MITIGATION
STUDIES IN PRAGMATICS General Editor: Bruce Fraser Associate Editors: Kerstin Fischer, Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen The Studies in Pragmatics series is dedicated to publishing innovative, authoritative monographs and edited collections from all micro-, macroand metapragmatic linguistic perspectives. Rooted in the interdisciplinary spirit of the Journal of Pragmatics, it welcomes not only book proposals from linguistics proper but also pragmatically-oriented proposals from neighboring disciplines such as interactional sociology, language philosophy, communication science, social psychology, cognitive science, and information science. The goal of the series is to provide a widely read and respected international forum for high quality theoretical, analytical, and applied pragmatic studies of all types. By publishing leading edge work on natural language practice, it seeks to extend our growing knowledge of the forms, functions, and foundations of human interaction.
Other titles in this series: FISCHER
Approaches to Discourse Particles
AIJMER & SIMONVANDENBERGEN
Pragmatic Markers in Contrast
FETZER & FISCHER
Lexical Markers of Common Grounds
Forthcoming: HABERLAND
Future Prospects for Pragmatics
Proposals for the series are welcome, please contact the General Editor, Bruce Fraser:
[email protected] MITIGATION
CLAUDIA CAFFI University of Genoa, Italy Department of Italian, Romance Languages, Humanities and Arts (DIRAS)
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ISBN-13: 978-0-08-044334-8 ISBN-10: 0-08-044334-6 ISSN: 1750-368X For information on all Elsevier publications visit our website at books.elsevier.com Printed and bound in The Netherlands 07 08 09 10 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Studies in Pragmatics (SiP) General Editor Bruce Fraser Boston University, USA Associate Editors Kerstin Fischer University of Bremen, Germany Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen University of Copenhagen, Denmark Consulting Editor Jacob L. Mey University of Southern Denmark, Denmark Editorial Board Kent Bach, San Francisco State University, USA Diane Blakemore, University of Salford, UK Shoshana Blum-Kulka, Hebrew University, Israel Claudia Caffi, University of Genoa, Italy Alessandro Duranti, UCLA, USA Marjorie Goodwin, UCLA, USA Hartmut Haberland, University of Roskilde, Denmark William F. Hanks, University of California, USA Sachiko Ide, Tokyo Women’s University, Japan Mikhail Ilyin, Moscow State Institute of International Relations of the Foreign Affairs Ministry of the Russian Federation (MGIMO), Russia Richard W. Janney, University of Munich, Germany Kasia Jaszczolt, University of Cambridge, UK Elizabeth Keating, University of Texas, USA Sotaro Kita, University of Bristol, UK Ron Kuzar, University of Haifa, Israel Alec McHoul, Murdoch University, Australia Brigitte Nerlich, Nottingham University, UK Etsuko Oishi, Fuji Women’s University, Japan Srikant Sarangi, Cardiff University, UK Marina Sbisà, University of Trieste, Italy Maxim Stamenov, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria Deborah Tannen, Georgetown University, USA
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To Elvira
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CONTENTS Acknowledgments
xv
Introduction
1
Foreword Presentation of the corpus Structure of the book Transcription conventions List of abbreviations List of metalinguistic abbreviations Glossary
Chapter 1 Pragmatics: subject and subjectivity 1.0. 1.1. 1.2. 1.3. 1.3.1. 1.3.2. 1.3.3. 1.4. 1.5. 1.6. 1.7. 1.8. 1.9. 1.10.
Foreword Towards a psychostylistics of interaction A ‘loaded’ discipline The subjectivity of language The instance d’énonciation (Benveniste, 1966) The deictic origin (Bühler, 1934) The egocentric child (Piaget, 1989 [1926]) A complex subjectivity Stylistic markers Semiotic markers The function of identity maintance and ‘speech markers’ (Giles et al., 1979) Contextualizations cues (Gumperz, 1982a) Mitigation: first definitions Bridging the gap between linguistic pragmatics and self-psychology
1 3 5 9 9 10 11
13
13 15 21 24 24 25 26 28 29 35 36 38 40 43
x
Contents
Chapter 2 Mitigation: the background 2.0. 2.0.1. 2.0.2. 2.1. 2.1.1. 2.1.2. 2.1.3. 2.1.3.1. 2.1.3.2. 2.1.4. 2.1.4.1. 2.1.4.2. 2.1.4.3. 2.1.5. 2.1.6. 2.1.7. 2.1.8. 2.1.8.1. 2.1.8.2. 2.2. 2.2.1. 2.2.2. 2.3. 2.3.1. 2.3.2. 2.4.
Introduction Structure of the chapter Scopes of mitigating devices Ideas of mitigation Mitigation in different research areas: the empirical turn Hedges in Brown and Levinson (1987) Mitigation as vagueness: hedges Lakoff (1972) Bourdieu (1982) Mitigation as indirectedness (Fraser, 1975; Leech, 1983; Holmes, 1984) Fraser (1975) Leech (1983) Holmes (1984) Mitigation as de-focalization of deictic origin Mitigation as removal of unwelcome perlocutionary effects (Fraser, 1980) Prince, Frader, and Bosk (1982) The notion of weakening (Abschwächung) Meyer-Hermann and Weingarten (1982) Langner (1994) Intensity Intensity according to Bally (1970 [1909]) Intensity according to Strawson (1964) Towards an extended notion of mitigation Some conceptual distinctions The multidisciplinary relevance of mitigation Conclusions
Chapter 3 Pragmatics of mitigation: bushes, hedges and shields 3.0. 3.1. 3.2. 3.3. 3.3.1.
Introduction Mitigation as a bridging category Types of mitigating devices (Habermas, 1987 [1981]) The functioning of mitigation Bushes
47
47 47 49 51 51 53 56 56 60 61 61 63 64 66 66 69 70 71 72 73 74 76 80 80 87 89
91
91 93 95 97 98
Contents
3.3.2. 3.3.3. 3.3.4. 3.4. 3.5.
Hedges Combination of bushes and hedges Shields Other strategies of mitigation: quotational shields and topical shields Conclusions
Chapter 4 Mitigation and emotive communication: steps toward a psychostylistic approach
4.0. 4.1. 4.1.1. 4.1.2. 4.2. 4.3. 4.4. 4.4.1. 4.4.2. 4.4.3. 4.4.4. 4.5. 4.6. 4.7. 4.7.1. 4.7.2. 4.8. 4.8.1. 4.8.2. 4.9. 4.10.
Introduction Style as a psycholinguistic issue: the role of emotion Mitigation as an empathic strategy: attunement (Stern, 1985) The other edge of the sword: mitigation as an anti-empathic strategy On the conceptualization of emotion in linguistic theories A folk psychological category: involvement An approach to emotive communication (Caffi and Janney, 1994b) Emotive communication and emotional communication The notion of emotive contrast Types of emotive devices Emotive closeness and distance: empathic deixis Immediacy (Wiener and Mehrabian, 1968) Equivocation (Beavin Bavelas, 1985; Beavin Bavelas et al., 1990) Disqualification Haley (1959) Mitigation and diqualification Transactional disqualification (Sluzki et al., 1967) Types of transactional disqualification Reactive moves to transactional disqualification The Freudian concept of ‘undoing’(Ungeschehenmachen) Conclusions
Chapter 5 Doctor-patient dialogue: a case-study 5.0. 5.1. 5.2.
Introduction Analysis of a dialogue at a primary care physician’s The broader summary of the encounter: the fabula
xi
102 104 106 114 117
121
121 123 125 129 132 136 138 138 139 141 143 145 149 150 150 152 154 155 157 158 159
161
161 163 165
xii
Contents
5.2.1. 5.2.2. 5.3. 5.4. 5.5. 5.6. 5.7. 5.8. 5.8.1. 5.8.2. 5.9. 5.10. 5.11. 5.12.
The phases of the encounter The recurrent trend of the phases Between fabula and plot: salient moments of the encounter Muldimensional microanalysis of TR1: the plot The argumentative layer The illocutionary layer: overall illocutionary description of the phases Mitigation and institutional politeness in TR1 Micro-sequences of (non)-attunement Topical and stylistic non-attunement Micro-sequences of stylistic attunement Distribution of mitigators Mitigation and monitoring of emotive distances Co-variance among parameters Conclusions
Chapter 6 Grammar of mitigation in doctor-patient dialogue 6.0. 6.1. 6.2. 6.3. 6.4. 6.5. 6.5.1. 6.5.2. 6.6. 6.6.1. 6.6.1.1. 6.6.1.2. 6.6.1.3. 6.6.2. 6.6.2.1. 6.6.2.2. 6.7. 6.7.1. 6.7.2. 6.7.3.
Introduction Preliminary questions Mitigation and institutional politeness Types of mitigation Between natural and non-natural mitigation: a transitional case Non-natural mitigation Lenitive mitigation Tempering mitigation Linguistic means of lenitive and tempering mitigation Linguistic means of lenitive mitigation Lenitive mitigation and deference Summary of linguistic means of lenitive mitigation Strategies of lenitive mitigation Linguistic means of tempering mitigation Prepositional phrases in tempering mitigation Summary of linguistic means of tempering mitigation Mitigation and felicity conditions (constitutive rules) Attenuation of compliance with essential rules Attenuation of compliance with preparatory rules Attenuation of compliance with the propositional content rule
167 168 171 176 185 186 189 192 192 195 197 200 202 204
207
207 209 212 216 217 220 220 222 226 226 236 238 240 242 251 254 255 256 256 257
Contents
6.7.4. 6.8.
Mitigation as side-effect of the reinforcement of the sincerity rule Conclusions: toward a pragmatic typology of mitigators
xiii
257 259
Conclusions
263
Bibliography
273
Appendices
299
Appendix A: TR1, dialogue at a primary care physician’s (Ch. 5) Appendix B: Examples from Chapter 6 A) ‘Lenitive’ mitigation (directive acts) B) ‘Tempering’ mitigation (assertive-verdictive acts) C) Other types of mitigation (other acts)
301 317 317 320 323
Name Index
325
Subject Index
333
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to thank all the colleagues, students and friends who have been sources of encouragement, constructive criticism and support. Covering the winding and obstacle-ridden path to this book – what with rethinking, shortening, and translating the original Italian version (Caffi, 2001) – has required a lot of time and effort. I now find it impossible to individually acknowledge all those who have been supportive along the way. I will thus mention only a few. Letizia Cirillo has greatly helped me at all the different stages of this time- and energyconsuming work, generously accompanying me from the first draft and tentative translation into English to the final editing of Chapters 1-4 and 6. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Richard W. Janney, who was ‘exposed’ to the first version of the book and gave me precious feedback. Among those whose help I have to mention are: Salvatore Attardo, Alessandra Fasulo, Shona Fowler, Sara Gesuato, Hartmut Haberland, Klaus Hölker, Giulio Lepschy, Margaret Malone, Jacob L. Mey, Bice Mortara Garavelli, Amanda Murphy, Marina Sbisà. I would like to thank Sarah Oates and Christopher Tancock of Elsevier for their support and patience. I also would like to thank the series editor, Bruce Fraser, who helped me to straighten out the line of reasoning of the book and enhance its cohesion and clarity. Any remaining faults and deficiencies are certainly only my own. Finally, I owe a special thanks to the anonymous doctors and patients who were willing to have their interactions recorded, thus making this research possible. I do hope that, at least in the long run, this work may be useful to them all.
Genoa, January 2006
Claudia Caffi
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INTRODUCTION o vita pauperum, deus meus, in cuius sinu non est contradictio, plue mihi mitigationes in cor, ut patienter tales feram. Aug., Conf. XII, XXV 34. O life of the poor, my God, in Whose bosom there is no contradiction, pour a rain of mitigations on my heart, so that I may bear those people with patience. (my translation, C.C.)
FOREWORD The key idea behind the present book is very simple: style is inherent in the use of language. However useful heuristically, the neutral, ‘gray’ expressions used as examples in linguistics, including pragmatics, do not exist but in the minds of linguists. In real life, our utterances are usually modulated, i.e. stylistically ‘colored’ in order to fit different contexts and to express our feelings. As real speakers, we do not normally say things like France is hexagonal. At best, if pressed, we may say If I’m not wrong, France is sort of hexagonal, isn’t it? Nor do we usually say The cat is on the mat. We are more likely to say something like Your damned cat is on my mat again, get it off right now, and so on. Even the most impersonal forms of communication such as warning notices seem to be touched by the need of coloring. For instance in New York, we may happen to be threatened not by the neutral No parking, but by the reinforced form Don’t even think of parking here. At other times we may feel the actual need to express our personal investment in what we say, that is, to convey more than the simple subscription to the truth of the propositional content of our utterances. This need also surfaces in stylistic choices. And it is precisely this need that makes Galileo say “And yet it moves”, (“Eppur si muove”),
2
Introduction
instead of a detached “the earth turns”, and risk his life. 1 Style is not only a matter of manners. If pragmatics is the discipline that deals with authentic language usage in the real world, as I think it is, it must necessarily take style into account. Talking about modulation is a pragmatic way of talking about style, which makes an otherwise excessively broad and conceptually loaded category fully operational. Unlike the general category ‘style’, ‘modulation’ foregrounds the active, intentional and personal dimension of stylistic choices. It refers to the operations that speakers perform to vary the intensity of their speech acts. Speakers constantly make their speech acts either ‘stronger’ or ‘weaker’, that is, they vary the intensity of their utterances, as a pianist does with notes by using the pedal. 2 Variations of intensity that we constantly experience signal variations in emotive involvement, which is a pragmatic way of referring to the speakers’ inner world surfacing in their choices in discourse. In their goal-directed, communicative behavior, speakers usually modulate their utterances in two opposite directions, namely mitigation and reinforcement. Mitigation is the weakening direction of modulation. Its counterpart in the opposite, strengthening direction is reinforcement. The latter covers all the operations aimed at giving prominence to a given linguistic choice. In actual speech, it is often impossible to distinguish between the two: a formal mitigating device can be functionally reinforcing. Indeed, mitigation is inherently ambivalent. And this ambivalence is just one aspect of the rhetorical functioning of speech. Let us consider, for instance, a type of mitigation, a litotes such as “John is not bright”. How is the negative form to be interpreted? In such cases, it is up to the interlocutor, contextually, not only to decide on the illocutionary force of the utterance – whether it is an assertion, a piece of criticism, a piece of advice, etc. – but also to interpret its propositional content as being either weakened or reinforced. In the present example, the speaker may think that John may be a bit shy, just too uptight for his role, or simply dull. 3
1
This example can be found in Bally (1965 [1925]: 15), where he introduces the distinction between the intellectual mode (mode pur) and the affective mode (mode vécu) (cf. 2.2.1.). For a discussion, cf. Hübler (1987: 362 ff.). 2 This simile is found in Spitzer (1931 [1928]). 3 Litotes, double negatives, etc. have been the object of an impressive body of scholarship over the centuries and in recent pragmatics. I consider some of the relevant literature in Caffi (1990) and Caffi (1992) where, while rejecting the alleged automatic hyperbolic nature of litotes, I propose ‘indeterminacy’ among its constitutive pragmatic features. Here suffice it to mention the studies by Horn (in particular, Horn, 1989; Horn, 1991), a classic in this field of research, which, however, is still lacking an adequate empirical basis. Empirical evidence supporting the view that “negation markers hedge information rather than discard it”, i.e. data corroborating the ‘retention hypothesis’ as opposed to the ‘suppression hypothesis’, can be found in Giora et al. (2005a). According to this view, which has been put forward by many authors and is compatible with the traditional rhetorical treatment of litotes, “information introduced via negation would be retained and tinge the interpretation of the negated item so that the outcome is a mitigated product involving both the negativity of the negation marker and also the expressed meaning of the negated item” (ibid.). “He is a little…somewhat…not exceptionally
Introduction
3
Speakers mitigate out of uncertainty, caution, or consideration. Briefly put, they mitigate to attune with others. Mitigation is pervasive in speech, as speakers do not commit themselves more than is strictly necessary. Far from being limited to a matter of politeness, mitigation captures rationally grounded behavior mainly aimed at avoiding unnecessary risks, responsibilities and conflicts. At the same time, mitigation indexes the type of speaker we want to be taken for in a given encounter. In other words, mitigation is a way in which pragmatics addresses the issue of the linguistic co-construction of our (multiple, fragmented, uneven, even if not contradictory) identity. An issue of this kind can only be dealt with in an integrated interdisciplinary approach which combines rhetorical, stylistic, psychological and linguistic reflection on the actual functioning of human interaction. A speaker’s (mitigated) style encompasses the main pathways leading up to every linguistic action. These pathways are emotions, language, and relationships with others. Self psychology, linguistics, and sociology provide us with the analytical tools to guide us along these pathways. Pragmatics provides us with the tools to study the ways in which these very pathways intertwine in speech. In following this ‘labyrinth’ from the specific angle of (micro-) stylistic choices, I will use as a thread a botanical metaphor: ‘bushes’, ‘hedges’ and ‘shields’ are the labels of three basic mitigating strategies. Bushes are devices that introduce vagueness in the propositional content of an utterance. Hedges are mitigators centered on illocutionary force. Shields are the operations centered on the ‘I-here-now’ of the utterance, i.e. its deictic origin. By means of shields the source of the speech act is veiled, disguised or deleted. The different types of mitigators, which are investigated in Chapters 3 and 6, are taken from my corpus of doctor-patient interaction in spoken Italian.
PRESENTATION OF THE CORPUS My main concern in the present book is to set up an integrated pragmatic framework for the analysis of interactional strategies, and to describe mitigation strategies in spoken Italian within this framework. In order to avoid a generic and idealized analysis, it is necessary to limit the type of data to be examined, and to select it from a specific activity type. Verifying principles, categories, and explicative hypotheses ‘live’, so to speak, against real data, i.e. in situated communicative situations, is not a by-product of a theory, nor a mere testing of tools applied to a certain field. Rather, if we are not content with ‘desk-pragmatics’, such verification is a necessary step in the researcher’s back-and-forth movement between analysis and synthesis, that is, in her/his constant reflection on her/his data. In the psychological field, Freud saw an “inseparable bond” between theory and the method of bright” is an example discussed in Giora et al. (2005b), whose main goal is to show the hedging functions of negation markers in ironic remarks.
4
Introduction
treatment. Similarly, in an integrated pragmatic framework, theory and praxis cannot be separated, and in addition, their osmosis has to be brought to light. The choice of doctor-patient interaction is due to the fact that mitigation is clearly of great relevance to doctor-patient discourse, and to therapeutic discourse in general. In the present book I rely on my previous research into the subject which appeared in Caffi (2001). 4 On the whole, mitigation is obviously a way of being cautious with respect to words/actions that may entail risks, which are particularly evident in the asymmetrical context of doctor-patient interaction. In this shortened version of a book originally written in Italian, I have refrained from fully describing this type of institutional discourse as such.5 Much work has already been done on asymmetrical doctor-patient encounters (cf., among others, Haberland and Mey, 1981; Raffler-Engel, 1990; Ehlich et al., 1990; Todd and Fisher, 1993; Have, 1995b; Wodak, 1997; Cordella, 2004) and no attempt will be made in this book to review this literature. Nor will I endorse an orthodox conversational analytical methodology. Rather, my approach will combine several different perspectives. The data of this study consist of 25 transcripts of doctor-patient and psychotherapeutic conversations collected from 1993 to 2001 in two big towns of Northern Italy in different clinical settings (see below). The length of the recording is about 9 hours. The resulting corpus contains the following types of data: 17 transcripts of doctor-patient dialogues (TR1-TR17); 1 transcript of a psychiatric interview (TR18); 7 transcripts of psychotherapeutic dialogues (TR19-TR25). The dialogues are of variable length: the psychotherapeutic dialogues are often very long, lasting an average of 45 minutes; the doctor-patient dialogues are often very short, as in the case of the exchanges taking place during the ward-round at the hospital. However, they have all been transcribed in their entirety. The excerpts discussed in the present work (Chapters 3, 5, 6, and Conclusions) are taken from the following types of medical contexts: 5 4 3
dialogues at a primary care physician’s (TR1-TR5, PC); dialogues during visits at a specialist’s (TR6-TR9, SpV); dialogues during the round at the obstetrics ward at the hospital (TR10-TR12, WR);
4 The theoretical model as well as the typology of mitigators proposed in Caffi (2001) have been used and developed, also in a contrastive perspective, by Hölker (2003) and Schneider (forthcoming). 5 Linguistic aspects of institutional discourse are discussed in, among others, Drew and Heritage (1992); Gunnarsson, Linell and Nordberg (1997); Sarangi and Roberts (1999). On asymmetries in dialogue see, among other, Marková and Foppa (1991); De Swaan (1990).
