps to initiation of repair work, while consistency retroactively confirms that one’s interpreting is on track (Arundale 1999). Standard psycholinguistic models overlook the simultaneous foresight and hindsight in comprehending utterances, as well as the interdependence of projecting and retroactive assessing across participants. “Encoding” models of production (Levelt 1989; Fodor, Bever & Garrett 1974: 388–397) and the research underlying them are likewise monadic because they assume that utterances result solely from plans by a speaker for encoding his/her own meanings. These models fail to take into account that in generating talk, a speaker not only presumes adjacent placement (as examined above), but also designs his/her talk for one or more particular recipients. With regard to foresight, recipient design involves a speaker’s presuming a recipient will be able to draw upon certain resources, and projecting the ways that recipient will employ those resources in interpreting the utterance the speaker is in the process of designing. Designing talk using projections of subsequent interpreting is not only pervasive, in that it occurs both across utterances and across components within utterances, but also dynamic, in that the speaker’s projections continually evolve as the speaker’s talk evolves. With regard to hindsight, psycholinguistic models also fail to consider that as the speaker is projecting the recipient’s interpreting, he/she is simultaneously assessing the consistency of that projected interpreting with his/her understanding of the recipient’s evolving interpreting of the prior talk (Arundale 1999). Consistency between projected and prior interpreting provides confirmation that the utterance one is designing will likely be interpreted without engendering retroactive change in the recipient’s evolving prior interpreting, while inconsistency may lead one to
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change the design of his/her utterance in order to block such retroactive change (Good 1995). Here again, the standard models overlook the simultaneous projecting and retroactive assessing involved in producing utterances, as well as the interdependence of foresight and hindsight across participants. One sees what the standard monadic models overlook only as one examines comprehending and producing in the ecologically valid context of ordinary conversation, and only as one examines them from the perspective of the participant. In examining CA research on turn taking, we indicated that boundaries and units in talk are symbiotic and equally important in analyses of talk. In examining the perception of utterance components, we argued that in unitizing the stream of talk, participants are simultaneously projecting and retroactively assessing boundaries as well as units. In examining models of comprehension and production, we argued that the simultaneous projecting and retroactive assessing of each participant is interdependent with those of the other. Together these arguments ground our position that what have been conceptualized as boundaries or as instantaneous points in time at which foresight ends and hindsight begins are instead diffuse and continually advancing periods of time. There are no vanishingly small instants of time that separate utterances or their components and that guide participants in unitizing talk. Writing provides well-defined boundaries and units. Talk provides no such things, leaving them to participants to co-constitute. Boundaries and units in conversation are interactionally achieved – they emerge ex post facto, as opposed to existing a priori. In addition, in examining conversation as a dyadic phenomenon, to be studied in its normal ecological setting and from the participant’s perspective, we have argued that unitizing is not a monadic cognitive process. That is, although projecting and retroactive assessing are cognitive processes that individuals can perform as monads, unitizing involves dyadic cognizing, because as soon as two individuals begin talk-in-interaction, each person’s simultaneous projecting and retroactive assessing immediately become dynamically entwined with those of the other person. Unitizing in comprehending and producing conversation involves interdependent or non-summative dyadic cognitive processing, rather than the summative interleaving of the cognitive processes of two monads. Neither the broader concept of dyadic cognizing, nor its instantiation in the Janus Principle, are apparent if one adopts the monadic perspective of standard encoding/decoding models of language use. Only in adopting the dyadic perspective of co-constituting models of interaction can one formulate such concepts, explore their implications, and employ them as
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we have done in arguing that the boundaries and the units apparent in talk are interactionally achieved and symbiotic with one another.
Rethinking sequences and sequentiality: Implications It is this emergent and symbiotic nature of boundaries and units that requires rethinking the concepts of sequence and sequentiality. Monadic encoding/decoding models are the basis for the prevalent assumption that welldefined, instantaneous boundaries exist a priori in the stream of talk, and that by identifying these boundaries one segments the stream and identifies a sequence of units. An alternative but equally problematic assumption is that welldefined, clearly delimited units exist a priori in talk and that one unitizes by isolating these units and hence the boundaries at which they are concatenated into a sequence. A dyadic, co-constituting model makes evident that both boundaries and units emerge post hoc in talk, such that they form a figure/ground gestalt in time, rather than in space as in the familiar illusions. Either boundaries or units may be treated as the figure, but always interdependent in time with the ground, and unanalyzable apart from it. The principal implication is that research on language use at all levels must treat sequentiality as problematic, rather than as given. Sequentiality involves ordering in time, but that ordering is the effortful creation of conversants, not a pre-existing feature of language or of its use in talk. We have sought to problematize the creation of ordering in time out of a stream of sound energy by examining the creating of boundaries and units in that stream as the effortful interactional achievement of dyads. Sequentiality in talk cannot be taken for granted, and therein lie several further implications. Our problematizing and rethinking of sequentiality requires shifting the focus of analytic attention away from the static sequences that are the outcome of unitizing, and toward the complex and dynamic processes of unitizing themselves. This shift of focus does not deny the existence or importance of sequences in language use, for they are readily apparent to participants and analysts alike. However, as we are biased to attend to units, rather than boundaries, so too are we biased to attend to sequences, rather than to the unitizing processes from which they arise. The rethinking that is required involves focusing on unitizing processes as the figure, against the ground of the sequences that result from it. Ford, Fox, and Thompson reach a very similar point on the basis of their examination of the nature of TCUs, noting that “trying to identify TCUs in the data yields only a partial account of what is actually going on
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in the interactions” (1996: 449), and continuing, “We would strongly suggest that researchers interested in turns and turn-taking must approach the analysis of turns with an informed respect for the complex array of practices through which contributions are shaped and revised within the contingencies of talkin-interaction” (1996: 450). We maintain that focusing on unitizing processes is essential in research on all of the different sequences that are examined in studying language use. In developing our argument, we have indicated a number of shortcomings in psycholinguistic research on talk that derive specifically from the failure to problematize the unitizing involved in creating sequences, and more generally from the failure to recognize that all appearances of language are instances of language use, and that all language use is inherently dyadic. The implications for psycholinguistic research and theory are manifold, as they are for theory and research in language pragmatics, but having identified shortcomings and suggested an alternative perspective, we will not develop these implications further. Instead, we turn to implications for research in CA, given our use of that research in grounding our argument. CA researchers adhere steadfastly to the principle that what is to be analyzed in research is not the transcript of participants’ talk, but their actual talk (and associated nonverbal behavior) as recorded on audio (or video) tape, a commitment that involves hours of repeated listening to (and viewing of) data. Listening involves unitizing, as does the transcription necessary both to facilitate study by making the data “stand still,” and to publish the data and analyses of it. The transcription practices employed in CA in particular, and in research on language use in general, have been examined critically (O’Connell & Kowal 1996; Ochs 1979). However, given the sheer complexity of unitizing proceses, CA researchers need to problematize these practices, with special attention to the possibility that they may be uncritically accepting as givens both structural linguistic categories like “word,” and conventions developed for written language, but not employed in speech (Linell 1982). CA researchers also employ a number of analytic concepts that can be seen to presume cognitive processes, even though they eschew the use of psychological explanations for conversational phenomena (cf. Heritage 1984: 241–243; Pomerantz 1991). Among other concepts, “orientation” and “expectation” appear to involve implicit and hence unexamined psychological commitments (Pomerantz, personal communication, May 1997). CA researchers need to examine their use of such concepts, with special attention to the possibility that some of these uses may presume a monadic psychology antithetical to the dyadic project of CA. Having argued that the concept of “dyadic cognition” is
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both viable and productive in understanding the interactional achievement of talk, we believe it can be useful in grounding these important analytic concepts in a dyadic psychology, rather than in a reductionistic monadic one. As Good (1995: 147) argues, the simultaneous foresight and hindsight identified by the Janus Principle “requires substantial cognitive skills,” as does any aspect of dyadic cognizing. We have sketched some of these skills, but much work remains to be done to elaborate them. As initial steps, the concept of “dyadic cognizing” needs to be explored in research on attention and on memory. Attention is linked to the CA concept of “orientation,” and a key concern will be to examine how dyads engage one another’s attentional processes to produce the phenomena of joint attention that have been seen as central both in the achievement of conversation (Clark 1996), and in the acquisition of language in interaction (Tomasello 1995). In addition, matters of memory are implicated in retroactive assessing and in conversational repair (Good 1995), so that another key concern will be to build upon current views of memory as constructive in understanding how dyads direct one another’s construction of memory in the service of interpreting conversation, in effect opening an examination of memory as co-constituted. These implications for research in psycholinguistics, language pragmatics, CA, and cognition are important, but we would point to one final question suggested by our efforts to problematize and rethink sequentiality, and to privilege research on unitizing that acknowledges the participant’s perspective: what are the implications for the practices of unitizing conducted by analysts? To accomplish their work, analysts often create “units of analysis” distinct from the units participants employ, and in studying language use, such units (Barker’s tessare) may well be sequential in nature, as in the categorizing schemes employed to code streams of verbal interaction for various analyses. The arguments of this chapter apply here, as well, with the implication that analysts need to rethink their understandings of how analysts do unitizing. The methodological and epistemological issues involved in such rethinking are complex, but we maintain that analysts will gain little purchase on them as long as they conceive of inquiry as a monadic endeavor. A better understanding of how analysts do unitizing will require that analysts reconceptualize inquiry as a dyadic endeavor, and more specifically that they recognize that in identifying boundaries and units using the coding schemes they have devised, they too are co-constituting those boundaries and units in on-going “conversations” with other analysts. Such conversations are not always face-to-face, but inquiry, like talk, is an interactional achievement (Arundale 1999). The need to rethink matters of sequentiality is pervasive.
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Soskin, W. F., & John, V. P. (1963). The study of spontaneous talk. In R. G. Barker (Ed.), The Stream of Behavior (pp. 228–281). New York: Appleton, Century, Crofts. Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1986). Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Streeck, J. (1995). On projection. In E. Goody (Ed.), Social Intelligence and Interaction (pp. 87–110). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Tomasello, M. (1995). Joint attention as social cognition. In C. Moore & P. J. Dunham (Eds.), Joint Attention: Its Origins and Role in Development (pp. 103–130). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Warren, R. M. (1970). Perceptual restoration of missing speech sounds. Science, 167, 392– 393. Warren, R. M., & Warren, R. P. (1970). Auditory illusions and confusions. Scientific American, 223(6), 30–36. Watzlawick, P., Beavin, J. H., & Jackson, D. (1967). Pragmatics of Human Communication. New York: Norton. Wilson, T. P., Wiemann, J., & Zimmerman, D. H. (1984). Models of turn taking in conversational interaction. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 3, 159–183.
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Discourse markers as turns Evidence for the role of intersubjectivity in interactional sequences Sara W. Smith and Andreas H. Jucker California State University Long Beach, USA / Justus Liebig University, Giessen, Germany
Introduction Discourse markers in English are ordinarily used to facilitate the exchange of propositional content and propositional attitude, but they are not considered capable of conveying substance themselves. If Speaker A asks “Is it raining?” and Speaker B, who has just come inside, replies, “Well, it is drizzling,” the propositional information is thought to reside in “it is drizzling”. The well is thought to facilitate the interaction, in this case by serving as a warning signal that the assumptions behind the original claim are going to be challenged and need to be reassessed (Jucker 1993). However, there are intriguing examples in natural conversations in which Speaker B’s whole turn consists of such a discourse marker and in which the conversation proceeds to a negotiation of the question and the assumptions behind it. For example, B might merely utter “Well”, and A might then observe “You are wet” or assert “They predicted rain” or otherwise attempt to justify or clarify the original question. Our goal in this paper is to explain how it is that partners use turns that consist of discourse markers without any related content, in particular to explain the use of turns that consist of well. We will look at their role in interactional sequences. Previous analysts (e.g., Levinson 1983; Schegloff 1991) have argued that interactional sequences create meaning that goes beyond the content of the utterances involved. We want to look behind and beyond the sequences to identify the processes that enable this creation of meaning. We will argue that these turns provide evidence of the critical role of intersubjectivity.
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It is more or less part of the definition of discourse markers in English that they do not convey propositional content. In relevance theoretic terms, they are said to convey procedural rather than conceptual meaning. They give processing instructions to the addressee in that they indicate how the utterance in which they occur is to be interpreted, thus reducing the processing effort needed for the addressee and increasing the degree of relevance of the entire utterance (cf. Andersen 1999: 163–165). The discourse marker well, for instance, is seen as indicating to the addressee that the currently established context is not entirely appropriate for the interpretation of the following utterance. The addressee is instructed to search for a modified context against which the following utterance is to be interpreted (Jucker 1993). Such an analysis works well for several more or less distinct uses of this discourse marker; as a marker of insufficiency, as a face-threat mitigator, as a frame and as a delay device. However, if well is used as a full turn, the analysis encounters a potential problem. On the face of it, procedural meaning can only make sense if it can facilitate the conveyance of conceptual meaning. But if an utterance consists of the discourse marker well only, there is no obvious conceptual meaning whose conveyance could be facilitated by the procedural meaning of the discourse marker. In a different theoretical framework, conversation analysis or ethnomethodology, the discourse marker well has been argued to be one of a set of markers or announcers of dispreferred seconds in adjacency pairs (Levinson 1983: 334; Pomerantz 1984: 72, 99). If a speaker disagrees with an assessment, if she rejects an invitation or if she denies a request, she is more likely to use the discourse marker well than if she agrees, accepts or complies. This theory looks beyond the individual turn in which the discourse marker occurs and analyzes it in sequence with the preceding turn. It suggests an obvious solution to the fullturn discourse marker well. In many cases it is sufficient for a speaker to utter what she and her addressee know to be an announcer of a dispreferred second to indicate that a preferred second will not be forthcoming at this point. This hypothesis can be corroborated through an analysis of the utterances which follow well-only turns. Conversationalists seem to have no doubt as to how such turns are to be interpreted. The present paper will analyze examples from published transcripts and from a corpus of natural conversations in which a turn consists entirely or mainly of a discourse marker that is ordinarily used to introduce propositions. We will focus on examples of well, but we believe that other discourse markers may serve similar functions. In our samples, well was used in reply to questions, assessments, invitations, and advice.
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Our analyses look at the textual and social context of such turns. We claim that subsequent turns provide evidence that hearers interpret the markers as signals of the need to negotiate the original question, assessment, invitation, or advice. We argue that the meaning of the marker can be said to come from its role in the interactional sequence and in the partners’ ongoing negotiation of beliefs and that speakers are finely attuned to the sequentiality of turns. They know – and they know each other to know – which type of turn is expected at a specific point in the interaction, and they react immediately to the choices of their interlocutors. This ability to anticipate and to interpret interactional sequences seems to provide evidence of what is variously called intersubjectivity, socially shared cognition (Schegloff 1991), or social intelligence (Goody 1995). That is, they provide evidence of the ability to create and use a model of another person’s beliefs and behaviors. Goody (1995) and Drew (1995) have argued that conversational interactions in general depend on the critical component of social intelligence they call “anticipatory interactive planning”. Our argument is similar to that of Schegloff (1991), who used the phenomenon of third-turn repairs to argue for the role of intersubjectivity. He argued that speakers detect problems in the response of their interlocutors only because they are working toward a shared understanding of utterances. We believe that the use of well turns provides a striking example of both partners’ ability to anticipate how another person will react and to plan one’s own utterances accordingly. This ability, ordinarily taken for granted, is critical to the success of communication. Further, it reflects an aspect of human intelligence that is at least as amazing as the capacity for symbols and syntax and is as deserving of inclusion in linguistic models. In addition, we will analyze the structure of events within the interactional sequences involving well turns. We believe this will provide evidence of how partners structure the interaction in such a way as to provide a favorable cognitive context for the speaker’s goals. Thus, for example, a speaker issuing an invitation may create a sequence designed to activate beliefs that will support an acceptance of it. When the hearer signals, via a well turn, that acceptance is not forthcoming, the speaker may try different means to activate the context most friendly to an acceptance. Thus the sequence may be motivated by partners’ anticipation of each other’s mental states. This would provide further evidence of the critical role of intersubjectivity in sequences. Finally, sequentiality turns out to be an invaluable analytical tool. Looking beyond the sequence helps the analyst to establish how the conversationalists themselves interpret the discourse marker. In the normal case, a discourse
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marker is embedded in an utterance. The interlocutor reacts to the entire utterance, and it is generally not possible for the analyst to single out to what extent the reaction concerned the discourse marker and to what extent it concerned the rest of the utterance. However, if the rest of the utterance is missing, the reaction may be taken as a diagnostic of the speaker’s interpretation of the discourse marker itself. The normal procedure in the analysis of discourse markers involves the detailed analysis and classification of the utterance in which the discourse marker is embedded. This is based on the assumption that the meaning potential of the discourse marker will be redundantly encoded in the utterance as well. In the case of full-turn discourse markers, on the other hand, the analyst can rely on the conversationalist’s own understanding of the discourse marker as it manifests itself in the reaction by the addressee.
Analysis The goal of the present paper is to demonstrate and interpret the role of sequentiality in the interpretation of utterances, using examples in which the expression well serves as a turn. We found cases in which questions, assessments, invitations, and advice were met with well as a full-turn response. In order to explain the meaning of such sequences, we found we must take into account the cognitive, social, and linguistic aspects of these interactions. Much discussion of sequences has focused on adjacency pairs, i.e., sequences with pairs of utterances in which the second is highly predictable from the first. For example, questions are normally followed by answers, assessments by agreement, invitations by acceptances or refusals, and advice by acceptance or refusal. We will look at longer sequences and ones that are less predictable in structure. We find in these cases that the completion of a speech act is much more complex.
Sequentiality and responses to minimal turns Pomerantz (1984), Levinson (1983), and Davidson (1984) analyze silence as a response which partners interpret as a dispreferred or negative response. (1) A: C’mon down he:re, = it’s oka:y (0.2) A: I got lotta stuff, = I got be:er en stuff ’n
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In example (1), provided by Davidson (1984: 105) and cited also by Levinson (1983: 328), they note that speaker A apparently interprets B’s nonresponse as a refusal. He then elaborates the invitation, attempting to upgrade it. This response is contrasted with cases in which hearers either comply or attempt to justify their refusal. Levinson (1983: 329) notes the significance of this interpretation of silence. Many further kinds of significant absence of speech can be found. . . and each kind draws the analyst’s attention to the strong kinds of expectations that different conversational organizations . . . impose on particular sequential slots. The demonstration is the more remarkable in that silence has no features of its own: all the different significances attributed to it must have their sources in the structural expectations engendered by the surrounding talk. . . . If conversational organization can map ‘meaning’ onto silence, it can also map situated significance onto utterances – and in fact can be shown to regularly do so.
The present paper will explore ways in which meaning is mapped onto turns that consist of the discourse marker well. These utterances are interpreted and reacted to despite the fact that they contain no terms that are ordinarily thought of as conveying content. In examples in which silence is the response to an utterance, the speaker is given no clue as to the source of the problem. In examples provided by Davidson, speakers may respond in any of several ways – by repeating the original utterance, by rewording the original utterance but expressing the same message, or, as above, by reformulating an invitation or assessment. We will find that the use of well provides more guidance to the original speaker, as evidenced by the nature of the speaker’s reformulations.
Activation of beliefs Models of comprehension portray the text as activating and deactivating a series of conceptual frameworks for the reader/hearer. These frameworks are known variously as “schemas” (Bransford 1979), “scripts” (Schank & Abelson 1977), “mental models” (Johnson-Laird 1991) or “situation models” (van Dijk & Kintsch 1983; Kintsch 1995). For example, if a character in a story goes from the classroom to a restaurant, the schemas and scripts associated with a classroom are first activated and then deactivated as the character goes to the restaurant, and a new script/scenario is activated for the restaurant setting. Glenberg, Kruley and Langston (1984) have demonstrated the sensitivity of such activa-
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tion processes to relatively minor details of text. For example, the two sentences below differ in the activation level of sweatshirt at their conclusion. (2) a. John took off his sweatshirt and went for a run. b. John put on his sweatshirt and went for a run. (fabricated examples)
We propose that conversational partners collaborate in attempting to activate relevant schemas and scripts for their partners. Of course they do not have direct access to their partner’s general background of beliefs, nor do they have direct access to the current state of activation of beliefs. However, they do have various bases for making reasoned judgements about such beliefs and their level of activation in a given context (e.g. Krauss & Fussell 1991). Much of what happens in an interactional sequence consists of partners attempting to activate certain target beliefs which would be relevant to agreeing with an assessment or accepting an offer. Speakers formulate utterances with such goals in mind (though not necessarily consciously), and they try to assess their partner’s commitment to those beliefs. When one strategy does not work, they may try another. The use of well as a response seems to issue a hint that a new context is needed which will be more relevant to achieving the goal. In cognitive terms, the speaker tries to activate a new context in hopes that it is more likely to prime the desired response. Ordinarily, the person responding to an assessment or offer will provide some basis for revision by the content of their reply. (3) a.
A: I’m hungry. Want to go to lunch? B: Well, we’ve got this meeting in 15 minutes. A: Okay, how about going afterwards? (fabricated example)
Jucker (1993) proposed that well is used to indicate a shift in the relevant context. In this case, well would signal the belief by B that some other context, the meeting, is more relevant to respond to than was the context presented previously, i.e. hunger. In cases we looked at in the present paper, the person receiving the assessment or offer did not supply the basis for the revision. However, the use of the expression well as the utterance given in reply caused the original speaker to assume that some other context more relevant to the situation needed to be considered. She is often able to make a reasonable presumption about that context and to make an appropriate counterproposal that takes it into account.
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(3) b. A: I’m hungry. Want to go to lunch? B: Well. A: Maybe we should wait and go after the meeting (fabricated example)
At this point, models of production have just begun to deal with issues regarding how speakers formulate expressions so as to take into account the permanent and current state of their partner’s beliefs. For the most part, models have dealt with limited phenomena, such as the selection of definite versus indefinite articles. We believe there is much to explore regarding the way in which speakers present information and especially the ways in which they negotiate information. Discourse markers such as well may play an important role in such negotiations. In our examples, well appears to signal to the partner that an assessment or offer is not successful and that a more relevant set of beliefs needs to be activated. In addition to fitting utterances into expected speech act sequences, the speaker must also manage the co-construction of a set of beliefs relevant to achieving conversational goals. In making an assessment or an offer, a speaker must evoke a relevant context for justifying it in order to provoke the desired response. Another way to put this is that the expression must foreground the context that is most relevant to the goal. The discourse marker well seems to play an important role in managing such evocations. When a strategy has not been effective, the speaker needs to know so that he might attempt another one. Following well, the speaker attempts to offer a context that would be more relevant than the one previously placed on the floor by either partner.
Preferred and dispreferred responses According to Pomerantz (1984), each type of utterance (i.e. each speech act) has preferred and non-preferred responses. Assertions are ordinarily followed by some form of acknowledgement, with the preferred response being an agreement rather than a disagreement. Levinson (1983: 307, 308) contrasts the preferred and non-preferred responses to requests with the examples given below. (4) Child:
Could you .hh could you put on the light for my .hh room Father: Yep
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(5) C: Um I wondered if there’s any chance of seeing you tomorrow sometime (0.5) morning or before the seminar (1.0) R: Ah um (.) I doubt it C: Uhm huh R: The reason is I’m seeing Elizabeth
When the listener in (4) agrees to the request, the response is structurally simple, the single word yep. In contrast, the negative response in (5) is structurally complex, with an indirect response I doubt it surrounded with markers such as delays, prefaces, and attempted justifications.
Our data Our data come from four sources, two representing spontaneous conversations and two representing conversations that are somewhat constrained. One set, Sistertalk, consists of a conversation recorded unsurreptitiously between two sisters and their husbands, all middle-aged English adults. One sister (MA) and her husband (WA) have recently visited relatives in Australia, and the other sister (BE) plans to go soon. MA and WA are telling about their trip. A second set comes from a published paper by Davidson (1984). The data consists of spontaneous conversations between adults. It was originally collected and partially transcribed by Jefferson, then subsequently used by several researchers and also cited by Levinson (1983). Coincidentally, the data were obtained in the area in which the first author lives, so that geographical references are familiar and interpretable. These conversations appear to include the full range of speech acts, including assessments, questions, invitations, and advice. However, we do not have as much knowledge of their context as we do of the sets we obtained ourselves. The second two sets consist of conversations between students who interact in the artificial context of a research lab. In one set, labelled DAAD, partners are asked to spend five minutes getting to know each other (if strangers) or catching up with each other (if friends). They were then assigned topics to discuss from among a set (sports, movies, travel, karate, opera). In the second set, labeled Chaplin, partners were asked to describe and discuss a Charles Chaplin video. Even though we believe that we were able to elicit conversations that are in many respects perfectly natural, these conversations are functionally restricted. They contain only a fairly narrow range of speech acts. Many speech acts that might occur in natural conversations, such as invitations, re-
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quests for help, negotiations about future actions, and so on, do not occur. Instead, the conversations consist largely of assertions, reactions to these assertions, requests for information and requests for clarification. Interestingly, our conversations yielded few direct disagreements. For the most part, speakers managed to anticipate negative responses and to pose assertions or requests in such a way that there were various options available for indirect responses. In some cases, the whole turn consisted entirely of the expression well. In other cases, that expression was accompanied by other discourse markers or general acknowledgements. We were not able to identify any difference in the functions of the different forms. We avoided using examples in which the accompanying expressions seemed themselves to carry weight. One interesting situation is that in which a partner begins a reply with well and then is cut off by the original speaker. In this case, the well was clearly seen as an adequate basis for a counter-response by the original speaker.
Role of well as introducer of dispreferred seconds Levinson (1983: 309) and Pomerantz (1984: 72, 99) both identify well as a preface frequently used to mark the dispreferred status of a response. That is, a listener who intends to refuse a request or disagree with an assertion may preface the reply with well. In a different theoretical framework, Jucker (1993) provides a more specific analysis of the role of well. One major function is to ask the partner to reassess the assumption(s) behind a request or assertion. In our protocols, well was regularly used in this way. (6) B: do you stay and watch the credits? A: no B: no? A: well, certainly if I do I don’t . . pay attention. B: yeah. cause who cares? cause who knows these people? Yeah. A: well, you do. B: . . well
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I don’t know all of them. but I know some of them. but I don’t watch them anymore.
(DAAD 245m)
In excerpt (6), the partners introduce a series of reassessments of speaker B’s question regarding the watching of movie credits. A given speaker also might use well to introduce a reassessment or reframing of her own claim. (7) B: my cousin hated Mexico A: yeah B: yeah I think he was intimidated --, well, he wasn’t intimidated, he just didn’t like the fact that, since he’s from Chile that everyone just figured he was --,
(DAAD 242t)
In standard uses of well, it serves as a preliminary to a dispreferred response. As such, it signals to the partner that the dispreferred response is forthcoming and it thus allows the partner to more easily process unexpected responses. Canonical sequence with well Assessment/Proposal
A: want to go to lunch?
Optional negotiation of assessment/proposal Preliminary to disagreement/refusal B: well, Optional negotiation of obstacle Identification of obstacle Acknowledgement of obstacle Revision of assessment/offer Acknowledgement
we have a meeting A: oh, that’s right why don’t we eat after it B: great.
Because of the role that well plays in such standard sequences, it can serve as a signal of an obstacle in itself. We might think of this as a type of ellipsis, only at the discourse level rather than the sentence level. When a reaction is predictable
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based on a common understanding of sequential patterns, a given partner may be able to anticipate the other’s move and even make reasonable assumptions about the content of that move. Elided sequence with well Assessment/Proposal
A:
want to go to lunch?
Optional negotiation of assessment/proposal Preliminary to disagreement/refusal B:
well,
Implicit negotiation of obstacle Identification of obstacle
{A: there must be an obstacle: Oh, we have a meeting}
Acknowledgement of obstacle Revision of assessment/offer
A:
or we could eat after our meeting
Acknowledgement
B:
great.
Thus the partner may be able to infer the obstacle and propose a revision of the assessment/offer on his or her own initiative. As with a self-repair of an error (Schegloff 1991), this is a preferred means of revision. Besides avoiding a direct correction, the original speaker can demonstrate his or her sensitivity to the partner’s perspective. Levinson (1983: 334) argues for the preference of the avoidance of certain turns, such as requests or invitations. Speakers can avoid them by producing pre-requests or pre-invitations, which check whether compliance with a direct request or a direct invitation would be possible. Is the requestee in a position to carry out the request, for instance: “Can you pass the salt?” Or is the invitee in a position to accept the invitation: “Are you free tomorrow evening?” Such presequences are often standardized to such an extent that they fulfil the function of the request or the invitation itself. In the same way, well, as an announcer of a dispreferred second, can in itself function as a polite form of a refusal or disagreement. Below we will substantiate this claim with a range of examples from a variety of sources, including both published extracts, and extracts from our own corpus. In addition, we will analyze the strategies used by the partner in response.
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Interactional structures in which well comprises a turn There are several structures in which well occurs as a turn. We will briefly describe the structures we found and will then analyze the various functions such turns can serve. In some cases, the Speaker began a turn with well and was interrupted. While the turn might have been intended to convey content, the Hearer apparently felt the well preface to be an adequate basis for a response. In fact, as will be seen in more detail in analyses below, the Hearer may benefit from responding at that point rather than later. In other cases, well appeared as an interruption or overlap of a turn in progress. We will argue below that this use is strategic, allowing the partner to provoke a reassessment of the claim on the floor without having to explicitly correct the original speaker. It invites the speaker to make a self-repair at a point when it would be most effective. Well was sometimes used to complete a turn, when the turn had consisted only of another particle, usually an acknowledgement. As will be seen in the analysis below, it allows the speaker to acknowledge the partner’s position but also to introduce a different perspective on it. Finally, and most strikingly, well was sometimes used as a full turn. In some cases, well was used with a turn-final intonation (well.), making it clear that the speaker intends no further contribution in that turn. In other cases, the intonation contour is that of a potentially continuing turn (well,). With this form, it is less clear whether the speaker might continue, but the partners treat it as a normal exchange of turns. We find that in the conversations we studied, many other turns also end with a continuing contour. In all the cases analyzed, both partners treat the well as a full turn and continue the conversation accordingly.
Functions served by well turns Turns consisting of well play a role in several types of interactional sequences: questions, assessments, invitations and advice. Using examples from our own data and also from Davidson (1984), we will analyze the role these turns play.
Negotiation of questions Ordinarily it is assumed that the person who asks a question gets to define it, and the role of the recipient is simply to answer it. However, as Lakoff (1973)
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noted, sometimes the recipient finds that he or she cannot answer the question as it is. In her examples, well was a preface to an answer and implied thereby that the answer was insufficient in some way and was being qualified accordingly. In Jucker’s (1993) relevance-theoretical analysis of these examples, it is the question itself that is deficient in that it has inappropriate assumptions, and the recipient is signaling the need for consideration of a more relevant set of assumptions. Another way to put this is that the discourse marker well is used to signal the need to negotiate the question. As we will see in examples (8) and (9) below, the recipient of a question may simply reply well without elaborating further. In the cases we observed, this was sufficient impetus to begin a negotiation of the question. In example (8), the partners have been discussing their educational plans. Speaker A has earlier explained that he transferred from another campus in hopes of taking a program (physical therapy) that is very competitive to enter and that requires the student to first complete a set of prerequisite courses. When Speaker B later asks him whether he plans to stay at the present campus, A’s response is a full-stop well. (8) B: A: B: A:
are you gonna stay here? well. how long is your . . physical . . everything? well . . if you get into the program, . . . (Hx) yeah right . . uhm after your, B: @ A: you have to finish your GE’s and prerequisites, if you get in . . probably four to five years.
