Discourse and Pragmatics
Week 9
Strategic Interaction
Whos doing Whats
• When we use language we
communicate
• Who we are and who we think the people
we are communicating with are
• What we think we are doing
Interactional Sociolinguistics
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Whos doing Whats in Talk
‘Strategies’ of doing and being
‘Small stuff’ matters
Even the smallest features of talk are
functional and potentially meaningful
• Subtle variations in the way we talk can
create big problems in communication
and in relationships
Whos and Whats
• Whos
• Presentation of the Self
• Conversational Style
• Politeness
• Whats
• Framing and Contextualization Cues
• Whos + Whats
• Positioning
Whos
• Presentation of the Self
Who are you?
• The is no fixed, essential ‘self’
• The idea of a consistent self is an illusion
• It is also a ‘necessary fiction’ for social
interaction
• It is better to talk of ‘selves’ rather than ‘self’
• We perform different ‘selves’ to different
people in different situations
What is the ‘self’
• Erving Goffman: sociologist
• The presentation of Self in Everyday
Life (1959)
• Focus on ordinary social interaction
• ‘Dramaturgical’ Approach
• Life is like a play
The self
• Can be divided into:
• performer
• character
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We are all actors
We are always performing
What is ‘true’ or ‘real’
Depends on how much we ‘believe’ in
the character we are portraying
Sincerity
Sincere ------------------------Cynical
• We always have something to hide!
• Whether we are being ‘honest’ or ‘dishonest’,
we must exercise similar ‘care’ in creating the
‘impression’ that we want to create
• Audience must believe the performance to be
‘real’ if it is to be effective
• Businessperson vs. con-man
• Lover vs. gigolo
Interaction involves...
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performers
audience
roles
The main risk in interaction is that your
performance will be inadequate or
‘questioned’ by your audience
Controlling Information
• Information that is
‘given’
• Information that is
‘given off’
• Information
‘leakage’
Performance
• Elements of performance:
•‘Routine’
•‘Front’
•‘Line’
•‘Face’
Audience segregation
• We use different fronts for different
people in different situations
• We usually arrange our lives so that the
people towards whom we play one part
are different from those towards whom
we play another part
• Difficulties of performing to ‘mixed
audiences’
• Regions (frontstage and backstage)
Whos
• Conversational Styles
• New Yorkers and Californians
• The Silent Finn
Example: ‘Valley girl talk’
• Habitual rising intonation
• ‘Like’
• "I, like, didn't say anything."
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Relationship to gender
Negative evaluations
Systematic variation
Uptalk: Given and new information
Like: discourse marker, marker of social
identity
Some Functions of ‘Like’
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Inspecificity
• She's like five foot five.
• She's five foot five.
• Hyperbole
• She's like ten feet tall.
• She's ten feet tall.
• Quotation
• She was like, I don't see why that's necessary.
• * She was, I don't see why that's necessary.
Example: ‘Language Crimes’
• Roger Shuy
• Forensic Linguistics
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Agent: You see these plans are very hard to get.
Engineer: uh-huh
A: I need to get them at night
E: uh-huh
A: It’s not done easily
E: uh-huh
A: understand?
E: uh-huh
+++++++
A: How are you?
E: uh-huh
Politeness
• How we communicate our relationship
with other people in our language
Two kinds of face
• Negative face (desire for autonomy,
personal space,freedom from
imposition, freedom of action)
• Positive face (desire for self-image to
be acknowledged and approved of)
• Each are addressed with specific forms
of face work
Two Kinds of Face Strategies
• Involvement
• ‘Solidarity’
• Showing ‘closeness’ or solidarity
• using first name, expressing interest, claiming
common point of view, using informal
language
Involvement Strategies
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Use first name or nicknames
Use informal language
Use a ‘common language’
Act interested, sympathetic
Be direct
Agree
Claim common experiences, interests, group
membership
• Talk about ‘us’
Two Kinds of Face Strategy
• Independence
• Showing ‘respect’
• using titles, not making assumptions,
apologizing, using formal language
Independence Strategies
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Use titles
Use formal language
Don’t make assumptions
Apologize
Be indirect
Try to minimize imposition
Hedge
Talk about things not having to do with us
Independence and
Involvement
• In any interaction we usually use both
independence and involvement
strategies
• The problem is deciding how and when
to use these strategies
• Based on
• who we are talking to
• why we are talking to them
Deference Face System
• -P, +D
• symmetrical (equal)
• participants see themselves as at same
social level
• distant
• both would use mostly independence
strategies
Solidarity Face System
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-P, -D
symmetrical
close
both participants likely to use more
involvement strategies
Hierarchical Face System
• +P, +/-D
• asymmetrical (unequal)
• asymmetrical face strategies
• higher uses more involvement
• lower uses more independence
Deference
Speaker<-----------------Independence--------------->Speaker
Solidarity
Speaker<--Involvement-->Speaker
Hierarchical
Speaker
(involvement)
Speaker
(independence)
But it’s really not that simple...
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There is another factor
W
Weight of imposition
W+/ W-
Conflicting Strategies/Mixed up
systems
• Two businessmen meeting for the first time
• Mr R: (reading Mr. Wong’s business card
which says Wong Hon Fai) Hi, Hon Fai. I’m
Bill Richardson. My friends call me Bill.
• Mr W: How do you do Mr. Richardson.
• Mr. Wong thinks: That guy is acting too
familiar, who does he think he is?
• expects deference system, hears hierarchical system
• Mr. R. thinks: This guy doesn’t want to be my
friend. He’s not very nice.