Introduction
5 1 7
5
dialogues during post-operative examinations of patients who have undergone radiotherapy (for cancer) (TR13-TR17, Rt); dialogue during a psychiatric visit to a public institution (TR18, PsV); psychotherapy sessions held by three different psychotherapists (TR19-TR25, PsS).
The doctors involved had a micro-recorder running, which could be seen by the patients. The patients had previously been informed of the recording for research purposes and had given their permission. In the case of psychotherapy sessions, the recording was actually part of the professional’s routine practice. In order to further guarantee privacy and to avoid introducing distracting factors into the analysis, such as my personal acquaintance with the doctor, I have used materials obtained through third parties who acted as intermediaries and guarantors. This is an advantage, not only from an ethical point if view, but also from the point of view of the need for neutrality in observation, and it greatly outweighs the disadvantage of the lack of precise information on the interactional partners.
STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK The structure of the book is as follows:
Chapter 1 Pragmatics: Subject and subjectivity sketches the general view of pragmatics that best suits an extended notion of mitigation. The chapter has three major goals. First, it recasts mitigation in a broad framework that enables us to consider the different dimensions of mitigated stylistic choices. Mitigation highlights the subjective quality inherent in speech. More precisely, it is a trace of the speaker’s ongoing process of adaptation to the hearer. Pragmatics can thus be defined as the study of the ways in which the subjective orientation of every speech act becomes intersubjective. Second, it lays the foundations of an integrated pragmatic approach. With this goal in mind, it is possible to gain important insights into subjectivity, which have a bearing on mitigation, by drawing on the works of such authors as Benveniste, Bühler and Piaget. Third, it is argued that mitigation lends itself to connecting practical needs and relational needs, which all contribute to determining the speaker’s linguistic choices. Indeed, different dimensions are convergent in these choices. They are: the identity-oriented dimension (relevant to the interlocutors’ social roles), the emotive dimension (relevant to the interpersonal distances geared by a given formal choice), and the emotional dimension (relevant to the subject’s inner world and various selves). Only an integrated pragmatic approach makes it
6
Introduction
possible to deal with this last dimension, whose central role has been recognized in principle as much as it has been neglected in practice.
Chapter 2 Mitigation: The background explores previous research on mitigation both historically and theoretically. First, it presents a selected overview of studies on mitigation produced in the last few decades. The criterion adopted for selection is deliberately focused: previous studies are clustered around the three scopes of mitigating devices, i.e. proposition, illocution, and deictic origin. In the first case, mitigation is basically seen as vagueness, in the second as indirectness, and in the third as deletion of the speaker as the actual source of the utterance. Second, a specific connection between stylistics and speech act theory is proposed. This connection, hinted at by Strawson (1964), is the notion of intensity, or its operational counterpart, namely (reinforcing or mitigating) modulation of illocutionary force. The crucial point is that our understanding of intensity phenomena is part and parcel of our understanding of speech acts. Finally, some conceptual distinctions (e.g. mitigation as a process vs. mitigation as a result, illocutionary vs. perlocutionary mitigation, etc.) are made with a view to shifting from a narrow to a broad concept of mitigation.
Chapter 3 Pragmatics of mitigation: Bushes, hedges and shields has the major goal of investigating the ways in which mitigation increases or reduces the speaker’s distance from both the utterance and her/his interlocutors. The chapter draws on the discussion of actual examples of mitigating strategies in spoken Italian to show that mitigation works in a multilevel, multidimensional way. In order to start building a typology of mitigating devices in spoken Italian, some of the examples to be discussed in Chapter 6 from a grammatical viewpoint, are discussed here from a functional viewpoint. Specifically, the three categories of mitigators, namely bushes, hedges and shields, are analyzed in their cognitive and emotive impact. ‘Quotational’ and ‘topical’ shields, which reveal the strategic mitigating potential of discourse texture, are presented. Finally, the correspondences between rhetorical, psychological, and pragmatic categories introduced throughout the book are summarized. These correspondences, however tentative, can be regarded as possible non-generic starting points for future research that aims at connecting fields that have for too long been unrelated. This chapter (and this book as a whole) is an attempt at rediscovering the unity of our knowledge about our words, ourselves, and our relationships with others that ancient rhetoric established as its main goal at its very outset.
Introduction
7
Chapter 4 Mitigation and emotive communication: Steps toward a psychostylistic approach investigates mitigation from the viewpoint of psychological research. It is a decisive step toward the construction of an integrated approach that takes into account emotive factors involved in mitigating processes. Key notions such as ‘involvement’ and ‘immediacy’, which lend themselves easily to bridging pragmatic and psychological research, are discussed. An important contribution to a better understanding of mitigation mechanisms is the notion of attunement as conceived by Stern (1985) in a developmental psychoanalytical framework. In everyday life, mitigation indexes the speaker’s attempt to tune in to her/his interlocutor. On the other hand, mitigation may increase distances, inasmuch as it aims at controlling the ongoing interaction and implicitly marks the speech act in which it occurs as potentially problematic. Hence mitigation runs the risk of being anti-empathic. Important evidence supporting this thesis is gathered from an independent field of research, namely research on schizophrenic speech. Conceptual categories elaborated in that field serve to describe and explain microparadoxes which punctuate verbal ‘normal’ exchanges. In particular, an insightful category is found in Haley’s (1959) and Sluzky et al.’s (1967) category of disqualification. The overall sense of this notion is the avoidance of responsibility in communication, and some types of mitigation perform precisely this task. The main point of the chapter is to show that psychological and linguistic insights in mitigation are heading toward this same conclusion.
Chapter 5 Doctor-patient dialogue: A case-study applies the views on mitigation set up in the previous chapters to the analysis of a whole doctor-patient dialogue. In particular, substantiating one of the tenets pointed out in Chapter 1, this chapter shows how mitigation, in the broad sense of stylistic downgrading choices, meets both instrumental and relational goals. The dialogue in question is a peculiar exchange in which the patient does not show the expected deference toward the expert and even seems to challenge his role. On his part, the doctor fails to attune to the patient’s style. A detailed, multi-layered analysis of the dialogue is provided, which zooms in on the text and comprises a global description of the macro-phases of the institutional encounter as well as a turn-by-turn reconstruction of the interlocutors’ interactional work. A recurrent pattern emerges: after a phase of potential conflict, the interlocutors reach a compromise. Sequences of interactional attunements or failures of attunement are identified. The interlocutors go through a difficult negotiation in order to avoid open conflict. The chapter aims at proving that, in describing, so to speak, in slow motion, the role of mitigation in this negotiation work, the sociolinguistic perspective must be integrated with the psycholinguistic perspective: style is the place where the interplay of social factors (power) and psychological factors (emotions) surfaces in discourse. To take into account this
8
Introduction
interplay is vital in order to reach an adequate, though inevitably tentative, reconstruction of the processes through which speakers (re)construct meanings and pursue their goals. In particular, the chapter stresses the role of emotive factors triggered by mitigation in the construction of meaning and in the mutual adjustment of relational distances.
Chapter 6 Grammar of mitigation in doctor-patient dialogue discusses excerpts taken from my corpus of transcribed doctor-patient conversations. From a descriptive standpoint, it offers an overview of the linguistic means (morphological, syntactic and prosodic) used in a standard variety of spoken Italian in a given institutional setting (therapeutic encounter) to obtain an attenuating modification of speech acts. These mitigators are clustered around two macro-types of speech acts: requests and statements. Mitigation is labeled ‘lenitive’ in the former case and ‘tempering’ in the latter. Lenitive (or deontic) mitigation accounts for the various cases in which the degree of imposition of the directive is weakened. Tempering (or epistemic) mitigation encompasses the various cases in which what is weakened is the commitment to the truth of the assertion. This overview leads to a theoretically relevant result. The analysis of formal devices of tempering mitigation in assertive-verdictive acts and of lenitive mitigation in exercitive-directive acts shows a structural analogy between these two types of mitigation. Further, the punctual reference to felicity conditions for both types of mitigation allows for the explanation of this analogy.
In a short conclusive chapter (Conclusions) the mitigation strategies in spoken Italian discussed in the book are listed in a final typology.
The book ends with two Appendices: the first Appendix (Appendix A) gives the transcript of the doctor-patient dialogue analyzed in Chapter 5 in the original Italian version and in its English translation. The numbering of lines in the English translation has been adapted so as to correspond as closely as possible to the Italian original. The second Appendix (Appendix B) lists the examples, both in the original Italian version and in English, on which the analysis carried out in Chapter 6 is based.
Introduction
TRANSCRIPTION CONVENTIONS . ? , ! -: ƑƑxx xxx XXX °xxx° h = +xxx* (…?) ((xx)) […] >xxx< <xxx> xxx
falling intonation (statements) rising intonation (questions) suspensive intonation exclamations pause up to 2 seconds pause between 2 and 5 seconds lengthened sound truncated word unclear word word pronounced in a louder voice word pronounced in a lower voice audible breath latching overlapping (+ indicates where overlapping starts and * where it ends) reasonable guess at an unclear word/segment comments by the transcriber omission faster pace slower pace emphasis
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS D P Hp T C PC SpV PsV WR Rt PsS TR
doctor patient head physician therapist client visit at a primary care physician’s visit at a specialist’s psychiatric visit ward round radiation therapy psychotherapy session transcript
9
10
Introduction
LIST OF METALINGUISTIC ABBREVIATIONS DIM
ĺ
FEM ĺ FIG IFID EMD FTA IMD NP PMD SING SUBJ
ĺ ĺ ĺ ĺ ĺ ĺ ĺ ĺ ĺ
diminutive suffix feminine suffix figurative meaning illocutionary force indicating device enunciative mitigating device face-threatening act illocutionary mitigating device noun phrase propositional mitigating device singular subjunctive
Introduction
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GLOSSARY Classes of illocutionary acts (from Austin, 1962) Verdictives ĺ are typyfied by the giving of a verdict…by a jury, arbitrator, or umpire. But they need not be final. They may be, for example, an estimate, reckoning, or appraisal. Exercitives ĺ the exercising of powers, rights, or influence. Examples are appointing, voting, ordering, urging, advising, warning, etc. Commissives ĺ are typified by promising or otherwise undertaking; they commit you to doing something. Behabitives ĺ are a very miscellaneous group, and have to do with attitudes and social behaviour. Expositives ĺ they make plain how our utterances fit into the course of an argument or conversation, how we are using words, or, in general, are expository. Examples are ‘I reply’, ‘I argue’, ‘I concede’, ‘I illustrate’, ‘I assume’, ‘I postulate’. (adapted from Austin, 1975 [1962]: 151-152)
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1 PRAGMATICS: SUBJECT AND SUBJECTIVITY But if it is true, as De Saussure claimed, that the linguistic system is similar to the rules of chess, it also holds true that we must take into account not only the play but the player.* Terracini, 1976: 102; my translation, C.C.
1.0. FOREWORD We realize that something exists only when it fades, disguises itself or disappears. We know that ‘the subject’ 1 – to borrow a label from folk psychology – is there only when, while addressing the other, s/he is tiptoeing, stepping back, or preparing a way for retreat. These movements of approximation, subtraction, deletion or masking leave a number of traces on the surface of a discourse. Such traces and their interactional consequences are precisely what this book is about. It can also be said that the present book deals with the different ways in which speakers are on their guard, blurring their utterances, toning them down, and making them somehow revocable. Since these adjustments are usually carried out by means of modulations in intensity resulting in stylistic oscillations between weakening and reinforcing choices, it is difficult to distinguish clearly between the modes of cognitive and relational non-commitment and those,
* The original sentence is the following: “Ma se, come disse il Saussure, il sistema linguistico è simile alle regole degli scacchi, resta che oltre al gioco si debba tener presente il giocatore” (Terracini, 1976: 102). I am well aware of the shortcomings of this term and the ubiquitous ambiguity between (at least) its everyday meaning of ‘subject-matter’, ‘topic’, and the specialized meanings that linguistics has assigned to it. Nevertheless, in this chapter devoted to subjectivity, I have adopted the term ‘subject’, which is also employed in the English translation of Benveniste’s famous article, La subjectivité dans le langage (Benveniste, 1966, English transl. 1971), to mean ‘the speaking subject’. Possible alternates such as ‘the speaker’, ‘the utterer’, etc. should in principle be discarded because they are reductive, hence unsuitable for an integrated approach. Throughout this book, I employ such phrases for the sake of simplicity, since clarity has to be preferred over consistency. I am grateful to Giulio Lepschy and Salvatore Attardo for having discussed this point with me.
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on the contrary, of commitment and involvement. 2 In any case, the basic idea behind this book is that all these stylistic movements, regardless of their direction, are an integral part of the dynamics of discourse and share the same goal: the speaker’s adaptation to the hearer and the communicative situation. The idea of adaptation is at the very core of mitigation, the latter being the concept I have decided to use in order to capture part of the dynamics of discourse. The fact that, by communicating, interlocutors continually adjust to each other and build up the sense of their linguistic actions and their agreement about them, is one of the few generally shared assumptions of linguistic and pragmatic theories. Different versions of this assumption can be found across the centuries in philosophical, sociological and linguistic reflections on language. However, this assumption is rooted above all in classical rhetoric, and in the even older Homeric and Pythagorean notion of polytropy, the ability to speak in many different styles that Homer attributes to Ulysses. Ulysses was polÚtropoj because he could find the most suitable way of addressing his interlocutors. 3 This versatility indicates wisdom, whereas choosing a single discourse type regardless of one’s different interlocutors and situations betokens ignorance. Moreover, the speaker’s ability to adapt her/his discourse to others, an art which seems to have been mastered by Pythagoras as well, is typical of good medicine, in that care of patients must be polÚtropoj and adjusted to their different needs and characteristics (cf. Rostagni, 1955: 6). Polytropy, as praised by Homer, corresponds to communicative versatility, which is the ability to adjust to the other and her/his codes. Such an ability is at the very core of what was known as rhetoric in the past and is now known as pragmatics. Polytropy depends on the assessment of circumstances. The criterion used to choose the communicative option most suitable to the circumstances (i.e. what to say and how to say it) is what classical rhetoric calls pršpon (Lat. decorum), i.e. what is appropriate. If we master this competence, we will be able to find the right thing (to say and to do) at the right moment, seizing what the Greeks called 2
Definitions of ‘involvement’ will be presented in 4.3. As is well-known, commitment is a key notion in speech act theory both in Austin’s and in Searle’s versions: it is the notion both authors employ in order to capture the concept of responsibility for a speech act which in the present study is assigned a fundamental role. Within a philosophical theoretical framework, the notion of discursive commitment is at the center of Brandom’s study (1994). A differential comparison between commitment (a cognitive, dichotomous category) and involvement (an emotive, scalar category) is advanced by Katriel and Dascal (1989) (cf. 4.3.). 3 Homer defines Ulysses as polÚtropoj, i.e. as the man who can speak in many ways. Such an epithet, however, has also the negative meaning of ‘sly’ and ‘deceitful’, which does not match Homer’s praising intent in describing his hero. So why does the poet call Ulysses polÚtropoj? The answer to this question lies in the fact that Ulysses is a wise man, in that he possesses the ability to adapt discourse to different situations. As highlighted by Rostagni (1955), this is the substance of a fragment by Antisthenes, who was one of Gorgias’ disciples, the latter being the founder of rhetoric in the Magna Graecia of the 4th century B.C. Antisthenes’ fragment is part of a collection of Homeric questions assembled by Porphyry in the 3rd century A.D.
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kairÒj. Following Pythagoras, who first theorized it (cf. Rostagni, 1955: 11), kairÒj is related to metapragmatic awareness, i.e. to knowledge of both language and the world and the ability to fit one to the other (cf. Caffi, 1994a; 3.1.).4 Discourse has to vary in order to adapt to changing circumstances, including the different speaker and listener stances, times, places, persons referred to or addressed, and so on. It is therefore necessary to know the different forms of discourse in order to act appropriately and choose the types of discourse that comply with the situation. The idea of adaptation is assigned a fundamental role in seminal works at the beginning of the twentieth century both in sociology and linguistics. If, in the field of sociology, Max Weber (1922) placed the concept of adjustment at the center of his definition of ‘soziale Beziehung’ (social relation), in the same years, in the field of linguistics, Charles Bally developed his stylistics of language around the central idea of ‘adaptation au milieu’ (adaptation to the situation). Speakers, says Bally (1970 [1909]: 297; cf. 2.2.1.), boost or weaken their discourse in order to reach their interactional goals. This adjustment to the situation, in its broader sense of the speaker’s adjustment to a given interactional context is, precisely the main function of mitigation. Adaptation, which is also one of the key concepts in systemic theories (cf. Bertalanffy, von, 1968; Le Moigne, 1977; Le Moigne, 1995 [1990]), is so crucial in pragmatic approaches that some authors (e.g. Verschueren, 1987) have even interpreted pragmatics in its different levels and units of analysis as a theory of adaptation. In the present chapter I will present my general view of an integrated pragmatic approach. I would like to make the following points. First (Sections 1.2.-1.5.), I wish to point to the need to bridge the gap between pragmatics and individual psychology around an articulated idea of subject: pragmatics must take into account the emotive dimension which is crucial in the discursive building of identity. Second (Sections 1.6.-1.9.), I wish to argue that the bridging of this gap, far from being a generic aspiration, can be approached by considering the linguistic micro-choices which previous research has often conceptualized as broad categories of speech markers. Third (Section 1.10.), I wish to advance some preliminary definition of ‘mitigation’ starting from the idea that it meets practical as well as relational needs.
1.1. TOWARDS A PSYCHOSTYLISTICS OF INTERACTION The conceptual framework that I intend to propose in this book is centered on the pragmatic and rhetorical aspects of the co-construction of sense in interaction. The framework I have in mind aims at integrating different approaches to the study of communication, in particular 4
Interestingly, the concept of kairÒj as related to the ‘here and now’ subjective experience, is used in a non-orthodox psychoanalytic approach by Stern et al. (1998) and Stern (2004).