(DAAD 18B8m)
The original speaker, B, clearly takes the response well to be a signal for the need to negotiate the question. Rather than pursue the original question, he raises a more specific question regarding the conditions for A to stay at the campus, i.e., the length of the planned program. Even in answering this sub-question, A uses several devices to qualify his answer. He twice uses the conditional (if you get into the program,. . . if you get in). Note that this reply was also introduced with well and a brief pause. That is, A gives several cues that he is not able to answer the original question and must instead deal with the uncertainty regarding his status in the program. While he never directly answered the original question, the negotiation itself served to answer the question indirectly. That is, he will stay here if but only if he gets into the program. There are a variety of ways in which a question might be negotiated. In example (9), the recipient of the question does answer it directly, but only af-
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ter qualifying her answer. The partners have been asked to discuss a Charlie Chaplin video they have seen. They have been given a set of possible questions to discuss, including questions whether they found the movie funny and what was the funniest scene. At the beginning of the segment below, they answer the first question. They agree that the movie, while charming, clearly falls short of what they consider to be a funny movie (you can smile but not laugh). When Speaker B goes on to ask Speaker A what she thought was the funniest part, A’s initial response consisted of mild laughter followed by well. (9) A: you can smile at it but . . . (1.4) [but--] B: [yeah] yeah & & yeah you can-you can smile but not laugh. A: mhm. B: erm . . . (1.4) what did you think was the & & [funniest part @@@], A: [@@@@], well, B: funniest part, A: . . . (3.6) in the in the part that I saw-B: mhm. A: maybe the funniest part was . . (H) you know when & & they were eating . . [their--] B: [right], A: dinner and then erm Charlie Chaplin was sitting & & here and er and opposite another man, (H) and then there was only one plate, <@ and it @> was swinging from one side & & [to the other @@], (Chaplin 043)
Speaker B recognizes the well turn as a sign that the question was problematic, but he apparently cannot identify the source of the problem. He responds by repeating the last part of the question with more emphasis. When A goes on to reply, she begins with a long pause, repeats the beginning of her introduction, uses maybe to directly indicate her uncertainty, and follows it with you know before finally describing her funniest scene. All these devices mark the question as problematic and her answer as a qualified fit to the question. In summary, the recipient of a question may signal the desire to negotiate it by replying with a well turn. While the recipient might in some circumstances go on to make his or her concerns explicit, that apparently is not necessary.
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In some cases, as in example (8), the person who asks the original question might begin the negotiation while in other cases, as in (9), it may be left to the recipient to initiate the negotiation.
Negotiation of assessments Ordinarily, speakers who make assessments expect the listener to agree with them (Pomerantz 1984). One would think that a partner who disagrees would simply indicate that directly. However, as Pomerantz has noted, there is a clear preference for avoiding disagreement. Thus the partner may instead seek a way to negotiate the assessment by indirect means. We found that turns consisting of well could be an effective device for such negotiation. The following excerpt is taken from a dinner table conversation in which two sisters (MA and BE) and their respective husbands (WA and DA) talk about MA and WA’s recent trip to Australia, where they visited relatives. In the excerpt MA and WA relate an incident how they looked for a restaurant. WA, the husband, begins the narrative which is interspersed by backchannel items from his sister-in-law, BE. He describes the restaurant that they found as “not very attractive looking”. His wife reacts immediately with the single-word utterance well with a high rise-fall intonation contour even before he can finish his own utterance. (10) WA: and so, we looked around
for some licensed restaurant & & where we could have a drink [. .(0.7)], BE: [mm] WA: and also [ah a Chinese meal] afterwards, MA: [and perhaps have some lunch]. WA: and we saw this . .(0.7), not very attractive looking [. . . (1.0)], MA: [well --] WA: Chinese restaurant. this enormously attractive . .(0.6), Chinese restaurant. MA: yeah I wouldn’t say it was not very attractive it was & & upstairs and [. .], WA: [yeah] MA: and it was in that nice street [. .(0.7)], WA: [yeah] MA: <so we de->,
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[and it was open . .(0.5)], WA: [and it was XX open yeah]. MA: so we decided to go up and we got [upstairs] . . . (1.2), WA: [yeah] (Sistertalk, lines 499–527)
It is interesting to note how WA reacts to the utterance of his wife. He repeats the relevant part of his previous utterance but reverses the evaluation and says “this enormously attractive Chinese restaurant”. In addition there is a moderately long pause after the evaluative modifier, indicating that it was indeed the modification which had to be replaced in his previous utterance. He clearly understood his wife’s well as a disagreement with his own assessment. MA explicitly confirms this interpretation and goes on to note the characteristics that were attractive. From this point onwards MA takes over the narrative. We find it especially interesting that the partner who disagrees with the assessment is effective in getting the original speaker to modify it on the spot. That is, the original speaker makes a self-repair of the assessment, with well as the only clue that it is problematic. In this case, his revised assessment is given ironically, and he left it to his wife to identify a different frame from which to evaluate the restaurant more positively. Nonetheless, it is clear that the original speaker realized what was being requested with the well interruption. Assessments are made against a background of assumptions regarding evidence to support them. When such assumptions turn out to be discrepant, partners have to negotiate the assumptions as well as the assessment that follows from them. In excerpt (11) below, two students who just met are establishing basic information about each other. Speaker A indicates that he expects to finish his degree in 2 1/2 to 3 years and follows up with an assessment of his plans (I can get it done). Speaker B expresses disbelief, first indirectly (how many?) and then more directly (oh really?), but A maintains his claim across these exchanges. Speaker B comments that’s fast which, under the circumstances, implies a contradiction of A’s claim (i.e., ‘that’s too fast’). Speaker A responds with a turn consisting of yeah well. (11) A: oh about two and a half three I can get it done. B: how many? A: two and a half to three. B: oh [really]? A: [yeah] B: that’s fast
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A: yeah well. B: are you in your major course now? A: no, you see, that’s why I wanna hurry up and get out [get in] get out B: [@@] A: I wanna start my life
(DAAD 14A3i)
While yeah acknowledges B’s viewpoint, well suggests that A might have a different one. At that point, B changes gears and begins to negotiate his assessment and the assumptions behind it. Rather than continuing to express his doubts regarding A’s stated schedule, he seeks evidence that would test the claims on the floor. That is, B seeks a context in which to either justify or disconfirm their beliefs. In doing so, he reveals his assumptions about the nature of progress towards a degree, that ordinarily a student needs several years to accumulate coursework towards the major degree. A’s response makes clear that he is focusing on a different set of assumptions, those connected with his goals outside the academic world. Similarly, example (12) involves the negotiation of assumptions behind an assessment. The partners are discussing their status in a course. It is the last week of classes, and they expected the instructor to review materials for the final exam. Speaker A had to miss class and was planning on getting speaker B’s notes. She is thus disappointed to learn that the instructor did not give a very extensive review. However, speaker B approaches the situation with different assumptions foregrounded. She notes enthusiastically that students can submit essays for extra credit toward their grade, and she seems to assume that they will get good grades on these essays. Speaker A does not seem reassured. She starts to say something, apparently to the effect that she has not always gotten the grade she hoped for on essays. B returns to the subtopic of the notes, reassuring A that she took good notes and thus implying that A will after all do well in the exam. Speaker A then responds with well, which is given with the intonation of a full turn. (12) B: erm . . he= eh . . didn’t review, as much as he usually does (Hx) (H). . . . (2) so we’re screwed. of course it’s not as much reading. . . but . . did you hear?, . . . (H) they’re giving a 16= extra points, [they give us] these two easy easy easy little= (H),
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A: [(H) yeah]. B: . . . essays, . . and everybody’s gonna get (Hx) --, A: yeah I wrote them but I I didn’t get, like I said [I I XXX] B: [yeah. I give] you all my notes, there’s not that much, this time, but I got you know, . . as much as I could. A: well. B: we’ll just have to read this stuff, it’s not gonna be that big of a deal. either way, . . we’ll get an A, . . in the class,
(DAAD 24A4c)
In response to A’s well, Speaker B presents yet another context for her continued optimism; they can read the assigned material. She then makes explicit what has been implicit throughout her comments – they both can still get a high grade in the class. In this excerpt, the turn consisting of well played an interesting role in negotiating the assessment. First, it led the partner to make explicit the assessment that had previously been implicit. Thus it signaled the need for negotiation. Second, it elicited a response as though the speaker had disagreed with the partner’s assessment of the situation. That is, the speaker reacted by presenting another basis for her belief. In our view, this is evidence that the original speaker is attempting to build a context for her claim. When the partner refuses to accept that claim, the original speaker attempts to add further contexts to support it. This is an important element of negotiation of assessments, to provide the evidence that supports one’s own assessment, in the hope that it will persuade the partner to the same conclusion.
Negotiation of invitations Invitations are issued against background assumptions by the inviter regarding the conditions under which the invitee will accept them. These assumptions include those regarding what the addressee will find appealing and also about the addressee’s availability. In addition, invitations are particularly face-
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threatening to both partners. Thus it is especially important to have devices for negotiating invitations. In example (13), taken from Davidson (1984), speakers P and A negotiate an invitation. From the conversation it appears that the pair, probably a mother and daughter, have a mutually established assumption that the daughter will periodically take the mother on an excursion. The daughter’s first invitation, to the beauty shop, is based on the assumption that the mother wants to have her hair styled. The mother refuses, giving evidence counter to that assumption. Next the daughter issues an invitation with a different assumption, that the mother might want to go to her local grocery store, Market Basket. The mother begins her response with well honey I, and before she can complete an utterance her daughter cuts her off with a revised offer. (13) P: Don’tchu want me tuh come down’n getchu t’morrow en take yih down; duh the beauty parlor, (0.3) A: what for.=I jus’ did my hair it looks like pruh uh pruhfessional. (0.4) P: oh I mean uh: you wanna go t’the store er anything over et the Market Basket er anything? A: hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh h=well honey IP: or Richard’s? Davidson (1984: 107, 109, 111)
The daughter’s third offer, and the role of well in negotiating it, is of interest in several regards. First, it relies on a somewhat different set of assumptions from the first two offers. Richard’s is a gourmet food store in an upscale area, clearly a more exotic destination. The first two offers assume the mother’s need for everyday errands, while the third assumes that the mother might want to do something more exciting. Second, it relies on the common ground between the partners. This includes not just the knowledge of facts about the partner’s worlds (what Market Basket and Richard’s refer to) but also about the assumptions behind visits to these places. Third, it illustrates the face-saving role of the use of preliminaries to dispreferred responses. With well, the mother gives the daughter a warning that the offer will not be accepted. The daughter, having weathered one refusal, hopes to avoid another by upgrading her offer before it is directly rejected. Further, the daughter gets to demonstrate her sensitivity to the mother’s interests.
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In a second example from Davidson (1984: 114–115), Speaker A invites Speaker B, apparently an acquaintance, to bring his companion(s) for a visit. In this example, the negotiation is protracted, and it makes some of the assumptions more transparent than would usually be the case. The original proposal is presented with the assumption that a romantic evening (you know have a date) is a sufficient reason to come. While B acknowledges the invitation during its issue, he does not accept it. Speaker A then tries to provide more context to make the invitation appealing, by identifying an upcoming special event. B acknowledges the event, but he still does not accept the invitation. Speaker A then elaborates the invitation, providing first one (stores are open) and then a second (bands) new and quite different context in hopes that they will provide an adequate basis for accepting the invitation. Following the mention of the stores being open, B gives a highly qualified acceptance that includes well as a preface ([pause] yeah well maybe we can do that). Speaker A hopes to clinch an acceptance with the further context of the bands. However, B responds only with a reduced well (wul). Following this well-turn, A tries a different approach, directly asserting the appeal of the event its fun to go. (14) A: you oughta bring em down sometimes (0.6) A: you’n Maggie, (you know), have a date B: yah yeh B: hhh A: yeh. uh week from Friday is the hospitality night. (.) B: a week from Friday A: (yih know) when all the stores are open in the evening. B: eeYeh (0.4) yeah well maybe we can do that (.) A: and someti- they usually have some a the high school B: uh huh A: bands B: hh (wul) A: if its nice weather it’s fun tuh go B: eeYeah (0.2) (Davidson 1984: 114–115)
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One way to look at this interaction is that A keeps presenting different dimensions associated with the event that she believes will provide an adequate basis for a positive response. That is, she keeps revising the context for the acceptance or rejection of the invitation. As each one is received with limited enthusiasm, she tries another one. The response well served as a form of preliminary refusal that encouraged A to continue searching for more successful contexts, ones that might be more relevant to B’s decision than those previously given.
Negotiation of advice Advice is an especially sensitive communicative speech act, threatening the face of both partners. It is given against a background of assumptions about the needs of the addressee, the right of the speaker to give advice, and the relevance of the advice to problems recognized by the addressee. Any or all of these assumptions may require negotiation. In example (15) below, speaker B is apparently trying to arrange for something to be moved. Speaker A proposes a third party, Sammy, to help but does not give any justification for this proposal. Speaker B responds with a filled pause plus well and a reduced he. At that point, A provides background information to justify his proposal (his station wagon). (15) A: you should uh, listen that could be a job for Sammy Hhh B: uh, well, (he ) A: and his station wagon B: oh he couldn’t get them in Davidson (1984: 109, 111, 112)
B’s response well is taken as a potential rejection. But if this were taken as a simple rejection, A might either accept the rejection or might reformulate the proposal at the same conceptual level as initially. For example, A might either challenge the rejection or might start over by proposing someone else to help. Instead, A elaborates the proposal so that it includes a context that might not have been available or accessible to B when he rejected the proposal. That is, B might not know or be likely to remember that Sammy has a station wagon. Further, the elaboration offers a dimension, transportation, that B might not have initially found relevant; e.g. perhaps B rejected Sammy’s help because he is not very strong. It is clear that A’s elaboration focused B on the new context, as B’s next rejection focuses on that context (he couldn’t get the items into a station wagon). Following the preliminary rejection expressed by well, A offered
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another context that he believed might be more relevant than the assumptions B had already activated. Advice is often given indirectly and negotiated in subtle ways. In example (16) below, two good friends have just begun chatting. Speaker B begins the conversation by telling about her hectic morning. Apparently the friends had previously discussed a strange noise her car was making. On this morning it had gotten worse so that she was compelled to take her car to the garage, where she learned that she needs a new water pump. After they digress to discuss how she got to campus, speaker A returns to the topic of the car. She re-introduces the topic with well as a preface, following both filled and unfilled pauses. She then changes the focus from the friend’s statement of her problem to her own hard-earned wisdom on the topic well yeah water pumps can be expensive,. . . I just replaced mine. She goes on to give indirect advice as to what B should do, I told you that Mike can get em from wholesale. Speaker B responds with well as the whole turn, given with a final intonation contour. (16) A: [erm], . . . erm, . . . well yeah waterpumps can be expensive, . . . I just replaced mine, . . . in fact I told you that Mike [can get em], B: [mhm]. A: from wholesale. B: (H) well. A: he got mine from him. forty buckforty bucks. B: forty bucks? A: yeah. I paid two twenty, to replace the thing the first time. B: so the thing is, mine has to be Mercedes parts, . . so they’re more expensive anyway,
(DAAD 24A1c)
Speaker A responds to B’s apparent refusal by giving evidence to support her suggestion. First she cites her personal experience I got mine from him, and then she gives the price she paid forty dollars. Speaker B’s response is again noncommittal, and A provides further evidence for her advice. Speaker B finally rejects
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A’s experience as irrelevant. She believes that the parts needed for her make of car are not available from wholesale. Throughout the segment, the speakers seem to be negotiating perspectives to take on the repair, with Speaker A focusing on the cost of parts and B apparently not (in telling her story, B had not mentioned the potential price of the repair, only the inconvenience of having to leave her car at the garage). Speaker A introduced her perspective with well and then B rejected that perspective with well. Next A provided evidence for her perspective, and B finally justified hers. It is interesting to note that the advice was never given or rejected directly; rather, the partners negotiated it throughout the segment. In excerpt (17) below, the use of well at first seems out of place. However, with a closer look it appears to illustrate our analysis nicely. Partner B introduces a topic by describing a movie she just watched in a class. After several exchanges about the reaction to the movie, partner A asks whether the class critiqued the movie. When B replies that they will critique it the following week, A describes the strategy for critiquing that she learned in a class. Although she conveys enthusiasm for the approach she learned, she is not very specific about it. (17) A: [so did they critique it]? B: we haven’t critiqued it yet, we’re to critiquing it, next week. A: I had an English class, . . a couple of years ago, it was a literature class, B: [mhm]. A: [erm], . . . and we watched a couple of movies, and critiqued it, . . a=nd you know, as to why the director did what they did, it’s kinda like a short story, where everything is done intentionally, B: [mhm]. A: it was really interesting (H), it was real interesting. we did a lot of . . erm --, have you ever seen the movie The Rapture? B: mh no.
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A: that was a real . . interesting movie, but he’s determined to tear ones apart like that, [it] was real interesting. B: [mhm]. . . . (H) (GULPS) . . . well (Hx), A: so it would be fine, if you could do that. B: yeah. A: (CLEARS HER THROAT) B: these are legal microphones hum (Hx)@@.
(DAAD 241c#3)
Throughout A’s story about her class, speaker B has responded with a series of standard acknowledgements, mhm. However, at one point, following such an acknowledgement, A does not continue her story. After a long pause, B then says well. It is not obvious to the observer what the well is in reaction to, as there is no question, invitation, assessment, or explicit advice in the preceding turn. However, the meaning of the well can be seen in Speaker A’s reaction to it. At that point, Speaker A makes explicit what she presumably was trying to suggest indirectly, that her partner should critique her assigned movie using the same approach that A had learned in her class. Thus it becomes clear that the partners are negotiating advice. Speaker A is giving implicit advice as to how to critique the movie, and speaker B is avoiding making a commitment to that approach. As in example (12) above, the well turn provoked the original speaker to make her advice explicit. When B again gave a noncommittal reply yeah, A did not press her case but rather avoided any further discussion of the topic by clearing her throat. Speaker B then abruptly changed the topic, ending the negotiation without directly accepting or rejecting the advice. She apparently did not want advice on how to critique the movie, but she preferred to avoid a direct refusal. Her use of well signaled this reluctance and made the negotiation more transparent.
Interpretation and conclusion Well appears to play an interesting role in the negotiation of beliefs. Speakers may use a turn consisting of well to introduce a negotiation of a question, assessment, invitation, or advice from the partner. Well seems to signal the speaker’s need for a new context – a reorientation, a reframing, an introduction of a different perspective – before he/she responds to the original speech event.
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We believe we have demonstrated that conversational sequences construct meaning from interactional units such as well. Partners bring their own prior assumptions about interactional structures, and they are able to use the subtlest of interactional cues to signal when negotiation is needed. This illustrates the power of the interactional sequence itself. In addition to learning more about the role of well, we believe we learned more about the negotiation of common ground. The negotiation that follows well turns demonstrates how partners are constantly co-constructing their beliefs. Sequences involving the use of well turns made transparent some interesting production strategies used by speakers in attempting to gain agreement, compliance, or acceptance. That is, we were able to identify ways in which speakers attempted to create more effective contexts for their proposals by activating relevant beliefs in the partner. This is another role of sequentiality, the sequencing of contexts to create an optimal cognitive environment for the partner. We believe that the role of well turns also demonstrates the role of intersubjectivity. It is only because partners can anticipate each other’s reactions that they can converse as we have seen in our examples. First, they must not only know the expected interactional sequences for assessments and proposals, but also they must understand that their partner knows them and knows that both partners know them. In example (13), it is only because the daughter can anticipate that the mother’s use of well signals a refusal that she is able to offer a revised invitation before the mother refuses the one on the floor. Second, they must be able to create and use a representation of their partner’s belief systems in order to create utterances that will attempt to achieve conversational goals. The daughter would not be able to issue an appropriate revision unless she understood something of how her mother’s assumptions are organized. When her mother fails to accept the offer to go to one grocery store, the daughter offers an option with a different set of characteristics rather than another option with the same or less appealing ones. In turn, the mother’s acceptance or refusal of invitations allows the daughter the opportunity to revise her model of her mother’s beliefs and goals. We believe that the type of production strategies that partners use in everyday conversations exploit cognitive abilities that are just beginning to be explored.
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References Andersen, G. (1998). The pragmatic marker like from a relevance-theoretic perspective. In A. H. Jucker & Y. Ziv (Eds.), Discourse Markers: Descriptions and Theory (pp. 147–170). [Pragmatics and Beyond New Series 57]. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Bransford, J. (1979). Human Cognition: Learning, Understanding and Remembering. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Davidson, J. (1984). Subsequent versions of invitations, offers, requests, and proposals dealing with potential or actual rejection. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis (pp. 102–128). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Drew, P. (1995). Interaction sequences and anticipatory interactive planning. In E. N. Goody (Ed.), Social Intelligence and Interaction: Expressions and Implications of the Social Bias in Human Intelligence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Du Bois, J. (1991). Transcription design principles for spoken discourse research. Pragmatics, 1(1), 71–106. Glenberg, A. M., Kruley, P., & Langston, W. E. (1994). Analogical processes in comprehension: Simulation of a mental model. In M. A. Gernsbacher (Ed.), Handbook of Psycholinguistics (pp. 609–640). New York: Academic Press. Goody, E. N. (1995). Social Intelligence and Interaction: Expressions and Implications of the Social Bias in Human Intelligence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1991). Mental models. In M. I. Posner (Ed.), Foundations of Cognitive Science (pp. 469–500). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Jucker, A. H. (1993). The discourse marker well: A relevance theoretical account. Journal of Pragmatics, 19, 435–452. Kintsch, W. (1995). How readers construct situation models for stories. In M. A. Gernsbacher & T. Givon (Eds.), Coherence in Spontaneous Text (pp. 139–160). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Krauss, R. M., & Fussell, S. R. (1991). Constructing shared communicative environments. In L. B. Resnick, J. M. Levine & S. D. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on Socially Shared Cognition (pp. 172–200). Washington DC: American Psychological Association. Lakoff, R. (1973). Questionable answers and answerable questions. In B. B. Kachru, R. B. Lees, Y. Malkiel, A. Pietrangeli, & S. Saporta (Eds.), Issues in Linguistics: Papers in Honor of Henry and Renee Kahan (pp. 453–467). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Levinson, S. C. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pomerantz, A. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of preferred/dispreferred turn shapes. In J. Atkinson, J. Maxwell & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis (pp. 152–163). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schank, R. C., & Abelson, R. P. (1977). Scripts, Plans, Goals and Understanding: An Inquiry into Human Knowledge Structures. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Schegloff, E. A. (1991). Conversation analysis and socially shared cognition. In L. B. Resnick, J. M. Levine & S. D. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on Socially Shared Cognition (pp. 150– 171). Washington DC: American Psychological Association. van Dijk, T. A., & Kintsch, W. (1983). Strategies of Discourse Comprehension. New York: Academic Press.
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Appendix. Transcription conventions Extracts from the literature are quoted in their original form. Our own data has been transcribed according to conventions introduced by du Bois (1991), summarized below. Units Intonation unit Truncated intonation unit Truncated word
{carriage return} --
Speakers Speech overlap
[]
Transitional continuity Final Continuing Appeal
. , ?
Lengthening Lengthening
=
Pause Long Medium Short Latching
. . . (N) ... .. (0)
Vocal noises Vocal noises Inhalation Exhalation Laughter
() (H) (Hx) @
Quality Laugh quality Quotation quality Sotto voce Loud Multiple quality features
<@ @> <SV SV> Y>
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Transcriber’s perspective Researcher’s comment Uncertain hearing Indecipherable syllable
(( )) <X X> X
Specialised notations Duration Intonation unit continued
(N) &
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Sequences in discourse: The micro-macro interface
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Talk on TV Sequentiality meets intertextuality and interdiscursivity Roy Langer Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
Introduction Conversation analysis (CA) builds on the assumption that talk-in-interaction is meaningfully organized. It aims at defining the “simplest systematics” of talkin-interaction (Schegloff & Jefferson 1974). The concept of sequentiality constitutes one of CA’s key concepts. It defines how turns of speech, turns of phrase or idioms form various sequences (cf. Schegloff 1972; Goodwin & Heritage 1990). Many scholars agree that the local and institutional environment of talk represents the primary context in which participants understand discourse. The concept of sequentiality has been a central issue in the interrelationship between text and context. Already “The First International Conference on Understanding Language Use in Everyday Life” focused on this aspect when asking: “How far is extratextual material necessary to the carrying on of analysis at the level of concreteness common to ethnomethodology, CA and contemporary language-oriented social constructivism?”. (Watson 1992: xiv) This is the central question in an ongoing debate about the boundaries of CA. It is also the point of the micro-macro-dualism which ethnomethodologists find so problematic, and about the humanistic concerns and moral basis of ethnomethodology (ibid.: xix). Traditional CA usually delimits the analysis of sequentiality to the analysis of turn-taking and adjacency pairs (cf. Schegloff & Sacks 1973: 295–296). Other conversation analysts define sequences in broader terms by introducing the term ‘extended sequences’:
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Extended sequences in interaction need to be understandable and analyzable as whole units because they represent complex systems of action or activity systems. Explicating extended sequences entails paying attention to their overall structure rather than to any restricted set of contiguous utterances or turns. The structure of extended sequences is marked by a beginning and an ending, and, possibly, by sections and subunits, each of which may be differentiated internally. (Psathas 1994: 99)
According to this perspective, “[T]he whole is not the sum of its parts; rather, the whole is constituted in and through all relevant elements as a ‘gestaltcontextured’ configuration”’ (ibid.: 118). The debate about the relationship between text and context hinges on the question of how to appreciate sufficiently the properties of conversation as a process of social interaction (Moermann 1988: 12). For conversation analysts in particular, it is also a debate about the acknowledgement of the interpretive roots of ethnomethodology and whether or not CA represents a break from these foundations (Dittmann 1982: 6; Garfinkel & Wieder 1992: 16–17; Soraya 1998: 51–52). However – and without neglecting the fact that some conversation analysts acknowledge the contextual, cultural and interpretive aspects of discourse – this debate also highlights one of the major points of contention between CA on the one hand and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) on the other. They disagree, for example, about the analytical relevance of such concepts as intertextuality, values, powers and the analytical importance of the socio-cultural context. The blurred, diffuse and heterogeneous character of both CA and CDA makes a search for dialogue between CA and CDA difficult. This paper seeks to bridge the gap between CA and CDA by enhancing the analytical scope of the concept of sequentiality and by illuminating how context-oriented complexity reductions based on intertextual and interdiscursive links can be used strategically to produce certain images and perceptions in talk on TV. After a short theoretical discussion of CA and CDA in a comparative perspective, two case analyses of TV-programs will be presented in order to exemplify how CA and CDA could support each other in the analysis of talk on TV.
CA and CDA in a comparative perspective With the linguistic turn in media analysis, both CA and CDA attained growing attention among media scholars. Both offer a better understanding of the construction of media messages, and how those construction processes remain
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bound to a particular context, while at the same time reproducing social context (e.g. Van Dijk 1988a, b; Heritage & Greatbach 1991; Jäger 1993; Fairclough 1995b; Langer 2000). CA intends to investigate “naturally occurring conversation” (Atkinson & Heritage 1984: 2) and seeks to describe and to explicate “the competences which ordinary speakers use and rely on when they engage in intelligible conversation interaction” (ibid.: 241). Thus, CA is a method applicable to the descriptive inductive analysis of inherent structures of talk-in-interaction. It offers rigorous, systematic procedures for studying social actions that also provide reproducible results (Psathas 1995: 1). CA’s focus on talk-in-interaction in the media has resulted in a number of studies illuminating news interviews and talkshows (e.g. Heritage 1985; Clayman 1988; Heritage & Greatbach 1991; Clayman 1992; Greatbach 1992; Firth 1999). CDA, on the other hand, investigates the social use of language based on the assumption that reality is constructed in discursive practices. It proceeds from a number of core principles, uniting the various viewpoints within this group of approaches. These principles are (cf. Fairclough & Wodak 1997): (1) CDA addresses social problems; (2) power relations are discursive; (3) discourse constitutes society and culture; (4) discourse triggers off ideological work; (5) discourse is historical; (6) the link between text and society is mediated, and (7) discourse analysis is interpretative and explanatory. CDA holds the content of utterances to be as important as their structure. Analysis in CDA takes place at the levels of textual production, discursive practice, and social practice simultaneously. It examines each of these as a product of earlier discourses, reflecting rules and conventions of earlier social use of language. Key concepts in CDA are the concepts of intertextuality and interdiscursivity. The concept of intertextuality stresses the dialogue properties of texts: every text is part of a series of texts to which it reacts and refers, and which it modifies. Interdiscursivity can be defined as the constitution of a text from a configuration of text types or discourse and genre conventions (cf. Fairclough 1992: 10). CDA has offered insight into the constitution of discursive and social practices in almost all media genres. For instance, studies based on CDA have focused on the construction of national identities (Wodak et al. 1999; Langer 2001), gender (Wodak 1997), ethnicity and race (van Dijk 1991 & 1993; Jäger 1993) and marketization of public discourse (Fairclough 1995a). All these studies use linguistic analysis as part of the social analysis and have taken sides in the scientific discussion of sequentiality by starting from the assumption that
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intertextuality and interdiscursivity largely determine the selection of words and communicative strategies. CA and CDA have a number of similarities. Both deal with the analysis of discursive events and their textual manifestations. Both are empirically oriented, and neither shares the static view of language that characterizes traditional linguistics. Yet – in spite of a few attempts (e.g. Aslama & Valtonen 1997; Soraya 1998; Langer 1999) – parallel accounts or methodical frames combining the two outlooks are rare. Rather than search for points of agreement, prominent conversation and discourse analysts have sought to distance themselves from each other by pinpointing differences and highlighting disagreements. To be sure, certain key differences between CA and CDA make cooperation difficult. For CA “mutual understanding and coordinated action is not resolved by reference to shared symbol systems which encode and decode the meaning and import of the talk” (Zimmerman & Boden 1991: 10). Critics of CA (e.g. Dittmann 1982; Kallmeyer 1987; Geißner 1988; Soraya 1998) argue that it suffers from a lack of methodological foundation, a rigid formalism and a too narrow understanding of context. Fairclough (1992: 16–20) criticises CA for its tendency to avoid general theory and sociological concepts such as class, power or ideology, and for neglecting intertextuality and discursive practice. Essentially, he questions CA’s purely formal and structural view on discourse in particular the idea that the sequential position of an utterance suffices to determine the meaning of that utterance. The idea of common rules for turn-taking where discourse participants have equal rights and obligations assumes an ideal speech situation where power and hegemony are absent: “. . . [I]t is evident that producing discourse is part of wider processes of producing social life, social relationships, and social identities; yet much CA in its harmonious reading of interaction between equals gives the impression that producing discourse is an end in itself.” (ibid.: 19) On the other hand, conversation analysts criticise CDA for not being an appropriate method for the study of the detailed particularities of conversations. The majority of conversation analysts most likely would agree with the criticism that CDA focuses on the blurred interrelationship and lack of separation between description and interpretation (e.g. Pennycock 1994; Widdowson 1995). On this basis some CA-scholars suggest a clear division between CA and CDA: Kallmeyer (1987: 1100) suggests that discourse analysis illuminates institutional communication, whereas CA explores talk-in-interaction on a microlevel. Moerman (1991: 31) claims that CA deals exclusively with structures of social interaction on a micro-level, whereas discourse analysis with “language beyond the sentence”.
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The tensions between CA and CDA thus boil down to a disagreement over the definition of the discourse unit to be analysed and the degree of inclusion of context into the analytical frame. One could – without neglecting these differences between CA and CDA – also deal with them as complementary approaches offering potentially relevant insight on different levels of analysis. CA is able to illuminate how media talk is structured in detail and how interaction based on sequential turn-taking and repair organization constitutes and reflects participants roles on a micro-level. CDA offers a broader analytical frame for investigating the discursive and socio-cultural settings of talk, as it is defined in the concepts of intertextuality and interdiscursivity. It does so by illuminating the relationship between structure and content as well as by illuminating the discursive rules and archaeological deposits from discourse history. The following two cases shall exemplify, how combining CA and CDA can generate new insights on the sequential organization of discourse that challenge traditional theorizing about sequentiality.
National discourse communities and role scripts in talk on TV Mass media constitute a platform for intercultural communication where identities and images are confirmed, preserved and redefined. They represent important components of our social environment, and they exert considerable influence over our beliefs, values and actions by presenting role models. Both of these mechanisms of the mass media create pre-dispositions and constitute preliminary conditions for the actions of their audiences. Thus, the analysis of media discourses about the self and the other is one of the central issues in current research on intercultural communication and media culture (cf. Hinnenkamp 1994: 4; Schmidt 1997: 42). The following case analysis stems from a research project about images of Germany in Danish media discourses. (Langer 2001) The project investigated what role models are offered by these Danish media discourses for intercultural contact between Danes and Germans; what attitudes and opinions are expressed in these media discourses; and finally, how these role models, attitudes and opinions are constructed rhetorically and linguistically.