• expects solidarity system, hears deference system
Frames
• The way we signal
• and interpret
• what’s going on
• what we are doing in
interaction
Frames
• Interpretative Frames
• Interactive Frames
Interpretative Frames
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Participants general expectations about
objects
people
settings
ways to interact
Restaurants, Classrooms, Karaoke
Boxes, MTR, etc.
Interpretive Frames
• Schema
• ‘World knowledge’
• our knowledge of the physical and
biological world, our agreement about what
‘reality’ is
• ‘Social knowledge’
• our knowledge of social conventions
around different kinds of activities
An embarrassing situation...
• Getting a taxi in
Taipei
Interactive Frames
• ‘a definition of what is going on in
interaction (or a any point in the
interaction) without which no utterance
(or movement or gesture) could be
correctly interpreted.’
• Tannen and Wallat
Monkeys
• Gregory Bateson
• Observations of monkeys at play
• ‘a monkey need to know whether a bite
from another monkey is intended within
the frame of play or the frame of
fighting.’
She knows...
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Play time
walk time
meal time
quiet time
trouble time
Interactive Frames
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Frames of activity within an interaction
We usually don’t just do one thing at once
There are
Overlapping frames
• talking on the phone and playing with my dog
• Frames within frames
• Lecture--activity--Lecture
• Serious--joking--Serious
What’s going on here?
• Doctor: (feeling child’s stomach) Okay, now let me
see what I can find in there. Is there a peanut butter
and jelly? Wait a minute...
• Child: No.
• Doctor: No peanut butter and jelly in there?
• Child: No.
• Doctor: Now move your legs up a little..Okay? Any
peanut butter and jelly in there?
• Child: No.
• Doctor: No? Is your spleen palpable over there?
• Child: No.
How does she know?
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Gestures
Movements
Intonation
Loudness
Voice quality
Contextualization Cues
• ‘Surface features of message form
which are the means by which speakers
signal and listeners interpret…
• what the activity is
• what words mean
• and how what they say is related to
what has been said before or what will
be said after.
‘Framing’ and
‘Contextualization Cues’
• John Gumperz
• Contextualization cues
• any sign which serves to construct the contextual
ground for situated interpretations, and thereby
affects how constituent messages are understood.
• Stress, intonation, voice quality (prosody)
• Paralinguistic cues
• Code choice
• ‘Nervous’
Competing Frames
• Tutorial Task
‘Discourse markers’
• Focus: as far as ... is concerned, speaking of
which
• Clarification: I mean, actually
• Contrast: on the other hand, mind you,
whereas
• Dismissal of previous discourse: anyway,
whatever
• Change of subject: whatever, by the way, ok
• Consequence: so, then, as a result
• ‘Anyway’
Tutorial Task
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Listen for the tokens:
‘umm’ or ‘eh’
‘you know’
‘ok’
What are the functions of these
utterances in the conversation
Positioning
• In interaction we negotiate who we are
in relation to each other (face)
• We also negotiate what we are
doing/what’s ‘going on’ (frames)
• But interactions do not happen in a
vacuum
• Every interaction has histories (stories)
behind it
Positioning
• Tries to connect the individual interaction
with the bigger picture
• Tries to show how we build up identities in
interaction
• Position
• military language
• marketing language
• Putting yourself and people you talk to in
some position in relation to other speakers
and the groups that make up the culture
Positioning
• ‘Karen, what do you think about
positioning?’
• Questioner/Answerer
• Teacher/Student
• Powerful/Less Powerful
Positioning
• ‘Can I see your ID?’
• ‘May I help you?
• ‘Please iron my shirts.’
Storylines
• Goffman
• interaction is a performance
• Storylines are the plays that we perform
• Personal storylines
• Cultural storylines
• Discourses
Personal storylines
• What happened between us before the
interaction
• What we expect to happen between us
after the interaction
• Who I am to you
• Who you are to me
Cultural storylines
• Personal storylines are based on
cultural storylines
• Without them, we would not know how
to act or interpret how other people act
• Our cultures are made up of stories
Force
• Speech Acts
• Every utterance has three kinds of
‘force’
• locutionary
• the meaning of the words
• illocutionay
• the action of the words
• perlocutionary
• the effect of the words
Kiss me!
• locutionary force
• verb (imperative) + pronoun
• illocutionary foce
• request?
• order?
• perlocutionary force
• ?
• Force depends on the positions of the people
involved and the stories they are performing
Kiss me!
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Boyfriend
Stranger
Boss
Personal storyline
• new or old
• just had a fight
• Cultural storyline
• When does kissing usually happen in the
story?
Positioning Triad
Position
Force of
Speech Act
Storyline
Positioning
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Self Positioning
Other Positioning
Challenging Positions
Changing Positions
Claims and impuitation of identity
Relationship to Framing
Analyze the following
conversation
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(Two strangers in a fitness centre)
A: Here, try like this. (Walks to the pull-down equipment, takes the
handlebar in this hands and demonstrates the appropriate moves. B
tries to imitate A but is not successful).
B: (Returns bar to A without saying a word)
A: You're afraid of the weights.
B: (Turns to A. Registers surprise on his face)
A: Think of a number between one and four and I'll tell you what you
have to do.
B: What?! (Bewildered, surprise reflected in his tone of voice and facial
expression)
A: I'll give each of your exercises a number. One is the overhead pulldown. Two is the triceps pull-up. And so on. Just choose a number and
I'll tell you what exercise to do and how much weight you need to put
on the machine to do it.
B: No, I don't think so. (Walks off the weight room floor)