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rhetorical and psychological approaches, which tend to remain too distant from each other. The general view of communication I subscribe to is that of a complex system where many parameters – be they discrete or scalar, central or peripheral – interact. I will use the term ‘parameter’ in its everyday sense of “a quantity whose value varies with the circumstances of its application” (Webster’s new world dictionary, 1988: 980). The basic reason for adopting this term and its systemic theoretical framework is summarized by one of the premises of system theory applied to human communication, namely the assumption that the parameters of an open system are more important than the system’s initial conditions (cf. Watzlawick et al., 1967: 127). The advantage of this perspective lies in the fact that it allows a dynamic approach to the interaction insofar as the focus is on the system’s functioning and contextual organization. The basic meaning I ascribe to the concept of mitigation – which I use as a synonym for attenuation – is the result of a weakening operation on one of the interactional parameters. As said in the Introduction, mitigation is one of the two directions of modulation, as opposed and complementary to ‘reinforcement’. 5 The concept of modulation has its analogue in the concept of intensity (cf. Bally, 1970 [1909]; Labov, 1984; 2.2.). However, while the latter is static and objectivizing, both ‘modulation’ and ‘mitigation’, as action nouns, highlight the intentional process performed by an agent aiming at the attainment of specific goals. Modulation makes it possible to shift the focus from the immanent (a parte obiecti) idea of the stylistic gradient of texts or discourses to the idea (a parte subiecti) of a speaking subject making plans and employing strategies to accomplish them. 6 The subject I have in mind is not a monolithic, compact, entity, i.e. the psycho-physical subject which most pragmatic theories are content with. Though fragmented, s/he is an allround figure, as opposed to disembodied subjects of semiotic formalism and to the numerous ‘men without qualities’ that inhabit linguistics. Far from nurturing the illusion of a ‘natural’ nucleus of communication that precedes theorization, I subscribe to the idea of subject that we have all internalized as speakers and competent members of a given social group. This subject 5
The term ‘modulation’ is used by Halliday (1976: 200) to refer to “a kind of quasi-modality” and by Lyons (1977: 65) to refer to “the superimposing upon the utterance of a particular attitudinal coloring, indicative of the speaker’s involvement in what he is saying and his desire to impress and convince the hearer”. The term is also used in Georges Mounin’s works with reference to a technical procedure of translation. The term ‘modulation’ is also used to refer to different communicative styles in the field of psychoanalysis (cf. Meltzer, 1981) and developmental psychology. In the field of cognitive psychology, the phrase ‘emotional modulation’ is employed by Hugdahl and Stormark (2003) with reference to emotional influences on selective attention. Newman and Lorenz (2003) use the term ‘response modulation’ in dealing with the interrelations between deficient response modulation and psychopathology. My use of the term draws on physics, where modulus means ‘intensity’, which is a scalar parameter defining a measurable quantity (e.g. a force). 6 I have borrowed the a parte obiecti vs. a parte subiecti distinction from Conte (1999 [1988]), who introduced it to characterize two different notions of (textual) coherence.
Pragmatics: subject and subjectivity
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is endowed not only with linguistic competence – extended as it may be to include sociopragmatic aspects – but also with what can be called an ‘emotive competence’. One of my main purposes in trying to sketch an integrated theoretical framework is to give full weight to the emotive investment and impact of a given utterance, especially a mitigated one, in a given context. In other words, within a general framework that takes into account heterogeneous dimensions, it must be possible not only to ask the question of what the utterance act means from a (macro-)social point of view (as the product of an agent that plays different roles) and a micro-social point of view (as the product of an actor assuming various face-saving and facepromoting strategies), but also to take into consideration how much the utterance act matters to the speaker and to what extent s/he is involved in it. In fact, the listener also weighs the utterance act as the product of a psychologically complex subject, whose emotive involvement or non-involvement with her/his utterance and partner in communication is part and parcel of the here and now of her/his discourse. The available theories of politeness (for a discussion, cf., among others, Held, 1992; Eelen, 2001; Watts, 2003; Fraser, 2005) do not fully recognize that the social dimension of politeness is molded into an individual form, for instance into stylistic choices. This simple fact has been kept too much in the background, leading to the conclusion that pragmatics must take individual psychology into consideration. I consider two approaches particularly relevant to my idea of subject: the study of discourse (utterance, utterance act) in European pragmatic linguistics of the early eighties and the conversational approach in its beginnings. The reasons for their relevance lie in the fact that both these frameworks deconstruct, although in different ways, the monolithic idea of the subject into a fragmented and multifaceted notion. As to the former theory, the category of the utterance act makes it possible to investigate the notion of subjectivity as inherent to and interwoven into every type of discourse, even the apparently most neutral kind of speech. As Ducrot (1980: 40) put it, every time we speak, we are speaking about our discourse (“dès que l’on parle, on parle de sa parole”), i.e. the utterance act is a constitutive element of the utterance meaning. The existence of a unit of analysis called ‘utterance act’ does not necessarily imply the inclusion of a psychological dimension in pragmatics, but it is an important preliminary step toward such an inclusion, in that it opens up the possibility of using specific conceptual categories to better understand the links between language and subjects. An approach of this kind, however, remains essentially linguistic and monological, in which the speaker is still disembodied – a shadow projected onto her/his utterance by means of signs of reflexivity and polyphony that are often intangible. On the other hand, the conversational approach, which dismantles the flows of messages to capture recurring patterns, considers the subject a mask or face, i.e. “the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact” (Goffman, 1967: 6). What is crucial for my line of reasoning is that not only does the person defend her/his face, but s/he also “becomes fond of it and feels an emotional attachment
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to it” (ibid.: 7). As Goffman claims: what the person protects and defends and invests his feelings in is an idea about himself, and ideas are vulnerable not to facts and things but to communications. Communications belong to a less punitive scheme than do facts, for communications can be by-passed, withdrawn from, disbelieved, conveniently misunderstood, and tactfully conveyed. (Goffman, 1967: 43)
As a consequence, communication must be approached very cautiously. Caution is brought about precisely by mitigation, with its inventory of adjustments, circumlocutions, evasions, seductions, sidestepping, disguising, etc. To use a Greek calque, mitigation is a form of eupraxia, which may entail the risk of dispraxia. In other words, the speaker who mitigates tries, in doing so, to foster the attainment of her/his goals but at the same time may run the risk of undoing what s/he is doing. This is the ‘other edge of the sword’ that will be specifically discussed in Chapter 4. In an integrated pragmatic approach that takes both linguistic and sociologic aspects into account, the speaker must be able to take on an identity – no matter how ephemeral – which s/he continuously negotiates with her/his partner in the interaction. In other words, in this approach, the psychological, emotive dimension of speech in context plays a crucial role. This psychological dimension must be regarded not as a datum, a substance, or a presupposed reality, but as a dialogic construction, a zigzag path that is uneven for most of the time, a process undergoing constant revision. The attention that one needs to pay to the surface of discourse, in its stylistic ripples and modulations, makes it possible to deal with the issue of identity from a partial, and precisely for this reason viable, perspective. 7 In pragmatics, identity can only be seen as a co-identity, i.e. an interactive construction process. The construction of one’s identity, no matter how partial and temporary (e.g. a given professional role), requires a contrastive focus on the constraints set by a given context with respect to an unlimited range of expectations about speakers’ behavior and their stylistic choices. In the present work, I will analyze excerpts of real interactions from a pragmatic-linguistic point of view. In so doing, I will address the question of how the interactional system in its various parameters works, making hypotheses as to what relational effects result from the different values assigned to such parameters. This type of analysis will confirm the salience of the emotive dimension within the system. One of the points I would like to make is precisely that emotion plays a crucial role in the system, in that it serves the adjustment of emotive distances (cf. Caffi, 2000). Further, its importance is usually realized ‘when something goes wrong’, i.e. 7
Within the interpersonal function, Fairclough (1992) distinguishes between relational and identity functions. According to the author, the latter, which has often been ignored by linguists, must not be overlooked or subsumed under the expressive function. In fact, the construction of identity through discourse is a function of language in its own right.
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in the interactions where this emotive ‘thermostat’ is defective. In this respect, a comparison with the distant field of psychoanalytical research in its later developments, when it pays more and more attention to the interactional dimension, is enlightening. According to a generally accepted hypothesis in psychoanalytical theories, the starting point of one’s relational story is the mother-child dyad: the child’s trauma is caused by the absence of attuned responses at an emotive level. In other words, the child’s trauma originates from the lack of an “affectintegrating, containing, and modulating intersubjective context” (Stolorow and Atwood, 1992: 54). 8 Should further studies in such fields as developmental and cognitive psychology prove this hypothesis, then the importance of an adequate calibration of emotive components and of the mutual attunement for the functioning of an interactional system would be confirmed. In the last few years, psychoanalysis has taken an interpersonal turn (cf. Mitchell, 1988). Similarly, but in the opposite direction, this book is meant to be a contribution to ‘an intrapersonal turn’ in pragmatics. Let me explain this point in greater detail. So far, pragmatics as a whole as well as in its different branches, has focused on the speaking subject and the world, dealing with the relation between the two in both directions, i.e. ‘ego vs. the world’ and ‘the world vs. ego’. Pragmatic studies have considered, on the one hand, how words can change the external world, and on the other hand, how the external world affects words. This is what Searle (1975) called ‘direction of fit’ (of words to the world and, vice versa, of the world to words), which has become one of the basic criteria used to classify speech acts. The subject has been mainly seen in her/his social dimension. It is not by chance that one of the key concepts of modern pragmatics is the transparent theatrical metaphor of ‘face’ and ‘persona’ in its original meaning of ‘mask’. Against this background, the two elements ‘subject’ and ‘world’ have been basically thought of as static and monolithic, whereas in reality it would seem more profitable to think of them as the result of mutual and often conflicting interrelations in which two basically nebulous concepts aggregate around a form no matter how temporary this might be. Secondly, Goffman’s metaphor of everyday life as the staging of a play – a metaphor dating back to baroque writers, Shakespeare and even earlier to the medieval and classical traditions – would seem to have been interpreted too literally. Indeed, the psychological aspects of the interaction have so far been either neglected or underestimated (cf. Caffi, 1992; Caffi and Janney, 1994b; 8
According to Stolorow and Atwood (1992: 31-32), “The shift from drives to affectivity as forming the basis for the dynamic unconscious is not merely a change in terminology [...] the regulation of affective experience is a property of the child-caregiver system of reciprocal mutual influence. [...] The child’s affective experience, for example, becomes increasingly differentiated and cognitively elaborated through the attuned responsiveness of caregivers to his emotional states and needs. [...] Such attunement must, of course, be communicated in a form that coincides with the child’s unfolding psychological capacities. It follows from this conception of consciousness becoming articulated within an intersubjective system that two closely interrelated forms of unconsciousness may develop from situations in which the requisite validating responsiveness is absent”.
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Caffi, 1999b; Caffi, 2000). As a result, the speaking subject of pragmatics has been reduced to a face, a ‘man without qualities’, to quote Musil’s title, that has the sole function of fulfilling a role, like Winnicott’s (1965) ‘false self’, who is just what others want her/him to be, i.e. a complaisant response to others’ expectations rather than a creative and original initiative. In short, face can be defined as ‘what society expects us to conform to’. I believe that modern pragmatics, which has gone beyond the stage where the anthropological, historical, and psychological subject had to be replaced by a formal structure, could adopt a less reductionistic attitude and rediscover the subject behind the qualities, the person behind the mask. In other words, it is high time that pragmatics raised the issue of the construction of identity in discourse, without thereby suffering a loss of disciplinary autonomy and being absorbed by psychology. Clearly, from a pragmatic perspective, identity has to be ratified by the interlocutor, and is, therefore, a co-identity that is constructed and negotiated within the interaction. Goffman (1959) himself distinguishes forms of behavior aimed at reaching certain practical goals from the supplementary, stylistic qualifications of such forms of behavior, which are used by the actors to represent the persona they want to be seen as. 9 Many anthropological and sociolinguistic studies on identity (e.g. Gumperz, 1982; Erickson and Shultz, 1982; Duranti, 1997), as well as philosophical works (e.g. Perry, 1975) and the social psychology of self-presentation (e.g. Tedeschi, 1981), are all important contributions in this sense. I suggest that the conceptual and theoretical space of pragmatic investigation should be expanded to describe with specific analytical tools the communicative dynamics that point in another direction, i.e. ego vs. internal world. This would acknowledge the importance of the intra-subjective, as opposed to the inter-subjective, dimension of communication, which can be inferred from surface cues – be they prominent or slight, predictable or unexpected – appearing in a given (co-)context. In other words, pragmatics has to extend its scope to include the psychological-emotive dimension. The aim should not be to venture into some kind of individual psychology, but to take into account, within a comprehensive study of communicative competence, what has been called “emotive capacity” (cf. Caffi and Janney, 1994b). This concerns the modes we use to construct, confirm, change and reinforce ourselves and our various ‘selves’ by means of discourse and communication. The social roles that we 9
This difference is the basis for Brown and Levinson’s (1987 [1978]: 100) distinction between rationality and face, which are considered two opposing interactional needs. Bange (1992: 68) suggests that a distinction should be made between two fundamental aspects of interactions, namely the rational, targeted, instrumental aspect, which concerns the use of means which are suitable to reach a goal, and the relational aspect, which includes a ceremonial or ritual component. According to Rom Harré (1985: 186), Goffman’s model lacks the basic notion of moral order against which the performance takes place. Self-presentation means showing oneself as compliant with a given image of value. In other words, “social personas are not given, they are constructed. And among the methods by which the construction is achieved is the choice of language. We present and define ourselves in everyday situations, using common rhetorical devices”.
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temporarily activate are affected by and intertwined with our different selves, subjective stances, feelings and emotions. The study of this still nebulous field of interrelation between communication and emotion requires an investigation into the links between psychological, sociological and linguistic interdependent variables within the system. So far, these variables have been mainly dealt with separately, without a systematic reference to their mutual connection, disjunction, neutralization or co-variance. In the next few chapters, I will try to map out some paths of what I would like to call the ‘psychostylistics’ of interaction. In so doing, I will use the rhetoric-pragmatic umbrella category of mitigation. Such a holistic and systemic approach must also encompass the affective components of the interactional system, in order to tackle the underestimated and almost totally suppressed dimension of ‘personal meaning’, or ‘meaning for the self’, which is always present in our communication with others and is foregrounded in therapeutic interactions. From a pragmatic perspective, this dimension may well be seen as an issue of emotive distances, with respect to both the content of communication and the interlocutor. These distances can be inferred from the analysis of enacted communicative choices. Without losing sight of the empirical need to anchor to the surface of texts, it is necessary here to retrace the less studied and conventionalized stages of the inferential process underlying the communicative exchange. This operation is indispensable, in that the management of psychological distances is inherent in communicative competence during both the encoding and the decoding of messages (cf. Frijda, 1982: 112). Moving away from the analysis of various types of mitigation, I will illustrate a multilevel, multi-dimensional, inferential process, where grammatical and semantic phenomena shade into pragmatic modalities, which, in turn, shade into psychological effects (cf. Givón, 1989). “Depth must be hidden. Where? On the surface”. This is what the Italian writer Italo Calvino (1988: 74; my translation, C.C.) stated quoting Hofmannsthal. The path I will try to outline, by retracing and making explicit what we continuously do as skilled interpreters when we communicate, starts precisely from the surface, i.e. from stylistic micro-choices, which represent stylistically and emotively relevant variations.
1.2. A ‘LOADED’ DISCIPLINE 10 If linguistics, as has been argued, is based on the choice of analytical radicalism, pragmatics is marked by an even more radical option. This is the impossible challenge of grasping the meaning of the utterance act, which involves a message addressed by a speaker to a hearer in a 10
Pragmatics: the loaded discipline was the title of the 3rd Rasmus Rask International Conference held in Odense, Denmark, on November 4-5 1996, the proceedings of which appeared as a special issue of the “Journal of Pragmatics”, Vol. 31, 1999.
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complex, unique context. This challenge is more or less present in the great variety of studies known as ‘pragmatics’. In fact, some ‘pragmatic’ approaches simply expand semantic investigations to include contextual variables. Here pragmatics is essentially a method. On the other hand, other approaches consider pragmatics to be a constitutionally multiple discipline that gives voice to the epistemological concerns of other fields of study, such as socio-linguistics, psycholinguistics, cognitive sciences, rhetoric, etc. The challenge for pragmatics is to capture “the point where language and the world meet” – if indeed they are ever separated – in the linguistic situation (Weinrich, 1966: 17, my translation, C.C.). In other words, pragmatics tries to capture discourse in its development, the unfolding linguistic action while it modifies (or attempts to modify) participant roles and contexts, whether they are assigned a merely discursive status or whether they are regarded as having an extralinguistic status. Since the object of study of pragmatics is communicative action and language in movement, the theoretical model to be constructed has to take into account dynamic, although to some extent idealized, objects. This does not entail the predominance of parole over langue – a dichotomy already challenged by Bally in his work on stylistics – but implies the search for typical contextualized patterns (like Wittgenstein’s ‘linguistic game within a form of life’, Searle’s ‘constitutive rule’, or Goffman’s ‘encounter’) from a cognitive-interactional, rather than normative, perspective. The best definition of the object of the study of pragmatics was given by Austin (1962: 52) and reads as follows: “the total situation in which the utterance is issued, the total speech-act”. The complex nature of this object requires pragmatics to be interdisciplinary. Interdisciplinarity – which also encompasses past disciplines, like rhetoric – is what makes pragmatics rich and ‘loaded’. Indeed, it is extremely hard to establish a connection with other disciplines, as this presupposes previous knowledge of them and the careful identification of possible relevant overlapping areas, before integrated insights can be produced. However, I believe that the link between pragmatics and other research fields does not simply respond to a generic theoretical vocation for multidisciplinarity. Rather, it is a clear theoretical and practical requirement. Pragmatics can and must play the role of the ecology of communication (Caffi, 1994a), by providing the necessary tools for enhancing the understanding of human communication in different contexts. For instance, while working with doctors and psychotherapists, I would provide them with a pragmatic reading of surface communicative dynamics, trying to integrate my perspective with theirs. To this extent there are external factors that make pragmatics a ‘loaded’ discipline. However, there are also internal, structural and methodological factors that make the task of pragmatics even more onerous. First of all, there is the general need to control theoretical instruments within authentic communicative contexts, or ‘activity types’, to use Levinson’s (1992) phrase. These specific contexts determine a number of constraints on interactional expectations, and require a continuous adjustment of the relevance and hierarchy of principles, maxims and inferences
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applying to ‘normal’ communication. Secondly, there is the need to motivate rules and provide explanations. For instance, why do mitigating devices mitigate (cf. Levinson, 1983: 274; R. Lakoff, 1980)? What social and psychological mechanisms are at work? Clearly, the answer cannot be only linguistic, but it must be integrated within a broader perspective and a systemic framework. Finally, the answer to the question why? is not enough. It is also necessary to explain how. For this reason, pragmatics cannot elude a fine-grained linguistic analysis. The detailed analysis of linguistic micro-phenomena, from both a structural and a stylistic point of view, is a requisite for the clarification of the link between linguistic choices and their potential effects on interaction, be they social or psychological. The discourse analyst plays the part of the interpreter, who is entitled by textual cues to make inferences and identify, within the latter, significant patterns of regularities. A common reader of pragmatics may think that language is essentially a response to practical needs, its major function being instrumental. In fact, we have learned from psychology that language also meets intertwined identity and relational needs. Mitigation is precisely what links these various interactional needs, and requires therefore an integrated socio- and psycholinguistic treatment. To sum up, the above-mentioned connections and ‘loads’ are necessary for pragmatics to deal with an extremely complex object, namely the ongoing process of human communication. It is vital not to lose sight of this complexity if one is to avoid hypostasis or mistaking a useful theoretical simplification for an ontological property of the object. Studies on complexity and the theory of chaos, which have flourished in the past ten years and have imposed themselves as the latest version of the 1970s system theory, move from the following basic assumption, which is also my starting point: in the study of complex phenomena, sacrificing the complexity of the object of analysis is tantamount to giving up the object itself. Against this background, mitigation can be seen as a form of optimization of the functioning of the system, insofar as it contributes to the adjustment of the latter to ever-changing contexts. Now, the first question to be raised in a pragmatic approach is to define who and what is ‘the subject’. Who is speaking in pragmatics? I suggest that we consider pragmatics as the theory of the discursive construction of subjectivity – rather, of situated subjects – no matter how fragmented and temporary this may be. Such a theory would make possible a semiotic treatment of the complexity of the self. I am fully aware of the utopian nature of this project, as well as of the impossibility of achieving it in this work. Nevertheless, I believe that pragmatic theories devoid of such a tension are poor: close as they are, by their very nature, to common sense, yet they do not preserve its holistic character and are trapped in the paradox of being at one and the same time the quintessence of everyday theorization and its regimentation. The present work intends to reflect common sense by means of ‘folk’ categories (cf. Cranach, von, et al., 1980), while avoiding both premature generalizations and reifying categorizations, and trying to clarify how some recurrent mechanisms of communicative action work in specific contexts.