The case of Danish holiday cottages Denmark has managed to exempt itself from certain kinds of EU legislation. One example is the continuance of a Danish law that prohibits foreigners with-
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out permanent residence in Denmark from buying Danish holiday cottages or permanent dwellings. Since most potential foreign buyers tend to be Germans, simply because of Germany’s physical proximity to Denmark, this legislation is in particular directed against the Danes’ German neighbors. Denmark is a very popular tourist destination for German tourists. Many Germans rent holiday cottages in Danish coastal areas. Many Danes are afraid of the Germans getting a chance to buy these cottages. They argue that an increase in demand on the nationally closed Danish market will result in higher prices and prevent many Danes from buying a cottage of their own. Proponents of this argument usually refer to the historically troublesome relationship between Denmark and Germany, and seek support from the fact that Denmark several times experienced oppression from its powerful and much bigger Southern neighbor, most notably during the German occupation of World War II. The Danish media discourse about holiday cottages is one of the most controversial public discourses in regard to Germany and Germans in general. This issue of Germans buying holiday cottages has remained one of the most explosive aspects of the discourse about Germany in the Danish media. Since the passage of the first Danish law prohibiting foreigners from buying Danish holiday cottages in 1959 there have been frequent public debates about this subject. The topic came up again in 1996: according to media reports, an increasing number of Germans were buying permanent dwellings in Denmark by sidestepping the law and evading the regulations. On May 2nd, 1996 Danish public service TV 2 broadcast a program in a series of prime time chat shows called “Focus”. Headlined “The Idyll in Danger,” the program constitutes one of the most important discursive knots in the “holiday cottage” discourse. Being such a highlight, the program summed up the previous debate and became the object of a number of intertextual references in the media later on. The following analysis of the program attempts to exemplify how the sequential organization of talk on TV is shaped by discursive genre conventions, pre-conceptualized scripts and its larger socio-cultural context.
“Focus”: a Danish TV-chat show The chat show series “Focus” started in February 1995. The goal of this series is to discuss topics of public interests. With a viewer share of 10–12 % on average, it is one of the successful programs on the Danish mediascape. The program lasts 45 minutes and the studio is the central stage. Three small documentary film reports, presenting new aspects of the topic or new opinions and thus working as “servers” for the discussion rounds, push the topical progress of
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the show forward. Based on this shift between studio and film sequences, the structure of the program looks as follows: – – – – – – – – –
Jingle of the “Focus” series and presentation of the topic (short introductory film) Studio introduction (host) Film 1 Studio discussion, first round Film 2 Studio discussion, second round Film 3 Studio-discussion, third round Conclusion (host) and jingle
There is no audience in the studio. Bruun (1997) characterizes “chat shows” as a mixture of journalistic debate, informational report and entertainment on stage. They blend elements from TV-news, interviews, documentaries, entertainment shows and audience discussions. In contrast to traditional talk shows, chat shows are less interested in presenting problem solutions based on consensus between the participants in a debate. Chat shows rather present the clash of different viewpoints and opinions on the TV-stage. The predominant purpose of this type of program is the entertainment of its audience.
Sequential organization based on role scripts The following analysis of the program focuses on the sequential organization of talk between the main actors in the program. The amount and length of contributions from the different actors vary a lot, corresponding to the role script of the participants. The most important actor is the host. He introduces new participants in the discussion, e.g.: (1) Vi har en gæst her i studiet, velkommen Jørgen Schleimann. ‘We have a guest here in the studio, welcome to Jørgen Schleimann.’
asks (critical) questions, e.g.: (2) >Hm, men altså på Rømø, der er der tale om, at det er ni tyskere, der har købt helårshuse, så, det er jo ikke nogen invasion ligefrem?< ‘Hm, but take Rømø, in this case nine Germans have bought these houses. So, this is not a downright invasion, is it?’
calls up the next speaker, e.g.:
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(3) Kastholm, vil du svare? ‘Kastholm, would you like to answer?’
pushes the debate forward, e.g.: (4) >Godt (.), $ og mens vi er ved at fortælle tyskerne, hvad de bør gøre og hvad de ikke bør gøre, vil jeg gerne spørge Grandjean-Thomsen $< ‘Well, while we are telling the Germans what they should and should not do, I would like to ask Grandjean-Thomsen.’
evaluates answers and arguments, e.g.: (5) Hm, (.) godt. ‘Well, o.k.’
subsumes and concludes, e.g.: (6) >Vi skal til at slutte nu. < Vi kan vist godt slå fast, at danske huse skal blive på danske hænder (.). $ Men vi ved trods alt godt, at det er dobbeltmoralsk. (.) Der står vi, uden at skamme os ret meget. Vi er alt for små. Tak for i aften. $< ‘We have to finish now. . . It seems certain that Danish houses shall remain in Danish hands. But we know all too well that this is a double standard. $ Here we are, without being too much ashamed. We are, after all, too small. $ Thanks for tonight.’
The host directs the show in accordance with a beforehand decided script and planned structure of the program. He leads the audience from one sequence to another and from one topical point or sub-conclusion to the next. He is a ringmaster, who guarantees that at no point the discussion is going to be spontaneous, natural or free, as this could endanger the overall plan for the program. The host is also responsible for ensuring that the audience can understand the different viewpoints expressed by the participants and that none of these actors talk too much or speak too long. If they do so, he tries to cut them off by interrupting their line of argument in order to guarantee the dynamics of the show based on constant turn-taking shifts and dialogue. His attempts usually result in overlapping talk. Whereas he succeeds in cutting off the laymandiscussant in the show, he seems less successful in stopping the invited experts and professional media chatters. This is illustrated by the sequential organization of turn-taking between the host and the scientific expert in the following example:
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(7) expert: . . . , hvor ferierne typisk holdes, hvor vi køber husene, (.)<de er måske slet ikke så enige>. . . . åltsådet her problem[med, at æh, Vi er ikke ene om i Europa, men hvem. . . ?<] 5 ‘We are not the only ones in Europe, but who. . . ?’ 6 expert ‘-nde> samfund med minoritetsbefolkninger bliver til 7 fritidssamfund, bliver til Disneylands, æh, den slags, det er et 8 generelt problem, som (.), æh, som vi har vanskeligt ved at 9 finde ud af. . . Altså, tyskerne køber jo ikke husene af nogen, 10 som ikke vil sælge dem, og de er vel danskere, dem der ejer 11 dem. . . ? [ hhhh . . . og påden anden] 12 ‘-ly communities with minorities become holiday 13 communities, become Disneylands, that kind, that is a general 14 problem, which, er, which we have difficulties in dealing 15 with. . . Because, those Germans don’t buy these houses from 16 somebody, who doesn’t want to sell, and they are Danes, who 17 own them, aren’t they and on the other hand’ 18 host: [ >Hm, du siger, det er ikke et specielt problem for os 19 danskere, det er. . . <] 20 ‘H’m, are you saying this is not a particular problem for us 21 Danes, it is. . . ’ 22 expert: side så føler vi, at det hører med til vores kulturarv. [hhh 23 altså] 24 ‘we feel, this is part of our cultural inheritance. I mean’ [@Ja.@] 25 host: 26 ‘Yes.’ In order to explain and to understand the sequential organization of talk in this example (CA), knowledge about the role scripts of the participants appears to be necessary (CDA). Role scripts reflect socio-cultural conventions which have been established in previous texts of the same kind. As an anthropologist, the expert’s role in public debates like this is to comment on the ongoing debate from a scientific perspective. The scientific expert just continues, although the host obviously (line 6 and 18) expresses his wish for a turn-taking shift and overlaps her speech. In order to finish her line of argument, the expert takes
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usually a breath in the middle of a sentence or in the middle of an argument (e.g. line 1 and 11), whereas she does not hold a pause at the end of a sentence or at the end of an argument (e.g. line 1, 11, 13). Instead, she immediately begins with her next sentence or argument, thus preventing interference from the host (e.g. line 17). Confronted with this, the host finally gives up his attempt. A short “Yes” (line 28) indicates his resigned impatience about the lack of success in getting the expert to stop talking. The two opponents appearing in this chat show are both well known by the Danish audience. Both of them have journalistic careers and have an influential impact on public opinion in Denmark. They are constructed as antipodes in the script of the show and hold opposite opinions in regard to the topic discussed. The role of one journalist is to present and express mainstream opinions, the role of the other is to provoke and to challenge these opinions. The only verbal combats during the show are fought out between these two participants and are initiated by the host, e.g.: (8) opponent b: . . . har en fair mulighed for at færdes påde danske strande og købe, og købe sommerhuse, æh. . . ‘. . . have a fair chance to walk on Danish beaches and buy, and buy, holiday cottages, er. . . ’ host (interrupts, moving his head to opponent a): >Det er ikke dobbeltmoralsk, altså, siger Kastholm.< ‘This is not a double standard, says Kastholm.’ opponent a: Jo, altså, det er jordens ældste forsamlingshus trick, at pådutte folk en mening, de ikke har fremsat. Jeg siger ikke spor om dobbeltmoral,(.) jeg [Overhovedet, ikke overhovedet ikke, over] ‘Well, yes, that is the oldest village hall trick of the world, to ascribe people an opinion they haven’t announced. I haven’t said anything about double standards, I – Not at all.’ opponent b: [Du brugte det, du brugte det, du brugte ikke ordet, men. . . ] ‘You said it ‘you said it, only you didn’t use the word, but. . . ’ opponent a: hovedet ikke, jeg. . . ‘Not at all, not at all, I. . . ’
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Again, the sequential organization of talk in this example is a result of predefined role scripts of the participants. Talk-in-interaction based on verbal conflicts and turn-taking-patterns (line 4/5 and 13) is constitutive for chat shows on TV. Previous texts established a discursive practice and constituted genre conventions for such shows. It also reflects and constitutes a certain sociocultural practice for organizing TV-entertainment for audiences. Thus, both intertextuality and interdiscursivity have a decisive influence on the sequential organisation of TV-talk in the chat show “Focus”. However, in order to get a comprehensive and in depth understanding of the sequential organization of talk-in-interaction on TV, the analysis has to include also the content dimension of the show.
The social use of language in a discourse community The chat show “Focus: The Idyll in Danger” is part of a Danish media campaign about an asserted buying up of Danish holiday cottages by German citizens. This discourse has a history of more than 40 years. The topic of this discourse pops up on the public (media) agenda in Denmark periodically. An archaeological analysis (that is: the analysis of all major texts on the topic and their socio-cultural background in the whole discourse history) ends up with a number of conclusions which can only be presented in a tentative resumé here. During the entire history of this discourse the same major arguments, rhetorical strategies and techniques can be identified. The chat show “The Idyll in Danger” reproduces most of these arguments, rhetorical strategies and techniques. By establishing intertextual links and by referring and presenting actors from earlier media texts about the same topic, the program subsumes and reflects the entire discourse history. In particular the repetition of negative historical experiences of Danes with Germans plays an important role when constructing Danish holiday cottages as national symbols (in line with the Danish national flag “Dannebrog” and the national colours red and white). All these symbols are frequently used on the visual side in “The Idyll in Danger”, as they have to be defended against German invaders and conquerors. This is relevant for the sequential organization of talk-in-interaction. The discourse history establishes a pre-understanding of the topic that is built into the script for the plot of the show, its characters and role distribution. It includes permanent memorising of negative stereotypes and historical experiences (Danish-German wars, the German occupation of Denmark during World War II), e.g. by use of lexical references such as “invasion”, “defence” and “Lebensraum” that link the past with the present and predict the future.
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One participant in the show argues for the necessity to discuss the general public opinion and the stereotyped view held by many Danes in order to understand the discourse about German purchases of Danish holiday cottages. The other opponent rejects to talk about this pre-understanding, because to him the discourse about holiday cottages has nothing to do with national stereotypes. The conclusion of this debate seems defined beforehand, as the host states at the end of the show: (9) Vi skal til at slutte nu. Vi kan vist godt slå fast, at danske huse skal blive på danske hænder. Men vi ved trods alt godt, at det er dobbeltmoralsk. Der står vi, uden at skamme os ret meget. Vi er alt for små. Tak for i aften. ‘We have to finish now. It seems certain that Danish houses should remain in Danish hands. We do know that this is a double standard, but that is what we think without being too much ashamed. We are, after all, too small. Thanks for tonight.’
These final comments document the pre-dominant understanding of the audience as a national discourse community. The sentence “We are, after all, too small” refers to the popular Danish proverb “We are, after all, just a small country”. Reading this sentence from a pre-written manuscript paper, the host reassures on behalf of the audience (“we”) the cultural reproduction of a perspective on the topic that was never intended to be challenged by the entertaining chat in this TV-show: “Danish houses should remain in Danish hands.” In conclusion, both the institutional setting and discursive conventions of talk on TV, the socio-cultural background of the discourse community of the speakers and the audience are decisive for talk-in-interaction on TV. This does not mean that talk on TV cannot be explored with regard to the sequential, turn-taking and repair organisation of discourse. It just says that the analysis has to be aware of the contextual setting and the discursive role descriptions in the production plans for talk on TV. Interaction on TV is by definition talk on stage and it is always based on a scenario and on certain discursive and socio-cultural conventions. The following case goes even one step further by focusing on the predefined sequential interaction between TV-journalists and TV-audiences based on complexity reductions, cultural stereotypes and interdiscursive links.
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Corporate image disruption and sequential complexity reduction in talk on TV Mass media are not just an important public arena when defining national identities. They also have an increasing importance in defining corporate images (Olins 1999; Hansen, Langer & Salskov-Iversen 2001). The importance of a positive reputation is indicated by a whole range of new buzz words, such as “reputation management”, “corporate image”, “crisis communication” and “pro-active communication planning”. In 1997 Greenpeace accused Shell for producing environmental damages when dumping the outdated oil-platform “Brent Spar” in the ocean. This case clearly showed that the image of any company is vulnerable, as Shell had to face a major image problem and a considerable decline in its turnover on its major markets (cf. Grolin 1997; Neale 1997; Søderberg 1997; Huxham & Sumner 1999). However, on the “marketplace of credibility” (Fletcher 1999: 3–7), truth cannot be defined in a truly objective manner. Thus being able to communicate one’s objectives in order to gain a positive reputation becomes more and more crucial for corporations. The following case attempts to illuminate how the image of a company can be affected by the sequential organization of talk-in-interaction in a critical TVshow. The analysis will focus on complexity reductions, cultural stereotypes and interdiscursive links that support the overall goal of a particular TV-show, namely to attack the image of a certain company.
The case of Hamburg-Mannheimer In 1997, the second-largest German insurance corporation Hamburg-Mannheimer entered the Danish insurance market. Hitherto, this market had been nationally monopolised, shared by major Danish insurance corporations. According to its own information, the German corporation captured with 18.000 newly signed contracts about 70 percent of all newly signed Danish life insurance contracts in 1998. With this explosive growth Hamburg-Mannheimer became one of the major players on the Danish insurance market within a year. A few months later, the situation had changed profoundly: the image of the company was seriously damaged and future prospects were turned on their heads. What had happened? In December 1998, the Danish consumer journal Money and Private Economy published an article headlined “A bad offer from Germany” (Penge & Privatøkonomi, 8/1998: “Dårligt tilbud fra Tyskland”). In this article the sales methods and products of the company became objects of criticism. Few weeks
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later, on January 17th and 18th 1999, Danish public service TV-channel DR 1 covered the company in its evening news. The corporation was accused of using “pyramid selling methods” (a dubious sales technique: the buyer of a product becomes a salesmen for the product in order to achieve discounts or even income – much alike the rationale of chain letters). Hamburg-Mannheimer was also accused of spreading misleading information about its “non-competitive products”. According to the journalists, the success of Hamburg-Mannheimer could only be explained by irresponsible business methods which promised potential customers the moon. On March 1st, 1999, another 30-minute program on the same TV channel repeated this critique. To document the accusations, the TV journalists recorded a sales course in the company by smuggling an “undercover agent” with a hidden camera into the organisation. A psychologist called the instructions given in the sales course “mental rape” and “psychopathic behavior”. The producers of the program labelled the sales methods used by the company as “sales weapons” and “tricks used on innocent victims”. In line with this, the salesmen of the corporation were presented as “damned effective” and “unscrupulous” “brain-washing” agents. There are no official statistics available, telling us about the economic costs of the image crisis created by this program. Up to a point, the company later gained rehabilitation by the fact that the makers of the program were charged by the Danish police for having manipulated documents and translations from German into Danish. However, there can be no doubt that this media exposure had a considerable negative effect on the reputation and – at the end – on the sales figures of the company.
“The Report” – investigative consumer research on Danish TV “The Report” claims to follow the principles of investigative and critical journalism. Since the program was launched in September 1996, the chief editor and host Jens Olaf Jersild was the guide of the viewers (http://www.dr.dk/tvfakta/rapporten). According to the self-description of the makers of the program, he is a journalist detective, who – on the background of the research of his team – takes the viewers on the hunt for the story. The self-perception and role understanding of the journalists becomes even more clear in the following quotation from the homepage (ibid.): (10) Mange af de ting, vi undersøger er enten på kant med eller direkte overtrædelser af loven. For at vise, hvordan de foregår, bruger vi ofte special-
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byggede kameraer under optagelserne. Vi viser dig med billeder, hvordan tingene hænger sammen i stedet for at fortælle dig om det, og vi konfronterer dem, vi undersøger, med vores optagelser bagefter. . . til at vise virkeligheden, som den er. ‘Many of the things, we investigate on are on the edge or direct offences of laws. To show what happens, we often use special hidden cameras when filming. We show you on film how things are related to each other instead of just talking about them, and afterwards we confront those we investigate on with our recordings. . . in order to show reality as it is.’
The structure of the program is based on fast cut sequences changing between recordings with a hidden camera on the one hand and experts commenting on and evaluating the recordings on the other. In between, always on the move – talking on the mobile phone, going fast, driving in a car to another location of crime and betrayal, introducing and connecting the different sequences with short tales – the audience meets the consumer’s detective on Danish Television. The conceptual structure of “The Report” has a number of similarities with a thriller or detective film. The traditional plot of a detective story, the high speed of the program caused by the mobility of the consumers’ detective and host of the program and the many short and fast cut sequences create suspense and thrill the audience. This might be one of the reasons for the popularity and success of the series, as “The Report” is successful in terms of viewer shares (up to 700.000 viewers – out of a total Danish population of 5 million). From a genre theoretical angle, the unique mixture of scripts and frames from investigative journalism and detective films creates cognitive schemes for the audience’s reception. As Grice (1979: 243–265) pinpoints, communication is based on a mutual agreement about the referential frame between the participants in order to give meaning. In the following analysis, sequentiality is understood as these cognitive schemes uniting participants in communication on a discursive and global level, rather than as local interaction and turn-taking in conversation. These cognitive schemes reflect expectations and evaluation patterns in the minds of audiences in regard to the role characteristics, trustworthiness, dramatic plot, topical and narrative structure. They have been established by previous media offers with similar characteristics (cf. Schmidt & Weischenberg 1994: 213; Van Dijk 1988a, 1988b).
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Sequential complexity reductions based on cultural stereotypes and intertextuality The editorial team of “The Report” introduces the program on its homepage by suggesting a parallel between the sales organisation of Hamburg-Mannheimer and clinical psychopaths: (11) Det er mental voldtægt. Hvis man skal bruge et klinisk udtryk her, så nærmer det sig, had man vil kalde psykopatisk adfærd fra sælgerens side, siger psykolog Alan Holmgren om de salgsmetoder, som sælgerne i det tyske Hamburg-Mannheimer lærer at anvende overfor deres kunder. ‘This is mental rape. If one should use a clinical term here, this is close to what I would call psychopathic behaviour from the salesman, says a psychologist about the sales methods, the German insurance company Hamburg-Mannheimer uses on their customers.’
This characteristic is an important bone in the skeleton behind the image of the insurance company constructed in the program. The German origin of the company is mentioned twice – thus obviously being of a certain importance. The focus on the German origin of the company had earlier been used in advertisements by the company itself, when referring to popular stereotypes: “Danish flexibility – German security” was one of the ad-headlines. In “The Report” the focus on the German origin of Hamburg-Mannheimer might have the purpose to unite the Danish audience of the program in a national discourse community (Pogner 1999). By alienating the company from the hitherto nationally monopolised Danish market a spill-over effect from national to corporate image might be intended. Previous research on media images of Germany in Denmark (Langer 2001) has shown that negative national images and stereotypes (e.g. Germany is too big, dubious, dangerous and dominant) are common in the Danish media. These other media texts can be seen as contextual frames for the next generations of texts (Langer 1997) – including the “Report” – program about Hamburg-Mannheimer. The dynamics of the 30-minute program is not only rooted in a cocktail of different genre aspects, but also in the cutting technique. As many as 54 different sequences – each sequence from a different location than the sequence before – fasten up the perceived speed of the program. They support the impression that we are on a hunt where the scene changes all the time. The hunt starts with a very fast cut introduction to the program: in the first 20 seconds, some of the most expressive quotations from the entire program are presented in six fast and short cut sequences, presenting the final conclusions of the in-
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vestigations and the witnesses behind. These conclusions and witnesses are in detail: –
a “Report” – journalist who explains the relevance of the program for the audience: (12) Sequence 1 Det kan blive din dør, de ringer på næste gang, supersælgerne. Og det kan blive dig, der bliver offer for deres psykologiske spil. ‘This can be your door where they ring the bell next time, these supersalesmen. And it can be you, who will be the victim of their psychological game.’
–
a former customer of the company who criticizes the sales practices of the company: (13) Sequence 2 Det er jo en form for trance! ‘This is a kind of trance!’
–
hidden camera recordings from a sales course in the company: (14) Sequence 3 Nu skal du sige: ‘Ja.’ Nu skal du sige: ‘Nej.’ Nu skal du gøre sådan, så gør han sådan. Det er det jeg er i gang med, jeg er ved at dressere kunden. ‘Now you shall say: “Yes”. Now you shall say: “No”. Now you shall do this, now you shall do that. I am on the way to train the customer.’
–
a communication expert who comments on these recordings: (15) Sequence 4 Det er så groft, at man kan sammenligne det med mental voldtægt. ‘This is so harsh that one could compare it with mental rape.’
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a self-promotion of the program “Report”: (16) Sequence 5 Jingle: (Logo and drums)
–
a “Report” – journalist who evaluates the company’s sales staff and techniques. He also underlines the relevance of the program for its audience and establishes a personal relationship between the company’s “supersalesmen” and the audience. The audience is addressed personally (“you”) and constructed as a victim in this relationship: (17) Sequence 6 Det her kunne være din gade. Det her kunne være din trappe. Det her kunne
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være din dør. Og det her kunne være dig. Det kunne nemlig nemt være dig, der får besøg af en supersælger. En sælger, som kun ser dig som et bytte, kun ser dig som et offer for alle de salgsteknikker, salgsvåben, som sælgeren er trænet i at bruge, i et nøje tilrettelagt psykisk spil. ‘This could be your street. These could be your stairs. This could be your door. And this could be you. Because it could easily be you, who will get a super-salesmen on visit. A salesman who looks upon you as a prey, who only looks upon you as a victim for all the sales techniques, sales weapon he is trained to use in a carefully orchestrated psychological game.’
Introducing the program like this, the producers intend to establish a selfperception in their audience as potential victims of the super-salesmen from Hamburg-Mannheimer. Visually, the sixth sequence shows a handheld camera zooming into a street, a staircase, a door. The camera screen has a back sight like a rifle. The visual image is accompanied by lexical choices in the parallel voiceover, such as “victims” and “sales weapons”. Thus, the choice of words produces interdiscursive links to the domains of hunt and even war. By doing so, the start sequence establishes the role script distribution for the entire program and introduces almost all the ingredients for the subsequent sequences. Before the audience witnesses any kind of evidence of “trance”, “mental rape”, “psychological game” and “sales weapons”, two further sequences in “The Report” do exactly what the program accuses the salesmen of HamburgMannheimer of, namely training the customer. The psychologist and the journalist detective repeat their accusations and evaluation of the company’s sales practices. Then the audience meets the hidden camera of “The Report”; a clip is shown where an instructor on a course for salesmen of HamburgMannheimer states: (18) Hvis man skal helt ned down to the bottom, så er salgsteknik egentlig ren manipulation. . . Hvis man bruger salgsteknik konsekvent, så er det manipulation med kunden. Og er man superhamrende god og øvet og rutineret, så kan man næsten få folk til at købe hvad som helst. ‘If you take it down to the bottom, sales technique is manipulation. . . If you use sales technique consistently, it is manipulation of the customer. And if you are really super good at it and experienced and skilled, you can get people to buy almost anything.’
However, this cite appears to be a fairly weak proof for a particular unethical spirit or practice. It does not take much more than a short look into the literature presented at Business Schools or sales courses to find out that sales staff shall sell products. Still, as an interdiscursive link to popular perceptions
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and negative stereotypes about salesmen (e.g. car dealers), this sequence serves its purpose – to construct negative connotations to the image of the company. Evaluative lexical choices like “tricks”, “manipulating”, “psychopaths” and “swindle” in the sequences of the show characterizing the sales techniques of Hamburg-Mannheimer create common cognitive frames of reference towards discourses about crime and insanity. These pre-conceptualized connotative evaluations seem to be backed up by other sources and witnesses in the subsequent sequences. A former customer of Hamburg-Mannheimer who now regrets having signed a contract blames the company for having manipulated his senses. That goes also for a former salesman of the company, who now does not feel good about his former job and employer any longer. Their statements are introduced by evaluations from a journalist using expressions like “brainwashing” and “hypnosis” – without the witnesses using these expressions themselves. Even more interesting is the role of the two German witnesses in the program. In a Danish sales brochure, Hamburg-Mannheimer uses Günter Kaiser, the company’s popular advertisement-spokesman in Germany. In “The Report”, the journalist detective called the Danish office of the company in order to discuss with Mr. Kaiser the company’s sales methods. The purpose of this apparently naive attempt to talk to Mr. Kaiser becomes obvious in the journalist’s comment, after having disclosed the non-existence of Mr. Kaiser outside the company’s advertisements: “But he doesn’t exist at all, this is swindle!” Again, a “witness” is used to document the betrayal of the company; this time by claiming that using non-real characters in commercials is an exception from the usual practice. Although most of the viewers probably know about the difference between commercials and reality, the purpose in terms of image disruption might work: again, the Hamburg-Mannheimer seems revealed to have cheated the customer. The second German witness is a spokes-woman for the German Consumer Council in Hamburg. And indeed, she expresses substantial criticism of the business methods of the company: “Hamburg-Mannheimer has a very bad reputation here in Germany. They have a very aggressive sales organisation. It sells insurance contracts which are – in comparison to others – extremely expensive. They sell the wrong insurance contracts (with regard the customers’ needs, RL).” Her sentence “They sell the wrong insurance contracts.” in the subtitle has been incorrectly translated into Danish “They sell false insurance contracts.” This wrong translation is repeated twice:
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(19) Das ist falsch, ja, das ist falsch. Also, es gibt hier kein anerkanntes Ausbildungssystem der Hamburg-Mannheimer. ‘This is wrong, yes, this is wrong. So, there is no approved training system of Hamburg-Mannheimer.’ Ja, det er løgn. Hamburg-Mannheimer har ikke noget anerkendt uddannelsessystem. ‘Yes, this is a lie. Hamburg-Mannheimer does not have an approved training system.’
The translation of the German cites into Danish subtitles deserves attention, because these translations fit into the overall intention of “The Report” to construct Hamburg-Mannheimer as a company that cannot be trusted. At the very end of the program, while the final subtitles are presenting the producers and “The Report”’s signature tunes, a voice over corrects the translation: “We shall correct a mistake in the subtitles. Several times the word ‘falsch’ was translated into ‘false’. It should have been translated into ‘wrong’.” From the perspective of Hamburg-Mannheimer, at this point damage had been done and could hardly be reversed. From the perspective of program analysis it seems questionable, whether the wrong translations are mere mistakes, as they fit too well to the journalists’ intention to cast a bad light on the company.
Sequentiality and complexity reduction by intertextuality and interdiscursivity The Hamburg-Mannheimer experience is an indicator for the current relationship between business life and journalists. A mere 30-minute program on Danish TV almost destroyed the new-established business of HamburgMannheimer. The company’s experience also documents, how the sequential organization of a TV-program constructs intertextual and interdiscursive links in order to produce a certain image and perception of the company. The purpose of this paper is not to decide whether the accusations against Hamburg-Mannheimer are true or false, but to describe how the program constructs the image of the company by using certain discursive scripts in order to reduce the cognitive work of its audience when it evaluates the company. It is, however, not unimportant how the media reality of “The Report” matches the perception of reality by other observers and the audience. As the gestalt of the program – supported by its sequential organization – is not easily seen through, laymen among the audience might very well be willing to take the
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media reality about Hamburg-Mannheimer for granted and accept it as a true representation of the company. From this perspective, two unusual aspects of “The Report” deserve attention: the translation of German phrases and the use of the hidden camera. Both aspects have been main topics in the critical feedback from media and legal experts after the broadcast. The sales director of Hamburg-Mannheimer commented on these aspects as follows (Politiken, 25.2.1999): (20) Det er helt ufattelige metoder, DR bruger. Det har vi aldrig oplevet i Europa. Man skulle tro, at DR var blevet betalt for det. . . Måske har vi været lidt for hurtige i vores salg, men vi har haft succes og har erobret 72 % af markedet på et å r. ‘It is unbelievable that Denmark’s Radio uses such methods. We have never seen anything like that in Europe. One should believe that Denmark’s Radio gets paid for this. . . Maybe we have been a little too good in our sales, but we have had success and have gained 72 percent of the market within a year.’
Investigations by the Danish police and the Danish Ombudsman concluded, that the accusations against the company raised in “The Report” are not valid. The Danish Press Committee criticised both the practices of translation and the use of hidden cameras on the background of a falsified police record. However, as an example of the negative long-term effects, a response to a letter by the editor in the Danish daily Jyllandsposten can be quoted. The reader asked whether it might be a good idea to place savings in Hamburg-Mannheimer. The newspaper’s expert responded: (21) De får os altså ikke til at udtale os om, hvorvidt valg af selskabet er en god idé eller ej. Den beslutning må de selv tage. Men vi kan sige følgende: Der har tidligere været megen blæst om dette selskabs aktiviteter i Danmark. Uden at tage parti hverken for eller imod selskabet, har vi det generelle råd, at man kun placerer sin langtidsopsparing i selskaber, man har ubetinget tillid til. Selskabet har tidligere været hovedpersonen i udsendelsen DR Rapporten – men retfærdigvis skal også nævnes, at DR Rapporten siden er blevet kritiseret for sine metoder til afsløringerne i Hamburg-Mannheimer. ‘You won’t get us to say anything about whether your choice of insurance company is good or not. This decision you will have to take on your own. But we can say the following: There has earlier been a dispute about this company’s activities in Denmark. Without taking sides for or against the company, we have the general advice to place one’s savings in companies, one trusts without any doubt. The company has been a main fig-
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ure in the TV-program “The Report” – but it is fair to say, that since then, “The Report” has been criticised for the methods used to reveal Hamburg-Mannheimer.’
The general advice “to place one’s savings in companies, one trusts without any doubts” includes the implication that placing one’s savings in HamburgMannheimer is risky. The image of Hamburg-Mannheimer does not any longer include trustworthiness after the company had been a main issue in “The Report”.