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1.3. THE SUBJECTIVITY OF LANGUAGE In this section, I will mention three highly authoritative and famous contributions to the study of mitigation, which are fundamental to the formulation of the categories that I will introduce in Chapter 2. 1.3.1. The instance d’énonciation (Benveniste, 1966) Emile Benveniste’s work is a milestone in modern reflections on language and subjectivity. Let me quote one of his most famous tenets: It is in and through language that man constitutes himself as a subject, because language alone establishes the concept of ‘ego’ in reality, in its reality which is that of the being. The ‘subjectivity we are discussing here is the capacity of the speaker to posit himself as ‘subject’. (Benveniste, 1971 [1966]: 224; original emphasis)
11
Statements of this kind appear to be icastic and exhaustive. In fact, Benveniste’s subjectivity is a precondition for subjectivity; it is a formal scheme that allows for the conversion of langue into discours. Specifically, if one takes subjectivity as referring literally to a subject ‘embodied’ in a communicative here-and-now, then we may well say that Benveniste’s subjectivity is a condition of subjectivity brought about by means of its grammatical marks. According to Benveniste, the speaking subject is nothing more than a formal apparatus that makes énonciation possible as the origin of all linguistic products: This formal apparatus makes it possible for the subject to manifest her/himself as such by taking on the mutually implying and reversible roles of ego and tu. Subjectivity in Benveniste’s theorization is in this sense the preliminary appropriation of langue on the part of a single speaker. It is the setting up of indexical categories in grammatical forms (paradigmatically, personal pronouns) that enables an ‘I’ to say ‘I’. In other words, it is the presence of the ‘communication’ system (or ‘discours’, to use Benveniste’s term) in the ‘language’ system. What Benveniste points out is the conversion from one system to the other, i.e. not the realization of a system, but its precondition. His subject remains in potentia; it is the formal frame of the utterance act, a mere silhouette which, however, still lacks the vital drive that can only be found in a contextualized choice by someone addressing someone else and planning to achieve some goals.
11
The original passage is the following: “C’est dans et par le langage que l’homme se constitue comme sujet; parce que le langage seul fonde en réalité, dans sa réalité qui est celle de l’être, le concept d’«ego»”. (Benveniste, 1966: 259, original emphasis).
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1.3.2. The deictic origin (Bühler, 1934) The other contribution to the study of subjectivity in language which it is important to mention here comes from Bühler. His notion of ‘deictic origin’ (cf. Bühler, 1934), which is composed of the triad ‘I-here-now’ at the basis of the utterance act, makes it possible to conceptualize the egocentric orientation of a communicative act within a semiotic theory. The deictic origin is at the center of a system of shared spatio-temporal coordinates that defines an indexical field (Zeigfeld), where references to persons and temporal or spatial deictic cues are used to guide (Steuerung) the hearer towards a correct interpretation of messages. The prototypical case of deixis is what Bühler calls deixis ad oculos, in which the perceptive space shared by speaker and hearer is real. This shared indexical field, however, can also be anamnestic (cf. Conte, 1999), in which case deixis is phantasmatic (am Phantasma, in Bühler’s terms). Such forms of deixis can be explained in terms of the speaker guiding the hearer towards joining her/him in an imaginary space through an act of conceptual transposition (Versetzung). Bühler’s work is very difficult and sometimes cryptic, and it certainly requires and merits further investigation. On the whole, a systematic study of deixis from different perspectives is still in its infancy. 12 Many points still have to be clarified. For instance, what exactly is the deictic origin of an utterance? Is it the zero-point of the spatio-temporal coordinates referred to in the utterance act? Is it the utterance act as a whole, or something different? When all is said and done, what does the concept of deictic origin consist in? According to Caffi and Janney (1994b), there is, in addition to Bühler’s classic phantasmatic deixis, a second kind of phantasmatic transposition to what we might call ‘inner space’, where the speaker invites the hearer to share her/his inner affective world. This world thus becomes a possible deictic origo, the zero-point of the reference act. Hence, the interlocutor and other objects of emotive communication are represented as being nearer to or farther from the speaker’s inner space. In other words, the ‘inner world’ is not just a selected topic in discourse, as in the case of self-disclosures (cf. Holtgraves, 1990 and other studies in social psychology) or any other instance of explicit reference to one’s own attitudes and feelings. The inner world can also be thought of as a formal part of discourse, particularly as the deictic framework 12
William F. Hanks (1992) highlights the lack of agreement on the meaning of deictic origin of utterances. Ostensive communication and indexical aspects of language in general are to a large extent still unknown. So far relatively little is known also about deixis linked to the reference act. We only know that what counts is the cognitive-perceptive, spatio-temporal access that the participants in the interaction have to the objects referred to in the actual discourse (ibid.: 60). Some interesting remarks on the role of deictics with respect to the notion of identity and self-identification can be found in Habermas (1987). Perry (1975) offers a review of the issue of identity in philosophical theories from Locke to Grice, whereas Perry (1996) provides an introduction to the philosophical issue of indexicality. Foundational contributions to the study of deixis can be found in Jarvella and Klein (1982).
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serving as a starting point for any reference act to the objects of a given communicative situation. One of the basic ideas of emotive communication, as shown by a number of studies in the psychology of emotions (e.g. Frijda, 1986), is the tendency to approach or withdraw from attitudinal objects. The ability to transmit and perceive these movements of approach and withdrawal is part and parcel of the above-mentioned emotive capacity. From a linguistic standpoint, establishing distances seems to be logically and chronologically prior to all other emotive activities, like for example evaluation and commitment. In this respect, proximity devices (cf. Caffi and Janney, 1994b; Chapter 4) are fundamental features of emotive communication: they make it possible to shift the deictic origin of utterances from points in the outer perceptual space to points in the inner subjective space, allowing us to express subtle variations of inner distance with respect to our topics, our partners, and our own acts of communication. In the next chapters, when analyzing communication in therapeutic settings, I will investigate how empathic sharing can be fostered or hindered by means of stylistically modulated choices. 1.3.3. The egocentric child (Piaget 1989 [1926]) Piaget’s seminal work on child egocentrism highlights a crucial developmental aspect, namely the shift from an almighty ‘I-here-now’ to a gradual acquisition of a ‘decentralizing’ ability. This is the capacity to adopt perspectives and strategies of categorization that are not directly linked to the time and space of the ongoing experience. In short, it is the ability to get over the egocentric ‘here and now’ so as to temporarily adopt the other’s point of view. Piaget (1989 [1926]) investigates the ontogenetic basis of deixis using the notions of egocentrism and decentralization and moving from the very first stage in the development of the child, when s/he is confined within a constraining ‘here and now’. As noted by Rommetveit (1974), the egocentric child’s communication seems to be based on the assumption that the world is unequivocal and monistic. The child’s immediate ‘here and now’ is the center of any world s/he might share with the others. For instance, s/he may refer to an object that is at the center of her/his field of observation as something that is accessible even to those who cannot, in fact, see it. Piaget’s egocentrism is a complex notion that includes logical and cognitive elements. These belong to a ‘syncretistic’ line of reasoning, which is far removed from abstractions and inadequate in explaining assertions or relational and social aspects. According to Piaget (ibid.: 261), the egocentrism surfacing in the child’s verbal production, although it does not exactly reflect her/his intellectual egocentrism, can be used to examine deeper stances, be they social or epistemic. The most important point for my line of reasoning here is that Piaget points out as a crucial feature of the egocentric stage the incapability of adopting the
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others’ perspective. 13 On the other hand, decentralization, as conceived by Piaget, is a very general and composite process, whereby a subject learns how to assume a variety of interconnected perspectives and strategies of categorization with respect to objects, events and states of things that are more and more complex and differentiated (cf. Rommetveit, 1974: 42). This ability to temporarily adopt the other’s point of view could be seen as the foundation of subjectivity in language. There is however another, more important, condition, which makes decentralization possible. As noted by Rommetveit, the main characteristic of schizophrenic communication, as described by Bateson et al. (1956), is not the incapacity for decentralization on the part of the schizophrenic subject. Rather, it is her/his lack of confidence in some kind of social acknowledgement of the reality that s/he experiences daily. The schizophrenic’s withdrawal from ‘ordinary’ life is, in Bateson’s ontogenetic double-bind perspective, a withdrawal from any kind of temporarily shared social reality (cf. Rommetveit, 1974: 53; my paraphrase, C.C.). Schizophrenic subjects ultimately lack the essential requirement of communication and subjectivity, i.e. the confidence in inter-subjectivity. Inter-subjectivity is first and foremost based on reciprocity in discourse roles, the possibility of exchanging roles and sharing something, even if temporarily, with others in terms of perceptions, an imagined world, or experience. What is undermined in schizophrenic communication is not just the ability to adjust to the other, but the very idea that a mutual adjustment is possible. These points will be further discussed in Chapter 4, when dealing with the connections between mitigation and some of the mechanisms of pathologic communication. The superordinate, multi-functional concept of mitigation can be used precisely to describe the various modes of mutual adjustment. Mitigation can be assigned the first broad meaning of attenuation of child egocentrism and can therefore be seen as the transition from subjectivity to inter-subjectivity, a compromise between the needs of the ego and the needs of the tu. Furthermore, it witnesses the dialogic willingness and the awareness that the direction of any act of communication is egocentric but in an alternate fashion. In this sense, mitigation is ubiquitous in communication, in that it consists in the provisional and reversible taking on of the role of subject, the giving up of a totally egocentric perspective, and the readiness to accept the other’s viewpoint – ultimately a prerequisite for interaction. Consistent with this line of reasoning, the dialogic exchange can be interpreted as the reduction of disagreement (cf. Coupland et al., 1991), rather than the construction of agreement. If we were to imagine the perfect antithesis to Piaget’s egocentric child, we could think of a subject that tries hard to 13
Piaget states: “Fundamentally, ego-centrism is thus neither a conscious phenomenon (ego-centrism, when self-conscious, is no longer ego-centrism), nor a phenomenon of social behavior (behavior is an indirect manifestation of ego-centrism but does not constitute it) but a kind of systematic and unconscious illusion, an illusion of perspective” (Piaget, 1989 [1926]: 268). In this respect, Kohut (1971) made some insightful remarks on so-called ‘mirror’ analyses by narcissistic subjects, who are unable to truly interact with others.
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identify with her/his interlocutors, by sharing their system of values and beliefs, while at the same time assuming their emotive stances, in a twofold, cognitive and empathic, effort. A subject like this is not a conceptual chimera, and was first described and designed in great detail by Carl Rogers in his ‘client-centered therapy’ (Rogers, 1951; Rogers and Kinget, 19651966. For a discussion cf. Caffi, 2001; 2002).
1.4. A COMPLEX SUBJECTIVITY At this point we can ask: What is the subject from a pragmatic and semiotic point of view? Although pragmatics has studied many aspects of subjectivity in language, it still lacks a comprehensive theoretical framework that encompasses the systematic relations between the predicates and modal attributes of the speaking subject (cf. Sbisà, 1989). Moreover, pragmatics needs to provide concepts that will enable us to account for these various aspects of subjectivity not only in theoretical but also in operational terms. In this section I will outline some steps that might well constitute the basis of an approach whereby the subject is not halved but ‘rounded’, and thus viewed as an embodied subject, to employ a phrase analogous to Clark’s (1997) ‘embodied mind’. I will therefore sum up in a provisional table some of the principal notions that belong – at least potentially – to related research areas that constitute a pragmatic perspective. It is possible to draw on these still relatively unexplored areas for ideas about the ways in which subjectivity pervades language in a constant tension between the psychological and the social dimensions, between intentions and conventions. Clearly, the various aspects of subjectivity are rooted in different theoretical fields. Some of these aspects can be encapsulated in predicates that are thought of as prototypical of the agent-protagonist of pragmatics. Each of these predicates corresponds to a key concept pertaining to some specific theory and these concepts as a whole outline the mise en discours of subjectivity. They all gather around themselves an area of disciplinary tensions. Table 1.1. below is intended to gather, approximately, some of the ideas of subjectivity that are at the center of certain major authors’ works. These ideas lend themselves to exploring still relatively under-researched areas concerning a non-monolithic notion or concept: a pragmatic approach to subjectivity would benefit from their mutual integration. This outline could provide some useful insights for an overall integrated conceptual framework regarding what the subject does – rather than what s/he is – i.e. her/his typical predicates. It is obvious that these do not fully represent the subject, but, at least, they make it possible to identify certain standard procedures with respect to the effects produced by her/his utterances. The multifaceted subject of integrated pragmatics is not “a substantial, more or less privatized entity
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that reveals and conceals, acts and reacts” (Brown and Rogers, 1991: 148); 14 rather, s/he is the result of an ongoing, sometimes uneven, process of construction. The self that is relevant to pragmatics is built up through a relationship with the other. The systematic integration of the various ideas of subject that I have laid out in Table 1.1. remains to be done. This is especially true of the connection between psychology on the one hand and analytical philosophy, logic, philosophy of language, and semiotics on the other. What is worth mentioning here is the equivalence between the indexicality and expressivity pointed out by Lyons (1977: 107) in the wake of Bühler, Jakobson and the Prague School. The two terms refer to the field of indices in Peirce’s sense, i.e. those signals that give information about their source. Lyons rejects the term ‘expressive’ in favor of ‘indexical’, since the former is overburdened in stylistics with other, often evaluative, meanings. Further, Lyons suggests that ‘expressive’ should be exclusively referred to those traits of the utterance whereby the speaker “establishes or reveals her/his individuality in a particularly original manner” (ibid.). In this sense – Lyons claims – expressivity would be part of creativity and fall within the scope of stylistics, rather than semantics. This solution, however, as noted by Lyons himself, implies relying on dichotomous trends in linguistics, which are as reassuring as they are unsatisfactory. In any case, Lyons’ remarks cannot but confirm and reinforce the link between a subjectivity enacted in a ‘here-and-now’ and the expressive choices that reveal it.
1.5. STYLISTIC MARKERS As mentioned in the previous section, Lyons considered the indexical and the expressive choices to be equivalent. On the whole, it must be noted that any clear-cut distinction between semantics and stylistics as far as expressivity is concerned is at the same time difficult and unfruitful, as witnessed by great authors’ works which, at the beginning of the twentieth century, laid the foundations for a psycho-stylistic approach. I am thinking here in particular of Bally and Spitzer. Bally’s (1970 [1909]) stylistics of language (langue) and Spitzer’s stylistics of the literary text together form a psycho-stylistic domain that is rich in insights and inspiring ideas that may well fit in with new categories and models of pragmatic analysis. The link, or even the equivalence, between stylistic aspects on the one hand and subjective and emotive aspects on the other is as old as the history of ‘style’ (for a general overview see Segre, 1988). 14
I am grateful to Sylvie Bruxelles for having pointed out to me (personal communication) that the label of integrated pragmatics (pragmatique intégrée) was introduced by Ducrot and Anscombre (1976) with reference to the integration of pragmatic factors within the grammatical description. In a philosophical framework, both the term and the concept were used by Parret (1982) with mainly programmatic purposes.
Table 1.1. Configurations of subjectivity
*
Analytical philosophy
Logics/philosophy of language
Semiotics
Psychology
Subject status
the one who acts (agent, actor)
the one who says ‘I’ by uttering ‘this utterance’
the one who interprets, infers and make others infer
Key ideas
action (Wittgenstein, Austin*, Searle)
indexicality (Bühler, Bar-Hillel, Reichenbach, Perry)
inferences (Peirce)
affect (basic dimensions: evaluation, potency, activity)
Connections with linguistics
discours (Benveniste)
shifters (Jakobson, Jespersen, Benveniste)
non-natural meaning, conversational implicatures (Grice)
affective meaning (Bally) emotive expressions (Marty)
Central dimension
responsibility
contextualization
rationality (of interlocutors) and interpretability of messages
intensity
Prototypical linguistic objects (locus classicus)
performative utterances, illocutionary acts, illocutionary force indicating devices
pronominal deictics, temporal and spatial deictics, address terms, allocutions
indirect speech acts, presuppositions, conventional implicatures, factive predicates, presuppositional triggers
lexicon (stylistics) suffixes (morphology) prosody, iconism in syntax, propositional attitudes, stylistic markers
Cognitive side
frames of action
access to a shared perceptive (or imagined) world
cognitive frames generating possible hierarchies of meaning (e.g. ‘background’ and ‘foreground’) for those meanings that are conveyed by means of presuppositions or by some types of implicit
appraisal (Lazarus)
Psychological side
intentionality
self-reference
intentionality
subject’s affective stances (Osgood)
Sociological side
conventionality
relativity of representations and social action
shared knowledge, frames of action that allow self- and other-protection from unnecessary risks
acknowledged social values (Weber, Habermas)
the one who is affectively oriented
In a review of ‘The Concept of a Person’ by Alfred Julius Ayer, Hilary Putnam (1975) challenges the widespread idea of a theoretical closeness between Wittgenstein and Austin. According to Putnam, the two philosophers and their ideas are deeply original and totally independent from each other. Further, their contributions to philosophy have not yet been given an ultimate interpretation and will therefore still be debated in the years to come.
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In this connection it is worth mentioning the famous definition of stylistics given by Bally: [Hence] stylistics studies the expressive facts of language from the point of view of their affective content, in other words it studies the expression of feelings through language and the influence of facts of language on feelings. (Bally, 1970 [1909]: 16; my translation, C.C.; italics in the original) 15
This statement, which radically changes the Saussurean perspective, opens up the path for the study of linguistic phenomena not only from a cognitive but also from an emotive viewpoint. Bally’s definition can be integrated with Spitzer’s (1928: 632) assumption in the field of literary stylistics, which reads as follows: in the field of expressivity, any emotion, i.e. any shift from our normal psychic state, is signaled by a shift from our normal linguistic use. And viceversa, Spitzer maintains that a shift from the usual language is symptomatic of an unusual psychic state. Although needing empirical evidence and contextualization in a non literary field, these are important starting points for a study of the intermingling between stylistics and subjectivity. As we will see in Chapter 4, in the field of individual and social psychology, these ideas are mirrored back by the identification of significant correlations between the cues in the actual messages and the intellectual, motivational and emotive characteristics of the utterers (cf. Osgood, 1960). Further, the basic notions presented above correspond in social psychology to the selection of stylistically marked choices as a starting point from which to make inferences about emotions, for instance those related to negative affect (cf. Wiener and Mehrabian, 1968). It must be stressed that stylistic choices are not limited to lexical choices. Rather, what I have in mind is a complex stylistic profile, a sort of relational temperature, which is close to Terracini’s (1976: 100) “diffuse expressive tonality” (my translation, C.C.), the latter being “the different degree of participation on the part of the subject to what s/he feels to be outside her/his self” (ibid.). According to Terracini, the expressive tonality has a correlate in the social tonality determining a given choice. Thus, “when we address our partners we are able to tune our discourse to their mentality and feelings”, since language “always means, at least potentially, coming closer to the other” (ibid.: 101). The intertwining of relational needs centered on the construction of identity and instrumental needs centered on the attainment of practical goals is precisely the kernel idea underlying my treatment of mitigation, which is ultimately an expression of linguistic freedom (cf. Terracini, 1963). The object of pragmatics is first and foremost ‘social tonality’, i.e. the inter-subjective aspect of communication. The main innovation brought about by pragmatics consists in seeing 15
The original statement is the following: “La stylistique étudie donc les faits d’expression du langage organisé au point de vue de leur contenu affectif, c’est-à-dire l’expression des faits de la sensibilité par le langage et l’action des faits de langage sur la sensibilité”.