Conclusion This paper examined how the concepts of sequentiality, intertextuality and interdiscursivity can be applied in the analysis of talk on TV. This attempt was based on the theoretical assumption that Conversational Analysis (CA) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) can support and complement each other in order to gain a deeper understanding of how talk on TV is organized. From a theoretical perspective it is argued that CA and CDA offer relevant insights on different levels of analysis: CA illuminates the structural details of the sequential organization of talk on TV; CDA offers insights on the influence of intertextual and interdiscursive links. Thus, grasping the micro-structures of talk-ininteraction and the interrelated and framing contextual macro-structures of the social use of language requires application and combination of analytical tools and key concepts from both CA and CDA. Intertextuality and interdiscursivity have a decisive influence on the sequential organization of talk on TV. In order to achieve the communicative goals of TV-producers behind the scenes, broadcast conversations’ preconceptualized talk on stage includes context-oriented complexity reductions based on discursive and socio-cultural conventions. Two cases have been examined, each of them documenting that talk on TV is shaped by socio-cognitive scripts, discursive rules and the socio-cultural context in a particular discourse community. Both cases illustrate how the sequential organization of talk on TV is both constituting participants’ roles and reflecting the discursive and socio-cultural setting of the role scripts by re-constructing consensual images in discourse communities. The analysis of the program “Focus” revealed that a CA-oriented analysis of turn-taking-structures and overlapping talk must be linked to the analysis of intertextuality. Pre-conceptualized role scripts are based on prior discursive
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practice and socio-cultural expectations of the participants in a chat show on TV. This analysis also displayed that the sequential organization of talk in this show was affected by a common referential frame, namely the national Danish discourse community. The analysis of the program “The Report” documented that broadcast conversation can establish intertextual and interdiscursive links in order to produce complexity reductions. Complexity reductions are necessary in order to create particular images and in order to direct the audience’s perception of a topic. It also includes an expectation and pre-conceptualization of how the audience of a show will perceive and react on the different sequences of the program. In order to reduce the cognitive work of the audience, such expectations and pre-conceptualizations imply knowledge about discursive conventions and socio-cultural images internalized by the audience. Talk on TV is designed to meet viewer expectations. In regard to the audience, CA and CDA have been criticised for their apparent lack of interest in reception processes (e.g. Stubbs 1997: 103; Schrøder 1998). The future challenge for both CA and CDA is to become integrated in a discourse ethnography, in which the study of sequential interaction and organization of talk, the study of discourse practices and the study of social practices are combined in the investigation of (sequential) communicative circuits in and around the mass media. Beyond the scope of this paper, such an attempt could also be one of the objectives on the agenda for future cooperation between CA and CDA.
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Langer, R. (1999). Contextualizing Conversation Analysis with Discourse Analysis. Paper given at the International Conference “Broadcast Conversations: Interaction in the Media”, Roskilde University, March 25–26, 1999. Langer, R. (2000). Germans welcome? Reflections on media discourse in practice. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 10(1), 7–24. Langer, R. (2001). Zwischen Gefühl und Vernunft: Zur Darstellung Deutschlands in dänischen Medien. Copenhagen Business School. Department of Intercultural Communication and Management. Moerman, M. (1988). Talking Culture: Ethnography and Conversation Analysis. Phidadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Moerman, M. (1992). Life after CA: An ethnographers autobiography. In G. Watson & R. M. Seiler (Eds.), Text in Context: Contributions to Ethnomethodology (pp. 20–34). Newsbury Park, CA: Sage. Neale, A. (1997). Organisational learning in contested environments – Lessons from Brent Spar. Business Strategy and the Environment, 6(2), 93–103. Olins, W. (1999). Trading Identities. Why Countries and Companies are Taking each others’ Roles. London: The Foreign Policy Center. Pogner, K.-H. (1999). Schreiben im Beruf als Handeln im Fach. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. Pennycock, A. (1994). Incommensurable discourses? Applied Linguistics, 15(2), 115–138. Psathas, G. (1994). The study of extented sequences. In G. Watson & R. M. Seiler (Eds.), Text in Context. Contributions to Ethnomethodology (pp. 99–122). Newsbury Park, CA: Sage. Psathas, G. (1995). Conversation Analysis. The Study of Talk-in-Interaction. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Schegloff, E. A. (1972). Sequencing in conversational openings. In J. Gumperz & D. Hymes (Eds.), Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication (pp. 349–380). New York: Rinehart and Winston. Schegloff, E. A., & Sacks, H. (1973). Opening up closings. Semiotica, 8(4), 289–327. Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turntaking conversation. Language, 50(4), 696–735. Schmidt, S. J., & Weischenberg, S. (1994). Mediengattungen, Berichtserstattungsmuster, Darstellungsformen. In K. Merten, S. J. Schmidt & S. Weischenberg (Eds.), Die Wirklichkeit der Medien (pp. 212–236). Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Schmidt, S. J. (1997). Die Welten der Medien. Braunschweig/Wiesbaden: Vieweg. Schrøder, K. C. (1998). Discourse Analysis and the Media/Society Nexus: Towards a Notion of “Discourse Ethnography”? Occasional Paper No. 71. Copenhagen Business School: Department of Intercultural Communication and Management. Soraya, S. (1998). Ethnohermeneutik des Sprechens. Skt Ingbert: Röhrig Universitätsverlag. Stubbs, M. (1997). Whorf ’s children: Critical comments on Critical Discourse Analysis. In A. Ryan & A. Wray (Eds.), Evolving Models of Language (pp. 100–116). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Søderberg, A.-M. (1997). Virksomhedskommunikation til en kritisk offentlighed – Shell mellem fornuft og følelser. In K. E. Hjorth (Ed.), Diskurs. Analyse af Tekst og Kontekst (pp. 43–80). Frederiksberg: Samfundslitteratur. Van Dijk, T. A. (1988a). News as Discourse. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
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Van Dijk, T. A. (1988b). News Analysis. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Van Dijk, T. A. (1991). Racism and the Press. London: Routledge. Van Dijk, T. A. (1993). Discourse and Elite Racism. London: Sage. Watson, G. (1994). Introduction. In G. Watson & S. M. Seiler (Eds.), Text in Context. Contributions to Ethnomethodology (pp. xiv–xxvi). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Widdowson, H. G. (1995). Discourse Analysis: A critical view. Language and Literature, 4, 171–172. Wodak, R. (1997). Gender and Discourse. London: Sage. Wodak, R., de Cillia, R., Reisigl, M., & Liebhart, K. (1999). The Discursive Construction of National Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Zimmerman, Don H., & Boden, D. (1991). Structure-in-Action: An Introduction. In D. Boden & D. H. Zimmerman (Eds.), Talk and Social Structure. Studies in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis (pp. 3–21). Cambridge: Polity Press.
Other sources: “Focus”, “The Idyll in Danger” (Brændpunkt, Idyllen i fare), TV2, May 2nd, 1996. “The Report” (Rapporten), “Hamburg-Mannheimer”. Denmarks Radio, March 1st, 1999. Homepage of “The Report” (Rapporten): http://www.dr.dk/tv-fakta/rapporten (April 2000). Articles from the Danish daily newspapers Jyllandsposten and Politiken, and from the consumer journal Penge and Privatøkonomi. The Danish Ombudsman for consumers: Response to the letter of complaint about Hamburg-Mannheimer from the Association of Danish Insurance Companies. http://www.fs.dk/jura/fjura/sager/99h-h.htm (April 2000). Hamburg-Mannheimer: Corporate ads from Danish newspapers, February– April 1999.
Appendix. Transcription conventions (cf. Psathas 1995: 12, 70–78) (.) (. .) no* $no$ @no@ >no< <no> no [ ] hhh
short pause longer pause (in relation to the surrounding talk) uttered more quiet than the surrounding talk uttered with a smiling tone uttered with a different tone from the surrounding talk uttered faster than surrounding talk uttered slower than surrounding talk emphasis on the world/syllable beginning of overlapping talk end of overlapping talk taking a breath
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Culture, genres and the problem of sequentiality An attempt to describe local organization and global structures in talk-in-situation Friederike Kern University of Dortmund, Germany
Introduction This paper explores the potential of the conversation analytical concept of sequentiality and investigates its applicability for the analysis of situated talk in a particular genre, namely the job interview. Even though global categories such as culture or gender are widely acknowledged to be of major influence for the speakers’ verbal performance, they cannot be easily accounted for in conversation analytically inspired sequential analysis. It is my aim to show how the concept of genre theory, as outlined by Luckmann (1986, 1988), can be used to include such macroanalytical categories into the microanalysis of situated talk. In job interviews, global orientations towards genre-specific rules, on the one hand, and the use of patterned, rhetorical strategies, on the other, are understood to be important constraints on both candidates’ and interviewers’ verbal performances respectively. Microanalysis of one conversational activity may provide insight into the speakers’ locally organized alignment to prior talk and their orientation to genre-specific and cultural patterns. Starting out from one conversational activity often found in job interviews, namely the question about and description of professional experience, the different ways participants construct those question-answer pairs are investigated. It soon becomes obvious that they do not always appear to be only produced according to constraints of local organization of talk but also expose the speakers’ orientation
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to more global or macroanalytical, genre-specific structures that may even be culturally patterned. First, I will give an overview of the theoretical and methodological approach my analysis is based on. This includes a review of the concept of sequentiality as understood in conversation analysis, and a brief outline of genre theory. Then, I will discuss the different ways participants in job interviews construct particular question-and-answer-pairs. The focus of analysis will first be on the constraints of local discourse production and then shift to more global, genre-specific factors as one source of explanation. In the last section I will reveal how culture as a macroanalytical category can be re-introduced into the interpretation of talk-in-situation on the basis of thorough sequential analysis.
Methodological and theoretical preliminaries Sequentiality in conversation analysis My approach is largely inspired by conversation analysis (see Levinson 1983 for an overview). In conversation analysis, no external categories should be applied to the data beforehand. Instead, analytical categories should be obtained empirically and derived directly from the data. They need to correspond as closely as possible to those that the participants themselves can be observed to orient to in interaction (participation categories). One way to prove the participants’ categories to be relevant analytical categories is through the analysis of sequentially produced forms and structures of language. Those forms and structures are thus understood to be intersubjectively produced in discourse and are investigated in terms of their interactive function. As a consequence, much attention is paid to the course of interaction and the participants’ contribution to it. In order to comprehend how discourse is interactively produced by participants, sequentiality is a key concept for conversation analysis and as such used as a tool to bring out relevant linguistic structures as interactively produced phenomena. Sequentiality, as it is understood in conversation analysis, is a local concept and used to develop analytical categories on a strictly empirical basis from the data itself. It provides a powerful instrument to analyze spoken language on the level of discourse organization, as speakers systematically select and interpret turns according to the preceding turn (see e.g. Levinson 1983 for details on adjacency pairs).
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However, there are well-known limits to data analysis if sequential analysis is followed strictly. If only categories that can be proven to be oriented to by participants should be included in the analysis particular contextual factors consequently cannot be easily covered. Such factors may be the participants’ institutional roles such as interviewer and applicant, doctor and patient or teacher and student. Other factors related to the respective roles are the distribution of speakers’ rights and obligations. For example, in job interviews, the interviewers’ right to ask all kinds of questions corresponds to the applicants’ obligation to answer them. As Schegloff (1992) states, the effects of such context features frequently believed to be of major influence to the speakers’ verbal performance may not be easily traced in situated talk: Even if we can show by analysis (. . . ) that some characterization of the context or the setting in which the talk is going on is relevant for the parties, (. . . ) there remains another problem, and that is to show how the context or the setting (the local social structure), in that respect, is consequential to the talk. How does the fact that the talk is being conducted in some setting (e.g. “the hospital”) issue in any consequence for the shape, form, trajectory, content, or character of the interaction that the parties conduct? (Schegloff 1992: 111)
This methodological problem becomes even more pressing with more global categories: Culture may also be a factor determining the course of an interaction. Meeuwis (1994) and Sarangi (1994) have strongly argued in favor of a concept of culture that focuses on what people do with culture. They show that intercultural encounters often reflect and indeed reinforce the participants’ stereotypical beliefs about each other. Acts of discrimination may be the result of such encounters. An approach as outlined by Meeuwis and Sarangi, however, will only focus on the interactional effects of culture. In a more traditional view (e.g. Gumperz et al. 1979) culture is understood to manifest itself in the speakers’ choice of lexical, structural and communicative performance in a particular situation. However, this approach is even more difficult to include in a linguistic method that is dedicated to sequential analysis as a tool to develop analytical categories. Culture, in this view, remains an external category that is applied onto the data without much further proof. In my paper, I will try to show how the dilemma of combining the conversation analytical concept of sequentiality with culture as a global category can be solved. The solution that attempts to thus integrate micro- with macroanalytical categories draws on the notion of genre.
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Job interviews as communicative genres Communicative genres are conceptualized as providing routinized solutions to reoccurring communicative problems in a society (cf. Luckmann 1986; Günthner & Knoblauch 1994). Their “routinization” may support individual speakers in a specific situation, as they are able to use the patterned solutions to solve their particular communicative problem: Because speakers as well as recipients are familiar with genres they may be regarded as frames for the orientation that interactants refer to in producing, as well as interpreting, communicative action. (Günthner & Knoblauch 1994: 5f.)
In many job interviews, highly routinized interviewer questions are commonly answered with comparable sets of responses: Adelswärd and Ziv (1995) compared the ‘weakness’ question in Swedish and Israeli job interviews and found cross-cultural preferences to answer with ‘impatience’. The candidates’ knowledge about such a preference may assist them to perform successfully in a job interview. According to genre theory, such and similar questions-and-answers pairs are specific communicative problems and their respective solutions. Job interviews are important gate-keeping situations deciding upon social participation or marginalization, even more so in times of economic crisis. Impression management and positive self-presentation will usually be the applicants’ main goal in a job interview, whereas the interviewers obviously want to find out whether the applicant is suitable (cf. Adelswärd 1988). Indeed, job interviews as genres can be described in terms of underlying rules that participants follow in order to achieve their respective communicative goals. The participants are engaged in conversational activities only to display their orientation towards genre-specific goals as part of the highly ritualized “game” (cf. for example Roberts & Sayers 1987; Auer 1998). Moreover, job interviews are “one of the most culture-specific events we all have to face” (Roberts & Sayers 1987: 114). It has been shown that a lack of knowledge of genre-specific rules may contribute to discrimination against minority members (Gumperz et al. 1979; Sarangi 1994). Because of the above mentioned underlying rules and goals, conversational activities such as specific question-answer-pairs (i.e. communicative problems and their respective solutions) may not only be products of the proceeding interaction but may also show evidence of the participants’ orientation to more global constraints in job interviews. This becomes obvious in the so-called ‘hidden agenda’ (cf. Adelswärd 1988; Komter 1991): In job interviews, two levels of meaning can be distinguished. On the surface level, the participants talk
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about facts and dates, whereas, on a deeper level, all questions and answers can always be related to the job in question. For example, on the deeper level, the question ‘What is your wife’s job?’ can be interpreted as a question about the candidate’s potential mobility and readiness to change place of residence (see Birkner & Kern 2000 for more details). Besides, interviewers and candidates alike may have a variety of linguistic styles at their disposal to solve such genrespecific, communicative problems. Section (4) of this chapter will present an attempt to determine on what grounds the participants use different styles as a resource to organize their verbal performance.
Data The examples are drawn from a large corpus consisting of 41 authentic job interviews that were recorded in Germany in seven companies after unification (1994–95).1 In those interviews, West German interviewers questioned West German and East German candidates respectively.2 The corpus also includes eleven interviews with staff members from several companies’ personnel departments. The interviews present ethnographic data that was occasionally used for analysis. Even though the following analysis is based on authentic job interviews, some ethnographic data has also been used. This includes valuable information on the vacancies and about the application procedures in the respective companies.
Question-answer formats in job interviews One genre-specific conversational activity is the question about and description of former professional experience. In the course of job interviews, applicants are regularly asked to describe their previous job(s). Such sequences are of vital importance to both interviewer and candidate: While the interviewer can check whether the candidate meets the demands of the job in question, the applicant is given access to the floor to present his or her professional competence. In the following passages, a series of those question-and-answer pairs about the candidates’ professional experience is presented. When explaining different rhetorical styles produced by the applicants by use of sequential analysis, I will draw again on genre theory to compare such sequences with respect to their potential cultural dimension.
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Listing former work experience The following example comes from an interview in the construction trade and represents one type of a question-answer pair on the topic of professional experience. The company advertised two vacancies, looking for a building-site manager and a project leader respectively. It is of central importance for the interviewers to learn exactly what the applicant has done in his previous job; this is particularly crucial since the meaning of the terms Bauleiter (‘buildingsite manager’) and Projektleiter (‘project leader’) as they appeared in the advert were vague and could include similar activities. The interviewer’s question indirectly raises the topic of the two vacancies making them hereby highly relevant. (1)3 01 02 03 → 04 → 05 06 → 07 → 08 09 → 10 11 12 13 → 14 15 16 17 17 18
I1: und sie haben (-) für harm bar als ge uh (--) WAS dort gemacht;= B: =äh:= I1: =proJEKTleitung? (-) BAU[leitung, (.) B: [äh: I1: oder? B: die proJEKTleitung=äh (-) mit dementsprechenden projektsitzungn? (-) die koordiNIErung (.) der (-) äh: äh: (.) der (-) äh (.) einzelnen geWERke (-) sowieso, I1: ja B: im bereich der beSPREchungen? (--) aber (-) auch (.) die: = äh (---) interne koordinierung (-) m:it Oberbauer SELBST, das heißt also (-) mit (.) dem: äh (. . . ) über AUSstattungsmerkmale und alles was daZU gehört, (.) und DEMentsprechende .h terminierungen (-) von (--) KÜCHN
(1 ) 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08
I1: and you did for harm bar as a GU4 what B: uhm I1: project leading? site [managing B: [uhm I1: or what B: project leading=uhm with the various project meetings
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09 coordination of uhm uhm the uhm the particular 10 jobs of course, 11 I1: yeah 12 B: in the area of meetings? 13 but also the=uhm internal coordination 14 with steigenberger himself 15 which means (-) with the: uhm ( ) about 16 fittings and everything in that field 17 and the relevant time scheduling for kitchens 18 ((etc.))
After the question proper (and you did for hochtief as a GU what), the interviewer continues by referring to the two vacancies (head of project vs. head of management, lines 4–55 ) hereby making them the relevant topic. This part of the utterance is built in the form of an open list: the interviewer links the words without connectors (e.g. and, or, etc.) thereby producing a specific rhythmic and intonational pattern. The third and last part of the list6 indicates its potential openness and therefore marks – along with the rising intonation – the question format. In an interactive perspective, the stretch of talk reveals how the candidate constructs his answer in accordance with the interviewer’s question using the following syntactically and pragmatically based strategies of alignment: The candidate starts with the same elliptic syntactic frame using neither personal pronouns nor verbs (lines 8–13). However, he then proceeds with more details on previous tasks and duties extending the given syntactic frame through rightward expansion (line 14ff.). On the prosodic level continuity with the interviewer’s question format is achieved through employment of the same rhythmic and intonational patterns such as the distribution of main accents and the rising intonation at the end of each turn (lines 9, 11, 13, 15, 17). Functionally, the candidate’s answer – just like the interviewer’s question – contextualizes a specific conversational task of this particular question-answer pair, i.e. the reference to facts and dates of professional experience. The sequence’s local organization is readily observable: The interviewer presents his questions in a stylistic pattern that is taken up and slightly varied by the candidate to communicatively present his professional experience. Within the concept of sequentiality, the candidate’s answer can be analyzed as the second part of a two-part question-answer series on the level of discourse organization. Particular linguistic forms such as the syntactic frame and intonational and rhythmic patterns gain interactive function by establishing co-
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herence with the interviewer’s question, not only on a thematic but also on a formal level. As will become clear with the next examples, such a response format to the question of professional experience is one type of prototypical answer that I will call ‘listing professional experience’. It constitutes one solution to the communicative problem of describing former work experience. A second type will be shown below. However, the following example (2) will demonstrate the sequentiality concept’s explanatory limits. It comes from an interview in the telephone marketing business. The candidate is asked about her work experience as a secretary, emphasizing her work as a telephone receptionist. Her answer bears similar prosodic and syntactical features as seen in the examples before, even though the question is differently formulated. (2) 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09
I3: hm? (-) was ham sie da am TElefon geMACHT? was warn das für geSPRÄche B: verMITtelt, (-) FLÜge gebucht für die LEUte, also richtig sekretariAT. I3: hm? (1,5) I3: und wie hat ihnen das geFALlen? B: GUT.
(2 ) 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09
I3: hm? and what did you do on the phone what kind of conversations B: arranged booking flights for the people so real office work I3: hm (1,5) I3: and how did you like it B: fine
In example (2), the interviewer does not construct a list as a part of his query, but instead formulates an open question that does not preselect a certain stylistic pattern as has been observed in example (1). However, the candidate chooses to construct her answer as a list similar to the one in the above examples. The structure of the candidate’s answer reveals the ‘classical’ threepartedness of lists (lines 3–5), as described by Jefferson (1990), its third part
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being a “generalized list completer” (ibid.). Two of the three simple and elliptic utterances are linked without connector. Again, the rising intonation at the end of two parts of the list may be part of the stylistic pattern and also signals openness. The third part starting with a discourse marker (so) already establishes the utterance’s function as a resume through lexical means, the specific prosody (falling intonation) supporting this function. After a follow-up question that focuses a different aspect and its answer, the interviewer changes the topic. This can be taken as evidence that the answer has been satisfactory to her. The next example (3) demonstrates once again that the candidates’ selection of stylistic forms is not always dependent upon the interviewers’ choices of style. Like example (1), it comes from an interview in the construction trade and displays a prototypical answer, even though again, no indication on the local production of linguistic forms can be found. (3) 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 → 14 → 15 → 16 → 17 → 18 19 → 20 → 21 → 22 → 23 → 24 → 25
I2: was ham sie denn BISher im (.) schlüsslfertign ( ) < beREICH, (.) in (-) RICHtung (-) bauLEItungsfunktion> (1) bisher geMACHT; (-) in welcher funktion WAren sie? B: .h hans und [holber] war ich äh (-) BAUleiter gewesn, (1) I2: [(. . . .) ] B: man kann auch SAgen; wenn man=es SO möchte; (-) äh proJEKTleiter, weil äh [( ) ] I2: [aber ZUständich für] alle geWERke [nich]? B: [für ] alle geWERke. (-) VOLL. (-) von eLEKro; (-) von der fundamentiON; .h (-) nein. .h (-) VON der (-) bodenverBESserung; untergrundverBESserung; (. . . ) (1) BIS zur (-) KLImaanlage. (1) bis zum TEPpichboden, (-) und bis zur WANDfliese, soWOHL als AUCH. (. . . )
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(3 ) 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
I2: what have you done in the field of ( ) ‘turn-key construction’ in the direction of site managing so far what was your position B: h. hand and [holber] I was uhm site manager I2 [ ] B: you could also say if you like uhm project leader because uhm [ ] I2 [but responsible for] all the particular [jobs B: [for all the particular jobs full from electri from the foundation .h no .h from the floor improvement subsoil improvement to the air conditioning to the carpets and to the tiles as well as
First, the interviewer signals his wish to know whether the candidate worked as a site manager or project leader. After the candidate’s tentative answer and an interruption by the second interviewer in the form of a follow-up-question, the candidate continues with a detailed list of his jobs on the building site. Again, the list contains several parts with elliptic syntax merely informing about facts and dates of professional experience. Once more, the candidate selects the form of a list to present his relevant professional capabilities, however, he does not do so on the grounds of the interviewer’s stylistic choice. Despite the interviewer’s question formulation, the candidate chooses the list style to give his response. All the above examples (1, 2, 3) demonstrate some of the candidates’ stylistic preferences. They construct their answers to questions about previous professional experience as lists that often come in three-part units and display prototypical features such as elliptic syntax, similar rhythmic distribution of main accents and rising intonation at turn endings. In some cases, the choice of style can be explained on the grounds of local discourse production: In such oc-
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currences, the interviewers’ stylistic patterns are taken up and followed by the candidates. In this way, discursive coherence and alignment is established on several levels of linguistic description. The cases where no mutual orientation to specific linguistic features can be observed are different altogether. One plausible explanation is that the list style has empirically proven to be a successful rhetorical solution to a particular kind of communicative problem in job interviews, i.e. the description professional experience. This has become part of the genre-specific knowledge about how to perform successfully in a job interview. Further evidence for this will be delivered in the following section.
Narrating about work experience A look at some more question-answer pairs dealing with the same topic reveals that some candidates use different rhetorical solutions to the communicative problem at hand. Instead of using lists, they construct longer stretches of talk that bear features of conversational narratives. The following example (4) also comes from the construction trade. The sequence starts with an openformulated question again; the response however displays different features from the ones we have seen so far. (4) 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
I1: was is denn IHre aufgabe da. B: (-) .h (1.5) im GROSSteil sinds (1) CE programme; die auf den: geSCHÄFTSstellen der (name) zum EINsatz (kommen.) (-) auf jeder geSCHÄFTSstelle ham wir auch noch=n (em ix) dreiHUNdert, (1) die ham ihre eigene DAtenbank, und ihren KUNdenstamm, (-) berLIN; berLIner raum un und so [WEIterI1: [mhm, B: .h (-) un:d (-) ja; (-) dann werden die < KUNden: ebend> (-) ANgeschrieben, die jetzt < grade: neu:> EIN(geschrieben werden;) dann werden die aus der datenbank RAUSselektiert, I1: ((schnalzt)) .h müssen SIE das machen. (2) B: die proGRAMme schreiben,
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20 JA. 21 I1: (-) ach SO. (4 ) 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
I: A:
I: A:
I: A: I:
what do you do there well (1.5) mainly it is ce programs that are activated in the offices (-) in every office we additionally have a (em ex) three hundred (1) they have their own data bank and their customers berlin berlin area and so [on [mhm .h (-) and (-) well (-) then the clients are informed that have just registered then they are selected from the data bank ((clicking tongue)) that’s what YOU have to do (2) write the programs yes I see
Here, the candidate first presents a portrait of the working scene before he finally locates his own task within the setting: He produces a long utterance about the professional environment he worked in (lines 2–16). Structurally and functionally, this stretch of talk resembles “relevant setting information” (cf. Polanyi 1985) that a speaker may produce to locate a narrative in time and space. Such “relevant setting information” is an important feature of conversational narratives helping to establish an imaginary place in which the event to be told took place. By way of such relevant setting information, listener and teller are supposed to enter this imaginary place. In contrast to the above examples (1 to 3), the speaker formulates complete clauses which – because of their different, more complex syntactic structure – do not display the rhythmic and intonational patterns seen before. So, in this case, a narrative pattern is used to communicatively solve the problem of describing professional experience. The interviewer’s follow-up question reveals some trouble he has with the candidate’s answer. He has not yet been able to identify the candidate’s job properly, so he has to ask again. This did not happen in the examples shown before and can be taken as further evidence that the list style is in a way more
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appropriate to fulfilling the genre-specific task at hand. It is obviously more difficult to follow the more complex narrative style to retrieve the wanted information, whereas the list style focussing on the relevant facts facilitates understanding. However, could it be the case that the candidate’s rhetorical style is due to the interviewer’s formulation of the question, which is – stylistically speaking – rather unspecific and leaves it to the candidate to select a specific style? The next example (5) is easy to compare to the first because it is the same interviewer who formulates his opening question using a similar list style. (5) 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
I1: (-) gehörte dann (-) zu ihrer AUFgabe (-) die arbeit vor (.) ORT? (.) die überWAChung (.) der bauarbeitn? (-) einschließlich (-) EINtaktn, (-) organisatiON, (-) SUBunternehmer, (-) terminplanEINhaltung, (1) < oder WAS (-) war da (-) ihr> B: ja (-) ja [äh der äh ] wir hattn (-) I1: [((räuspert sich))] B: äh (muß’ wolln) ma SO sagn (-) vielleicht’ äh (2) B: des (.) des (-) proGRAMM nannte sich KOStngünstiges BAUen. (-) I1: ja B: das war so mehr oder weniger auf (-) TYpen ausjerichtet? (2) B: und=äh (-) für (.) für diese (-) speziellen TYpen=äh (-) gab=es denn nochn computerprogramm vom be a’ (.) ABlauf (-) her, (-) also nen bauablaufplan im prinZIP? (-) den man uff de baustelle (-) RAUSjekriecht hat? (1) von=der arbeitsVORbereitung; (-) die: (-) die firmen (-) äh (-) beNANNT jekriecht hat,
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31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 (5 ) 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27
die termine warn im bauablauf denn DA, (1) praktisch die ganze koordiNIErung, (-) terMINkontrolle, (-) qualiTÄTSkontrolle, (-) EINschließlich denn nachher der gesamten ABrechnung. I1: mhm B: des des jehörte eben (dazu). (-) I1: ((räuspert sich)) B: abnahmen und und was eben so kam < zur (.) AUFgabe.> I1: was part of your job the work on-site supervising the construction activities including timing organisation tendering time scheduling (1) I: what was your B: yes (-) yes [uhm the uhm ] we had (-) I1: [((clears throat))] B: (must lets) put it like this maybe uhm (2) B: the the programme was called bargain construction. I1: yeah B: it was more or less aimed at types? (2) B: and=uhm for for each type=uhm there was a computer programme for the d construction process in principle a sequential construction plan which you got given on the construction site (1) by the job preparation which was given the names of the companies the timing was then already fixed regarding the
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28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38
sequence of construction (1) practically the whole coordination scheduling quality control including afterwards the whole invoicing. I1: mhm B: that was part of it I1: ((clears throat)) B: the inspection and and whatever else there was to the job.
Again, the interviewer produces a list that this time could be seen as two threepart lists (lines 2–4 and 5–7). Instead of following the interviewer’s chosen patterns of speaking immediately by continuing the list style (as seen in example (1) above), the candidate selects a different style when producing his answer. After some turn-taking trouble, the candidate delivers a detailed description of the specific building program. This part of the utterance displays similar narrative patterns to the ones shown in example (4) and could again be called “relevant setting information”: It supplies the listener with additional information on the building program he worked in. Only then, the candidate takes up the interviewers’ list style and thereby produces the correct answer: He continues with a list of his own activities on the construction site that displays the prototypical prosodic and syntactic features: elliptic clauses and regular rhythmic and intonational patterns (line 33 ff.). The switch of style is meaningful suggesting once more that the list style is the more appropriate solution to the communicative problem of describing professional experience in a job interview. One more example (6) is given to demonstrate the purposeful employment of narrative patterns for the communicative problem at hand. (6) 01 I: 02 03 04 05 06 07 B: 08 09 I:
(-) so dann waren sie zuerst beTRIEBS (.) organisator < zu anfang in der DAtenverarbeitung,> (-) äh und dann ANlageningenieur.= =WAS macht ein beTRIEBSorganisator,= =und was macht ein a äh ANlage(.) ingenieur? äh wir WOLLten die: äh EH DE VAU einführen? (-) materiALprojekt?= =<hm?>
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→
→
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43
B: lagerFACHkarte, (1) äh (-) und diese GANze lager (.) FACH (.) verwaltung rationaliSIEren? (-) wir hatten=n KLEINrechner im beTRIEB? (-) und (.) dieses proJEKT(.) äh: sollte auf=m GROSSrechner laufen? (1) und da wollten wir ein proJEKT NACHnutzen.= =von ((ortsname)) (-) die ham abgear (-) LIEssen abarbeiten im de vau ZET ((ortsname))? (-) und WIR wollten abarbeiten lassen de vau ZET (.) DAtenverarbeitungsZENtrum, (.) ((ortsname)); (-) und das mußte koORdiniert werden. das mußte EINmal, (1) zwischen (.) de/ ähn rechen (.) verarbeitungszentren koordiNIERT werden? (-) UND das mußte dann im beTRIEB eingeführt werden. I: =<
hm?> B: der geSAMte (.) betriebsablauf mußte (.) erARbeitet [werden? (.) I: [hm, B: die FACHabteilungen mußten eingewiesen werden; (-) früher gab=s da noch oft (.) ideologische HEMMschwellen, MIT der eh deVAU; I: <
hm,> B: INSbesondere bei der LAgerfach[(weise);] (-) I: [ja, ] B: [und das ] war meine AUFgabe. I: [(h).h(h) ] hm, (.) oKEE. (-)
(6 ) 01 I: 02 03 04 05
well then you were the company’s organizer at the beginning in data processing uhm and then installation engineer what does a company’s organizor do and what does a uhm installation engineer do
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06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39
A: uhm we wanted to introduce the edv7 material project I: hm A: storekeeping cards uhm and to rationalize this entire storekeeping administration we worked with small terminals and this project was meant to run on a main terminal and so we wanted to use a project from ((name of location)) they have run let it run in the de vau zett8 ((name of location)) and we wanted to let it run in the de vau zett data processing center ((name of location)) and that had to be coordinated that had to be first of all coordinated between the data processing centers and then that had to be introduced to operation I: hm the entire course of operation had to be worked out I: hm A the different departments back then there often existed ideological inhibitions with respect to edv I: hm A: especially at the storekeeping I: yes A: and that was my business I hm okay
The interviewer names two different type of jobs the candidate had had in a former company. Instead of taking up the double focus on the two jobs, the candidate delivers some background information on the company he worked for. Only after this does he provide the interviewer with the relevant information and talks about several activities connected with the respective jobs. Again,
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similar narrative patterns are used to rhetorically solve the communicative, genre-specific problem of presenting professional experience.
Culture as a global structure? It has become obvious that all participants act with genre-specific goals in mind. Whereas interviewers ask questions allowing them to follow up their main communicative goal – to assess the applicants’ suitability for the job in question – the candidates use the floor they are given by the interviewers to present their various professional experience. Formally, all candidates perform according to their obligation to answer the interviewers’ questions, and moreover organize at least thematic alignment to prior talk. They solve the genrespecific, communicative problem by presenting themselves as candidates with the suitable professional experience. On the grounds of the sequentiality concept, local discourse organization and global macro-structures such as genrespecific communicative solutions have been shown to emerge in ongoing talk. However, many of the above examples (2, 3, 4 and 6) demonstrate that not all linguistic forms employed to solve the communicative problem can be interpreted as locally produced. More or less independently of the interviewers’ question formulations, the candidates employ two different styles to achieve their communicative goal. That means two rhetorical solutions to the problem of describing professional experience could be found in the data. Whereas some candidates select list-formats (which sometimes, but not always, are triggered off by the interviewers’ question-formats), others prefer a style that includes specific narrative features, namely relevant setting information that is used to locate their own work in some spatial and temporal context. Hence, specific styles of speakers cannot always be explained by sequential analysis on the level of discourse organization. Rather, other, more global factors seem to be of influence to the speakers’ verbal performances. Are there other plausible explanations for the candidates‘ different manners of speaking? A reconsideration of the cases at hand takes us to the fact that the speakers were members of different speech communities, i.e. they may have different ideas about the suitability and practicability of particular communicative and linguistic resources. According to Gumperz (1972: 16), members of the same speech community share relevant communicative knowledge:
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To the extent that speakers share knowledge of the communicative constraints and options governing a significant number of social situations, they can be said to be members of the same speech community.
Knowledge about rules and conventions of language use is widely acknowledged to be a substantial part of culture (cf. Gumperz 1982, 1996). If information about the speakers’ cultural background is included, the following picture will arise: The speakers employing the list style were from former West Germany, while the candidates selecting a more elaborate style with narrative elements were from former East Germany. Linguistic practices such as list styles or narrative styles can then be said to appear in ongoing talk as culturally patterned rhetorical resources to interactively solve genre-specific, communicative problems. A conceptualization of culture as “discourse practices” (cf. Kern 2000) allows us henceforth to speak of culturally different verbal styles of East and West Germans respectively. Considering the fact that such job interviews have a long tradition in West Germany but are relatively new to East Germans (cf. Auer 1998), the question about the respective styles‘ appropriateness gains even more significance. West German candidates have a style at their disposal that appears to be more suitable to meet the (West German) interviewers’ demands. Being more familiar with the genre, they may have a more profound knowledge about the practicability of some stylistic resources. This, of course, is mainly due to their experience, and newcomers may face comparable communicative problems insofar as they may also lack important knowledge about some of the genre’s rhetoric solutions to communicative problems (cf. Sarangi 1994). The lack of knowledge may lead to discrimination against and/or marginalization of East Germans. Then culture can be said to have an effect on the outcome of an interaction; the interaction itself can be called intercultural, because culture has been shown to be a relevant participant category.
Conclusion Even though forms and structures of language are understood to be mainly intersubjectively produced in discourse and are primarily investigated in terms of their local interactive function, it is possible to include more global factors into the analysis to arrive at a more precise description of what is going on between participants. I have argued that the comparison of question-answer sequences in several occurrences of one genre reveals how global categories
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such as genre–specific communicative goals and cultural linguistic practices can be said to play a significant role for the participants’ verbal performance. In a methodologically controlled way, this can only be achieved through a thorough analysis based on the concept of sequentiality that has brought out relevant linguistic structures as interactively produced in discourse and oriented to by participants. Those structures are then to be typologized and compared, in consideration of relevant macro-categories. Thus, in the case at hand, cultural background can be said to play a significant role in the selection of linguistic structure, and participants can be shown to orient to global structures in talk on the grounds of sequential analysis. However, the evidence for the case at hand only holds for one particular conversational activity in job interviews, namely the question about and description of professional experience. Proof from other activities within job interviews may verify the respective types of style as culturally patterned.9
Notes . The data were collected as part of a research project, Impression Management in East and West German Job interviews‘ funded by the German Research Association. . The corpus also includes several role-played interviews recorded in the former East Germany and West Germany, and various discussions of interviewer teams evaluating candidates immediately after a job interview. . Transcription conventions follow GAT (cf. Selting et al. 1998). English translations are simplified. . GU = Geschäftsführender Unternehmer (manager in charge) . Lines apply to the German transcript. . Compare Jefferson (1990) on lists as three-part units in natural talk. . EDV = Elektronische Datenverarbeitung (eletronic data processing) . DVZ = Datenverarbeitungszentrum (data processing center) . In Kern (2000), comparable narrative patterns were also found in East German candidates’ biographical presentations; West German applicants, on the contrary, employed different rhetorical patterns that are derived from a report style.
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References Adelswärd, V. (1988). Styles of Success. On Impression Managament as Collaborative Action in Job Interviews. Linköping Studies in Arts and Science, Linköping University, Schweden, VTT-Grafiska Vimmerby. Adelswärd, V. & Ziv, E. (1995). What are you really bad at? A Crosscultural Study of the Negotiation of Weakness in Israeli and Swedish Job Interviews. Paper presented at the 4th International Pragmatics Conference at Kobe, 26th July 1995. Auer, P. (1998). Learning how to play the game: An investigation of role-played job interviews in East Germany. Text, 18(1), 7–38. Auer, P. & Kern, F. (2000). Three ways of analysing communication between East and West Germans as intercultural communication. In A. di Luzio, S. Günthner & F. Orletti (Eds.), Language, Culture, and Interaction. New Perspectives on Intercultural Communication (pp. 89–116). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Birkner, K. & Kern, F. (2000). Ost- und Westdeutsche in Bewerbungsgesprächen. In P. Auer & H. Hausendorf (Eds.), Kommunikation in gesellschaftlichen Umbruchsituationen. Mikroanalytische Aspekte des sprachlichen und gesellschaftlichen Wandels in den Neuen Bundesländern (pp. 45–81). Tübingen: Niemeyer. Gumperz, J. (1972). Introduction. In J. Gumperz & D. Hymes (Eds.), Directions in Sociolinguistics (pp. 1–25). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Gumperz, J. (1982). Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gumperz, J. (1996). The linguistic and cultural relativity of interference. In J. Gumperz & S. Levinson (Eds.), Rethinking Linguistic Relativity (pp. 374–406). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gumperz, J. et al. (1979). Crosstalk. A-Study of Cross-Cultural Communication. Southall: National Centre for Industrical Language Training. Günthner, S. & Knoblauch, H. (1994). ‘Forms are the Food of Faith’. Gattungen als Muster kommunikativen Handelns. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 4, 693–723. Jefferson, G. (1990). List construction as a task and resource. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Interaction Competence (pp. 63–92). Washington, DC: University Press of America. Kern, F. (2000). Kulturen der Selbstdarstellung. Ost- und Westdeutsche in Bewerbungsgesprächen. Wiesbaden: Gabler/DUV. Komter, M. (1991). Conflict and Cooperation in JOS Interviews. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Kotthoff, H. (1994). Zur Rolle der Konversationsanalyse in der interkulturellen Kommunikationsforschung. Gesprächsbeendigungen im Schnittfeld von Mikro und Makro. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 93, 75–96. Levinson, S. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Luckmann, T. (1986). Grundformen der gesellschaftlichen Vermittlung des Wissens: Kommunikative Gattungen. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Special Issue, 27, 191–211. Luckmann, T. (1988). Kommunikative Gattungen im kommunikativen Haushalt einer Gesellschaft. In G. Smolka-Koerdt et al. (Eds.), Der Ursprung der Literatur (pp. 279– 288). München: Fink.
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Meeuwis, M. (1994). Critical Perspectives on Intercultural Communication. Special Issue: Pragmatics, 4(3). Meeuwis, M. & Sarangi, S. (1994). Perspectives on intercultural communication: a critical reading. Pragmatics, 4(3), 309–313. Polanyi, L. (1985). Conversational storytelling. In T.V. Dijk (Ed.), Handbook of Discourse Analysis, Vol. 3: Discourse and Dialogue (pp. 183–201). London: Academic Press. Roberts, C. & Sayers, P. (1987). Keeping the gate. How judgements are made in intercultural interviews. In K. Knapp, W. Enninger & A. Knapp-Potthoff (Eds.), Analysing Intercultural Communication (pp. 111–135). Berlin: de Gruyter. Sarangi, S. (1994). Accounting for mismatches in intercultural selection interviews. Cross Cultural Communication in the Professions, ed. by A. Pauwels, Special Issue, Multilingua, 13(1/2), 163–194. Selting, M. et al. (1998). Gesprächsanalytisches Transkriptionssystem (GAT). Linguistische Berichte, 173/188, 91–122. Schegloff, E. A. (1992). On talk and its institutional occasions. In P. Drew & J. Heritage (Eds.), Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings (pp. 101–134). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Appendix. Transcription conventions () (word) wo:rd, wo::rd ‘ Sequential structure [] [] = and=äh
unintelligible text guess at unclear word lengthened/very lengthened segment Glottal stop overlapping text and simultanous speech latching
Pausing (.) (-) (1)
Micropause Pause of 0,25 sec length Pause of indicated length
Vocalizations .hh .hh hh, hhh so(ho)o haha hehe hm
Inbreaths Outbreaths laugh particles in speech syllabic laughter reception signal, one syllable
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hm=hm
reception signal, two syllables
Degree of Stress WORD !WORD!
main sentence stress extra strong stress
Intonation at the end of turns word? word, word; word. word-
rising intonation slightly rising intonation slightly falling intonation falling intonation continuing intonation
Volume and speed <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>
forte, loud piano, soft fast slow crescendo, getting louder diminuendo, getting softer accelerando, getting faster ralletando, getting slower
Additional information ((coughs)) descriptive comment <> language accompanying and interpretative comments Change of tone of voice <> <>
deeper tone of voice higher tone of voice
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Argumentative sequencing and its interactional variation1 Thomas Spranz-Fogasy Institute for the German Language (IDS), Mannheim, Germany
Introduction Dealing with argumentation in natural conversation is difficult. In everyday language we use very different meanings for terms like arguing, argument or argumentation. Whereas sometimes an argument may refer to a set of logically related assertions, at other times it may refer to a single assertion uttered incidentally. The terminology also varies within the sciences and even within the same discipline.2 Indeed arguing for teminological unity would be pointless because arguing exhibits a variety of functions, thereby necessitating numerous meanings of it. It is a well known fact that even in everyday argumentation interactants often utilize technical terms themselves – e.g., by pointing out this or that would not be ‘an argument’, or someone’s ‘argument lacks objectivity’, or someone ‘argues unfair’ – and for that reason a variety of meanings is both useful and functional. In the following sections some research on argumentation in conversational analysis will be presented, with special emphasis given to the identification of argumentation in natural conversation, its sequencing structure, and its interactional variation. The considerations are part of a broader study of conversational rhetorics in problem and conflict interaction conducted at the Institute for German Language (IDS) in Mannheim.3 The main goal of this study is the analysis and description of interactive practices under a functional rhetorical perspective which is derived from an ethnomethodological approach to the study of conversation. Ethnomethodologists have so far mainly looked at the organizational order of interaction; conversational rhetorics also investigates forms of interactive influence and interactive effects of the participants’ inter-
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active work, e.g. gaining acceptance, or silencing another speech partner. The focus thereby is whether the rhetorical impact stems from the organizational interactional constraints for establishing conversation and conversational argumentation themselves, and not only from semantic or pragmatic procedures. For example, interactants use the requests of turn taking and sequencing to force their partners’ utterances in a way they want them to react. Argumentation as a whole then is a particular rhetorical procedure wherein some other procedures of minor order may operate as e.g. ‘demonstrating consistency’, ‘denying relevance’, ‘denying competence’, or ‘appealing to normativity’.4 Argumentation is described here as an interactively organized sequence. The structure of that sequence makes it possible on the one hand to expand it extensively, and on the other hand to reduce by means of inferential contextual cues. The variability of the argumentative sequence then is one of the reasons which makes up its rhetorical power; sequencing therefore is not only an organizational function but a rhetorical too. The data of this study consists of 60 problem and conflict conversations from the IDS corpora: authentic counsellings, mediation talks, discussions, and even disputations of couples or in families, and also talk shows from TV. They are both private conversations and conversations in public institutions. The data thus provide for a wide range of types of interaction where argumentation occurs.
Background research Argumentation is a widespread procedure in the Western culture for clarifying unclear or controversial matters. After more than two thousand years of logical, normative or topological research we can now look at interactive aspects of argumentation too. This is due to the pragmatic turn of argumentation research by Toulmin (1958) and Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1958; see also Perelman 1980), where the focus of analyses changes from formal logic to the “uses of argument” (Toulmin 1958) and argumentation in natural contexts.5 Despite the body of research there is still a striking lack of empirical research on argumentation concerning argumentation in natural conversation. The reason for this is obvious. Identification of argumentation is already difficult: Where does it begin and where does it end? And it is difficult to determine the internal structures of argumentation. What are the necessary steps of argumentation and what is their sequential organization format? In natural conversation, ar-
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gumentation is often only indicated or is sometimes even hidden strategically by the participants. Two researchers who have dealt with argumentation in natural conversation are Jackson and Jacobs (see Jackson & Jacobs 1980; Jacobs & Jackson 1982, 1989). In an ethnomethodological approach they identify an argument as a specific expansion of adjacency pairs. The expansion may occur either as a presequence (i.e. placed before an adjacency pair to prepare it or otherwise to make it superfluous); or as a turninternal expansion (i.e. within one turn of the adjacency pair); or the expansion is an insertion sequence (i.e. between the two steps of the pair); or a postsequence (i.e. following an adjacency pair).6 In the view of Jackson and Jacobs argumentative expansions are triggered by disagreement. Argumentation therefore is a “disagreement relevant speech event” (Jackson & Jacobs 1980: 254) which is related functionally to the projection, production and resolution of such a disagreement. The concept of “disagreement” is then tied to the pragmatic concepts of the conversational maxims of Grice (Grice 1975) and the felicity conditions of Searle (Searle 1969), which means that some of these maxims or conditions are perhaps not accomplished and this lack of accomplishment creates disagreement which needs to be clarified argumentatively. This concept of argumentation is strictly related to single speech acts; the broader context is neglected.7 Jackson and Jacobs conceptualize argumentative utterances in a microanalytic manner by identifying the sequential properties of verbal activities. Argumentation is seen as established by activities which signal and display disagreement and is – in an ideal sense – terminated by that activity which is set conditionally relevant.8 The sequential order then is e.g. ‘question (with implications of disagreement in the partner’s view) – argumentation – answer’. Most of the other authors, however, argue from a semantic point of view. They postulate dissent or uncertainty as starting points for conversational argumentation. The termination then depends on an agreement of the interactants to one position, negotiating a compromise, breaking off the argumentation, or even breaking off the interaction itself. A precise definition of the empirical conversational phenomenon of argumentation, therefore, remains insufficient as are other kinds of some lexical or semanto-pragmatical definitions, e.g. causal conjunctions, fall short as an adequate definition for argumentation.
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A conversational rhetorical perspective on argumentation From a conversational rhetorical perspective argumentation is defined with the aid of organizational features which are necessary for the establishment of interaction. In order to describe a wide range of rhetorical practices we therefore take into account various dimensions of interaction that have been identified by Werner Kallmeyer and Fritz Schütze in a theory of interaction construction (see Kallmeyer & Schütze 1976; Kallmeyer 1988; Spranz-Fogasy 1997: 27ff). According to this theory, interactants have to carry out their conversation by simultaneously dealing with different levels of interactional organization: – – – –
– –
the organizational structure of talk, e.g. the exchange of turns; the thematical organization, where features of presentation like storytelling, description, etc. are established; the activity organization, where single and complex activities are typified (as e.g. an assertion or a counselling conversation); the interactive construction of identities and partner relationships, where social roles (mother or daughter, doctor or patient) or social relationships (friendship, antagonism) will be defined; the dimension of interactive modalities, where modes such as seriousness or play are organized; the establishment of reciprocity, where mutual understanding is ensured.
The efforts to establish these interactional dimensions are always tied to the likelihood for the achievement of the speaker’s own goals and the risks to block the partners’ goals. Procedures for forcing or supporting partners (e.g. concerning their rights and obligations of participation) have been identified on the level of organizational structure and modality organization (Kallmeyer & Schmitt 1996; Schmitt 1997). In addition the procedures of social positioning on the level of the interactive construction of identities and partner relationships have been revealed (Wolf 1999). Or procedures for establishing or blocking perspectives on the level where reciprocity is established have been identified (Keim 1996). In this way the procedures for supporting one’s own partner or for forcing an action by the partner become evident on the level of the organizational structure and the interactional modalities.
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Contextual implementation of argumentation Interactants begin an argumentation when their thematic exchange encounters a deficit, i.e. an utterance becomes unclear or controversial.9 The pursuit of their conversational goals becomes blocked. The result is that a problem presentation becomes misunderstandable, a conflict proposal will be rejected, and so on. In other words, the practical validity of an utterance, its mutual interactive ratification is put in question and practical validity has to be established or re-established for the purpose of further achieving common interactional goals. The partners therefore have to explain and give reasons for establishing or re-establishing a common view, i.e. a mutual understanding sufficient for their interactive goals. Typical kinds of deficits include dissent or uncertainty. Argumentation, then, is an interactive pattern for explaining a position and for locally clarifying the deficit and for then integrating the result into the ‘normal’ course of the current interaction for further comprehensive conversational work. Formally characterized, argumentation has a three-part structure, consisting of initiating, carrying out and reintegrating. Comprehensive conversational work
Thematical deficit
Argumentation
Ongoing comprehensive conversational work
Figure 1.
Such a procedure makes sense for an interactional logic too, in fact it is even necessary for conversation itself: Both, differences between the interactants and lack of knowledge about facts inevitably generate uncertainty or dissent which has to be resolved. Therefore there has to be a procedure at work which enables for the conversationalists a common clearing locally with reference to comprehensive interactional goals. Obviously there are other practices for the solution of such an interactive blockade: interactants may use storytelling, they define the blockade as a misunderstanding, or they postpone or even ignore the
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problem. In contrast the argumentation procedure stands out by giving reasons and explanations for the problematic position sufficiently until further notice. Giving reasons and explanations is necessary up to the point where the interactants may together pursue their general interactive goals which have been interrupted by the necessity to argue. Hence, triggering a sequence of turns and incorporating the interactively negotiated result of the argumentation sequence in a ‘normal’, unproblematic flow of utterances mark the boundaries of argumentation in natural conversations. The interactive practice called argumentation therefore has an external organizational frame, which initially establishes a clear delimitation concerning other activities. And it gains a projective constraint for coming to an end by virtue of the superordinate interactive goals. For the interactants this facilitates the orientation in the current conversation and makes it possible for them to concentrate on the topics they are dealing with.
The internal structure of the argumentation sequence Argumentation does not only possess the external structure discussed above, it also exhibits an internal structure which guarantees the performance of the argumentation itself. An example for a simple realization of this argumentation sequence is shown in the following segment from a mediation talk on insults, damage to property, and bodily harm:10 (1)
C:
1
so“ * äh isch glaub den vorfall ham=ma je”tzt so weit er aufzuklären war hie“r mit meinen bescheidenen mitteln glaub isch habe mer=n aufgeklärt ‘well * ehm I think the incident is clear now as far as it was possible to settle it here with my limited means I think we’ve solved it’
dass also“ * sie sich in de vergangenheit * solang sie zusammen im gleiche haus gewohnt habe net grad be“stens vertragen haben ‘in the past when you lived together in one house you did not get along with each other’ 2 B2: nee des war nu“r die letzte * des letzte jahr ‘no this was just the case in the last year we lived together’ 3 B2: mir habe ja vorher * äh parterre gewohnt ‘my husband and I used to live on the ground floor’
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4 C:
jaja okay * gut in ordnung frau neumeier ‘yes okay * that’s okay mrs neumeier’ 5 B1: darf isch ihne * hier grad zu äh zu den ausführungen v/ v/ * vum herrn beck grademal ‘may I say something else concerning the comments of mister beck my adversary’ B2: dass mir um dieses geschpräch gebete (. . . ) [. . . ] ‘that we wanted a discussion to talk things out [. . . ]’
Following the contrary presentation of the conflict parties, the mediator C tries a more general conflict definition (step 1: in the past when you lived together in one house you did not get along with each other), the wife B2 of the accused man B1 contradicts (step 2: no this was just the case in the last year we lived together) and gives a reason referring to spatial conditions of neighbourhood (step 3: my husband and I used to live on the ground floor; i.e. there were clashes only during the one year when the apartments of the opposing parties were on the same floor) the mediator C accepts that contradiction (step 4: yes okay * that’s okay mrs neumeier) whereas the accused B1 realizes further activities, which all participants deal with then, and which is therefore a ratification via continuation (step 5: may I say something else concerning the presentation of mr. beck my adversary). This is a – rather seldomly performed – clear case with an ideal succession of the elements of the argumentation sequence. Empirically, this sequence is most often realized in a more complicated fashion by insertion of other activities, e.g., insisting acts (see below). The prototypical argumentative sequence therefore consists of the following steps: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
triggering marking dissent or problematization presenting new explanatory information acceptance ratification
Steps 1 and 2 are performed by different speakers as steps 4 and 5 too; step 4 also has to be performed by a different speaker than step 3. Obviously empirically there are often other reactions than acceptance and ratification, for example insisting acts, postponing acts or even an agreement on disagreement; reactions which also render possible the return to the superordinate interactive goals. But the sequential structure presented here is
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the prototypical one, around which interactants orient themselves explicitly or implicitly.
Variations of the argumentation sequence The argumentation sequence is very powerful and extremely variable in terms of this basic sequence format. Conversationalists may expand it as far as they want, or compress it to a minimalistic activity.
Expansion features of argumentation Expansion of an argumentation sequence may be achieved in two ways depending on how sequences are arranged in the interaction. Expansion may be achieved by stringing together or chaining two or more argumentation sequences in a serial manner, or by inserting insisting acts to mark dissent or problems, or by inserting additional acts that provide reasons or justifications.
Insertion An argumentation sequence can be expanded by multiple insertions of argumentation sequences, thereby intensifying the branching of the interaction. Such branchings or embeddings are regularly tied in a contradicting or contrasting manner to the material of prior steps 2 (marking dissent) or 3 (presenting new explicative information).11 Such expansions of the argumentation sequence sometimes provide interactional problems: In general, along with insertion the danger of marginalization or dissociation of topics comes up, as well as friction in the interpersonal relationship by the face threatening effect of iterative critic. A very simple example for the inserted sequence is the following one, which is taken from another mediation talk on injuries (A is the plaintiff, B the accused, and C the mediator; the empirical data is reduced to the relevant features here). (2) 1 A: des hot sie a“lles gsa“cht a“lles die na“chbarschaft hot a“lles ghe“rt i“sch hab zeu“ge ‘she told everything everything the neighbors heard everything I have witnesses’ 2 B: nein des is nischt wahr ‘no that’s not true’
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3 A: die frau müller war vor ihrm fenschter ja die hot alles gehert ‘mrs müller stood at her window she heard that everything’ 4 B: die frau müller hot erscht zum schluss * des fenschter uffgemacht ‘mrs müller didn’t open the window until the end of our dispute’ 5 A: ja die hot=s awer innedrin gehert sie ware jo devo“r geschdanne ‘well but she heard it from inside you stood directly in front of her window’ 6 C: frau beck mir halde=s hier so äns nach em annere mir känne zusamme si“nge awwer mir känne net zusammen re:de“n ‘mrs beck we want to take turns speaking * we might be able to sing together but we can’t talk together at the same time.’ 7 A: ja * awer nit abstreite un mi“sch als lügnerin [. . . ] ‘okay * but she should not contradict and call me as a liar [. . . ]’
Mrs. A states at the beginning that the accused B mentioned all the injuries A has listed before (utterance (1)) and she says that she is able to verify this with the help of witnesses (utterance (1) and (3)). B contradicts (utterance (2)) and a dispute arises then, where both of them tie their objection to the objection of the other party (utterances (4) to (5)). The mediator C tries in vain to calm the dispute down (utterance (6)) and – after A’s renewed objection (utterance (7)) – terminates it, by which a new round of argumentation begins. Utterances (1) to (3) correspond with the first three steps of the argumentation sequence whereas utterances (4) and (5) both operate as step 2, respectively marking dissent with the referred utterance in an inserting manner.
Serialization Another way of building up complex argumentation conversationally is to chain two or more argumentation sequences after another. In this way the different positions of the two parties who are arguing become dismantled into single aspects. After having considered one aspect, another aspect is addressed or re-addressed and is dealt with through argument. In the same mediation talk cited above the mediator tries to find a commonly accepted conflict definition by which he hopes to get a starting point for a conflict resolution. While doing this contributions are regularly interrupted by objections from the plaintiff A (utterances (1) to (3); the transcription is given in a reduced version again):
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(3)
C: also äns steht fescht dass=der streit ghabt habt ne do herrscht kän zweifel dra ‘ok, it is true that you had a quarrel there is no doubt about’ 1 A: isch hab kä“n streit mit der fra ghabt sie hot misch beleidischt so is=es ‘I had no quarrel with that woman * she did insult me that’s it’ C: also disput war uff alle fäll frau beck des steht eindeutisch fescht * net * do gibt=s also * nix dran zu rüddeln * äh un die frau kraft gibt ja auch einen teil * der beleidigungen * zu: sie räumt allerdings ein * dass auch sie“ sie beleidischt hawwe ‘there was dispute for sure mrs beck and mrs kraft admits the insults partially but she also claims that you insulted her too’ 2 A: isch ha“b sie net beleidischt isch kumm jo gar net dazu vor lauter die hot jo so ruffgeschrie mit erhobenen finger als wenn isch e schulkind wär ‘I didn’t insult her I didn’t have a chance to insult her because she yelled so loud and wagged her finger at me as if I was in school’ C: awwer jetz * jetz * is awwer mol folgendes ihr wohnt jo haus an haus newerenanner ihr seht eisch jo im grund jeden * tag ‘but now is the following situation * you live in houses next door to each other you see each other every day’ 3 A: isch seh se üwwerhaupt nie selde höschens im summer we=ma im * wenn se in de garde geht ‘I do not see her at all * once in a while in the summer when she goes out in the yard’ C: ah ja: awwer irgendwo/ irgendwo sin jo doch berührungspunkt ‘well okay but somewhere somehow you two bump into each other’
Utterances (1) to (3) particularly operate as step 2 of the argumentation sequence but every time with a new thematical focus established by the mediator C. The new thematical focus therefore establishes a new initial position of an argumentation sequence. Both structurally provided forms of expansion, the insertion and the serialization, are empirically often combined.
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Compressed argumentation In addition to expansion of an argument sequence, there is also a possibility to compress the sequence. With that, there is a possibility just to indicate argumentation, a possibility to avoid dissent in anticipation, or even a possibility not to burden the interpersonal relationship. An interactional requirement for such a compressed argumentation stems from the interactants’ different knowledge, their different interests, or from the fundamental indexicality of verbal expressions.12 The ability to anticipate dissent or uncertainty provides for preceding reasoning – without an explicit dissent marking utterance or problematization. Such compressed argumentation is also based on the organizational structure of the simple argumentation sequence presented above. Although some of the steps of the argumentation sequence are not fully realized, all the relevant components can be reconstructed exactly in the context of the realized components (and this is true not only for the analyst but for the interactants themselves as well). The anticipation or the imagination of an objection is treated then as a dissent marker or as a complication, and the speaker presents his position in a contrasting manner. Only the contrasting manner indicates that there is an objection or a contradiction just assumed by the speaker. Acceptance will be demanded then or just assumed, and the ratification act is taken for granted. This is the way that all turn-internally placed reasonings operate. Compressed argumentation differentiates in two significant ways according to its interactive functioning: On the one hand avoidance may be exhibited by the speaker and on the other hand an offering may be made. Avoiding means that one party to the argument gives a reason for his utterances but wishes to imply that it is not negotiable, e.g. by encapsulating it in a long utterance with particular sequential relevance at the end of the utterance. At other times he may even state his point of view explicitly as not negotiable, e.g. by saying ‘I won’t discuss that now!’. An example from a counselling interaction on AIDS illustrates the avoidance strategy. The reduced version of the interactions is given here: (4) 1
R: ja ich kann da noch überhaupt noch nich mit ich weiß überhaupt nich dass es für mich/ was es für mich bedeutet un * ja ich merk einfach auch dass ich angst krieg [. . . ] manchmal schnürts mir einfach die luft ab ‘I do not know how to handle with * I do not know what it means to me when I get scared [. . . ] sometimes I couldn’t breath at all’
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2a/b B: also dieses *äh positiv sein womöglich auch schon *krank ich mein des is ja * jetz noch nich sicher die * d/ d/ äh muss ja * denk ich erst vom arzt noch abgeklärt werden * äh des * is ja ne sache die * gar nich im zusammenhang stehen muss jetz also des * äh des positive testergebnis * is ja noch * überhaupt keine * äh aussage darüber ob jetz * die krankheit schon vorhanden is ne positiv sein heißt nicht dass * aids*krank * äh äh jemand is * s=is emal=n status * vorläufig 2a B: ‘well your being positive or even ill/ I mean * it is not even certain and has to be diagnosed by your doctor * ehm * there doesn’t have to be a connection * ’ 2b ‘you know a positive test does not mean that you’ve got aids it is just a provisional state’ 3a/b R: ja aber * jetz kommen so die * die anzeichen die ersten sachen * wo * mein arzt mir eben gesacht hat * das sind alles begleiterscheinungen und *ja ich ich weiß auch * also ich will da mit andern leuten drüber reden die * auch betroffen sind weil ich denke da wird ich besser verstanden 3a R: ‘well but the first signs are those where my doctor told me they are all related symptoms * I know too/ *’ 3b ‘well I just want to talk about it with others who are also infected because I think they have a better understanding’ 4 B: sicherlich * äh das * gedankenaustausch mit betroffenen äh * is auf alle fälle gut ‘certainly you are right * ehm * an exchange of ideas with persons who are also infected is good in any case’
The client (R) here first formulates his fear of his HIV-infection ((1): I do not know how to handle with * I do not know what it means to me when I get scared [. . . ] sometimes I couldn’t breath at all). The counsellor responds but downplays the possibility of an AIDS disease, and gives a reason ((2a): well your being positive or even ill/ I mean * it is not even certain and has to be diagnosed by your doctor * ehm * there doesn’t have to be a connection). Before relinquishing the turn to his partner he states definitely that HIV-infection does not mean the AIDS-disease itself; by putting this statement in the last position of the turn-serialization he demands his partner’s ratification or even acceptance of that statement first. In this way he pushes his argument to the background ((2b): you know a positive test does not mean that you’ve got aids it is just a provisional state). But R rejects the statement and refers to his doctor
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as a competent authority ((3a): well but the first signs are those where my doctor told me they are all related symptoms * I know too/). Then he immediately downplays the open dissent and renews a prior request ((3b): well I just want to talk about it with others who are also infected because I think they have a better understanding). R’s rejection therefore is encapsulated in the same way as is his reference to competence. Actually B deals in the following statement with the renewed request and does not insist on his prior statement ((4): certainly you are right * ehm * an exchange of ideas with persons who are also infected is good in any case). The manner of offering compressed argumentation explicitly or implicitly offers a verbal reason as a questionable one for interactive negotiation (by saying e.g. ‘we have to discuss it’). In the following extract from another mediation talk on verbal insults the accused denies having used any insulting expressions. The mediator concedes that ‘as a rule’ but characterizes the incriminated incident as an ‘exceptional situation’. By doing so he substantiates in anticipation why rejection may be critical for the accused: there were witnesses who can substantiate the plaintiff ’s statement. The relevant steps of the argumentation sequence are realized in this compressed manner and are offered to the accused for further discussion: (5) B: solche solche wörter– gebrauche ich nicht ‘I don’t use expressions like that’ C: ich nehme ihnen ab daß sie die nischt gebrau“chen im regelfall * a:ber * äh in einer ausnah:mesituation herr kreuzer könnte des doch durschaus mal sei“n * un * äh * hie“r * is ja die * der antragssteller * in einer etwas besseren lage ihnen gegenüber indem er nämlisch einen zeu” gen aufbieten kann ‘I believe that you do not use such expression as a rule but isn’t it possible * in an exceptional situation mister kreuzer * that this could be * and * ehm * here the plaintiff is in a slightly better position because he has a witness’
The reference to an ‘exceptional situation’ can be seen as marking dissent to the rejection of the accusation whereas the mediator’s reference to witnesses may be regarded as an explication in the sense of step 3 of the argumentation sequence. The accused now has to deal with this unfavorable matter. But he simply rejects the validity of the assertion stated by the mediator and by that the validity of the accusation too, for which he himself offers an explanation of his own stating that it is ‘pure insinuation’:
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(6) B: ja * sie wissen ja auch was das ich ihnen geschrieben habe * äh daß erstens gar kein zeuge da war und ich darauf besteh daß es eine reine unterstellung ist von dem herrn * heinzel ‘well * you also know what I wrote * ehm that there was no witness there at all and that I insist that it is a pure insinuation by mister heinzel’
The accused therefore rejects negotiation of the mediator’s explicative offer (see C’s utterance in example 5). In the following section the mediator tries to prove contradictions in the presentation of the accused as a more competitive strategy. Expansion and compression are frequently combined in different forms. With these formats a complementary and very variable and process-sensitive potential for complex argumentation is given which provides for the establishment and the solution of argumentation in different contexts.