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this inter-subjectivity not as a mere starting point or result, but as an inherent component of a bi-directional construction process. Recent studies (e.g. Selting, 1994) have put forward the idea that style is the result of interactional negotiated work between the interlocutors. The notion of style encompasses the notions of choice and norm. Stylistic choices can be assessed against a twofold norm, which is at the same time co-textual and contextual (cf. Caffi, 1990). On the one hand, it is “the speaker’s prior style [which functions] as an empirical tertium comparationis in relation to which successive styles are produced and interpreted” (Selting, 1994: 384). On the other hand, it is a norm related to a shared knowledge of language and the world, and it concerns the type of interaction and the ensuing expectations about the aims to be reached and the modes in which they are pursued. In Caffi (1990), I have used the term ‘modulation’ to refer to the formulation of a speech act along one of the two opposing stylistic directions of weakening and boosting (cf. Ravazzoli, 1981; Holmes, 1984). The use of the superordinate term ‘modulation’ highlights the fact that if we want to consider both form and function, content and style, in a given context, we have to look at the whole range of possible choices against which we can assess the chosen one in a constant, though not necessarily conscious, comparison (cf. Bally, 1970 [1909]: 22). It is worthwhile mentioning in passing that this fundamental idea in Bally’s stylistics has its counterparts in the cognitive psychology of perception and mind activity. In particular, it has been noted that all the classification and decoding activities underlying the ordering of reality into personal experience are part of a process of ‘contrast enhancement’ (cf., among others, Guidano, 1988: 33). It is precisely through a contrastive comparison that we organize experience and construct sense. The preferred expressive choice is contrasted with the other possible choices in the same cotext and context (cf. Caffi and Janney, 1994b). Therefore, mitigation and, as opposed to it, reinforcement, are neither additions to a hypothetical stable content nor, as has been claimed, simply different “ways to express one and the same thing” (Hickey, 1989: 8). Supporting such an idea implies considering the rhetorical-stylistic choice as an embellishment or a frill, as has often been done, thus discrediting the use of rhetoric. In fact, it is not possible in pragmatics to separate style and content, since any stylistic choice triggers different felicity conditions, pragmatic presuppositions and implicatures. Modulation is part and parcel of the production and reception of the act. It is what gives utterance its expressivity, i.e. the tonality that makes it real and capable of conveying a contextualized meaning and an emotive involvement. This contextualized meaning results from the co-occurrence of a number of indices that signal an illocutionary force (in terms of a contextual description), a sequential relevance (in terms of a cotextual description), a given intensity, and a stylistic contour. All these features together constitute the overall pragmatic character of a speech act (cf. Caffi, 1990; Bazzanella et al., 1991). Here we are dealing with a complex object of study, which requires an integrated semiotic approach that draws on insights from traditional rhetoric and stylistics, speech act theory, conversation
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analysis, and psycho-sociological studies on their interaction. This kind of analysis is compatible with Givón’s (1989) approach, which places speech acts on a continuum ranging from explicit, direct choices to ‘modulated’ choices. According to Givón, the three-or-four major syntactically-coded speech acts are just the more common, conventionalized (thus ‘grammaticalized’) prototype peaks, spanning a multi-dimensional mental space, one made of several non-discrete socio-psychological dimensions. (Givón, 1989: 152153; original emphasis)
Further, Givón (ibid.: 5) points out that pragmatic categories are not discrete; rather, they “may display shades and gradations”. These shades and gradations, which fall within the scope of stylistics and rhetoric, are precisely what I intend to analyze using the umbrella term and concept of mitigation. Stylistic choices raise the issue of the norm against which they can be assessed. This is the problem of the tertium comparationis, which has always been addressed but never solved in either stylistics or socio-linguistics. In recent pragmatics (cf. Selting, 1994; Caffi, 1992), this issue seems to have lost its relevance since another, strictly empirical concept of tertium comparationis imposed itself as a norm established and negotiated within interaction, namely the style adopted by the speakers in previous turns. 16 In this respect, it has been noted that in cooperative sequences, the style that has been previously used is preserved, whereas in antagonistic sequences, the abrupt shift from one style to another is employed to signal divergence from a coordinated dialogic development of the situation, which may therefore require a re-definition. This notion of an empirical, co-textual norm that is negotiated by the participants in the interaction has to be integrated with an external, contextual norm applying to a given activity type (the latter going beyond the limited microcosm of the enacted interaction). Clearly, conversational style is the result of the joint work of two parties. However, one of the reasons 16
My research on modulation (cf. Caffi, 1990) started with an analogy between language and music. In this respect, the elusive nature of a possible tertium comparationis is beautifully captured by the following passage from Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus: “Such a chord,” he said, “has of itself no tonality. Relationship is everything. And if you want to give it a more precise name, it is ambiguity.” To illustrate the meaning of the word, he played me chord-progressions belonging to no definite key; demonstrated for me how such a progression fluctuates between C major and G major, if one lives out the F, that in G major turns to F sharp; how it keeps the ear uncertain as to whether that progression is to be understood as belonging to C major or F major if one avoids the B, which in F major is flattened to B flat”. “You know what I find?” he asked “that music turns the equivocal into a system. Take this or that note. You can understand it so or respectively so. You can think of it as sharpened or flattened, and you can, if you are clever, take advantage of the double sense as much as you like.” (Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus. The life of the German composer Adrian Leverkühn. Translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter. Secker & Warburg: London, 1966, pp. 46-47).
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why this is possible is that the parties involved have absorbed linguistic and extra-linguistic norms of metapragmatic awareness (cf. Caffi, 1994a) within a complex system of expectations, and are therefore able to make and interpret unexpected choices. Divergence, which has its linguistic equivalent in markedness and its conversational counterpart in preference, is thus both syntagmatic or sequential (within a co-text) and paradigmatic or contextual (within a variety of linguistic usage in a communicative situation) (cf. Caffi, 1992). 17 Caffi and Janney (1994b) start from Sapir’s (1927: 893) idea of “nuclear patterns of behavior” to introduce that of “anticipatory schemata” (Caffi and Janney, 1994b: 351). This notion is useful in identifying the different frames determining whether a given choice can be considered unexpected and hence significant from both a cognitive and an emotive point of view. Caffi and Janney (ibid.) distinguish between linguistic, contextual, and co-textual anticipatory schemata against which a given communicative behavior can cause a contrast of some kind at a particular level of intensity. I will discuss this matter further in 4.4.2. Here it suffices to say that, from Aristotle’s ¢prosdÒkhton through Cicero’s praeter expectationem (beyond any expectations) to Bally’s (1965 [1925]: 69) above-mentioned definition of stylistics, the dialectic opposition between what is expected and what is unexpected is one of the key mechanisms at the basis of communication. In homeostatic terms, unexpected choices lead to a sort of interactive destabilization by automatically calling attention to themselves. The destabilization triggers a post-destabilization reorganization of interpretative assumptions, and leads to fresh interpretative hypotheses based on new assumptions (cf. Dijk, van and Kintsch, 1978; Janney, 1992). The unexpected, surprising choice is semantically, semiotically, and emotively significant, in that it depends on an interpreter and an intentionality. Interestingly enough, from the cybernetic point of view of information theory, and from the perspective of literary semiotics – as in Lotman’s (1976) – the informativeness of a message or artistic text rests upon its being either non inflated or breaking with a system of expectations, which, in a literary text, also implies a reorganization in a new, alternative system. Despite their different perspectives and purposes, both stylistics and social psychology move from the unexpected choice to make inferences about the speakers’ attitudes and emotions. Thus, in an integrated approach we have to start from the surface of the text, which is modulated by emotivity or, to quote Bally (1965 [1925]: 15; my translation, C.C.), is run 17
The productivity of the notion of markedness first advanced by the Prague School is proved among others by Levinson’s (2000: 1) work, which, moving from a reformulation of this concept, thoroughly explores “the presumptive meanings […] which are carried by the structure of utterances, given the structure of the language, and not by virtue of the particular contexts of utterance”. My main objection to Levinson’s approach is that markedness is by definition a relative concept, in that a linguistic structure is always marked in comparison to another that is expected in a given context. Dealing with language in use, rather than abstract constructions, implies being aware that implicit meanings are not carried only by Levinson’s ‘utterance-type meanings’, but also depend on the speaker aiming at specific goals and addressing a given hearer in a given activity type (for instance the medical interviews analyzed in this work). In other words, and to quote Terracini (1976; cf. exergue), one has to take into account both the play and the player.
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through by “an affective, no matter how light, vibration”. This claim is echoed by Terracini (1963: 133; my translation, C.C.), who states: “the uttered thought always bears a formal, though often impalpable, trace of subjectivity”.
1.6. SEMIOTIC MARKERS Stylistic markers, which some authors view contrastively as ‘style shifts’, can be associated with markers identifying the speaking subject (cf. Abercrombie, 1967: 7). Drawing on Peirce’s (1956) concept of index (which is part of his famous triad ‘icon-index-symbol’), Abercrombie suggests that these markers can be classified into: a) Markers indicating membership of a (regional or social) group; b) Markers characterizing the individual; c) Markers revealing speaker’s changes (transition phases), especially affective changes (cf. Abercrombie, 1967: 7-9). These classes of markers lend themselves to being compared to the expressive means studied by Bally (1970 [1909]). In particular, the first class can be associated with Bally’s ‘evoked effects’ (effets par évocation, ibid.: 203-249) while the second class can be associated with ‘affective features’(caractères affectifs; ibid.: 170-202), and the third class with style shifts. Abercrombie’s tripartite distinction is used by Lyons (1977: 108-109) and Laver and Trudgill (1979: 3 ff.). The latter identify social, physical and psychological markers, and emphasize Lyons’ (1977: 33) distinction between communicative and informative signals. As pointed out by Lyons, communicative signals are used by the speaker to make the receiver aware of something s/he did not know before the signal was produced. Whether a signal is communicative or not rests, then, upon the possibility of choice or selection […] ‘Communicative’ means “meaningful for the sender”. (Lyons, 1977: 33)
On the other hand, in order to complete the concept of meaningfulness, Lyons defines informative signals. Informative signals make the hearer aware of something s/he was not previously aware of, regardless of the speaker’s intentions. Hence, ‘informative’ means “meaningful to the receiver” (Lyons, 1977: 33). Lyons dwells on Abercrombie’s (1967) third class of markers, which he calls ‘symptoms’. Lyons’ interpretation of this category, as pointed out by Laver and Trudgill (1979: 4), goes beyond that of a group of markers signaling affective information. In fact, according to Lyons, markers belonging to Abercrombie’s first class are
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defined as: any information in a sign or signal which indicates to the receiver that the sender is in a particular state, whether this be an emotional state (fear, anger, sexual arousal or readiness etc.), a state of health (suffering from laryngitis etc.), a state of intoxication or whatever [can be] described as symptomatic of that state. (Lyons, 1977: 108)
These observations pave the way for some first tentative steps towards an integrated psychostylistic approach connecting various disciplinary perspectives. Against this background, my main objective is to contribute to the re-discovery of symptomatic, ‘informative’ aspects which can be inferred from contextualized choices and within different systems of expectation thanks to metapragmatic awareness (cf. Chapter 4).
1.7. THE FUNCTION OF IDENTITY MAINTENANCE AND ‘SPEECH MARKERS’ (GILES ET AL., 1979) Another important contribution to the premises of this book is the work of Giles et al. (1979), which provides some useful operational insights in a socio-psychological framework. The authors see the issue of identity as part of the broader issue of a typology of speech markers. These are not given a limited traditional linguistic interpretation, but are considered to be synonyms of speech. According to Giles et al. (ibid.: 343-344), speech markers function at two distinct levels. 1
on a first level, they have an overall function of maintenance of the social system. To be more specific, speech markers belonging to this group make it possible to identify the members of the system along with their different roles and statuses. Markers of this kind, which often appear together with paralinguistic markers, cannot be controlled insofar as they signal the speaker’s membership to specific biological, social, and psychological categories. For instance, they may reveal that a speaker is a woman, English, immigrant, etc.;
2
on a second level, which is more relevant from a psychological point of view, speech markers enable the interlocutors to communicate indirectly attitudes, beliefs, values and intentions regarding their social states, and to process the emotional sense of others’ social states. In this case, markers point out subtle, although not necessarily voluntary, social and psychological states. For instance, they allow inferences on how the speaker perceives her/his membership to a given category
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(women, English, immigrants, etc.) and which stance or emotive meaning s/he associates with this membership. Thus, what distinguishes markers of the first level from markers of the second level “is precisely the emotional significance of the social categories” (ibid.: 351). The various functions of second-level speech markers are grouped by Giles et al. into two main functions: one pertaining to cognitive organization and the other concerning identity maintenance. In other words, the authors (ibid.: 357) maintain that, among the functions of second-level markers, it is possible to distinguish between the efficiency of the interaction, on the one hand, and emotional needs, on the other. These two different sets of functions operate simultaneously (ibid.: 359) and can therefore be thought of, from an operational viewpoint, as interconnected communicative levels. In particular, the identity maintenance function is essentially aimed at self-presentation and self-protection (ibid.: 366 ff.), and corresponds to what has been variously labeled in socio-psychological literature as ‘self-image’, ‘self-esteem’, ‘ego-defense’, and ‘positive social identity’. Further, Giles et al. assign a crucial role to speech markers in the communication of stances or feelings that involve the person at a deep level or could threaten her/his image. This is typically the case of disclosures, as is pointed out in the following passage: Since disclosures are not communicated directly, they are inferred from subtle behaviours generally, and an important feature of these is level 2 speech markers. Thus, our fears, anxieties, affections and values are communicated and interpreted on the basis of subtle markers rather than direct statements. (Giles et al., 1979: 357)
In social interaction there are rules governing the disclosure and the elicitation of information about intimate facts. It is perhaps worth noting in passing that precisely these basic norms undergo significant changes in doctor-patient encounters: this is one of the reasons why Giles et al.’s (1979) work is relevant to the present work. Now, since we do not ask others directly about these intimate facts, and they may be reluctant to give us self-threatening information, the monitoring of speech markers is vital in order to retrieve this kind of information. Moreover, there are some stances or information regarding ourselves that we do not want to disclose, while there are other topics (e.g. our income, power, etc.) that we do want to disseminate without, however, addressing them directly. Again, the subtle use and monitoring of speech markers, insofar as they signal various psychological states, may be the most suitable mechanism for conveying emotionally loaded information retrievable by means of inferences. In the present book I will deal with a group of second-level speech markers, i.e. mitigators. In so doing, I will adopt the same dynamic perspective as Giles et al., who claim:
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speech markers can be viewed as dynamic, meaningfully anchored to an underlying baseline but continually being modulated to meet changing circumstances. The nature of these modulations will, of course, be reflections of the underlying organizational and identity maintenance functions. (Giles et al., 1979: 368-369)
1.8. CONTEXTUALIZATION CUES (GUMPERZ, 1982a) John Gumperz’s studies, especially from the end of the 1970s on, can certainly be numbered among the investigations that have best highlighted the inextricable tie between knowledge of language and knowledge of the world. In particular, the concept of ‘contextualization cues’, which draws inspiration from sociology and anthropology, has deeply influenced socio-linguistic and pragmatic research.18 This phrase is used by Gumperz to address the various signals implicitly connecting the content of a situated message to its surface form. Contextualization cues work on the basis of ‘co-occurrence expectations’, which are learnt during the interactional experience and are part of linguistic competence. These expectations make it possible to correlate interactive styles with contextual presuppositions. More precisely, constellations of surface features of message form are the means by which speakers signal and listeners interpret what the activity is, how semantic content is to be understood and how each sentence relates to what precedes or follows. These features are referred to as contextualization cues. For the most part they are habitually used and perceived but rarely consciously noted and almost never talked about directly. Therefore they must be studied in process and in context rather than in abstract. (Gumperz, 1982a: 131; original emphasis)
The speaker’s repertoire of cues, which is historically, culturally and socially determined, can include processes of change of code, dialect and style, prosodic phenomena, lexical and syntactic choices, formulaic expressions, conversational strategies of openings and closings, etc. The meaning of these cues is implicit or, to be more precise, indexical, as it cannot be considered in isolation from its context use. This is the reason why the role of contextualization cues emerges clearly only when there is some sort of inconsistency between intention and interpretation, such as in misunderstandings. In these cases, as noted by Gumperz (ibid.: 132), the speaker’s communicative behavior tends to be interpreted in attitudinal terms, which means that the speaker can be seen as rude, non-cooperative, impudent, and so on. Even when the 18
For a thorough treatment of the notion of contextualization in Gumperz’ works and its relevance to sociolinguistic research, see Auer (1992). For further details, see also Gumperz (1992b): in this paper, which appeared in the collection edited and introduced by Auer and di Luzio, Gumperz discusses the contributions to the shaping of the notion of contextualization by different authors (among others, Bateson, Goffman, Brown and Gilman, Schütz, etc).
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speaker does not say what is expected, her/his behavior can be seen through an attitudinal lens (ibid.: 139): in other words, his/her unexpected behavior will be interpreted as motivated by some type of emotive stance. Here, it is first and foremost the shared interactional experience that can reduce uncertainties (ibid.: 144). Further, cues are typically scalar and linked to social conventions. More precisely: Conversationalists, for example, have conventional expectations about what count as normal and what count as marked kinds of rhythm, loudness, intonation and speech style. By signalling a speech activity, a speaker also signals the social presuppositions in terms of which a message is to be interpreted. Notions of normality differ within what, on other grounds, counts as a single speech community. When this is the case, and especially when participants think they understand each others’ words, miscommunication resulting in mutual frustration can occur. (Gumperz, 1982a: 132)
In Contextualization revisited, when dealing with code switching and prosody, Gumperz (1992b) underlines the fact that cues, though they imply some constraints on interpretation, are in some ways undetermined in character. As noted by the author, the same cues can perform different functions according to the context and co-text: What the interpretation is in any one case is a function of what has preceded and what happens afterwards in the interaction. It is only minimally dependent on the phonetic substance of the cues as such. (Gumperz, 1992b: 50)
Peter Auer (1992: 23), in his introduction to The contextualization of language, largely inspired by Gumperz’ work, points out that the notion of contextualization cues overlaps with Bateson et al.’s (1956) concept of metacommunication. I have examined the category of metacommunication, its explanatory power, and its compatibility with the category of illocution in Caffi (1984) and Caffi (1990). In these works I have made some suggestions that restrict the notion of metacommunication, in order to make it usable in non-idealistic pragmatic theory. Here, I will only mention the identity between ‘illocutionary’ and ‘metacommunicative’ as envisaged by Holly (1979), among others. In his attempt to integrate Watzlawick et al.’s (1967) model in speech act theory, Holly suggests that the relation component should coincide with illocution, whereas the content component should coincide with the propositional act. This interesting suggestion is discussed in Adamzik (1984).