Summary Argumentation is shown here as an interactional resource of interactants in conversations. Interactants may leave their main interactive goals for a short time or even longer by implementing an argumentation sequence. Within this sequence and by means of the organizational structure they are able to cope with their problem of understanding, and return again to the previous level of interaction. This is due to the implementation format and the internal structuring of the argumentation sequence which provides a comprehensive projection by its organizational constraints. Interactants gain interactive control by that procedure because it is bound to the comprehensive goals, and it is maximally flexible through expansion or compression of the sequence. Interactants may use minimal activities, or expand an argument at length without losing the thread of the interaction. Argumentation, therefore, is enacted in a range from a single parenthesis to hours of discussion. All of this makes argumentation a highly practicable procedure and this may explain its frequency, its dissemination in different contexts and types of interaction, and last but not least its high acknowledgment in the Western conversational culture.13 Sequentiality, as it is shown for argumentation here, therefore, is not only a merely formal organizational structure. It provides for resources for the production of utterances and for mutual reference of the partners with a lot of
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rhetorical implications. The rhetorical implications of the argumentation sequence are enormous: initiators of argumentation provide space for presenting their position, which conversely forces their partners to argue too. But there are also risks. For example, the partner’s position may ultimately result in success. One must also bear the following in mind when considering argumentation sequences: there is no truth in an interaction besides what partners define as true – and for that negotiation, argumentation as well as its sequencing, and its interactional variation are very powerful instruments.
Notes . I wish to thank Sara Smith (California State University) and Tom Lovik (Michigan State University) for their comments and their help with the translation. . See for example Klein (1981) who defines ,an argument as a number of assertions connected in a certain (‘logical’) way’ (p. 226; all translations from the author); otherwise Kienpointner (1996) says anargument is a reason given for or against a hypothesis’ (p. 75). . See Kallmeyer 1996; Keim 1996, 1999, i.pr., Schmitt 1997; Wolf 1999; Spranz-Fogasy i.pr. and Spranz-Fogasy 2002. . These procedures are described in Spranz-Fogasy 1999 und Spranz-Fogasy 2002. They are derived from argumentative criteria, whose relevance the interactants themselves determine within their argumentative utterances. . For an overview see Pander Maat 1984 and Nussbaumer 1995; for the pragma-dialectic approach of the Amsterdam school see Eemeren et al. 1993. . For these expansion formats see Jefferson 1972 and Jefferson & Schenkein 1978. . In later articles (e.g. in Jacobs et al. 1991) they both postulate the interrelationship of argumentation and the comprehensive conversational work, but do not analyze it empirically. And it must be stated that, by tying argumentation to the Gricean conversational maxims and the felicity conditions of Searle, they develop a normativistic view on argumentation and thereby dissolve the prior strict sequential approach (see Jacobs 1999). . For the concept of conditional relevance see Schegloff & Sacks 1973. Conditional relevance means the kind of projection or provisional structuring of an verbal activity by the previous activity: Enacting a particular type of an activity sets a following activity relevant and makes it expectable. Typical examples are adjacency pairs such as question-answer. . More general definitions of interactional argumentation deal with just ,giving a reason’ without reference to any kind of interactive incident. But in an interactional point of view accounts as argumentations or e.g. narratives always deal with deficits at least in the sense of uncertainties (see Kallmeyer & Schütze 1977). . The transcript is fully printed in Schröder (1995). Translations of the transcripts are from the author; they are rough translations with the focus on the argumentative aspects.
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Thomas Spranz-Fogasy . Sometimes even acceptance or ratification also cause a further insertion as the following scene from a TV discussion between two German politicians, the late physicist Robert Jungk and the former minister of defense Rupert Scholz, demonstrates. Scholz demands consensus and Jungk nods to the demand. Scholz then states consensus but Jungk denies: no I do not have any consensus with you (nein ich hab mit ihnen überhau”pt keinen konsens)(12.2.1991, N3: Alex. Das aktuelle Kulturstudio). . For the concept of indexicality see Garfinkel & Sacks 1976, Patzelt 1987. Indexicality is seen as an unavoidable quality of the meaning of verbal expressions to depend on the given context. . Argumentation is one of the most examined communication forms of the Western world, as to be seen in the amount of writings of Aristoteles (e.g. 1952, 1980), Toulmin (1958), Perelman (1980), or the Amsterdam School of Pragma-dialectics (Eemeren et al. 1993) etc.
References Aristoteles. (1952). Topik. Paderborn: Schöningh. Aristoteles. (1980). Rhetorik. München: Fink. Eemeren, F. van, Grootendorst, R., Jackson, S., & Jacobs, S. (1993). Reconstructing Argumentative Discourse. Tuscaloosa, Al: The Univ. of Alabama Press. Garfinkel, H., & Sacks, H. (1976). Über formale Strukturen praktischer Handlungen. In E. Weingarten, F. Sack & J. Schenkein (Eds.), Ethnomethodologie: Beiträge zu einer Soziologie des Alltagshandelns (pp. 130–176). Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 3: Speech Acts (pp. 41–58). New York: Academic Press. Jackson, S., & Jacobs, S. (1980). Structure of conversational argument: Pragmatic bases for the enthymeme. The Quarterly Journal of Speech, 66, 251–265. Jacobs, S. (1999). Argumentation as normative pragmatics. In F. van Eemeren, R. Grootendorst, J. A. Blair & C. A. Willard (Eds.), Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (University of Amsterdam, July 16–19, 1998) (pp. 397–403). Amsterdam: SicSat. Jacobs, S., & Jackson, S. (1982). Conversational argument: A discourse analytic approach. In J. R. Cox & C. A. Willard (Eds.), Advances in Argumentation Theory and Research (pp. 205–237). Carbondale, IL.: Southern Illinois Univ. Press. Jacobs, S., & Jackson, S. (1989). Building a model of conversational argument. In B. Dervin, L. Grossberg, D. J. O’Keefe & E. Wartella (Eds.), Rethinking Communication, Vol. 2 (pp. 153–171). Newbury Parks, CA.: Sage. Jacobs, S., Jackson, S., Stearns, S., & Hall, B. (1991). Digressions in argumentative discourse: Multiple goals, standing concerns, and implicatures. In K. Tracy (Ed.), Understanding Face-to-Face Interaction (pp. 43–62). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Jefferson, G. (1972). Side sequences. In D. Sudnow (Ed.), Studies in Social Interaction (pp. 294–338). New York: Free Press.
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Jefferson, G., & Schenkein, J. (1978). Some sequential negotiations in conversations: Unexpanded and expanded action sequences. In J. Schenkein (Ed.), Studies in the Organization of Conversational Interaction (pp. 160–163). New York: Academic Press. Kallmeyer, W. (1988). Konversationsanalytische Beschreibung. In U. Ammon, N. Dittmar & K. Mattheier (Eds.), Soziolinguistik. 2.Halbband (pp. 1095–1108). Berlin: de Gruyter. Kallmeyer, W. (1996). Gesprächsrhetorik. Rhetorische Verfahren im Gesprächsprozess. Tübingen: Narr. Kallmeyer, W., & Schmitt, R. (1996). Forcieren oder: Die verschärfte Gangart. In W. Kallmeyer (Ed.), Gesprächsrhetorik. Rhetorische Verfahren im Gesprächsprozess (pp. 19– 118). Tübingen: Narr. Kallmeyer, W., & Schütze, F. (1976). Konversationsanalyse. Studium Linguistik, 1, 1–28. Kallmeyer, W., & Schütze, F. (1977). Zur Konstitution von Kommunikationsschemata der Sachverhaltsdarstellung. Exemplifiziert am Beispiel von Erzählungen und Beschreibungen. In D. Wegner (Ed.), Gesprächsanalysen. Referate der IPK-Tagung 1976 (pp. 159–274). Hamburg: Buske. Keim, I. (1996). Verfahren der Perspektivenabschottung und ihre Auswirkung auf die Dynamik des Argumentierens. In W. Kallmeyer (Ed.), Gesprächsrhetorik. Rhetorische Verfahren im Gesprächsprozess (pp. 191–278). Tübingen: Narr. Keim, I. (1999). Herstellen von Dominanz im Gespräch durch Dominantsetzen von Perspektiven. In J. Fohrmann, I. Kasten & E. Neuland (Eds.), Autorität der/in Sprache, Literatur, Neuen Medien. Vorträge des Bonner Germanistentages 1997. Bd. 1 (pp. 110– 135). Bielefeld: Aisthesis. Keim, I. (in press). Perspectivity and professional role in verbal interaction. In C. F. Graumann & W. Kallmeyer (Eds.), Perspectivity and Perspectivation in Discourse. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Kienpointner, M. (1996). Vernünftig argumentieren. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt. Klein, W. (1981). Logik der Argumentation. In P. Schröder & H. Steger (Eds.), Dialogforschung (pp. 226–264). Düsseldorf: Schwann. Nussbaumer, M. (1995). Argumentation und Argumentationstheorie. Heidelberg: Julius Groos. Pander Maat, H. (1984). Argumentation: Zur Charakterisierung und Abgrenzung eines Forschungsgegenstandes. Studium Linguistik, 16, 1–20. Patzelt, W. (1987). Grundlagen der Ethnomethodologie. München: Fink. Perelman, C. (1980). Das Reich der Rhetorik. München: Beck. Perelman, C., & Olbrechts-Tyteca, L. (1958). La nouvelle rhétorique: traité e l‘argumentation. Bruxelles: Éd. de l’Inst. de Sociologie. Schegloff, E., & Sacks, H. (1973). Opening up closings. Semiotica, 8, 289–327. Schmitt, R. (1997). Unterstützen im Gespräch. Zur Analyse manifester Kooperationsverfahren. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft, 16(1/2), 52–82. Schröder, P. (1995). Schlichtungsgespräche. Ein Textband mit einer exemplarischen Analyse. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter. Searle, J. (1971). Sprechakte. Ein sprachphilosophischer Essay. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp Spranz-Fogasy, T. (1986). ‘widersprechen’ – Zu Form und Funktion eines Aktivitätstyps in Schlichtungsgesprächen. Eine gesprächsanalytische Untersuchung. Tübingen: Narr.
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Spranz-Fogasy, T. (1997). Interaktionsprofile. Die Herausbildung individueller Handlungstypik in Gesprächen. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Spranz-Fogasy, T. (1999). Interactional resources of argumentation. In F. van Eemeren, R. Grootendorst, J. A. Blair & C. A. Willard (Eds.), Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (University of Amsterdam, July 16–19, 1998) (pp. 761–763). Amsterdam: SicSat. Spranz-Fogasy, T. (in press). Argumentieren als Verfahren der Sachverhaltsklärung. Mannheim: Ms. Spranz-Fogasy, T. (2002). “Interaktionsorganisation als (meta-)kommunikative Ressource des Argumentierens”. In S. Bastian & F. Hammer (Eds.), Argumentation und Metakommunikation. Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 11–25. Toulmin, S. (1958). The Uses of Argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wolf, R. (1999). Soziale Positionierung im Gespräch. Deutsche Sprache, 27(1), 69–94.
Appendix. Transcription conventions [. . . ] (. . . ) , ** : ” /
omissions incomprehensible micropause lenghtening emphasis breaking off
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Sequential positioning of represented discourse In institutional media interaction Marjut Johansson University of Turku, Finland
Introduction In this article, I examine reported speech as a pragmatic object. By this I mean that the meaning of this linguistic object is not simply derived from the point of view of how it reports a previous utterance of another speaker, but more importantly, of how it contributes to the discourse in which it is positioned. In recent studies (Clark & Gerrig 1990; Fludernik 1993; Chafe 1994; Waugh 1995; Baynham 1996; Roulet 1997), this linguistic object has been studied from different pragmatic perspectives and it is named, according to traditional accounts, either reported speech, speech and thought representation or is referred to as polyphony or polyvocality. In some accounts, it is called discourse representation (Fairclough 1992), and constructed dialogue (Tannen 1989). I propose to examine it from a multilevel perspective and I name this object represented discourse. In this paper, my aim is to study represented discourse and its function in interaction from the perspective of sequentiality. I claim that represented discourse has to be considered from this perspective in order for us to understand how it contributes to the co-construction of meaning in interaction. Here, sequentiality is considered to be a relational notion, which has to be understood not merely as the principle governing the turn-taking, but as a broader concept. Establishing sequentiality is a profoundly dialogical enterprise because it is produced by the speakers jointly in interaction. It governs the co-construction of meaning in several dimensions, namely in the dimensions of turn-taking, topic
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development and cognitive-discursive activity. Further, different speaker roles have an effect on how a speaker follows a certain dimension of sequentiality. The framework of my study is that of dialogism, or to put it differently, a constructivist perspective on interaction. By dialogism, I take into account on the one hand, the dialogical use of language in situational contexts and socio-cultural practices (Linell 1998a: 54–55) and on the other, on a more abstract level, the interplay between the I and the other. In this paper, the other in focus is the voice cited, reproduced or rather, constructed, from other contexts. My approach draws from several sources such as Linell (1998a) and Fairclough (1992), as well as from French and Anglo-American interaction and dialogue research (for instance, CA, Goffman 1974, 1981; Drew & Heritage 1992; Vion 1992; Adam 1992, 1996). My framework and a multilevel approach to represented discourse is developed in detail in Johansson (2000). This paper contains three parts: first, the explanation of sequentiality and its different dimensions of the co-construction of meaning in institutional interaction; secondly, the definition of represented discourse consisting of a new orientation of the notion; and thirdly, the analysis of institutional discourse. In the analysis, my example is that of a media interaction, namely a political interview. I focus on how a journalist and a politician construct instances of represented discourse in media interaction. I show how the sequential positioning has an effect on the function of represented discourse and how it contributes to the co-construction of meaning. Furthermore, I investigate the ways the speakers, the journalists and the politicians, use represented discourse in their talk. As data, I use an interview where Martine Aubry, a member of French Socialist Party, is being interviewed.
Sequentiality Sequentiality in CA: turn-taking As I have already stated, the notion of sequentiality is essential in interpreting the function and the meaning of represented discourse. The notion of sequentiality is most often associated with CA, in which sequentiality is studied in turn-taking, most often in adjacency pairs. In CA, sequential analysis means examining the turn-taking system to find out how “. . . there is a variety of obvious orders, in sequential terms, to the organization of conversation” (Sacks 1987: 55). According to this view, on a general level, every turn projects the relevancy for a range of subsequent actions –
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that is, there is a sequential implicativeness (Schegloff & Sacks 1973: 296; Atkinson & Heritage 1984: 5–6). This means that in interaction, every action projects the next action which in turn creates a link with the action preceding it. Every utterance derives its meaning and function according to its placement in the sequence of action. Moreover, interaction can be considered as the speakers’ interpretation of the situation and the context they are creating. More specifically, in CA, the sequentiality has very often been considered from the point of view of adjacency pairs, for instance in closings (Schegloff & Sacks 1973). Sacks (1987: 55) says that an adjacency pair – a twounit sequence – is a basic, abstract sequence type. Sharrock and Anderson (1987: 307) explain this by stating that adjacency pairs “provide one elementary and frequent solution to the problem of what to do next in conversation”. They add that the first part gives an orientation regarding the next step in conversation (ibid.). In this study, turn-taking and thus adjacency pairs form one part of my explanation. In my analysis, I examine one type of institutional interaction, namely the interview. In an interview, the adjacency pairs are formed by questions and answers. The sequentiality established through the questions of the interviewer and the answers of the interviewee form the specificity of this interaction type (cf. Drew & Heritage 1992: 37). But as I shall show, looking into adjacency pairs is only a partial explanation. I believe it is necessary to add other dimensions of sequentiality, because the local context of two turns is not sufficient in explaining the function of represented discourse. I claim that in explaining sequentiality, one has to take more global aspects of discourse organization into consideration.
Different dimensions of sequentiality To account for the local and global discursive and interactional organization, I follow Linell’s (1998a: 85–86) dialogical principle of sequentiality: [All discourse], whether monological or dialogical, has a fundamental sequential organization. Each constituent action, contribution or sequence, gets significant parts of its meaning from the position in a sequence (which in realtime interaction is of course temporal in nature). That means that one can never fully understand an utterance or an extract, if it is taken out of the sequence which provides its context.
This definition is advantageous in that it moves away from the concept of a local sequence of adjacency pairs (ibid.: 86) and because it includes other ele-
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ments. In my work, I propose to broaden the concept of sequentiality by also examining other dimensions of it. In all, I distinguish between three dimensions of sequentiality. First, as mentioned, turns are organized in a sequence, that is, every interaction has its specific system of turn-taking. Second, the utterances produced by speakers are positioned sequentially according to topic development. A topic is what the text is about and it is usually seen as creating coherence in the text (Chafe 1994: 120–121; Linell 1998a: 181–205). Produced jointly by the speakers, topic development follows a certain pattern of sequentiality according to the constraints of the genre and interaction type in question and thus forms topical episodes. According to Linell (1998a: 183), “an episode is a bounded sequence, a discourse event with a beginning and an end”, usually created around a topic. This dimension of sequentiality, therefore, connects these local and global aspects of discourse. Third, the speakers carry out different tasks of cognitive-discursive activity which form certain types of textual sequences in their talk (Adam 1992). This means that when discussing a topic, speakers are carrying out different types of cognitive-discursive tasks. For exemple, the speakers engage to tell, explain, argue, describe and so on. A cognitive-discursive task signifies a certain process a speaker – or the speakers – carries out and that this process forms a certain type of pattern of talk. For instance, if speakers develop a story, they engage themselves in the cognitive-discursive task of telling, in which they speak according to certain discursive and linguistic characteristics (chronological order, temporality etc.) and in the end, the story takes a specific and recognizable form (Vion 1992: 205). A story is called a narrative textual sequence by Adam (1992: 46–58) who defines different kinds of prototypical sequences, for instance description. However, texts rarely manifest pure prototypical sequences, but instead they can be characterized as manifestations of the different combinations of textual sequences. In this paper, I will examine one of the most usual textual sequences in the political interview, namely, that of explanation. According to Adam (1992: 132), the (prototypical) textual sequence of explanation has four discernible parts. These parts demonstrate the different phases in the realization of the cognitivediscursive process of explanation. First, it contains an initial schematization. Second, the basic problem follows. This means that the problem that the speakers try to solve is being posed or described. Then, in the next part, there is a progression toward an explanation: the answer to the problem is produced. The final part is that of evaluation and conclusion. In his definition of this se-
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0 1 2 3
Initial schematization Problem: Why X or how X Because: Explanation Evaluation -conclusion
Figure 1. Textual sequence of explanation (cf. Adam 1992: 132)
quence, Adam follows Grize (1990) and this can be illustrated by the following (slightly modified) pattern shown in Figure 1. This will be the basis of my analysis. However, before beginning the analysis itself, one question remains: how is sequentiality established in the interview?
Sequentiality within a specific genre: political interview Interviewing is an important way of making politics – politicians prefer the kind of spontaneous and intimate talk. It allows them to use rather than public speeches (Bell & Leeuwen 1994: 1). According to Charaudeau & Ghiglione (1997: 57–58), the public sphere of politics is accomplished in the form of speech which ranges form controversy and revelation to proclamation and declaration. These different modes of political talk have different goals and are realized in different media genres. The interview could be characterized as a genre that produces speech of revelation: its goal is the why and how of the political acts (ibid.: 57–58, 65). The interviewers attempt to make the politicians discuss future, past or present political actions – and as we know, they do this by using different strategies and in different styles (see for instance Bell & Leeuwen 1994). As for the first dimension of sequentiality, in political interviews, the questions of the interviewer have a focal role. They are meant to elicit information (Jucker 1986: 101). The turn-taking, therefore, is controlled by the interviewer and it is his or her role to propose topics for discussion. In this sense, then the interview is an asymmetrical interaction. However, this is only a partial picture of this particular type of media interaction and as stated above, I believe it is necessary to look at more global aspects in this particular context. In terms of the topical episodes, these are generally easily distinguishable in the interview. Their boundaries are determined by the interviewer as he or she proposes new subjects to be discussed. In a political interview, the clearest cognitive-discursive tasks that an interviewer (IR) proposes to the interviewee (IE) are the tasks of explanation, description and argumentation. It is only rarely that the politician engages in narrating events that take the form of a story in chronological order. In the fol-
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lowing example, which is an opening question in an interview, the interviewer proposes the topic and a cognitive-discursive task of description concerning social exclusion to the interviewee, i.e. the politician: IR:
Euh the word exclusion it’s a word which describes its meaning well but which can appear a little bit abstract what is the reality behind this word
euh le mot exclusion c’est un mot qui dit bien ce qu’il veut dire mais qui peut apparaître un petit peu abstrait quelle est la réalité qui se cache derrière ce mot
The topic is introduced in the prefatory statement (Heritage & Greatbatch 1991: 99) of the question (euh the word exclusion). It is followed by an affirmation which contains the problem behind the question (it’s a word which describes its meaning well but which can appear a little bit abstract). Finally, I interpret the last utterance in this turn, which is in the interrogative form, as the task the interviewer offers the politician. The task is that of description – the interviewer asks the politician to describe the reality behind this word. In the following, I discuss the notion of represented discourse in relation to sequentiality.
Represented discourse In some recent accounts, quoting and the use of reported speech is studied as a pragmatic phenomen, that is, reported speech is studied in the context(s) of its appearance, most often in professional or institutional discourse (Fairclough 1992, 1995; Linell 1998b; Baynham & Slembrouck 1999). Researchers have discussed how voices, the blending and mixing of them, as well as the use of reported speech are a constitutive part of institutional discourse. This paper follows the same line of thinking, but I hope to present a new point of view in this discussion. I concentrate on the ongoing process of the co-construction of meaning in institutional interaction and how represented discourse thus emerges. As mentioned, I take the dialogicality of language use as my premise. This means, first, that every instance of represented discourse contains a voice, or a staged other. The presence of voices can be defined as manifest polyphony according to Bakhtine (1981, 1984; Volosinov 1973). By this it is meant that a speaker constructs a more or less explicit relation, or in other words, a reference, to another speaker in an utterance that points to a segment of speech
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from another context. Other types of polyphony can be distinguished in which the voices are implicit or blended with the speaker. In my work on represented discourse (Johansson 2000), I have focused on different levels of the concept in the framework of dialogism. According to my interpretation, as the speaker constructs an instance of represented discourse, he or she makes a recontextualization in his or her speech. I understand this concept as Linell (1998a: 154) defines it: [Recontextualization is a] “dynamic transfer-and transformation of something from one discourse/text-in-context (the context being in reality a matrix or field of contexts) to another. Recontextualization involves the extrication of some part or aspect from a text or discourse, or from a genre of texts or discourses, and the fitting of this part or aspect into another context, i.e. another text or discourse (or discourse genre) and its use and environment.”
As the speaker quotes or refers to another speaker and another context, there is a reconstruction process which involves inevitable shifts in meaning (Linell 1998a: 155) that then take full meaning in the new context in which the quotation is embedded. This is the basis of my conception of represented discourse. I define it as a form of mediated action that can be studied from both a social and individual perspective: a speaker acting as a social actor who constructs instances of represented discourse is simultaneously using represented discourse as a cultural and linguistic tool, which then forms a link between mental action, interaction and action situated in a social context. The basis of this – cultural tools functioning as mediation – can be found in Wertsch (1998). This construction process has two parts: first, the construction of the linguistic object and second, the construction of a relation. In this process, first, the voice functions as a trace in the consciousness of the speaker. The textual realization of the voice in the utterance of represented discourse links the speaker with other discourses, texts and social agents, that is the speaker positions him or herself in different dialogical relations with the voice. In other words, the represented discourse functions as one indicator of inter- or intratextual, or interdiscursive chaining. These notions are defined in Fairclough (1992). Secondly, represented discourse is realized by the speaker in a certain discursive and interactional context. The discursive framing of represented discourse and its positioning in interaction depend on the type of text and genre in question. They also depend on the type of relation that is negotiated with the co-speaker. In all, I believe that represented discourse contributes to the co-construction of meaning in these dimensions (See Table 1).
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Table 1. Represented discourse (RD): A form of recontextualization in which speaker constructs
THE LINGUISTIC OBJECT
A RELATION WITH
(explicit) voice trace in the consciousness of the speaker
Texts and other speakers intra- and intertextual and interdiscursive chaining
Positioning of RD in discursive and interactional context
Co-speaker negotiation with the co-speaker
In this paper, I focus on the positioning of represented discourse in the discursive and interactional context in the ongoing interaction.
Questions and data As I have mentioned, I will analyze one type of textual sequence, namely a textual sequence of explanation and how speakers jointly produce it. For the analysis, I have chosen one topical episode in which the interviewer asks the politician to explain why the governmental aid to enterprises in France has not resulted in more jobs in the labor market. In other words, the speakers develop a typical political topic and the politician explains – from her point of view – a fact in the political sphere. My aim is to study how represented discourse functions in this excerpt (see Appendix). My research questions are as follows: – –
What are the types of represented discourse from the speaker’s perspective? What is the sequential positioning of represented discourse in turn-taking, topic development and textual sequence of explanation?
The analyzed episode1 is a part of the four-hour data of my study in which I examined approximately 120 instances of direct and indirect utterances of represented discourse produced by interviewers and politicians in political broadcast interviews (Johansson 2000). The interview in question is L’heure de vérité (23.1.1994) – a French interview program from the 90’s. The program was
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usually divided into three parts, in each of which a different journalist had the possibility to question a politician or other celebrity about current issues. The politician in question is Martine Aubry, a politician from the Socialist Party, who was in the opposition party at the time of the interview, and the interviewer is Jean-Marie Colombani.2
Analysis Represented discourse in the opening question This episode is situated at the beginning of the interview and its global discourse topic is the financial aid that the government is giving to enterprises in France. In the opening question, the interviewer introduces the topic of the enterprises and how the politicians have reacted to the situation. In the analysis, I use the abbreviation RD for represented discourse. The occurrences of represented discourse are marked by an arrow (→).The introductory part of represented discourse is underlined and the recontextualized part is in italics in the excerpt: 145 IR: ok enterprises lets talk a little bit → about them there has been a polemic at the beginning of the year with the President of the Republic who observed that the new government has given 80 billion francs to the enterprises without creating any new jobs → the Prime Minister answered him and evoked a hypothesis to CONNECT part of this financial aid with the creation of → new jobs and this gave instantaneously rise to vigorous protests 146 IE: mm 147 IR: from employers 148 IE: mm
alors l’entreprise on va en parler un petit peu il y a eu une polémique au tout début de l’année avec le Président de la République qui a fait observer que 80 milliards . de FRANCS étaient allés vers les entreprises depuis l’arrivée du nouveau gouvernement sans CREATION d’emploi . le Premier Ministre lui a répondu en évoquant l’hypothèse de LIER une partie de cette aide à des créations d’emploi et on a eu dans la foulée une levée de bouclier mm patronale mm
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149 IR: with even one phrase by Mister Calvet the managing director of Peugeot to say it’s a crime even to think about such a thing so was François Mitterrand right when he defined the problem in terms of massive financial aid and so few results and WHY is there today this kind of attitude of employers in France
avec même une phrase de Monsieur Calvet le patron de de Peugeot pour dire c’est un crime contre l’esprit d’imaginer cela alors. est-ce que François Mitterrand a eu raison de POSER le problème en ces termes d’une aide aussi massive et de si peu de résultats et POURQUOI cette attitude patronale aujourd’hui en France
The form of the question at the beginning of the topical episode is the kind often found at the beginning of topical sequences (Greatbatch 1988; Heritage & Greatbatch 1991; Clayman 1992; Schegloff 1984). It contains two parts. The first part contains a prefatory statement in which the interviewer proposes the global topic of politics concerning the government, followed by several instances of RD. The prefatory statement is a metapragmatic utterance in which the interviewer introduces the discourse topic (ok enterprises lets talk a little bit about them). Then, there is the first instance of RD in which the voice is that of the president. It is introduced by the word polemic which explains that there has been a political discussion between different persons regarding this issue. The other instances of RD follow one another without an interruption. The interviewer quotes, or to use another expression, stages the voices of the following interlocutors (see the arrows in the excerpt): – – –
the President of the Republic: first remark the Prime Minister: his answer to the President employers and M. Calvet, managing director of Peugeot: opposition
In his question, the interviewer presents these voices as if they were in a dialogue. In other words, he creates a scene directly from a political and media discussion. In all, in this question, the function of RD is to create a link of the present media text with other media texts on political issues. The interviewer recontextualizes an object of political discourse to be commented on and analyzed by the politician. The RD determines the type of discourse in question and the direction in which the interviewer wants the politician to go in her interpretation. In addition, in the third part of the question, the journalist proposes that the politician take a stand in this discussion. The third part of the question occurs in turn (149), in which the connector so is used. It precedes the second part of the opening question. In this part,
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there are two utterances that are stated in the form of interrogatives (so was François Mitterrand right when he defined the problem in terms of massive financial aid and so few results and why is there today this kind of attitude of employers in France ). It is in these, according to my interpretation, that the interviewer proposes an explanation task about this polemic and the political situation in the country to the politician. In the next sub-chapter, the analysis of the answer of the politician is covered.