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1.9. MITIGATION: FIRST DEFINITIONS The first technical usage of the action noun ‘mitigatio’, meaning the action of soothing passions, dates back to the Rhetorica ad Herennium, sometimes attributed to Cicero and sometimes to Cornificius (86-82 B.C.). This treatise of the second decade of the first century B.C. translates the Greek art of rhetoric into a technical manual, in the practical Roman spirit: The author describes the mitigating effects of deminutio and explains why this should be used as follows: Understatement occurs when we say that by nature, fortune, or diligence, we or our clients possess some exceptional advantage, and, in order to avoid the impression of arrogant display, we moderate and soften the statement of it […] For things of this sort, if you handle them indiscreetly, in life provoke jealousy and in a speech antipathy. Therefore just as by circumspection we escape jealousy in life, so by prudence we avoid antipathy in speaking. (Cicero, 1981: 355-357)
19
Cicero, in some passages of De Oratore, employs both “mitigatio” (De Oratore, III, XXX, 118) and “imminutio” (‘weakening’) (ibid.: III, LIV, 207). The latter term is also used by Quintilian in his Institutio Oratoria (VI, III, 53). In the present work, mitigation is considered a synonym of attenuation or downgrading (Abschwächung in German), and is defined as the result of the weakening of one of the interactional parameters. Mitigation is one of the two directions of modulation (cf. Caffi, 1990; Caffi, 2006), the latter being the stylistic-rhetorical realization of the utterance. Since the mitigating operation assigns a lesser (than expected) value to one of the interactional parameters, it involves the (re-)allocation and (re-)adjustment of the rights and duties determined by the speech act, and, more importantly, the weighing of their intensity and urgency. On the whole, mitigation reduces obligations for the interlocutors (cf. Wunderlich, 1976; Meyer-Hermann and Weingarten, 1982), thus making the attainment of the various interactional goals easier. In other words, mitigation permits a ‘smooth’ management of the interaction and reduces the risks that the participants may incur on various levels, for instance the risk of self-contradiction (on a discourse level), the risk of refusal, conflict, or losing face (on a social level), etc. This definition makes it possible to explain why in all the natural languages studied so far the number of linguistic means of mitigation is much larger than the
19
The original passage runs as follows: “Deminutio est cum aliquid inesse in nobis aut in iis quos defendimus aut natura aut fortuna aut industria dicemus egregium, quod, ne qua significeturs adrogans ostentatio, deminuitur et adtenuatur oratione. […] Nam eiusmodi res et invidiam contrahunt in vita et odium in oratione si inconsiderate tractes. Quare quemadmodum ratione in vivendo fugitur invidia, sic in dicendo consilio vitatur odium” (Rhet. Her. IV, XXXVIII, 50).
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number of linguistic means of reinforcement. For instance, in a study on requests in English and German, House and Kasper (1981) list eleven types of ‘downgraders’ and six of ‘upgraders’. I will argue that mitigation is multi-functional and affects various aspects of meaning production. Proceeding from the already mentioned distinction made by Giles et al. (1979; cf. 1.7. above), I suggest here a first broad classification based on two main dimensions, namely interactional efficiency and identity construction. Within the first dimension, mitigation responds to instrumental needs, as it is meant to make the attainment of interactional goals easier. Within the second dimension, mitigation meets relational needs insofar as it serves the monitoring of emotive distances. Clearly, this distinction draws on Brown and Levinson (1987), who, by proceeding in their turn from Goffman’s (1956) distinction between rational, goal-directed behaviors and relational, ritual behaviors, make a distinction between rationality and face. Another less known analogue distinction was made by Spitzer (1922) between politeness (Höflichkeit) and consideration (Rücksicht). According to Spitzer, the former refers to a strategy, a Trick used by the addresser to attain her/his goals, whereas the latter is linked to an affective consideration of the other, an empathic movement towards the hearer (or Entgegenkommen, ibid.: 115; Caffi, 2005; cf. 4.1.1.) 20 . Behind this distinction there is a more general polarity in the speaker’s communicative activities. This is the never-ending conflict between the need to be understood, on the one hand, and the need to express one’s emotivity on the other; the need to be clear and the need to give free rein to the self (cf. Spitzer, 1922; Terracini, 1963). This contrast could also be seen in the light of the traditional opposition between emotion and cognition, which is paralleled by Bühler’s (1934) opposition between the cognitive function (Appell) and the expressive function (Ausdruck) on the one hand and the referential function (Darstellung) on the other. The idea of the supremacy of one function over the others (as opposed to a dichotomy) within a given message was put forward by Jakobson (1960) and Halliday (1970). According to the latter, the ideational function (i.e. the cognitive meaning), the interpersonal function (i.e. the illocutionary force), and the textual function (i.e. the stylistic organization) coexist in the structure of every message. However, what these polarities do not account for is the discursive construction of identity (cf. Fairclough, 1992; 4.2.). In the present work, mitigation is dealt with as a bridging category between different paradigms; in particular, it is considered both an emotive and a cognitive category. These two dimensions (emotive and cognitive) are not thought of as language functions, which are achieved by various means in each language, but as macro-functions of the interaction on its various levels. It must be made clear that, while Giles et al. (1979) highlight functions of
20
Spitzer (1922: 115) states: “Wir gebrauchen für ‘höflich’ das Wort ‘entgegenkommend’, weil eben den Wünschen des andern entgegenzukommen als höflich gilt”.
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‘identity maintenance’, the functions that will be foregrounded here are of identity building through discourse. What is certainly worth retaining of Giles et al.’s thesis is the distinction whereby some functions of mitigation can be connected to interactional effectiveness, whereas others are linked to emotional needs. I will also argue that mitigation is a multi-level and multi-dimensional phenomenon insofar as it involves simultaneously both various linguistic levels and interactional dimensions. Mitigation usually accompanies a ‘face-threatening act’. However, the negativity of the act for the hearer is only one of the parameters involved. These can be either central or peripheral, depending on the type of interaction and its purposes. I will try to show how mitigation covers both interactional efficiency and identity-building dimensions, thus also encompassing psychological and emotive aspects that other studies on interaction have so far neglected so as to focus on sociological and sociolinguistic aspects. In particular, I will discuss a number of examples from a corpus of doctor-patient and psychotherapist-client conversations, to demonstrate how mitigation contributes to the emotive monitoring of the interaction by either increasing or reducing the psychological distance between the interlocutors: Communicators typically modify their messages to suit the characteristics of their audience. Demonstrations of this abound in the literature. What has not been considered in any detail is how communicators make inferences about the relative success or failure of their attempts, what adjustments they make for unsuccessful attempts and the extent to which these adjustments may vary according to the communicator’s goal (persuasion, impression management, task, etc.), type of recipient or the nature of their relationship. Research into these issues would serve to illustrate more of the ‘on-line’ nature of motivated communication. (McCann and Higgins, 1990: 25)
The analyst has to reconstruct the less conventionalized inferential steps. Sometimes these are subtle effets de sens obtained by means of implicature, which may be easy to grasp but never easy to describe. In any case, they are part and parcel of our communicative competence – be it active or passive – and play a crucial role in sensitive, emotionally loaded interactions such as those in therapeutic settings. There is still the need to account for these often underestimated inferential processes from a systemic perspective. This is just one aspect of an old problem, namely the integration of affective and emotive components in pragmatics. Without such an integration, any description of communicative dynamics runs the risk of getting close to metaphysics. 21
21
This issue was somewhat anticipated in Holly’s (1979) and Adamzik’s (1984) research on Imagearbeit and Beziehungsarbeit, where Goffman’s concept of ‘face-work’ has been further developed (although without a sound empirical basis).
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1.10. BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN LINGUISTIC PRAGMATICS AND SELF-PSYCHOLOGY In the second half of the twentieth century, linguistics was characterized by the suppression of the psychological dimension from any account of linguistic phenomena. Since psychological phenomena cannot be easily encompassed in the domain of langue, they have been confined to parole and therefore ignored for fear of so-called ‘psychologistic’ tendencies. Yet, a careful reading of De Saussure’s Cours (1916; English translation, 1983), specifically paragraph 3.33., where the author defines semiology as a part of social psychology, reveals the absurdity of a ‘ban’ on psychology on the part of linguists. Such a ban is unacceptable from an integrated pragmatic perspective, which clearly emphasizes the constant interaction of social and psychological components in the making of discourse. Furthermore, the exclusion of the psychological dimension has encouraged a natural trend towards a defensive isolation on the part of a number of disciplines, including psychology. These disciplines have often considered linguistics a formalizing, somehow pedantic discipline, a technical metalanguage used to indicate words and sentences ‘without qualities’ that have been extrapolated from their ‘living’ usage. This prejudice has been strengthened by abstracting and idealizing certain tendencies that prevail in linguistics. On the whole, there is a paradox in the theoretical need to programmatically remove psychological factors that interfere with langue on the one hand, and the massive practical use of introspection, the artificial construction of data, the judgments of native speakers, and reliance on how their personal psychology reacts on the other. In the domain of psychology, language has often been seen in a rather naive way, and has only been investigated from an instrumental standpoint, usually as a lexicon, on the basis of words considered in isolation and having merely descriptive or narrative functions (in this respect, psychologists often use the category ‘reports’). Some recent psychological and sociopsychological literature on emotions (e.g. Stein et al., 1990; Giles and Robinson, 1990; Giles et al., 1979; Reilly and Seibert, 2003) reveals its distance from and lack of relatedness to linguistic literature. On the whole, it can be argued that the intermingling of the psychological dimension and other interactional dimensions, and the dynamic nature of this connection have not been adequately examined. As to the issue of affect, linguistics and psychology have basically ignored each other so far, as if there were no middle ground between nineteenth-century disciplinary interdependence and twentieth-century autonomy. Pragmatics may well be the conceptual space where linguistics and psychology can finally and fruitfully converge. A first step towards this convergence is the enlargement of the field of pragmatics to other motivational dimensions besides politeness, and other theoretical constructions besides face. The study of
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mitigation will be a means of investigating the link between actual linguistic choices and inferrable psychological effects. To employ the old-fashioned but still useful categories mentioned in 1.1., I will look at the utterances (as a product) to find the traces of the utterance acts (as a process). This last category will be assigned an extended meaning that includes all psychological processes pertaining to both self-presentation and the definition of the enacted relationship with the addressee in a ‘here and now’. With the aim of constructing an integrated approach, I will also draw on an often misunderstood area of pragmatics, i.e. speech act theory. The latter, perhaps due to its historical and theoretical links with the philosophy of law, highlights a key concept of linguistic behavior, namely commitment. This concept, which plays a crucial and often underestimated role in Austin (1962), allows us to take into account the issue of responsibility in discourse. 22 What is presupposed by the idea of commitment is the ethical dimension of saying-doing. In a field that is not too distant from that of analytical philosophy (cf. Hare, 1970), the concept of commitment has been conceived as dependent on the truth of the proposition and lexicalized by means of specific linguistic categories (for instance, modal adverbs and parenthetical verbs; cf. Urmson, 1952; Venier, 1991). On the whole, the felicity of a given act coincides with the fulfillment of external and internal conditions (with respect to the speaker) that the hearer can either assess or accept without questioning them, thus becoming the one who ratifies the speaker’s self-attribution of a role. This means that through her/his utterance act, the speaker commits her/himself not only to a content (a proposition), or a socially recognizable role indexed by an illocutionary forceindicating device (e.g. someone who is asking, ordering, giving a piece of advice, congratulating, etc.), but also to a given image of her/his self (e.g. a polite but detached professional, etc.). In a word, s/he is responsible for the image of the self conveyed by her/his discourse. The study of mitigation makes it possible to analyze the ways in which the subject can reduce her/his various kinds of responsibility towards both the utterance and the interlocutor. 22
The concept of responsibility has always been central to Austin’s work. This is a point which still needs further investigation in order to be fully appreciated. In A plea for excuses (1956) and Three ways of spilling ink (1966) (whose original title was ‘Responsibility’), both republished in Austin (1979 [1961]), the fundamental role of the notion of responsibility for philosophical reflections and for Austin’ speech act theory is stated very clearly, as can be gathered from the following passage, among others: “Briefly, it is the idea which Aristotle had in a primitive way, without having to fight free of the toils of sophistication that now encumber us: namely, that questions of whether a person was responsible for this or that are prior to questions of freedom. Whatever Aristotle’s idea may have been it worked this way: to discover whether someone acted freely or not, we must discover whether this, that, or the other plea will pass – for example, duress, or mistake, or accident, and so forth.” (Austin, 1979 [1961]: 273; original emphasis). In what now seems a distant historical context, Mikhail Bakhtin (1993) – with unexpected points of convergence – dealt with the problem of the responsibility of action in its connection with the theme of dialogue and otherness in a theoretical essay written in the early twenties, which came out in Russia in 1986.
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What is important for my line of reasoning is that a vital and underestimated component of communicative ‘felicity’ – that goes beyond Austin’s model – is the transmission and reception of a cognitive and affective commitment to both the utterance and the hearer. This subscription to what one is saying, together with its shades and slight variations, cannot be fully accounted for by the sincerity condition of speech act theories (cf. Chapter 4). In speech act theory, among the conditions that make the act felicitous, sincerity has a heterogeneous status. This is a dichotomous dimension that has been basically thought of in terms of the correspondence, or non-correspondence, between the state expressed by the proposition and the subject’s inner state. The fulfillment of the sincerity condition is not scalar and cannot be attenuated, but only reinforced. Thus, the concept of sincerity does not make it possible for us to capture either the various degrees of subscription to what is being said or the various degrees of involvement in the interaction. Nor does it allow us to take into consideration what may be called ‘the emotive temperature of the interaction’. Hence the need to combine the sincerity condition with something else. What I would like to suggest here, in line with Hübler’s proposition (1987), is the need to integrate Austin’s sincerity condition and Hare’s epistemic commitment with the notions of emotive involvement to the message and emotive closeness/distance with respect to the hearer. In this way, the focus would shift from an ethical and cognitive perspective to a rhetorical and stylistic one. The key concepts of responsibility (from a moral viewpoint), epistemic commitment (from a cognitive viewpoint), and sincerity (from a pragmatic viewpoint) would thus be complemented by the psycho-stylistic concept of the speaker’s identification with what the speaker is saying, i.e. a pragmatic counterpart of the psychological concepts of egonearness, immediacy, etc. Mitigation is a way of sensing the affective and stylistic dimension of communicative choices in its interplay with other dimensions. Mitigation can be used to calculate what we may call, by analogy with Piaget’s (1989 [1926]: 51) ‘coefficient of ego-centrism’, the ‘coefficient of emotive involvement in discourse’. This is, to a certain extent, connected to a ‘coefficient of indexicality’, which has been codified by classical rhetoric in various immediacy and vividness effects. As opposed to the model subject of early pragmatics, which is the source of strong performatives (e.g. ‘I swear’, ‘I bet’, ‘I promise’, etc.), the subject projected by mitigation is on her/his guard. As a matter of fact, these two ideas of subject are not conflicting but complementary: it is precisely because ‘saying’ is ‘doing’ that one needs to be cautious and weigh words by adjusting them to the context. The unit of pragmatics is an action unit, a pragmeme, to use Mey’s (2001: 221) label. Performativity is not an eccentric, logical curiosity, but a general feature of language, i.e. its capacity to set itself as action. Pragmatics has long addressed the question of why, under certain conditions, utterances can do what they say and say what they do, thus producing new states of things. We may now ask the reverse, i.e. why most pragmatic studies address utterances that
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seem to have lost their impact in respect of both the external and the internal world? How can the personal dimension of our discourse, i.e. what my utterance means to me as a person, be further ignored? The utterances studied by pragmatics often seem to illustrate routine, role-plays, scraps of Dasein; in any case they seem to have lost touch with the ‘self’ of the speaker uttering them. An abductive reading – both rhetorical and psychological – of textual cues, without aiming at interpreting them exhaustively, will assign more power to the mitigating subject as a producer of meaning. The subject mitigates since s/he has been forced to give up her/his egocentric omnipotence in order to become a subject capable of dialogue. S/he mitigates also because s/he is led by both caution and social conventions to protect and disguise her/himself behind ‘bushes’, ‘hedges’, and ‘shields’ (cf. Chapter 2). These are used to protect the speaker (as well as the hearer), but at the same time they iconically witness her/his presence. Clearly, the subject presupposed and projected by the present approach is one of the several possible theoretical constructions and not the ‘real’ subject. However, I believe that, if compared with the traditional, monolithical, unanalyzed psycho-physical subject, the multi-faceted, fragmented, wavering subject I have in mind will be somewhat closer to the experiencing subject, and its inner core.
2 MITIGATION: THE BACKGROUND Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken. Jane Austen, Emma, London: Penguin, 1966 [1816], pp. 418-419.
2.0. INTRODUCTION 2.0.1. Structure of the chapter The present chapter aims at providing an extended framework of analysis by integrating categories and tools belonging to different research approaches to mitigation. Key concepts of traditional pragmatics, such as illocutionary force, can be harmonized with other approaches that lend themselves to account for contextual, sequential, and stylistic features of interaction. My working hypothesis is that stylistic cognitive and emotive modulating and mitigating devices constitute the interface between pragmatic and psychological aspects of interaction. The starting point will be to establish empirical criteria for distinguishing between various kinds of mitigation. These criteria will be based on the identification of different scopes of mitigating devices, i.e. the abstract range over which mitigators apply within the utterance (cf. 2.0.2. below). I will then put forward three basic questions which can be summarized by the following points: x
Among the research perspectives taken on mitigation so far, which are the most relevant for an integrated approach? In particular, how has mitigation been conceptualized? How has it been defined?
x
Is it possible to find insights within the historical core of speech act theory that allow us to address, at least in nuce, issues related to the stylistic features of the utterance? And if so, what are these and how can they be linked to stylistics?
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x
What theoretical distinctions must be drawn at the outset in order to construct, if not a comprehensive theoretical framework, at least an integrated approach?
The answers to these three questions correspond to the three main sections of the present chapter. In Section 2.1., a restricted selection of the main contributions to the study of mitigation is presented, adopting a theoretical rather than historical standpoint. 1 Instead, my main concern will be to integrate my own notion of mitigation into the pragmatic research studies of the last few decades, taking up only the suggestions that I deem most suitable to building an integrated approach without discussing them systematically. More specifically, I will give a short (necessarily partial) survey of studies centered on three types of mitigating strategies within the speech act unit which I call bushes, hedges, and shields. These three different types of ‘internal’ mitigation (cf. Blum-Kulka et al., 1989) serve as fairly objective criteria for clustering studies of mitigation around three main focuses of the downgrading operation. These three types of mitigation are, as it were, personified in the characters which will be presented in Chapter 3. For the present purposes, it should be firstly noted that mitigation is often viewed as part of the wider issue of ‘politeness’. In politeness research, the notion of mitigation has so far mainly been employed with reference to the set of strategies speakers use to attenuate the impact of what Brown and Levinson (1987) call ‘face-threatening acts’ (FTAs). In other words, mitigation has been understood in a narrow sense, as having its main focus on illocutionary directive acts, particularly on requests. In contrast, I take mitigation in a broader sense, as the result of the weakening of interactional parameters such as cognitive commitment, emotive involvement, topical salience, etc. I am aware that this formulation is approximate. However, it can hardly be otherwise, given the vastness of the object of study, i.e. contextualized human communication and the holistic, systemic-inspired, approach adopted here (cf. 1.2.). My general claim is that, by studying the stylistic nuances of communicative choices, we can fathom different interactional dimensions, which are simultaneously at work and provide a given choice with its specific significance and import. These dimensions are intra-subjective, i.e. concerning the subject’s inner world and her/his different selves, and inter-subjective, i.e. concerning the negotial co-construction of the subject’s identity through a given exchange. As previously noted, interaction is affected by instrumental and relational needs that go beyond those assumed to motivate face-work (cf. Chapter 1). In Section 2.2., I will narrow down the discussion on mitigation to ‘classic’ speech act theory: in particular, a specific connection between the perspectives of speech act theory and stylistics will be identified. This connection is the concept of intensity hinted at by Strawson 1
I will not discuss in detail the works of authors who have used the term/category ‘mitigation’ to refer to a wide variety of discourse phenomena ranging from softeners to sweeteners, from cajolers to disarmers, and so forth (cf. Edmondson and House, 1981).
The background
49
(1964) in his reading of Austin’s notion of illocutionary force. On the other side, from the stylistic standpoint, it was precisely about intensity that Bally (1970 [1909]) put forward remarks which capture the pervasive presence of upgraders and downgraders in speech. A natural language, says Bally, is intrinsically subjectively and emotively oriented: when people speak, they continuously reinforce or mitigate their discourse in order to express subjective and emotive stances. In this sense, the notion of intensity plays an important role in bridging the gap between pragmatics and stylistics. This bridging is in my view a prerequisite for an adequate account of real usages of language in that it makes it possible to deal with the ‘ripples’ on the discourse surface, its nuances and shadows, functioning as cues of the subject’s stances toward both what s/he saying and her/his interlocutor. The integrated pragmatics I have in mind is basically the study of the discursive construction of identity as a global effect resulting from/projected by the use of these stylistic choices. In Section 2.3., some conceptual distinctions will be drawn in order to clarify the different meanings of ‘mitigation’, and suggestions will be made as to how to move from a narrow view of mitigation to a broader one in which mitigation is seen as the surfacing of a calibration 2 of interactional distances that is rooted in metapragmatic awareness (Caffi, 1994a). 2.0.2. Scopes of mitigating devices In what follows, by analogy with the use of the notion of ‘scope of an operator’ in logical semantics, the notion of ‘scope of a mitigating device’ will be employed to refer to the range of linguistic elements over which the mitigator applies. In Caffi (1999a) I distinguish between three abstract scopes of mitigating devices which together serve as a basis for some working hypotheses. These three scopes, or domains on which mitigating devices operate, are the proposition (and within it, reference and predication), the illocution (e.g. illocutionary verbs, expressions modifying the strength of the illocution), and the deictic origin of the utterance (i.e., the I-here-now of the utterance). Mitigating devices of all types may be employed simultaneously and, conversely, a specific mitigating device (e.g. the use of a past tense or an impersonal construction) may affect more than just one scope of the speech act. Indeed, as we will see in more detail in Chapter 3 and Chapter 6, in most cases, a single mitigating device affects different scopes. Expanding Lakoff’s metaphor (1972; cf. 2.1.3.1.), I have named the mitigators operating on propositions bushes (or propositional hedges), those operating on illocutionary act hedges, and those operating on the deictic origin of the utterance shields. In this respect, it must be stressed that this three-way distinction is of heuristic value only, since it is difficult, in an approach that goes beyond semantics, to isolate three distinct ‘objects’ (which would mean posit the 2
I use this concept in the sense put forward by Ray Birdwhistell in the following definition: “L’ajustement l’un à l’autre des membres d’une interaction” (quoted in Bateson and Winkin, 1981: 300).
Mitigation
50
existence of three hypostases) in each utterance. There are no clear-cut distinctions between the components of the speech act . The three classes of mitigators are heterogeneous. On the one hand, bushes and hedges are lexical expressions, sometimes desemantized, polyfunctional markers. As is well-known, markers are often syntactically not integrated into the sentence: hence the difficulty of ascribing them a single scope. On the other hand, shields do not contain explicit mitigating devices: the downgrading operation takes place at a deeper, more abstract level, affecting syntax – as with the passive transformation – or morphology – as in the switch from first person singular pronouns to other person pronouns (cf. 3.2.). In shields there is a shift of responsibility from the ‘I’ of the speaker, i.e. the agent of the utterance, to someone else or to an impersonal source (e.g. The histology report says that there’s nothing wrong, instead that I think that there’s nothing wrong). The ‘I’ is deleted. As we will see, shields index an overall cognitive and emotive non-committal to the speech act. 3 The threefold distinction outlined here serves as a criterion for a classification of the linguistic tools of mitigation. It is empirically grounded since it is anchored in actual discourse choices and has the advantage of avoiding the uncontrolled proliferation of maxims (e.g. ‘be optimistic’, ‘be tactful’, etc.) which are subject to the researcher’s feelings and creativity. In this book I will apply the distinction to the analysis of a number of conversations, of which some excerpts will be discussed in Chapters 5 and 6. Meanwhile, in the next few sections, I will use the three types of scopes of mitigators to explore the complex geography of pragmatic studies in the last few decades, discussing: x
works where mitigation, centered on the proposition, is seen as vagueness;
x
works where mitigation, centered on illocutionary force, is seen as indirectedness;
x
works where mitigation, centered on the deictic origin of the utterance, is seen as reduction of the responsibility for the utterance.
Clearly, any effort to review and synthesize the findings in the above areas involves making arbitrary choices. A recurrent difficulty arises from the failure on the part of many authors to clearly explain the criteria behind their definitions of mitigation. In particular, while some authors (for instance, Brown and Levinson, 1987) have implicitly employed the abovementioned scopes, others (for instance, Leech, 1983; Holmes, 1984; Langner, 1994, etc.), despite focusing on one scope (specifically, illocution) have also actually dealt with mitigating operators falling within another scope, namely proposition. Finally, there is a fourth type of abstract scope of mitigating devices that is apparently left 3
As we will see (cf. 3.2.), Habermas (1987: 72 ff.), in his sociological approach to communication, proposes a similar threefold distinction. Habermas identifies within the speech act a propositional component, an illocutionary component, and an expressive component. This typology bears interesting analogies with Haley’s (1959) disqualification model, which will be discussed in 4.7.
The background
51
out of my distinction, namely where the scope falls within the domain of perlocution and is related to mitigating the unwelcome perlocutionary effects connected to the utterance of a speech act (Fraser, 1980). The possibility of identifying other scopes and the potential overlapping between them shows the limitations of my tripartition. However, the limitations can be at least partly overcome if one adopts a scalar view of pragmatic phenomena, particularly of illocutionary force (cf. Bazzanella et al., 1991), and assumes that any single illocutionary act results from a ‘bundle’ of features that are simultaneously involved in a linguistic choice. Ultimately, if one adopts a perspective that is radically pragmatic, one must give up on fulfilling the esprit de géométrie harbored by every researcher.
2.1. IDEAS OF MITIGATION 2.1.1. Mitigation in different research areas: the empirical turn The emergence of the concept of mitigation dates back to the late 1970s when the main concern of pragmatic research was the construction of models of discourse aimed at combining the concept of the illocutionary act with sequential analyses of discourse exchanges. The point I would like to stress is that the very idea of mitigation was developed in those research fields marked by a shift from a paradigm of introspection to one of empirical analysis. It began with the turn from the analysis of invented examples (a feature of early philosophical pragmatics) to the study of authentic speech. Indeed, the umbrella-category ‘mitigation’, regardless of its various meanings and uses at the time, was only introduced when pragmatic research moved away from the abstract ideal of the speech act to focus on its actual object of study, i.e. interaction in vivo (rather than in vitro). A number of seminal studies included pragmatic analyses that gave great relevance to the concept of mitigation, while adopting different terminology. Despite being very different from one another, all these studies shared a close bond between theoretical framework and empirical input, and had, among their aims, a practical application. In particular, I am referring here to the following works: (1) Labov and Fanshel’s (1977) work on psychotherapeutic encounters, (2) Edmondson’s (1981) model of discourse, and its pedagogic application in Edmondson and House’s (1981), and (3) Blum-Kulka et al.’s (1989) work in the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP). In Edmondson’s (1981) theoretical model, the concept of mitigation is not explicitly referred to, but it is constantly used. In fact, Edmondson’s ‘H-supportive principle’, which he claims “governs our perception of conversational events, and underlies our perception and evaluation of social behavior in general” (1981: 25), assigns a crucial role to the interlocutors’ adjustments to one another. Interpersonal adjustment, as noted at the outset, is at the very core
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of mitigation. Instead of using the term ‘mitigation’, however, Edmondson puts forward three types of supportive moves, which he claims are functionally comparable to pre-sequences and can be defined as turn-internal acts with strategic functions relative to the head act. These moves he calls ‘grounders’, ‘expanders’, and ‘disarmers’ (1981: 115); they occur “only in conversational behavior (at the ‘surface’ level), not in underlying interactional structure” (1981: 122). The same three types of moves also appear in Blum-Kulka et al. (1989), as we will see below. In the ESL pedagogic grammar by Edmondson and House (1981), ‘grounders’, ‘sweeteners’, ‘disarmers’, and ‘expanders’ are strategic supportive moves employed by the speaker. The use of a grounder consists in giving grounds for a request. The use of a sweetener consists in softening an imposition on the addressee, thus avoiding possible objections. In the following example, as claimed by Edmondson and House, it easy to recognize two grounders and a sweetener: “John, can you lend me ten pounds – I’ve run out myself and the banks are closed – I can let you have it back tomorrow for sure” (1981: 46). A disarmer differs from a sweetener in that it is mainly concerned with the preventive removal of a potential offense, e.g. I don’t want to be boring, but…, I hope you don’t mind if…, etc. In using an ‘expander’, a speaker “quite simply gives more details about, say, a person he is describing, or provides a detailed account of how a state of affairs he has described came to be the case” (1981: 46). In Blum-Kulka et al.’s (1989) Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP), requests and apologies are studied in different languages, including English, French, German, Danish, Spanish, and Israeli. In this work, the term ‘mitigation’ refers to the attenuating function of so-called ‘downgraders’, as opposed to the reinforcing function of ‘upgraders’. In the next few chapters, I will often make reference to distinctions highlighted by Blum-Kulka et al. (1989). In particular, I will use: x
the distinction between head act – corresponding to that part of the utterance which is, in itself, enough to perform the speech act – and other parts of the utterance, like ‘alerters’, ‘attention getters’, and ‘supportive moves’;
x
the distinction between internal mitigation (i.e. mitigation occurring within a speech act) and external mitigation (i.e. mitigation occurring outside the speech act), the latter corresponding to either pre-sequences or grounders;
x
the distinction, within the possible realizations of a request, between direct strategies, conventionally indirect strategies (e.g., suggestory formulae, query preparatories), and non-conventionally indirect strategies (e.g., strong and mild hints).
The research documented in Blum-Kulka et al. (1989) is influenced by Brown and Levinson’s (1987) model of politeness, which is addressed from a deliberately narrow standpoint in the next subsection: the only topic selected for review is their treatment of hedges.
The background
53
2.1.2. Hedges in Brown and Levinson (1987) I draw on Brown and Levinson (1987) for some key terms and concepts which have become part of the metapragmatic lexicon. I am referring here particularly to the notions of positive and negative politeness (based on Goffman’s distinction between positive and negative face), the concept of the face-threatening act (FTA), and the concept of redressive action. As said, the prototypical face-threatening act serving as a basis for the investigation of politeness strategies is the request. No attempt will be made here to review Brown and Levinson’s model systematically. Enough has been said on it, and its merits and shortcomings do not need further discussion. 4 Suffice it to say that the category ‘mitigation’ is not a possible substitute for ‘politeness’ as the authors imply in the 1987 version of their paper (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 42). In fact, a mitigating speaker can be perceived as impolite, and conversely, a nonmitigating, direct speaker can be perceived as exquisitely polite. My idea of politeness differs greatly from Brown and Levinson’s in many respects. In my view, politeness is not directly linked to linguistic choices, it is, for instance, not linked directly to the use of hedges, as the authors maintain. A given expression in a given language, e.g. a hedge, has many mitigating, downgrading functions which produce different effects. Politeness is one among the possible effects of a mitigating operation, an effect which is both calculable and uncertain, i.e. not guaranteed. This last point is not only a version of the widely recognized idea that politeness is a culturally-bounded matter, nor merely a version of the idea that it is a context-dependent matter, taking ‘context’ both in its macro and in its micro-sense. (Obviously, politeness in a macro-contextual sense refers to rituals of a given activity type, e.g. a medical interview whereas politeness in a micro-contextual sense refers to the situational features of a given encounter). Politeness is also an individual-dependent matter. In this respect, it is worth recalling the definition of the ‘model speaker’ Brown and Levinson have in mind: All our Model Person (MP) consists in is a willful fluent speaker of a natural language, further endowed with two special properties – rationality and face (p. 63).
This model person could, in principle, be assembled by an artificial intelligence scientist because it lacks one crucial property: feelings. The emotive quality of our communicative experience which is intertwined with our judgments on politeness is completely ignored by Brown and Levinson. Their model person is a non-person, the ‘man without qualities’ mentioned in Chapter 1. In fact, without emotive capacity, which is not fully covered by the notion of face, interaction is bound to collapse. Further, below a certain degree of emotive 4
For instance, increasingly detailed study of natural languages has shown that the claim of universality of Brown and Levinson’s model is simply unacceptable (cf., among others, Eelen, 2001; Fraser, 1990; Fraser, 2005; Janney and Arndt, 1993; Journal of Pragmatics 2003, Vol. 35, Nos. 10-11).
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Mitigation
involvement no rationality – for instance no inferential process – can even begin to function. With these premises, the cursory remarks that are advanced above aim only at reconstructing Brown and Levinson’s use of the term ‘hedge’ in order to compare and contrast it with my use of the term and the concept of mitigation. 5 Incidentally, the authors use the term to refer to both upgraders and downgraders, with a fair degree of distortion of the metalinguistic acception of the lexeme in everyday language by which the verb ‘hedge’ means ‘to hide or protect oneself’ and is therefore usually thought of as a downgrader only (cf. footnote 6). What is worth noting here is that in Brown and Levinson’s work the term ‘hedge’ refers to all three categories of mitigators that I have labeled ‘bushes’, ‘hedges’, and ‘shields’. In other words, Brown and Levinson, although they do not make any clear distinction at a theoretical level, actually employ the different scopes of mitigation I have identified within the speech act, i.e. proposition, illocutionary force, and deictic origin. However, of these three possible scopes of downgrading operations, only illocutionary force is explicitly mentioned by the authors (cf. Brown and Levinson, 1987: 151). First of all, the authors use ‘hedge’ as both a generic and a specific term. In the section devoted to positive politeness, the word ‘hedge’ is employed in a generic sense and is included in the sub-strategy ‘hedging opinions’ to exemplify the strategy ‘avoid disagreement’. The above-mentioned sub-strategy consists, say the authors, in the introduction of elements of vagueness when expressing opinions, as well as the avoidance of axionyms, i.e. strong evaluative terms. Brown and Levinson claim that this is the only function performed by hedges with respect to positive politeness, as they normally are, according to the authors, “a feature of negative politeness” (p. 121). Brown and Levinson also use ‘hedge’ in certain specific senses. As to hedges affecting the proposition – i.e. hedges that, according to George Lakoff (cf. 2.1.3.1.), signal that a given object does not fully belong to a class – they are first mentioned, together with ‘question’, in the outline of the second group of strategies of negative politeness. As to hedges affecting illocutionary force, in the section ‘Hedges on illocutionary force’, after hinting at hedges 5
Although the English term hedge has been part of the metalanguage of pragmatics for a while, it has been given a number of translations in different languages. In German the word Heckenausdrücke is also used (cf. Kolde, 1989). Alternatively, it can be replaced by the umbrella term Abschwächungsignale. Abschwächung as metalinguistic term was introduced by Spitzer (1922) as opposed to Verstärkung (cf. De Ferrari, 2001). This distinction is also made by Walther Azzalino in his Mittel der Verstärkung und Abschwächung eines sprachlichen Ausdrucks (Azzalino, 1954/55). In French the metaphoric term hedge (I have suggested as a possible French translation haie in Caffi, 2000) is often translated with the hyperonym atténuateur. KerbratOrecchioni (1992: Vol. 2, 196-223; 1994: Vol. 3, 43-44, 129) suggests adoucisseur as French translation for softener. Drawing on the concept of hedge as developed by George Lakoff, Roulet (1980) identifies some mitigating devices as atténuateurs and, while comparing them to prosodic factors, he describes them as items realizing an illocutionary act (ibid.: 93). An overview both of the term and the concept of hedge can be found in Markkanen and Schröder (1997) and Clemen (1997) that show how ‘hedge’ is overburdened with different, if not incompatible, meanings. Hence the need of further distinctions.
The background
55
encoded in particles, Brown and Levinson discuss (together with instances of indirect speech acts in which some felicity conditions are suspended) a number of cases of utterance modification. This can be obtained by means of so-called ‘dubitative particles’ (such as perhaps, I guess, I suppose, p. 159), i.e. epistemic modals and parenthetical verbs, or by turning the utterance from a statement into a question. The distinction between modification of force indicator and modification of propositional content is acknowledged, although implicitly, by Brown and Levinson. They hint at such a distinction when dealing with Tzeltal, in particular with particles, which “are usable either as performative hedges or as propositional hedges” (p. 164). The authors then move on to discuss adverbial-clause hedges (p. 167), such as in fact, in a sense, it seems to me, and various types of if-clauses. In addition, Brown and Levinson suggest a classification of hedges according to the Gricean maxims (pp. 169-176). Specifically, they identify: a)
b)
c) d)
Quality hedges (p. 169), which lessen the commitment to the truth of the proposition (e.g. cautionary premises like to the best of my recollection, parenthetical remarks, etc.); Quantity hedges (p. 171), which signal that the information provided is less precise than expected (e.g. roughly, more or less, approximately, to some extent, all in all, so to speak); Relevance hedges (p. 173), which introduce a shift in topic (p. 176) (e.g. this may not be relevant, but..., sorry, I’ve just thought..., by the way...); and Manner hedges (e.g. if you see what I’m getting at, to be succinct, more clearly ...).
Brown and Levinson also mention hedges addressed to politeness strategies (p. 176), which “function directly as notices of violations of face wants”. Among them we can find frankly, to be honest, I hate to have to say this, but..., although it is not clear why these mitigators are viewed as politeness strategies instead of being connected to the Gricean maxim of Quality. Finally, the authors mention prosodic and kinesic hedges, which signal the presence of an FTA. Briefly put, the first type of scope of mitigators, i.e. propositional content, is dealt with implicitly, while the second type of scope, i.e. illocutionary force, is explicitly mentioned. As to the third scope of mitigating devices, namely the deictic origin of the utterance, the implicit reference to it can be inferred from the fact that the following devices are introduced: impersonal verbs (p. 196); replacement of ‘I’ and ‘you’ by indefinites (p. 202); pluralization of ‘I’ and ‘you’ (p. 203); use of address terms as ‘you’ avoidance (p. 208); use of reference terms as ‘I’ avoidance (p. 209); point-of-view distancing (p. 209). In this respect, a major distinction is drawn to classify strategies affecting the deictic origin of the utterance. On the one hand, such operations may be subsumed under positive politeness strategies aimed at reducing the distance between speaker and hearer (p. 123). On the other
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hand, they may be negative politeness strategies aimed at increasing the distance between the interlocutors (pp. 209-211). The upshot of these remarks is that Brown and Levinson implicitly acknowledge the existence of three scopes of the mitigating operation (propositional content, force indicator, and deictic origin) that correspond to the three categories of mitigating devices identified here: bushes, hedges, and shields. This view is implicitly held by the authors, and is not recognized theoretically. As we will see in more detail in the next few sections, previous studies had isolated, either overtly or covertly, each of these three scopes, and had identified groups of mitigators operating within one scope – often by envisaging models of analysis not always compatible with one another. As pointed out at the beginning of this chapter, no attempt will be made to compare the use of the category ‘mitigation’ by different authors. What is perhaps more fruitful is to cluster the most relevant contributions to early research on mitigation around the three different domains that have been pointed out, that is: proposition, illocution and deictic origin. With this purpose in mind, let us start by considering the foundational paper by Lakoff (1972) where mitigation is centered on proposition. 2.1.3. Mitigation as vagueness: hedges 2.1.3.1. Lakoff (1972). The term ‘hedge’ 6 entered the technical language of logical-linguistic semantics through a paper by George Lakoff published in 1972 (and reprinted in 1973). This paper prepared a switch, in the treatment of hedges, from semantics to pragmatics and introduced a topic that would be included in the field of research on discourse markers at a later stage (cf. Kolde, 1989). The main merit of the paper lies in the fact that it addresses 6
The fourth definition given to the entry ‘hedge’ by the Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary (1976: 884) is a figurative, metonymic, extended meaning: 4. A barrier, limit, defense; a means of protection.