Response: Represented discourse in the explanation The first reaction the politician has is to signal the nature of the question (150): 150 IE:
151 IR:
mm your question it it has actually four or five +questions+ {laughs} yes
mm votre question elle en elle en comporte quatre au cinq {rire} oui
This is a metapragmatic utterance which comments on the structure and the complexity of the question. The politician underlines her observation by laughter. Her commentary is ratified by the interviewer in the next turn, (151), by yes. It is only after this that the politician develops the first part of her answer (the lower-case bold letters refer to different parts of the answer): 152 IE: ok I’ll try to answer them a) somewhat clearly the first one that is indeed 80 billion has been paid by the government of Balladur to enterprises euh. in 8 months.. these 80 /or in 18 months to be more exact because we have to count the budget of 94 → with an analysis which said if it doesn’t go so well today in France if there is unemployment it is because there is a problem on the side of enterprises and their competitiveness so [we are] 153 IR: nobody ] nobody denied this analysis besides on the other hand
bon je vais essayer d’y répondre un peu clairement la première c’est que| effectivement 80 milliards ont été versés par le gouvernement Balladur aux entreprises euh .en 8 mois.. ces 80 /ou en 18 mois plus exactement puisqu’on compte le budget 94 avec une analyse qui était de dire aujourd’hui si ça va pas en France s’il y a du chômage c’est parce qu’il y a un problème du côté des entreprises et de leur compétitivité donc [on va] [personne] personne ne contestait cette analyse d’ailleurs par ailleurs
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54 IE: that’s not true 155 IR: not the Left nor the Right 156 IE: b) → yes they did because the Left has said from the beginning what we need today. what is lacking from the enterprises is the markets euh one has to lean on the consumption and what was done there was the opposite there was 80 billion which was taken from the households the rise of +[various payments]+ the rise of the taxes of petrol of tobacco and c) so on to pay the enterprises what have they done. you know that today they do not have a lack of MONEY have you noticed that we are breaking all the records of self-financing the enterprises today have 170 billion euh PLACED ASIDE ok their real problem is the markets it is the consumption the National statistics office +[l’Insée]+ has d) just shown it what have they done with these 80 billion they have paid their debts those who needed to do that and they have placed the money in the financial market e) so the money didn’t allow them to invest nor to employ NOR to stop the lay offs
si ni la gauche ni la droite si si parce que la la gauche a DIT a dit dès le début aujourd’hui ce qu’il faut ce qui manque aux entreprises c’est des marchés euh il faut appuyer sur la consommation et là au contraire on a prélevé 80 milliards sur les ménages la hausse de la cgc la hausse de la taxe sur l’essence sur les tabacs etcetera pour les verser aux entreprises qu’est-ce qu’elles ont fait les entreprises. vous savez qu’aujourd’hui les entreprises elles ne manquent pas D’ARGENT est-ce que vous avez vu qu’on bat tous les records d’auto-financement les entreprises aujourd’hui ont 170 milliards . euh DE COTE PLACES . bon leur vrai problème c’est les marchés c’est la consommation. l’Insée vient de le montrer qu’est-ce qu’elles ont fait de ces 80 milliards elles se sont désendettées pour celles qui en avait besoin et elles l’ont placé sur le marché financier donc ça ne leur a permis. ni ni d’investir NI de d’embaucher ni d’arrêter les licenciements
In (152), the interviewee takes up the task of explaining by a metapragmatic utterance (ok I’ll try to answer them somewhat clearly). This first part of the answer, marked by (a), is a reorientation of the problem the interviewer has given the politician and the beginning of an explanation. The interviewee states first that there has been a financial aid to enterprises (80 billion has been paid) and the reasons why the government has paid this money (unemployment, competi-
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tiveness of enterprises). These facts are stated in the form of RD. Here the RD has the function of announcing what the foundation (an analysis) of the political act (payment of the money) was. In his turns (153, 155), the interviewer comments on this analysis and the interviewee opposes this commentary in her turns (154, 156). In the beginning of the latter turn, there is, once again, an instance of RD, which is the first part in a counter-argumentation of the answer (marked by b). Not only does the politician disagree with the commentary of the interviewer, but she also shows that she does not accept that the government has given financial aid to enterprises. This instance of RD allows her to give the interpretation of her political party on this matter (enterprises, markets). With her explanation, signaled by the contrary, she remarks that it is the households that suffer from this situation created by the government. In the part of her answer marked by (c), the politician proposes the point of view of the enterprises and the fact that in her opinion they do not have problems. She does this by stating a question (what have they done) and giving the answer which begins with a discourse marker (you know). This question and answer point out an affirmation that the politician supposes to be known to everybody. She reintroduces the argument (on the market) and the support for this argument in (d) ( it is the consumption the National statistics office +[l’Insée]+ has just shown it). She finishes her explanation in (e) by enumerating the things the enterprises have done with the money they have been given. She concludes (so) this part of the explanation by saying that their actions have not gone in the right direction.
Refocus of the topic: reposing the question and answering with RD The next step in the interaction is the next question of the interviewer (157– 163) regarding the discourse topic. 157 IR: 158 IE: 159 IR:
160 IE: 161 IR: 162 IE: 163 IR:
so does one have to talk so about an unpatriotic attitude of the empl/ employers or are there any stronger reasons. mm which have resulted so in the governmental approach
alors est-ce qu’il faut parler alors d’incivisme par/ patronal ou est-ce qu’il y a des causes plus. mm plus fortes qui tiennent alors à l’approche du gouvernement
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This question resumes the topic of the aid the government is giving to the enterprises and the opposition from the employers. In other words, this question refocuses on the initial question. This comment of the IR also shows that the politician has not yet answered the opening question, but has so far developed an answer in which she has explained the state of the situation. It is not until turn (164) that she produces an answer to the initial question, punctuated by several instances of RD: 164 IE: f) I would say first that it was a MISTAKE a mistake to think that we had a crisis of supply and to help the enterprises when one should have done the contrary stimulate the consumption and the public spending actually that was what the government of Balladur tried to do somewhat LATER when it realized this mistake but it unfortunately lowered the income tax in other words it did not reach nob/ it reached only every other household in France which makes most of the money and it wasn’t THEM that consume the most so I think it was another mistake g) and that is TO SAY NOTHING about fairness. but let’s go back to → our subject the President of the Republic he wanted first to say this WHY give these 80 billion to enterprises when they are not clearly doing what they were expected to do on the other hand → he wanted and that is a theme he has often taken up to give a reminder that the enterprises in France they often give notice too FAST ok I’m not one of those who
je dirais d’abord il y a eu une ERREUR une erreur de croire qu’on était devant une crise de l’offre et d’aider les entreprises alors qu’il aurait fallu au contraire relancer la consommation et la dépense publique ce que d’ailleurs le gouvernement Balladur a essayé de faire quelque temps plus TARD en se rendant compte de cette erreur mais malheureusement il l’a fait. en baissant l’impôt sur le revenu c’est-à-dire en ne touchant que la pers/ le ménage sur deux en France qui gagne le plus d’argent et c’est pas LUI qui consomme le plus donc je crois une que c’est une erreur complémentaire SANS parler de l’équité. mais revenons sur notre sujet. le président de la République il a d’abord voulu dire ça POURQUOI avoir donné ces 80 milliards aux entreprises puisqu’elles n’en ont pas fait ce qu’on voulait. il a voulu d’autre part, et ça c’est un thème qu’il a abordé souvent . rappeler que les entreprises en France elles licencient souvent trop VITE bon je fais pas partie de
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think that the enterprises should not lay off employees when the economic situation demands it when one is working in a structural area which is not functioning one has to reduce the number of staff but but I think as others that the enterprises in France have a REFLEX which is to reduce the employees at once when things are not working I also believe and I think that the → President of the Republic also hinted that people have been replaced by machines and not always in the good sense to benefit the competitiveness. Antoine Riboul employer of [bsl] 165 IR: [having said this] . . .
ceux qui pensent de celles ou de ceux qui pensent qu’une entreprise ne doit pas licencier. là quand la conjoncture ne va pas quand on est dans un secteur structurel qui ne va pas on est obligé de réduire les effectifs mais mais je crois avec d’autres que les entreprises en France ont un REFLEXE qui est de réduire la masse salariale dès que les choses ne vont pas je crois aussi et je pense que le président de la République y faisait aussi allusion qu’ on a beaucoup trop remplacé les hommes par des machines et pas toujours dans un b on sens de compétitivité. Antoine Riboul patron de [bsl] [mais cela dit]
First, this answer in (164), contains parts (f) and (g). In part (f), the interviewee explains the problems that are connected to financial aid paid by the government of Balladur. The politician gives her evaluation of this political act by saying that it was a mistake and that it was based on two aspects (a crisis of supply, and to help the enterprises), but she disapproves of it (the contrary). She notes that the government knows that it has made a mistake. She arrives at the conclusion (so) that it was another mistake. The second part of this turn (g) begins with a metapragmatic utterance (but let’s go back to our subject), the function of which is to introduce a shift in the topic. It is at this fairly advanced point in the topical episode that the politician starts to directly answer the opening question. The core of the answer is given in the form of three instances of RD. In the beginning, the discussion between three voices was staged by the interviewer. However, the politician does not choose that of the Prime Minister nor that of the person representing the employers. Instead, she answers by taking up the point of view of the president on the issue. At the same time, she marks her own position by I think, I believe and stating that she accepts his opinions on this matter. The first two instances of RD follow one another. They are followed by the politician’s personal opinion (ok I’m not one of those who think – when – but but). In other words, the politician positions herself as following the same line
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of thinking as that of the voice, that is, the President. Then she introduces the third instance of RD which is a criticism of the enterprises. At the end of this long turn, there is an interruption by the interviewer.
Conclusions The different places where represented discourse emerges are illustrated in the following summary of the topical episode. With this summary, I demonstrate the function of represented discourse in the sequentiality of turn-taking, in textual sequences which are constructed in the execution of cognitive and discursive task of explanation and in the end, how the meaning is co-constructed in this interaction. The different phases in the task of explanation are indicated (see Figure 1) by bold italics and the function of represented discourse by italics. The instances of represented discourse are used, on the one hand, to show the facts have been discussed and the events that have taken place in the public sphere: first, the interviewer stages instances of political media discussion (0–1). By juxtaposition of several quoted comments, he dramatizes and recontextualizes a scene of dialogue between different persons who have spoken in the media. Secondly, the interviewee anchors the facts by using represented discourse in the beginning of her answer (1–2). On the other hand, she positions herself against the politics of the government that she finds to be mistaken and which she opposes by using represented discourse. The represented discourse is also staged at the end of the topical episode when the politician takes a stand towards the opinion and the voice of the President (3). At this point, it is an interpretation of what the President has said as well as an acceptance of this opinion. The politician states her own opinion in juxtaposition with that of the President. To sum up, the instances of represented discourse contribute to the coconstruction of meaning in the topical episode in the following manner. First of all, both speakers use represented discourse in the function of stating the events. Second, the politician also uses it in a counter-argumentation and at the end, in an evaluation. From the point of view of the interviewer, the represented discourse is used to bring the media object into the discussion, while the politician uses it to create a political opinion. In other words, used by the interviewer, represented discourse functions merely as an intertextual device creating links to a political media scene, but the politician also uses it as a rhetorical device, that is represented discourse is used to create a position,
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(0) initial schematization and (1) the stating of the problem Turns
Execution of a cognitive and discursive task
IR Proposition of initial arguments (145, 147, 149) and the explanation task Initial schematization and problem
Co-construction of meaning and the function of RD Discourse topic: enterprises – Exposition of opinions about the politics of the government and demand of opinion RD anchors the topic in the political media discourse
(1) the problem and (2) the explanation (why X and how X) Turns
Execution of a cognitive and discursive task
Co-construction of meaning and the function of RD
IE a) (152)
Preparation of the explanation and argumentation
Political act (financial aid) and its foundation
Reorientation of the problem and RD anchors the facts in the political explanation media discourse and ratifies the foundation of this political act IR (153,155) Precision of the argument
About the foundation of this political act
IE b) (156)
Argument of opposition and its development
RD stages the opposition (through the voice of the political party and that of the politician).
Explanation
The politician supports her argument of the opposition by indicating those who suffer from the political act (households).
c) (156)
Description Explanation
Of the real situation of the enterprises according to the politician
d) (156)
Reintroduction of the argument of the opposition
Support (according to the politician and the National statistics office)
Explanation
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(3) Evaluation-conclusion Turns
Execution of a cognitive and discursive task
Co-construction of meaning and the function of RD
e) (156)
Evaluation
IR (157, 159, 161, 163) IE f) (164) g) (164)
Reintroduction of the argument given in the beginning Explanation-evaluation Evaluation-conclusion
Of the actions of enterprises after they have the financial aid Concerning the opinion of enterprises regarding their help Of the political act of the government Concerning the comments of the President who opposes the enterprises; the politician supports these opinions RD is used to construct the position and the opinion asked by the interviewer in the opening of the topical episode
not merely to anchor facts. On a general level, the interviewer and the politician discuss the why and how of a political act. A political opinion is being (re)created around a media topic and it is put back into this same media debate. To study the voice of the others in different types of discourse is a pragmatic enterprise in which one has to concentrate on different dimensions of this phenomena. In this paper, I have proposed to examine represented discourse not only from the point of view of adjacency pairs, but also from the point of view of topic development and cognitive-discursive activity. By the latter, I mean that speakers also create other dimensions of sequentiality in their talk, namely producing different kinds of textual sequences, such as the one analyzed here, explanation. It is only by looking into these dimensions that one can discover how represented discourse contributes to the co-construction of meaning in interaction.
Notes . The first version of this analysis is presented in Johansson (2000: 164–170). . The speakers are referred to by IE = interviewee, Martine Aubry and IR = the journalist, Jean-Marie Colombani.
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References Adam, J.-M. (1992). Les Textes: Types et Prototypes. Récit, Description, Argumentation, Explication et Dialogue. Paris: Nathan. Adam, J.-M. (1996). L’argumentation dans le dialogue. Langue française, 112, 31–49. Atkinson, M., & Heritage, J. (1984). Structures of Social Action. Studies in Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bahtin, M. M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Ed. by Michael Holquist. Auxtin, Tex: University of Texas Press. Bakhtine, M. M. (1984). Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Baynham, M. (1996) Direct speech: What’s it doing in non-narrative discourse? Journal of Pragmatics, 25, 61–81. Baynham, M., & Slembrouck, S. (Eds.) (1999). Speech Representation in Institutional Discourse. Special issue. Text, 19(4). Bell, Ph., & Leeuwen, T. van. (1994). The Media Interview. Confession, Contest Conversation. Kensington, Australia: The University of New South Wales Press. Chafe, W. (1994). Discourse, Consciousness and Time. The Flow and Displacement of Conscious Experience in Speaking and Writing. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Charaudeau, P., & Ghiglione, R. (1997). La parole confisquée. Un Genre Télévisuel: le Talk Show. Paris: Dunod. Clark, H. H., & Gerrig, R. J. (1990). Quotations as demonstrations. Language, 66, 764–805. Clayman, S. (1992). Footing in the achievement of neutrality: the case of news. In P. Drew & J. Heritage (Eds.), Talk at Work (pp. 163–198). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Drew, P., & Heritage, J. (1992). Analyzing talk at work: an introduction. In P. Drew & J. Heritage (Eds.), Talk at Work (pp. 3–65). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press. Fludernik, M. (1993). The Fictions of Language and the Languages of Fiction. The Linguistic Representation of Speech and Consciousness. London and New York: Routledge. Goffman, E. (1974). Frame Analysis. An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of Talk. London: Basil Blackwell. Greatbatch, D. (1988). A turn-taking system for British news interviews. Language in Society, 17, 401–430. Grize, J.-B. (1990). Logique et Langage. Paris: Ophrys. Heritage, J., & Greatbatch, D. (1991). On the institutional character of institutional talk: the case of news interviews. In D. Boden & D. H. Zimmerman (Eds.), Talk and Social Structure. Studies in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis (pp. 93–137). Cambridge: Polity Press. Johansson, M. (2000). Recontextualisation du discours d’autrui. Discours représenté dans l’interview politique médiatique. Annales Universitatis Turkuensis 237. Turku: Turku University. Jucker, A. (1986). News Interviews. A Pragmalinguistic Analysis. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
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Linell, P. (1998a). Approaching Dialogue. Talk, Interaction and Context in Dialogical Perspectives. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Linell, P. (1998b). Discourse across boundaries: on recontextualizations and the blending of voices in professional discourse. Text, 18(2), 143–157. Roulet, E. (1997). L’organisation polyphonique et l’organisation inférentielle d’un dialogue romanesque. Cahiers de linguistique française, 19. Unité de linguistique française (pp. 149–179). Genève: Université de Genève. Sacks, H. (1987). On the Preferences for Agreement and Contiguity in Sequences in Conversations. In G. Button & J. R. E. Lee (Eds.), Talk and Social Organization (pp. 54– 69). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Schegloff, E. A. (1984). On some questions and ambiguities in conversation. In M. Atkinson, M. & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of Social Action. Studies in Conversation Analysis (pp. 28–56). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schegloff, E. A., & Sacks, H. (1973). Opening up closings. Semiotica, VIII, 289–327. Sharrock, W., & Anderson, B. (1987). Epilogue: the definition of alternatives: some sources of confusion in interdisciplinary discussion. In G. Button & J. R. E. Lee (Eds.), Talk and Social Organization (pp. 290–321). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Tannen, D. (1989). Talking Voices. Repetition, Dialogue and Imagery in Conversational Discourse. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Waugh, L. (1995). Reported speech in journalistic discourse: the relation of function and text. Text, 15(1), 129–173. Wertsch, J. V. (1998). Mind as Action. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vion, R. (1992). La communication verbale. Analyse des interactions. Paris: Hachette. Volosinov, V. V. (1973). Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. New York: Seminar Press.
Appendix 1. Translation of the excerpt Interview: L’Heure de vérité. Martine Aubry (=IE) and Jean-Marie Colombani (=IR) 145 IR: → ok enterprises lets talk a little bit about them there has been a polemic at the beginning of the year with the President of the Republic who observed that the new government has given 80 billion → francs to the enterprises without creating any new jobs the Prime Minister answered him and evoked a hypothesis to connect part of this financial aid with the creation of new jobs and this gave instantaneously rise to vigorous protests 146 IE: mm 147 IR: from employers 148 IE: mm
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149 IR: → with even one phrase by Mister Calvet the managing director of Peugeot to say it’s a crime even to think about such a thing so was François Mitterrand right when he defined the problem in terms of massive financial aid and so few results and why is there today this kind of attitude of employers in France 150 IE: mm your question has actually four or five +questions+ {laughs} 151 IR: yes 152 IE: a) ok I’ll try to answer them somewhat clearly the first one that is indeed 80 billion has been paid by the government of Balladur to enterprises euh. in 8 months.. these 80 /or in 18 months to be more exact because we have → to count the budget of 94 with an analysis which said if it doesn’t go so well today in France if there is unemployment it is because there is a problem on the side of enterprises and their competitiveness so [we are] 153 IR: [nobody ] nobody denied this analysis besides on the other hand 154 IE: that’s not true 155 IR: not the Left nor the Right 156 IE: b) yes they did because the Left has said from the beginning what we → need today. what is lacking from the enterprises is the markets euh one has to lean on the consumption and what was done there was the opposite there was 80 billion which was taken from the households the rise of +[various payments]+ the rise of the taxes of petrol of tobacco and so on to pay the enterprises c) what have they done. you know that today they do not have a lack of MONEY have you noticed that we are breaking all the records of self-financing the enterprises today have 170 billion. euh PLACED ASIDE . ok their real problem is the markets it is the consumption the National statistics office +[l’Insée]+ has just shown it d) what have they done with these 80 billion they have paid their debts those who needed to do that and they have placed the money in the financial market e) so the money didn’t allow them to invest nor to employ NOR to stop the lay offs 157 IR: so does one have to talk 158 IE: so 159 IR: about an unpatriotic attitude of the empl/ employers or are there any stronger reasons. 160 IE: mm 161 IR: which have resulted
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162 IE: 163 IR: 164 IE: f)
so in the governmental approach I would say first that it was a MISTAKE a mistake to think that we had a crisis of supply and to help the enterprises when one should have done the contrary stimulate the consumption and the public spending actually that was what the government of Balladur tried to do somewhat LATER when it realized this mistake but it unfortunately lowered the income tax in other words it did not reach nob/ it reached only every other household in France which makes most of the money and it wasn’t THEM that consume the most so I think it was another mistake and that is TO SAY NOTHING about fairness. g) but let’s go back to our subject. The President of the Republic he → wanted first to say this WHY give these 80 billion to enterprises when → they are not clearlydoing what they were expected to do. on the other hand he wanted and that is a theme he has often taken up. to make a reminder that the enterprises in France they often lay off too FAST ok I’m not one of those who think that the enterprises should not lay off employees when the economic situation demands it when one is working in a structural area which is not functioning one has to reduce the number of staff but but I think as others that the enterprises in France have a REFLEX which is to reduce the employees at once when things are not working I also believe and I think → that the President of the Republic also hinted that people have been replaced by machines and not always in the good sense to benefit the competitiveness. Antoine Riboul employer of [bsl] 165 IR: [having said this] . . .
Appendix 2. Transcription conventions The transcription of the material is done according to the standards used in conversational and verbal interactional studies. All the turns are numbered. Prosody and intonation rising intonation falling intonation . short pause .. long pause [] overlapping talk +[ ]+ explanations
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CAPS / {}
accentuated voice interruption of a word or construction non verbal elements such as laughter
Abbreviations and linguistic observation RD represented discourse IR interviewer IE interviewee → indicate the line where there is an instance of represented discourse to be explained introductory part to represented discourse id underlined italics indicate represented parts of instances of represented discourse bold indicate the explained or turning points in textual sequences a, b textual sequences are marked by letters
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Interactional coherence in discussions and everyday storytelling On considering the role of jedenfalls and auf jeden fall1 Kristin Bührig University of Hamburg, Germany
Introduction Pragmatic-oriented research in linguistics shows that conversations can be regarded as a succession of different activities on behalf of the interlocutors.2 This is due to the insights of Mead’s, Garfinkel’s and Goffman’s work which show that conversations have to be understood as an interactive process of the coparticipants. Their cooperation brings up a structure of conversations which can been seen as a result of sequentiality (cf. Levinson 1990). Not only conversation as a whole has to be understood as an interactional achievement, but single utterances are also often co-constructed by the interlocutors (cf., e.g. Goodwin 1979, 1981; Lerner 1991; Ferrara 1992; Selting 1995; Rehbein 1999). Against this background, linguistic research becomes interested in the relation between interaction and grammar and in the communicative function of linguistic expressions that help the interlocutors structure the conversation as a coherent whole. In the following, the different concepts of sequentiality within the framework of conversation analysis and functional pragmatics will be discussed with regard to the role of the co-participants and their activities in the production of mutual understanding. The communicative function of the German expressions auf jeden Fall and jedenfalls will be investigated against this background.
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Sequentiality in conversation analysis and functional pragmatics Within the framework of conversation analysis, special attention has been given to adjacency pairs:3 they encompass two turns by different speakers following each other in direct succession, e.g., greeting-greeting, question-answer and so on. Between both parts of an adjacency pair there is a relation of a special kind, referred to as conditional relevance (cf. Schegloff 1968; Sacks 1972; Schegloff & Sacks 1973): when a speaker produces an utterance which can be attributed to being the first part of a specific type of adjacency pair, it is up to the next speaker to perform the second part of the adjacency pair.4 Research on adjacency pairs5 shows three features of sequential organization: a. the research on the succession of activities concentrates on interactional units which can be observed on the linguistic surface of conversations; b. the research seems to be oriented around the concept of turn; c. turns are performed by different interlocutors who are thus always regarded as potential speakers. In order to grasp the system in the succession of the interlocutors’ different activities, the unit of the turn is possibly too unspecific. This, for instance, is suggested by research into the link between grammar and interaction that points towards the interactive relevance of the smaller units a turn is composed of (cf. e.g. Schwitalla 1992; Selting 1995; Rehbein 1995, 1999; Schegloff 1996, etc.). Furthermore, Meierkord (2000) shows that the unit of the turn is too broad for reaching an understanding of the characteristics of co-operative speaking in lingua-franca communication. Likewise, the concentration on only interactional phenomena on the linguistic surface seems to have shortcomings insofar as the hypothesized principle of conditional relevance points towards an inner structure of succession of the relevant activities not visible at the linguistic surface, yet are of relevance for the interlocutors in the process of mutual understanding. To what extent this internal structure causes a change in the interlocutors’ participant role – from the role of the hearer to that of the speaker – is a question in which some insight might be gained by reconstructing the inner structure by considering the interlocutors’ necessary mental activities. Within the framework of functional pragmatics, the activities of mutual understanding between speaker and hearer are also at the very heart of research interest. The succession of different activities is, however, analyzed with a view to the specific purpose that speaker and hearer perform interactively
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within the performance speech action patterns (on the concept of speech action pattern see Ehlich & Rehbein 1979, 1986). Speech action patterns have the character of being socially developed paths of actions that perform a purpose. They also encompass linguistic and mental activities that are performed by both the speaker and the hearer. In the analysis, utterances are reconstructed as steps, called pattern positions (‘Musterpositionen’), in performing a speech action pattern. Pattern positions are not only produced in turns but very often in smaller units that can be understood as utterances. Rehbein (1999) shows in his research on the mode of utterances that the hearer is instructed to perform specific activities while processing the knowledge verbalized by the speaker, depending on the mode of the utterances and the linguistic means that are used. While constructing and following the speaker’s verbalized instructions within an utterance, the listener, for example, accepts the speaker’s evaluation of verbalized knowledge (‘declarative mode’) or takes on the role of a future actor, as in the case when a request has been uttered by the speaker (‘directive mode’). Thus, in the view of a linguistic action theory, the progression of actions within the speech action pattern of everyday questions and their answering that serves the purpose of knowledge transfer is not understood as consisting of only two steps like (a) asking a question and (b) giving an answer. Instead the reconstruction of the underlying deep-structure shows mental activities such as (c) seeking the relevant knowledge on behalf of the hearer of the question and (d) evaluating the verbalized knowledge on behalf of the speaker of the question before he (e) either thanks the hearer for his help or, in case the knowledge does not help, starts the pattern again. Ehlich (1979: 359–361) distinguishes different forms of succession with respect to their internal structure: a. concatenation of speech actions: a speaker systematically combines a number of speech actions within one turn, for instance, assertions that perform a speech action pattern, such as a narration or a report; b. sequence of speech actions: a succession of actions, within which two or more interlocutors intermittently change as actors by taking over each other’s action steps. Ehlich views the internal structuring as an essential characteristic of both kinds of succession in speech acts. This structuring arises out of the fact that both concatenation of speech acts and speech act sequences are performances of underlying speech action patterns which have the character of being socially developed paths of action. This distinguishes them from a third kind of action succession.
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c. the merely accidental series of speech actions that are not based on an internal structure (cf. op. cit.: 362). Authentic conversation is very often characterized by an oscillation between sequenced organization of speech actions and concatenation of speech actions: successions of speech actions that perform speech action patterns which are expected to be organized in a concatenative form can also include sections that are organized in sequential form, for example, when in the course of narration a speaker is looking for words or when two interlocutors jointly tell a story. Over and above that, in institutional communication concatenations of speech actions are very frequently sequenced by the institutional representative’s (the agent’s) activities, as for instance Rehbein (1980) shows in his analysis of sequenced narrating (‘sequentielles Erzählen’) in social counseling, and Ehlich and Rehbein (1986) in their research on the discourse of teaching and learning with regard to the teacher presentation with divided roles (‘Lehrervortrag mit verteilten Rollen’). Conversely, succession of speech actions (depending on their respective speech action pattern) which are expected to reveal a sequenced discourse structure can be produced in a concatenative form, the so-called batteries of speech actions (‘Batterien’) (cf. Ehlich & Rehbein 1977). In interviews, for instance, a speaker who has posed a question does not allow his interview partner any time to reply, but immediately poses a further question with the result that the interviewee is prevented from producing the answer as a follow-up activity (cf. Bührig 1996, 2000).
Coherence in discourse While telling a story or giving a lecture, different difficulties can arise which result in the line of thought being interrupted and which make the relation between different topics or different utterances difficult for the hearer to recognize. Lenk’s (1998) analyses show that discourse markers6 (such as anyway) help hearers achieve an understanding of a conversation as a coherent whole. In her work it becomes clear that the use of discourse markers is generally motivated interactively: “The speaker wants to guide the hearer’s understanding and indicates the connections between discourse segments so that the hearer’s final interpretation will be as close as possible to her intentions.” (Lenk 1998: 49). This implies that the hearer has to perform a prior processing of what the speaker has said. In Lenk’s view, coherence can be established on various levels:
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Local coherence are those relations between segments in discourse that appear immediately adjacent to each other, whereas global coherence are those relations between segments in discourse that appear further apart, with other stretches of discourse in between.” (1998: 7, footnote 19).
Global coherence, for instance, is signalized when the speaker has gone off on a tangent by using anyway.7 For the German case, Thim-Mabrey (1985), Pérennec (1990) and Dalmas (1995) have analysed the expression jedenfalls in a similar way. The expression auf jeden Fall can generally be found in dictionary entries and in footnotes in which a synonymous meaning to jedenfalls is attested. The examples for the above-mentioned authors’ analyses of jedenfalls are taken from literary texts and from newspapers. Thus, they allow only a partial reconstruction of the interactive necessities for using jedenfalls. Furthermore, from the perspective of linguistic action theory, one realizes that the usage of jedenfalls and auf jeden Fall can be seen not only as a digression from the topic, but also as a digression from a line of action (cf. Rehbein 1977: 18f.) and thus resulting in one part of the hearer’s position in a pattern of speech action becoming independent. Viewed against this background, I would like to raise the questions whether sequentialization of concatenation of speech actions may occur in the hearer’s processing of verbalized knowledge under certain circumstances and how a restructuring of discourse back to the concatenation of speech actions is managed. In the following I will try to develop an analysis that deals with the oscillation between sequenced structuring of conversations and the restructuring towards concatenation of speech actions by means of the expressions jedenfalls and auf jeden Fall in everyday storytelling and academic discourse. As a first step the expressions jedenfalls and auf jeden Fall will be shown in two fragments of everyday storytelling and academic discourse before the needs of their usage are reconstructed.
Auf jeden Fall and jedenfalls in everyday storytelling Example8 1 is taken from a conversation among three young women talking about their previous professional and teaching experiences.9 Prior to the above transcript section, the speaker Ulrike (Ul) talks about an unsuccessful demonstration lesson in her final exam that dealt with the spelling of German street names. In an insertion, whose end is presented from segment 82 onwards, Ulrike tries together with Julia (Ju) and Christa (Ch) to recapi-
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Example 1. Demonstration lesson (@Fienemann 1998)
(Ulr): Ulrike (Jul): Julia (Chr): Christa 1
2
3
[gedehnt [lengthened
[leise [with a low voise
4
[lachend [laughing 5
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tulate some spelling rules. She closes this sequence in segment 93 with “Is ja egal, ne?” (“Oh, who cares?”) and in segment 96 she returns to recount how the lesson had gone. “Auf jeden Fall: Ich mit Stadtplan gearbeitet, mit Kopien, mit Gruppenarbeit, mit pipapo.” (“At any rate, I worked with a city map, with photocopies, in teamwork, with whatever.”). A similar situation can be seen in Example 2. The recording was made in the claims department of an electrical outfitter to collect some anecdotes to be published in a so-called “Rentnerzeitung”, a farewell present given to an employee on his last day of work in the company before retiring. Prior to the above discourse fragment there is a story about an employee in that department who once knocked over a whole shelf of minute spare parts for different appliances. Mr. Kruse (Kru) was asked to tell this story, but he was interrupted by Holly trying to elaborate on one incident in the story, namely the
Example 2. Mishap
(Kru): Mr Kruse (Hol): Holly, the initiator of the farewell present 1
2 3
[lachend [laughing 4
[lachend [%laughing 5
[lachend [laughing
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Example 2. (continued) 6
7
8 9
[lachend [laughing 10
11
[zögerlich [hesitatingly 12
respective colleague’s comment and how this comment became a running gag within the company. In segment 48 “Na jedenfalls wurde das auf m Sonnabend wurde, wurde dann mit n paar Mann äh • ähm sortiert” ( “Well, at any rate, on Saturday that was, was, uhm • uhm sorted out by a few men.”) Mr. Kruse returns to narrating the course of events.
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Needs for restructuring narrative discourse Can Julia’s and Christa’s utterances in Example 1, or Holly’s utterance in Example 2 be understood as deviations from a topic? Research on telling stories shows that past events and experiences are not narrated along a continuous and stringent line in accordance with their real chronological order (cf., e.g. Quasthoff 1980; Rehbein 1980; Quasthoff & Hausendorf 1996; Fienemann 1998). Instead, the speaker elaborates on details and evaluates the narrated events from the speaker’s point of view and present speech situation. As Fienemann (1998) shows, there is a move characteristic of narration between a past, imagined situation called narrative space and the respective situation, with the time and place of the speech making specific orientation demands on both speakers and hearers. You can recognize the hearer’s co-operation, on the one hand, by the hearer signalizing his participation in this movement by his back-channel behavior and, on the other hand, by the hearer’s supporting co-evaluation. In Example 1, the hearers assist in finding the spelling rules, so that one element of the story to be told becomes an independent sequence within that conversation. Yet Ulrike has not finished her narration. To be able to continue, the other participants must first accept Ulrike as primary speaker (cf. Wald 1978; Bublitz 1988; Quasthoff 1990) and again take on the role of hearers, who in their imagination space must recall the narrated situation. To achieve this, Ulrike has to build a bridge to the previously verbalized discourse knowledge, which she had communicated prior to recapitulating the spelling rules. In Example 2, Mr. Kruse is faced with a similar task: Holly’s elaboration on one element of the story triggers the exit of the narrative space. This element, verbalized in segments 40–44, has the features of a ‘scandalon’ (cf. Rehbein 1980), the point in a narration where a speaker finds an event worth telling and from which the linguistic processing of knowledge when narrating is being controlled. In case the speaker verbalizes the scandalon or the hearer recognizes the scandalon, the process of narration is brought to an end. Accordingly, in segment 46 Holly utters a closing evaluation which introduces the return to the respective present speech situation. At this stage, the hearer has the opportunity to take over the turn and to initiate linguistic actions on his own. Similarly, in Example 2, Mr. Kruse has to reorientate the hearers back to the previously verbalized discourse knowledge in order to complete the narration of the course of events. Mr. Kruse and Ulrike both use the expressions auf jeden Fall and jedenfalls respectively in order to continue their process of narrating. Before analyzing
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their special communicative function, let us first look at a third example from another type of discourse in which the speaker also attributes special tasks to the hearer in the processing of verbalized knowledge.
Auf jeden Fall in a scientific presentation The expressions auf jeden Fall and jedenfalls are also found in academic discourse. Example 3 is taken from a research paper presented by a linguist (Ref) at a conference on linguistics at a German university. It deals with reading comprehension of English as a foreign language. Example 3. Reading comprehension
(Ref): Linguist 1
2
[gedehnt [lengthened 3
4
5 6
7
8 9
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In the above section of the presentation the linguist leads the auditorium through the transcript of a video recording in which the reading of a text from a psychological textbook as well as the experimentee’s reflections in the sense of a think-aloud protocol are documented. Whereas in the beginning (segments 10–14) the linguist describes the experimentee’s activities, she interprets the examinee’s hand movement in segment 15 as indicating a possible problem with text comprehension. In segment 16, after a short break, she returns to describing the experimentee’s activities. This utterance is introduced by auf jeden Fall. On account of the institutional character of a conference and the institutional rules of turn-taking, giving a presentation or a lecture entails combining speech actions in a concatenative form. Thus, the speaker need not be afraid of losing his turn. Nevertheless, can we find any interactive necessity prompting the linguist to use auf jeden Fall in this utterance? Reconsidering segment 15 against this background and the use of möglicherweise (“perhaps”), it becomes clear that in the course of her ‘deliberative speaking’ (cf. Rehbein 1985, 1995), the linguist proposes an interpretation of the experimentee’s hand movement. The content of this proposal is not a future action alternative that is evaluated by the hearer, as Rehbein (1977) shows in his analysis of the structure of proposals in the constellation of which the hearer has problems arriving at a decision (Rehbein 1977: 316–322). Accordingly we can discern in the above example a cognitive orientation of this speech action, which can be seen as a result of functionalizing a proposal for a specific form of speech action, i.e. scientific discourse. Scientific discourse is characterized by an eristic structure (cf. Ehlich 1993, 1995; Graefen 1997). Thus, observations on elements of scientific inquiry are formulated with respect to a hearer who might disagree (cf., e.g. Sökeland 1981; Rudolph 1983; Franke 1987; Paek 1993). In proposing an interpretation, the linguist in the above example presents this proposal to the audience for evaluation. Evaluating is part of the posthistory10 of proposing: the hearer either integrates the interpretation proposed in his knowledge or declines the proposal and generally utters the result of his evaluation subsequent to the proposal.11 On behalf of the institutional setting and in accordance with the special institutional turn-taking-rules, the audience does not immediately react interactively to the linguist’s proposal. Although the mental process of evaluation will be undertaken simultaneously to the further presentation, the interactive reaction takes place in the discussion which follows at the end of the presentation. In evaluating the linguist’s proposal, the audience is not only engaged in the mental activities of listening to and understanding what the linguist says.
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The hearers also perform an autonomous consultation of their own knowledge, which occupies mental capacities that would otherwise be available for the mental activity of hearing. In segment 16, after her proposal, the linguist introduces another piece of knowledge concerning the experimentee’s nonlinguistic actions: The experimentee flips back through a few pages in the book. The linguist describes this activity as the result of an event whose starting point can be seen in the experimentee’s hand movement, when we consider the linguistic construction she uses: “kommt es dann dazu” (“it happens”). Looking at segments 15 and 16 in relation to each other the linguist thus offers a piece of knowledge in support of her proposed interpretation. Therefore, she needs to direct the mental activity of the audience to precisely this knowledge verbalized in segment 16. In my view, the linguist uses the expression auf jeden Fall to comply with this necessity arising out of a proposal, which in the constellation of the presentation and due to the postponing of the audience’s interactive part of the post-history, is produced in a concatenative form, although it normally involves the potential of a speech act sequence.
Conclusion The usage of auf jeden Fall and jedenfalls shows some parallels. Firstly, with respect to the linguistic surface, jedenfalls and auf jeden Fall are used at the beginning of the respective utterances. With the exception of Example 1, they are located directly before the finite verb.12 Secondly, in all three examples it is necessary to intervene in the hearer’s mental activities. The hearers are directed to the content of the respective utterance, as they have not only concentrated on their reception activities in the sense of constructing a hearer’s plan:13 What we observe in both Example 1 and Example 2, is that the original hearers turn into speakers during the course of the interactive movement between narrative space and time and place of speech. So if Mr. Kruse in Example 2 and Ulrike in Example 1 want to continue what they had been saying, they have to direct the activities of those other people involved in the discourse towards listening and reception. In Example 3 the necessity to intervene arises out of the linguist’s proposal, which she augments with knowledge that is relevant in view of the audience’s positive evaluation. At any rate, auf jeden Fall and jedenfalls affect a synchronization of the interlocutors’ linguistic and mental activities that had strayed in different directions during the conversation. In restructuring conversation to the concatenation of speech actions, auf jeden Fall and jedenfalls make the listening in-
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terlocutors assemble14 the previously verbalized discourse-knowledge. This is done not only to focus the other interlocutors’ attention on their role as hearers, but also to offer them a basis for their specific hearer activities. Against this background, and while taking into consideration the different types of speech action successions (see above) as well as elaborating on Lenk’s research findings, I would like to speak of interactional coherence with respect to the power of auf jeden Fall and jedenfalls so as to be able to consider the interactional processing of speech actions and discourse.
Notes . I am indepted to Claudia Böttger, Anita Fetzer, Jutta Fienemann, Helga Kotthoff, Christiane Meierkord, and Jochen Rehbein for their fruitful comments on an earlier version of this contribution. For their help with the English I wish to thank Claudia Böttger, Alice Julia Otto and Linda Reams-Behboud. . There is a wide and stimulating debate on the necessity of differentiating between the various roles which interlocutors can take on in conversation (cf., e.g. Yngve 1970; Goffman 1981; Glindemann 1984; Levinson 1988, etc.). For reasons of space I am not able to present this debate. I would only like to mention that within the framework of ‘functional pragmatics’ and according to Behaghel (1900) and Bühler (1934) I will in the following refer to the terms ‘speaker’ and ‘hearer’ so as to focus on the activities on the process of reception and to be able to consider the interactive function of linguistic means. . This does not mean that only one form of sequentiality exists; rather a great number of interactively organized forms of sequences have been analyzed in research literature (cf. Streek 1983). . Sequentiality, however, does not only include the way in which a first utterance is followed by a subsequent one. Rather, sequentiality has been described as a global working principle that is based on specific expectations of a second activity which is subsequent to the first. This second activity might occur later in the conversation, for instance when a sidesequence (cf., e.g. Jefferson 1972) is embedded by the interlocutors (for an overview see, for instance, Levinson 1990). . For a criticism of adjacency pair as a basic principle of sequential rganization of conversations see, for instance, Tsui 1989 and her discussion of relevant research literature. . This term was introduced in Schriffrin 1987. Other terms which can be found in research literature are for example, pragmatic marker (Fraser 1996; Brinton 1996), discourse particle (Schourup 1985; Abraham 1991), pragmatic particle (Östmann 1981), pragmatic expression (Erman 1987), discourse connectives (Blakemore 1987, 1988). For a more recent overview of the many terms used see, for instance, Jucker & Ziv (1998) and Lenk (1998). . For an analysis of ‘anyway‘ also see, for instance, Bublitz (1988).
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Kristin Bührig . The examples are presented in score areas according to the conventions of the ‘Heuristic Interpretative Auditory Transcription’ (cf. Ehlich & Rehbein 1976). The transcription conventions are: “•”, “ , ”, “?” marks final sentence falling intonation, question rising intonation, and so on; “((1s))” marks hesitations of a second; “•” marks hesitations of 0.25 seconds; “[lengthened]” indicates a comment on the intonation of the items inside the brackets; “. . .” marks abortion of a speech action; “/” marks self repair; “>” marks speaking faster; “<” marks speaking more slowly; underlining of words or syllables marks emphasis of the underlined part. . I would like to thank Jutta Fienemann for letting me have the audio recordings of this talk before the publication of her dissertation. For a detailed analysis of narrating in this talk see Fienemann (1998). . Based on considerations made by Ehlich (1972), Rehbein (1977) expounds an action theory of language which not only takes into consideration the product of utterances but also the process character of speech action. Whereas by pre-history a speech action, for example, the motivation process, is understood, the post -history encompasses the consequences of speech action that are systematically part of carrying out a speech action pattern (cf. Rehbein 1977: 181–184) . These steps are to be understood as a deep structure which is available as a socially processed form of an action alternative in the sense of a speech action pattern. Of course, disturbances can occur in the course of proposing, for instance, if the hearer has not asked the speaker for a proposal, does not understand it, and so on. . An exception is example one, in which only an infinite part of the verb is communicated by the speaker. Auf jeden Fall and jedenfalls do not only occur at the beginning of utterances. Rather, you will find them in the so-called mid-field of utterances; furthermore, auf jeden Fall can be used to perform autonomous utterances. . Rehbein (1976, 1977) develops the concept of hearer plan corresponding to the reconstruction of a planning process on behalf of the speaker, so as to be able to capture the hearer’s linguistic-mental activities in the reception process, (cf. also Ehlich & Rehbein 1986; Redder 1990). . Considerations concerning the relation between the form and the communicative function of jedenfalls and auf jeden Fall can be found in Bührig (in preparation).
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Index
A achievement 43 action theory 25 activation 155 adjacency 49 expectation 10 pair 10, 59, 114, 208, 251, 274 placement 132–133, 142 position 10 relation 10 Andersen 152 anticipation 134 appropriateness 49, 78 argumentation 28, 231 sequence 236 artificial intelligence 20 attempt 43 auf jeden Fall 273 Austin 71, 73–74, 78–79 B Bahtin/Bakhtine 254 Birmingham School 17 bottom-up 39, 63, 103 boundary 121–122, 130, 136, 138, 141 boundedness 9, 121 C Clark 7, 24, 128–129 closing phase 105 co-constitution of interactional units 141 co-construction of meaning 249–250, 254–255
cognition 124 see also distributed cognition, situated cognition, social cognition cognitive monitoring 19 psychology 23 cognitive-discursive activity 250, 252 process 252 task 252–254 coherence 100 see also collective coherence, interactional coherence coherent sequence 11 collective coherence 26 WE-intention 26, 39, 63, 66 common ground 24, 28, 169 communicative action 37 act 12 contribution 42 intention 25, 37, 52 project 44, 59, 64 complexity reduction 182, 192–193, 196 concatenation of speech actions 275 conceptual framework 155 conditional relevance 10 construction-integration model 104 context 6, 40, 42, 45, 143, 153, 181, 183, 186, 192 conventionalized sequence 27, 100 conversation analysis 8, 101, 208, 231
Index
conversational game 122 implicature 45 sequence 121, 126 cooperation 37, 47 cooperative principle 15, 48 coparticipant 37–38 Critical Discourse Analysis 28, 182–185 culture 207, 209–210, 225 D Davidson 154 determinateness 123, 134 dialogism 123–124, 249–250, 254–255 dialogue common ground 57 grammar 16 sequence 37 Dijk van 21, 155 disagreement 131 discourse 181–182, 185–186 community 185, 191–192, 196 genre 9, 14, 28 history 185, 191 marker 27, 109, 151, 276 discreteness 9, 121 discursive practice 183–184, 191 dispreferred response 90, 157 utterance 113 second 152, 159, 161 distributed cognition 24, 26 dovetailedness 16, 49 Drew 153 dyad 27, 121–123, 125–126, 128, 130, 134–135, 141, 143–144 dyadic cognizing 27, 127, 135 dynamic 122, 126, 141 E ecological psychology Ehlich 275
125–126, 143
encoding/decoding model 122–124, 134 explanation 252, 256, 259 extended sequence 181 F Fairclough 183 felicitous communication 38, 75–76, 85–86, 92 felicity conditions 11, 43 floor 20 forward inference 113 frame 102 functional pragmatics 29, 273 fuzziness 50 G Garfinkel 55 genre 48, 186, 191, 207–210, 224 Givón 2, 37, 45, 64 Glenberg 155 Goffman 19, 56, 59, 63 Goody 24, 153 Greimas 72, 82 Grice 15, 47, 58, 124, 233 Gumperz 3, 209, 224–225 H Habermas 37, 56–61 hearer ratification 38 Heritage 127, 129, 183, 250 hindsight 27, 136, 142 Hymes 46 I illocutionary act 72–76, 80–81, 84, 94 force 79 image 193, 196 individual I-intention 26 inference 104 insisting 87–95 intention 12, 122–123 intentionality 13, 37, 46
Index
interactional achievement 125 coherence 285 synchrony 20 system 60 intercultural communication 13, 185 interdependence 47, 52–53 interdiscursivity 28, 182–183, 191–193, 198 interpersonal system 59 intersubjectivity 27, 151 intersubjective meaning 51, 63 intertextuality 28, 182–184, 191, 196 interview 251, 253 J Jackson 233 Jacobs 233 Janus Principle 130, 134–135, 137, 140, 143 jedenfalls 273 job interview 28, 207, 210, 225 K Kallmeyer 234 Kintsch 21, 103, 155 L language use 45, 123 Levinson 41–42, 49, 56, 59, 151 Linell 38, 64, 136, 255 linguistic competence 46 linguistic surface 42 long-term memory 19, 99, 102–103 Luckmann 14, 16, 207 M macro sequence 11 media 182, 185 mediated action 255 mental representation 21, 80–82, 99, 102, 104
mode of utterance 275 monadic 121, 127, 141 monologism 123 N narrative scheme 72, 83–88, 93–95 semiotics 26, 71–72, 82–83, 94 negotiation 153 of advice 152, 171–174 of assessment 152, 160–161, 166–168 of assumption 151, 167, 171 of belief 153 of invitation 152, 168–171 of question 152, 162–165 negotiation-of-meaning sequence 43 negotiation-of-validity sequence 59 non-propositional content 114 nonsummativity 124–125, 127 normative rightness 38 O objective world 38, 58 Olbrechts-Tyteca 232 overhearer 129 P pattern position 275 Perelman 232 perlocution 40, 73 Pomerantz 154 power 182–184 pragmatic well-formedness 50 preferred format 10 process–product 44 processing 104, 107–115, 127 propositional content 111 link 112 prospective versus retrospective analysis 122 prototypical pattern 99
Index
Q question-answer pair 207, 210, 212 R rationality 37, 46 recipient design 133 recontextualization 255 recurrent sequence 26 recurring linguistic unit 100 Rehbein 275 relevance theory 62, 152 represented discourse 29, 249–250, 255–256 retroactive assessing 134, 140, 142 rhetorics 231 rules of sequencing 19 S Sacks 9, 19, 251 scandalon 281 Schank and Abelson 21, 102 Schegloff 6, 9, 19, 24, 128, 132, 138, 151, 251 schema 102, 127 script 21, 102, 127, 185–186, 188–191, 195 Searle 124, 233 self-repair 162 sequence 1, 232 of actions 251 of speech actions 275 see also: argumentation sequence, conventionalized sequence, conversational sequence, coherent sequence, dialogue sequence, extended sequence, negotiation-of-validity sequence, recurrent sequence sequential implicativeness 19, 251 interpreting 19, 132–134 organization 3
positioning 250 relevance 19 sequentiality 1, 4, 7, 48, 249–254 series of speech actions 276 short-term memory 103 sincerity condition 52 situated cognition 126 small talk 10 social cognition 24, 128 constructivism 181 intelligence 24 practice 183 psychology 23 world 38, 58 sociocultural competence 46 practice 191 sociolinguistic variation 45, 54 speech act 12, 40, 123 sequence 11, 72–73, 75–77, 80, 82, 84, 87, 93–95 theory 13, 25, 39, 71, 73, 75–76 speech action pattern 275 speech comprehension 107 Sperber and Wilson 62 stereotype 191–193, 196, 199 style 211, 213, 217, 219, 221, 224–225 subjective truthfulness 38 subjective world 38, 58 sync time 20 T text linguistics 20 textual sequence 252, 256 system 59 third position repair 79 top-down 39, 63, 103 topic 249, 252, 254, 256, 258 Toulmin 232 transition relevance place 138 truth 38 turn 145
Index
turn-constructional unit 8, 131–133, 137, 144 turn-taking 8, 145, 249, 251–253 U uptake 73, 75–79, 85, 92 utterance act 54, 45 V validity claim 26, 38, 56, 59
values 182, 185 voice 250, 254–255, 258 W Watzlawick, Beavin, and Jackson 123 WE intention 63 Weigand 84 well 109, 151 Wodak 183
In the PRAGMATICS AND BEYOND NEW SERIES the following titles have been published thus far or are scheduled for publication: 1. WALTER, Bettyruth: The Jury Summation as Speech Genre: An Ethnographic Study of What it Means to Those who Use it. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1988. 2. BARTON, Ellen: Nonsentential Constituents: A Theory of Grammatical Structure and Pragmatic Interpretation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1990. 3. OLEKSY, Wieslaw (ed.): Contrastive Pragmatics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1989. 4. RAFFLER-ENGEL, Walburga von (ed.): Doctor-Patient Interaction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1989. 5. THELIN, Nils B. (ed.): Verbal Aspect in Discourse. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1990. 6. VERSCHUEREN, Jef (ed.): Selected Papers from the 1987 International Pragmatics Conference. Vol. I: Pragmatics at Issue. Vol. II: Levels of Linguistic Adaptation. Vol. III: The Pragmatics of Intercultural and International Communication (ed. with Jan Blommaert). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 7. LINDENFELD, Jacqueline: Speech and Sociability at French Urban Market Places. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1990. 8. YOUNG, Lynne: Language as Behaviour, Language as Code: A Study of Academic English. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1990. 9. LUKE, Kang-Kwong: Utterance Particles in Cantonese Conversation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1990. 10. MURRAY, Denise E.: Conversation for Action. The computer terminal as medium of communication. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 11. LUONG, Hy V.: Discursive Practices and Linguistic Meanings. The Vietnamese system of person reference. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1990. 12. ABRAHAM, Werner (ed.): Discourse Particles. Descriptive and theoretical investigations on the logical, syntactic and pragmatic properties of discourse particles in German. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 13. NUYTS, Jan, A. Machtelt BOLKESTEIN and Co VET (eds): Layers and Levels of Representation in Language Theory: A functional view. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1990. 14. SCHWARTZ, Ursula: Young Children’s Dyadic Pretend Play. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 15. KOMTER, Martha: Conflict and Cooperation in Job Interviews. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 16. MANN, William C. and Sandra A. THOMPSON (eds): Discourse Description: Diverse Linguistic Analyses of a Fund-Raising Text. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1992. 17. PIÉRAUT-LE BONNIEC, Gilberte and Marlene DOLITSKY (eds): Language Bases ... Discourse Bases. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 18. JOHNSTONE, Barbara: Repetition in Arabic Discourse. Paradigms, syntagms and the ecology of language. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 19. BAKER, Carolyn D. and Allan LUKE (eds): Towards a Critical Sociology of Reading Pedagogy. Papers of the XII World Congress on Reading. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1991. 20. NUYTS, Jan: Aspects of a Cognitive-Pragmatic Theory of Language. On cognition, functionalism, and grammar. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1992. 21. SEARLE, John R. et al.: (On) Searle on Conversation. Compiled and introduced by Herman Parret and Jef Verschueren. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1992.
22. AUER, Peter and Aldo Di LUZIO (eds): The Contextualization of Language. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1992. 23. FORTESCUE, Michael, Peter HARDER and Lars KRISTOFFERSEN (eds): Layered Structure and Reference in a Functional Perspective. Papers from the Functional Grammar Conference, Copenhagen, 1990. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1992. 24. MAYNARD, Senko K.: Discourse Modality: Subjectivity, Emotion and Voice in the Japanese Language. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1993. 25. COUPER-KUHLEN, Elizabeth: English Speech Rhythm. Form and function in everyday verbal interaction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1993. 26. STYGALL, Gail: Trial Language. A study in differential discourse processing. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia, 1994. 27. SUTER, Hans Jürg: The Wedding Report: A Prototypical Approach to the Study of Traditional Text Types. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1993. 28. VAN DE WALLE, Lieve: Pragmatics and Classical Sanskrit. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1993. 29. BARSKY, Robert F.: Constructing a Productive Other: Discourse theory and the convention refugee hearing. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1994. 30. WORTHAM, Stanton E.F.: Acting Out Participant Examples in the Classroom. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1994. 31. WILDGEN, Wolfgang: Process, Image and Meaning. A realistic model of the meanings of sentences and narrative texts. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1994. 32. SHIBATANI, Masayoshi and Sandra A. THOMPSON (eds): Essays in Semantics and Pragmatics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1995. 33. GOOSSENS, Louis, Paul PAUWELS, Brygida RUDZKA-OSTYN, Anne-Marie SIMONVANDENBERGEN and Johan VANPARYS: By Word of Mouth. Metaphor, metonymy and linguistic action in a cognitive perspective. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1995. 34. BARBE, Katharina: Irony in Context. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1995. 35. JUCKER, Andreas H. (ed.): Historical Pragmatics. Pragmatic developments in the history of English. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1995. 36. CHILTON, Paul, Mikhail V. ILYIN and Jacob MEY: Political Discourse in Transition in Eastern and Western Europe (1989-1991). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1998. 37. CARSTON, Robyn and Seiji UCHIDA (eds): Relevance Theory. Applications and implications. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1998. 38. FRETHEIM, Thorstein and Jeanette K. GUNDEL (eds): Reference and Referent Accessibility. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1996. 39. HERRING, Susan (ed.): Computer-Mediated Communication. Linguistic, social, and cross-cultural perspectives. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1996. 40. DIAMOND, Julie: Status and Power in Verbal Interaction. A study of discourse in a closeknit social network. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1996. 41. VENTOLA, Eija and Anna MAURANEN, (eds): Academic Writing. Intercultural and textual issues. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1996. 42. WODAK, Ruth and Helga KOTTHOFF (eds): Communicating Gender in Context. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1997. 43. JANSSEN, Theo A.J.M. and Wim van der WURFF (eds): Reported Speech. Forms and functions of the verb. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1996.
44. BARGIELA-CHIAPPINI, Francesca and Sandra J. HARRIS: Managing Language. The discourse of corporate meetings. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1997. 45. PALTRIDGE, Brian: Genre, Frames and Writing in Research Settings. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1997. 46. GEORGAKOPOULOU, Alexandra: Narrative Performances. A study of Modern Greek storytelling. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1997. 47. CHESTERMAN, Andrew: Contrastive Functional Analysis. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1998. 48. KAMIO, Akio: Territory of Information. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1997. 49. KURZON, Dennis: Discourse of Silence. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1998. 50. GRENOBLE, Lenore: Deixis and Information Packaging in Russian Discourse. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1998. 51. BOULIMA, Jamila: Negotiated Interaction in Target Language Classroom Discourse. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1999. 52. GILLIS, Steven and Annick DE HOUWER (eds): The Acquisition of Dutch. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia, 1998. 53. MOSEGAARD HANSEN, Maj-Britt: The Function of Discourse Particles. A study with special reference to spoken standard French. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1998. 54. HYLAND, Ken: Hedging in Scientific Research Articles. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1998. 55. ALLWOOD, Jens and Peter Gärdenfors (eds): Cognitive Semantics. Meaning and cognition. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1999. 56. TANAKA, Hiroko: Language, Culture and Social Interaction. Turn-taking in Japanese and Anglo-American English. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1999. 57 JUCKER, Andreas H. and Yael ZIV (eds): Discourse Markers. Descriptions and theory. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1998. 58. ROUCHOTA, Villy and Andreas H. JUCKER (eds): Current Issues in Relevance Theory. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, 1998. 59. KAMIO, Akio and Ken-ichi TAKAMI (eds): Function and Structure. In honor of Susumu Kuno. 1999. 60. JACOBS, Geert: Preformulating the News. An analysis of the metapragmatics of press releases. 1999. 61. MILLS, Margaret H. (ed.): Slavic Gender Linguistics. 1999. 62. TZANNE, Angeliki: Talking at Cross-Purposes. The dynamics of miscommunication. 2000. 63. BUBLITZ, Wolfram, Uta LENK and Eija VENTOLA (eds.): Coherence in Spoken and Written Discourse. How to create it and how to describe it.Selected papers from the International Workshop on Coherence, Augsburg, 24-27 April 1997. 1999. 64. SVENNEVIG, Jan: Getting Acquainted in Conversation. A study of initial interactions. 1999. 65. COOREN, François: The Organizing Dimension of Communication. 2000. 66. JUCKER, Andreas H., Gerd FRITZ and Franz LEBSANFT (eds.): Historical Dialogue Analysis. 1999. 67. TAAVITSAINEN, Irma, Gunnel MELCHERS and Päivi PAHTA (eds.): Dimensions of Writing in Nonstandard English. 1999. 68. ARNOVICK, Leslie: Diachronic Pragmatics. Seven case studies in English illocutionary development. 1999.
69. NOH, Eun-Ju: The Semantics and Pragmatics of Metarepresentation in English. A relevance-theoretic account. 2000. 70. SORJONEN, Marja-Leena: Responding in Conversation. A study of response particles in Finnish. 2001. 71. GÓMEZ-GONZÁLEZ, María Ángeles: The Theme-Topic Interface. Evidence from English. 2001. 72. MARMARIDOU, Sophia S.A.: Pragmatic Meaning and Cognition. 2000. 73. HESTER, Stephen and David FRANCIS (eds.): Local Educational Order. Ethnomethodological studies of knowledge in action. 2000. 74. TROSBORG, Anna (ed.): Analysing Professional Genres. 2000. 75. PILKINGTON, Adrian: Poetic Effects. A relevance theory perspective. 2000. 76. MATSUI, Tomoko: Bridging and Relevance. 2000. 77. VANDERVEKEN, Daniel and Susumu KUBO (eds.): Essays in Speech Act Theory. 2002. 78. SELL, Roger D. : Literature as Communication. The foundations of mediating criticism. 2000. 79. ANDERSEN, Gisle and Thorstein FRETHEIM (eds.): Pragmatic Markers and Propositional Attitude. 2000. 80. UNGERER, Friedrich (ed.): English Media Texts – Past and Present. Language and textual structure. 2000. 81. DI LUZIO, Aldo, Susanne GÜNTHNER and Franca ORLETTI (eds.): Culture in Communication. Analyses of intercultural situations. 2001. 82. KHALIL, Esam N.: Grounding in English and Arabic News Discourse. 2000. 83. MÁRQUEZ REITER, Rosina: Linguistic Politeness in Britain and Uruguay. A contrastive study of requests and apologies. 2000. 84. ANDERSEN, Gisle: Pragmatic Markers and Sociolinguistic Variation. A relevance-theoretic approach to the language of adolescents. 2001. 85. COLLINS, Daniel E.: Reanimated Voices. Speech reporting in a historical-pragmatic perspective. 2001. 86. IFANTIDOU, Elly: Evidentials and Relevance. 2001. 87. MUSHIN, Ilana: Evidentiality and Epistemological Stance. Narrative retelling. 2001. 88. BAYRAKTAROG LU, ArFn and Maria SIFIANOU (eds.): Linguistic Politeness Across Boundaries. The case of Greek and Turkish. 2001. 89. ITAKURA, Hiroko: Conversational Dominance and Gender. A study of Japanese speakers in first and second language contexts. 2001. 90. KENESEI, István and Robert M. HARNISH (eds.): Perspectives on Semantics, Pragmatics, and Discourse. A Festschrift for Ferenc Kiefer. 2001. 91. GROSS, Joan: Speaking in Other Voices. An ethnography of Walloon puppet theaters. 2001. 92. GARDNER, Rod: When Listeners Talk. Response tokens and listener stance. 2001. 93. BARON, Bettina and Helga KOTTHOFF (eds.): Gender in Interaction. Perspectives on femininity and masculinity in ethnography and discourse. 2002 94. McILVENNY, Paul (ed.): Talking Gender and Sexuality. 2002. 95. FITZMAURICE, Susan M.: The Familiar Letter in Early Modern English. A pragmatic approach. 2002. 96. HAVERKATE, Henk: The Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics of Spanish Mood. 2002.
97. MAYNARD, Senko K.: Linguistic Emotivity. Centrality of place, the topic-comment dynamic, and an ideology of pathos in Japanese discourse. 2002. 98. DUSZAK, Anna (ed.): Us and Others. Social identities across languages, discourses and cultures. 2002. 99. JASZCZOLT, K.M. and Ken TURNER (eds.): Meaning Through Language Contrast. Volume 1. 2003. 100. JASZCZOLT, K.M. and Ken TURNER (eds.): Meaning Through Language Contrast. Volume 2. 2003. 101. LUKE, Kang Kwong and Theodossia-Soula PAVLIDOU (eds.): Telephone Calls. Unity and diversity in conversational structure across languages and cultures. 2002. 102. LEAFGREN, John: Degrees of Explicitness. Information structure and the packaging of Bulgarian subjects and objects. 2002. 103. FETZER, Anita and Christiane MEIERKORD (eds.): Rethinking Sequentiality. Linguistics meets conversational interaction. 2002. 104. BEECHING, Kate: Gender, Politeness and Pragmatic Particles in French. 2002. 105. BLACKWELL, Sarah E.: Implicatures in Discourse. The case of Spanish NP anaphora. 2003. 106. BUSSE, Ulrich: Linguistic Variation in the Shakespeare Corpus. Morpho-syntactic variability of second person pronouns. 2002. 107. TAAVITSAINEN, Irma and Andreas H. JUCKER (eds.): Diachronic Perspectives on Address Term Systems. 2003. 108. BARRON, Anne: Acquisition in Interlanguage Pragmatics. Learning how to do things with words in a study abroad context. 2003. 109. MAYES, Patricia: Language, Social Structure, and Culture. A genre analysis of cooking classes in Japan and America. 2003. 110. ANDROUTSOPOULOS, Jannis K. and Alexandra GEORGAKOPOULOU (eds.): Discourse Constructions of Youth Identities. 2003. 111. ENSINK, Titus and Christoph SAUER (eds.): Framing and Perspectivising in Discourse. 2003. 112. LENZ, Friedrich (ed.): Deictic Conceptualisation of Space, Time and Person. 2003. 113. PANTHER, Klaus-Uwe and Linda L. THORNBURG (eds.): Metonymy and Pragmatic Inferencing. 2003. 114. KÜHNLEIN, Peter, Hannes RIESER and Henk ZEEVAT (eds.): Perspectives on Dialogue in the New Millennium. 2003. 115. KÄRKKÄINEN, Elise: Epistemic Stance in English Conversation. A description of its interactional functions, with a focus on I think. n.y.p. 116. GRANT, Colin B. (ed.): Rethinking Communicative Interaction. New interdisciplinary horizons. n.y.p. 117. WU, Ruey-Jiuan Regina: Stance in Talk. A conversation analysis of Mandarin final particles. n.y.p. 118. CHENG, Winnie: Intercultural Conversation. A study of Hong Kong Chinese. n.y.p.