This sense has probably marked the shift from the word’s primary meaning (“a row of bushes or low trees […] planted closely to form a boundary”) to the legal technical meaning of the verb to hedge (“to secure oneself against risk of loss by entering into a contract”), to the extended figurative meaning “to go aside from the straight way; to shift, shuffle, dodge; to leave open a way of retreat”. Also, according to The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1993: 1211), one of the meanings of the verb to hedge is: 5. avoid committing oneself, refuse to face an issue, evade the question This same entry informs us that formerly, between 1570 and 1599, to hedge also meant “to turn from the direct path; leave a way of retreat”. This last definition encapsulates the idea of topical shield, which, as will be explained later (cf. 3.4.), is exemplified by the strategic use of digressions. Thus, the idea of discourse hedge (Fr. atténuateur, Ger. Heckenausdruck, It. attenuatore) as a means of self defense seems to be not an invention of linguistics but the catachresis of a culture. For this reason, the history of the term ‘hedge’ definitely deserves further investigation.
The background
57
phenomena which warn against the application of bipolar logic (true vs. false) to linguistic research. Specifically, Lakoff shows the inadequacy of a semantic approach to propositional modifiers and illustrates the importance of a contextualized analysis of such phenomena. The starting point of Lakoff’s (1972) paper is the problem of the prototypicality of a given object, an issue, at the time, in cognitive psychological discussions of the notion of being part of a class. 7 Lakoff claims that a logic of vagueness is not only possible but also, in fact, necessary, pointing out a number of expressions “whose job is to make things fuzzier or less fuzzy” (1972: 195); he refers to these as hedges. The following list is a representative sample of the expressions mentioned by Lakoff (1972: 196): sort of, kind of, loosing speaking, more or less, roughly, pretty (much), relatively, somewhat, rather, mostly, technically, strictly speaking, so to say, practically.
After dealing with sort of as a predicative modifier, Lakoff provides a number of examples where hedges realize functions other than that of simply highlighting the degree of membership of a given object to a class. He concludes that “semantics cannot be taken to be independent of pragmatics, but that the two are inextricably tied together” (1972: 198). With respect to a pragmatic perspective, however, the perspective adopted by the author is too narrow in two major respects. First, from a methodological standpoint, no distinction is made between mitigators and their effects; indeed, ‘vagueness introducers’ produce effects of different kinds. 8 Second, from a theoretical standpoint, the issue of how to switch from a claim to truth to a claim to appropriateness is ignored. I will briefly clarify these two points. With respect to the first point, the main task performed by hedges, according to Lakoff, is to reduce precision of denotation, i.e. the relationship holding between a lexeme and an external non-linguistic object. Now, in the widely accepted definition, denotation is a context-free relationship, which holds independently of a particular context of usage. Reference, instead, is 7
For category formation and prototypicality see Rosch (1978). For a discussion of vagueness from a logical point of view see Ballmer and Pinkal (1983). For a general discussion of vagueness in English from the perspective of applied linguistics see Channell (1994). Vagueness as an interactional resource has been pointed out by several authors, among others, by Aijmer (1984); Adelswärd and Linell (1994); Jucker et al. (2003). It can be said that predicates and lexemes introducing vagueness produce a fuzzification of the utterance in which they are used. I will not use the term fuzzification, while in Chapter 3 I will employ, though a bit reluctantly given their awkwardness, the terms ‘eventualization’ and ‘fictionalization’ (cf. 3.3.4.). ‘Fuzzification’ is used in a logical-semantic background by Jayez (1990). Jayez aims at showing that some lexemes (adjectives like hot or clever, adverbs like almost) cannot be fully accounted for by a truth-functional approach. Rather, they can only be explained by means of contextualized descriptions. A similar point has been already raised by Sadock (1977). Finally, as to the opposite direction of modulation, i.e. reinforcement, Bolinger’s (1972) semantic treatment of intensifiers remains a classic. 8 This type of mitigation is dealt with in Chapter 6 under the category of secondary semantic mitigators.
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usually understood as the relationship holding between a speaker and a context of usage (cf. Lyons, 1977: 206-215). Given these premises, my argument can be summed up as follows: denotation, in the study of actual usages, cannot be separated from the actual reference act, the latter being in turn part and parcel of the proposition (Searle’s 1969 ‘propositional act’). So, hedges introducing elements of vagueness in denoting an object have the effect of reducing the claim to truth of the whole proposition, thus falling under the Gricean maxim of Quantity. The foregrounded ‘name-object’ relationship turns into a ‘speaker-truth’ relationship within the proposition. In this function as referential vagueness introducers, the use of hedges has repercussions on the whole speech act. The gap to be bridged between Lakoff’s account and a pragmatic account is that, once a pragmatic approach has been adopted, the denotationdenotatum relation (Lyons, 1977: 207) cannot be easily separated from either the uttererutterance relation or the utterer-utterance act relation. In fact, hedges make it possible to weaken the claim to appropriateness of the whole utterance, thus falling under the Gricean maxim of Quality. In other words, speakers can use referential vagueness to reduce both their commitment to the precision of denotation, hence of their reference act, and their epistemic endorsement of the truth of the proposition. Further, this weakening of responsibility, this ‘deresponsibilization’, will in turn affect the contextual appropriateness of the utterance. This multi-step, multi-inferential mechanism provides the foundation for the approach to mitigation presented in the present book. Such a mechanism has often been ignored or marginalized in subsequent investigations into discourse mitigators. In fact, as semantic phenomena, hedges often have been reductively viewed as stylistic markers indicating registers (formal vs. informal) or socially determined variations (cf. 2.1.3.2.). In other words, research has often overlooked the different levels of abstraction involved in the analysis of downgrading operations and the different inferential steps that must be reconstructed in order to understand the effects produced by mitigating devices. 9 9
An example of such a reductive interpretation is provided by Robin Lakoff’s (1973) paper on the logic of politeness. The acceptability of an utterance containing hedges, she notes rather cursorily, depends on the context in which the utterance occurs. For instance, the utterance “Nixon is sort of conservative” may be acceptable in an informal situation, when the speaker wants to mask her/his real opinion, but not in an official context like a New York Times editorial (1973: 300). According to the author, the reason why such an utterance would not be appropriate in an official context lies in the fact that the use of hedges implies a weak emotive subscription on the part of the speaker. The link between hedged expressions and emotive subscription is just hinted at by the author and, interesting as it may be I shall not dwell on this point. What I would like to stress is rather that appropriateness is only derivatively a matter of politeness. The fact that such an utterance can be acceptable or not does not depend on a rule of politeness, for instance ‘don’t impose’ which the author presents in the same paper. Politeness plays only a secondary role, by implicature. What plays a major role in determining the acceptability of an utterance is rather a series of chain reactions – a series of inferential steps – that are triggered by the approximator and justified by the context. In particular, contextual expectations influence both the extent to which Gricean maxims, especially the maxim of Quantity, must be applied, and the acceptability of an utterance containing hedges. Suffice it to mention here an example taken from my corpus which shows that acceptability is mainly a matter of contextual
The background
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In Chapters 5 and 6, I will discuss a number of examples taken from a corpus of doctorpatient conversations in order to show the co-existence of, and interrelation (sometimes synergic, sometimes conflicting) between, various interactional parameters. The latter operate simultaneously within the same communicative event and cannot be easily distinguished in the functioning of mitigation. Against this background, it must also be stressed that any pragmatic analysis aimed at explaining how acceptability can be achieved at different levels should try to identify the various operations associated with the different scopes of mitigators. Furthermore, I would like to stress the tentativeness of such an analysis. Indeed, it is difficult to neatly separate the different ranges of mitigation, since more than one interactional parameter, as well as more than one scope, may be involved at the same time. With respect to the second point, concerning the issue of how to switch from a claim to truth to a claim to appropriateness, it allows us to raise a question of particular importance for the approach adopted in this book. As just said, in a linguistic-pragmatic analysis which takes the utterance as a basic unit, it is extremely difficult to isolate both the different ways in which a mitigation device affects different logical-semantic scopes and the different effects it produces on different interactional dimensions, either directly or by multiple implicature. This difficulty, however, is not a symptom of theoretical weakness. On the contrary, it is due to the emergence of an object that an integrated pragmatic point of view allows to investigate, i.e. a complex multi-layered and multi-dimensional mechanism. Pragmatic research should shed some light on this mechanism, trying to separate the operations performed on different components of the utterance and to identify, whenever possible, the contribution of each operation to the construction of the global sense of the utterance. Using the well-known Gricean distinction between sentence meaning and utterance meaning (Grice, 1968), it can be said that hedges reflect the progressive shift from sentence meaning to utterance meaning and from utterance meaning to utterer’s meaning, or, to use Givón’s (1989; cf. 6.5.2.) categories, the shift from ‘modes of truth’ to ‘modes of manipulation’. A possible pragmatic counterpart of the logical-semantic notion of fuzziness (Lakoff, 1972) is the scalar ‘precision-vagueness’ dimension of illocutionary force proposed by Bazzanella et al. (1991). As to Lakoff’s hedges, they correspond to the notion of bushes introduced in Caffi (1999a) and in the present work (cf. 3.3.1.), because the mitigating action performed by bushes focuses on propositional content, particularly on the interactional parameter ‘precision’. In bushes, to use Austin’s (1962) categories, the locutionary (rhetic) act is made less precise. expectations. The example is the hedged utterance produced as a general comment on previous turns produced by the interlocutor to tell his health problems: “maybe it’s a sort of bad moment – something like that” (cf. Chapter 6, ex. 38; Appendix B, ex. 33). Clearly, this utterance can be either acceptable or not, depending on whether it is uttered by an acquaintance expressing generic concern for the interlocutor’s health or by a doctor addressing a patient, as is actually the case. Here, since the utterance is pronounced by an expert addressing a patient in need of a diagnosis, the lack of precision will make the utterance totally inadequate with respect to the interlocutor’s (contextually legitimated) expectations.
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This being said, the difficulty of distinguishing between markers affecting locution, markers affecting illocution and markers affecting the whole utterance must be stressed again. As we will see, this task is made even more difficult by the peculiar interrelation between bushes and quotation mitigators. 2.1.3.2. Bourdieu (1982). As we have seen, hedges were at first considered as semantic means used by speakers to make a locutionary act less precise by signaling its non-prototypicality. Subsequently, hedges became a widely-used discourse and pragmatic category. This evolution was not dependent on an accidental shift of perspective, as might be inferred from a number of studies (for instance, Kolde, 1989), but it was a consequence of the inherent multifunctionality of hedges. Hedges show the interplay between semantic and pragmatic aspects in a particularly striking manner. As I have maintained in 2.1.3.1., hedges work on both the proposition and the speech act. On the one hand, they lessen the propositional claim to truth by reducing precision of reference. On the other hand, they affect illocutionary force by weakening the utterance claim to appropriateness. Subsequent research could not shed light on this twofold operation, since most researchers limited themselves to considering the category of hedges as a pragmatic and conversation analytical tool and extending its scope beyond the limits of a single speech act. Brown and Levinson (1987: 174), for instance, refer to markers like by the way, incidentally, that reminds me, etc. that introduce digressive moves for which the speaker apologizes as ‘relevance hedges’, thus referring to the Gricean maxim of Relevance. In the course of time, the concept of hedging has had a number of applications in pragmatics and sociolinguistics, for instance in the work by Robin Lakoff on the logic of politeness (cf. footnote 9). I will not dwell here on the evolution and success of this concept. However, it is interesting to note what might be considered an extreme view in the sociological interpretation of the concept of hedge. I am referring here to the view held by the French sociologist Bourdieu (1982). According to Bourdieu, hedges are similar to discourse fillers and closely connected to phatic communication. At the same time they reflect oblique performances of speech acts. He regards hedges as techniques specifically employed to realize mitigating, disguising, and masking strategies (Bourdieu, 1982: 87 ff.). Bourdieu claims that the use of such expressions, which are the linguistic tools by which euphemism and censorship are achieved, increases as one climbs up the social ladder. In particular, hedges are usual for the upper class, whose members employ them not only in public and in official situations, but also in their daily exchanges. According to Bourdieu, the ensuing communicative style reflects a number of important functions. Significantly, not only are hedges and mitigators indices of a set of choices at the speaker’s disposal, but they also signal, at both meta-communicative and reflexive level, an ‘advanced’ meta-pragmatic competence, in that they
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function as practical metalanguage elements marking the neutralizing distance that is typical of the bourgeois relationship to language and society. Their effect is, according to Lakoff, one of elevating intermediate values while degrading extreme values, or, in Labov’s words, one of avoiding any mistake or exaggeration. These locutions express the ability to keep one’s distance from one’s own purposes – ultimately one’s own interests – and at the same time from those who, being unable to keep this distance, allow themselves to be guided by their purposes and give themselves up to expressive drives without any restraint. (Bourdieu, 1982: 89, my translation, C.C.) 10
Despite the ideologically grounded oversimplification of Bourdieu’s opinions, his view is interesting for two main reasons. On the one hand, it represents a tendency that can be found in sociolinguistic and pragmatic research to almost automatically associate any given communicative choice with a particular sociolect. On the other hand, Bourdieu’s view is relevant to the idea of mitigation developed in this book insofar as it represents an early intuition of the link between mitigated communicative style and emotional control of the interaction. I will not go into this important issue in detail at this point. I would only like to add that in his interesting criticisms of Talcott Parsons’ abstracting reductionism, Elias (1978 [1969]) – long before Bourdieu and with the aim of carrying out a historical and sociological analysis – had already highlighted the problem of finding a connection at the theoretical level between the ‘control over emotions’ and the idea of the gradual development of civilization. According to Elias, mitigation is part of the process of emotional tuning, and corresponds to a series of mutual adjustments and corrections that ultimately become the basis of the ‘civilization of good manners’. I would like here to take the argument back to its original trail. In order to do that, it is worth considering Fraser’s (1975) pragmatic interpretation of the concept of hedges in his discussion of illocutionary force indicating devices (IFID). 2.1.4. Mitigation as indirectedness (Fraser, 1975; Leech, 1983; Holmes, 1984) 2.1.4.1. Fraser (1975). It was Fraser (1975) who, while illustrating different types of hedges, shifted the scope of mitigators from the act of reference within the proposition to illocutionary 10
The original passage reads as follows: “[mitigators] fonctionnent, au titre d’éléments d’un métalangage pratique, comme marques de la distance neutralisante qui est une des caractéristiques du rapport bourgeois à la langue et au monde social: ayant pour effet, selon Lakoff ‘d’élever les valeurs intermédiaires et d’abaisser les valeurs extrêmes’, et, selon Labov, ‘d’éviter toute erreur ou exagération’, ces locutions sont une affirmation de la capacité de tenir ses distances à l’égard de ses propres propos, donc de ses propres intérêts, et du même coup à l’égard de ceux qui, ne sachant pas tenir cette distance, se laissent emporter par leurs propos, s’abandonnent sans retenue ni censure à la pulsion expressive”. (Bourdieu, 1982: 89)
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force indicating devices (IFID) corresponding to performative verbs. Typically, says Fraser, ‘hedged performatives’ occur when the illocutionary verb is introduced by a modal, as in the following sentences: I can promise you that we will be there on time, I must advise you to remain quiet, I wish to invite you to my party. Fraser calls these utterances ‘strongly performatives’, as opposed to ‘weakly performatives’ like I can claim that Henry IV is still alive, I must authorize you to leave now, I have to promise you that we will be there on time. 11 However, it is not my intention here to criticize either this distinction or Fraser’s suggestions for, a taxonomy of speech acts, the latter being the subject matter to which the paper is mainly devoted. Rather, what is interesting for my present purposes is the fact that Fraser (1975) shifts the scope of hedges, and he does so quite explicitly, starting from the title of the paper. Furthermore, Fraser’s work provides an opportunity for the following general remarks. According to Fraser (1975: 188), in early work influenced by generative semantic theories, some scholars tended to regard pragmatic phenomena (notably, performative utterances) as equivalents of syntactic phenomena (notably, performative sentences). For instance, Ross (1970) puts forward the well-known hypothesis of a performative hyper-sentence in the deep structure of each sentence. This enables him to make generalizations about the uses of some pronominal forms. Similarly, Sadock (1970) introduces the category ‘whimperatives’ to account for interrogative constructions like won’t you give me a drink?, which have directive illocutionary force and can hence be regarded as imperatives. These particularly influential works exemplify a tendency to identify syntactic realizations with pragmatic modes, forms with function, despite the lack of a one-to-one correspondence between them (cf. Caffi, 1982; Caffi, 1994a). Regardless of the importance of the above-mentioned studies for linguistic research, it is worth noting here that they derive from a major misunderstanding. In fact, Austin’s concept of performativity has progressively lost strength – especially after Searle’s (1969) interpretation – so that the action configuration of a given linguistic structure aimed at performing a specific communicative action is mistaken for a grammatical configuration. Performativity, which can be defined as the ability of language to become action, is first reduced to an illocutionary function, then watered down to the status of a grammatical indicator, and finally misled with a sentence type – most often an English sentence type. By contrast, between illocutionary and performative an inclusive relationship holds: the concept of performativity is more restricted than that of illocutionary force, the former is a special case of the latter. Every speech act has an illocutionary force. Only some illocutionary forces can be realized by a performative utterance or formula. Both performativity and illocutionary force, however, are labels to capture language general features which are lexicalized and realized in different ways in 11
Unfortunately, the expression ‘strongly performative’ seems to contradict the very idea of the hedged performative, which is intuitively linked to a somehow disguised performative utterance.
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different languages. Neither should be misled with grammatical structures, though they obviously have syntactic correlates. This misunderstanding can be avoided if the analyst keeps the following levels separated: x
levels of analysis (e.g. syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic);
x
levels of abstraction (emphasis on language, on langue, on single acts pertaining to the domain of parole, etc.);
x
language as the object of research versus language as the researcher’s own metalanguage.
The confusion of these different levels has led to identify mitigation with the attenuation of a directive illocutionary act. This identification results in a narrow concept of mitigation, which is restricted to matters of politeness. It can also be claimed that this identification has been furthered by the existence, in natural languages, of a wide range of grammatical devices used to mitigate directive acts. These devices have lent themselves easily to become a privileged area of inquiry. Although the ethnocentric approach, which mingles inputs (and outputs) of pragmatic research with those of pragmatic research specifically on English (cf., among others, Wierzbicka, 1985) has been abandoned, there is still a strong tendency to mistake performative utterances for syntactic and semantic phenomena. This tendency is evident in some logicalsemantic works (especially those following the motto ‘performatives are statements too’) and in more recent cognitive studies. One of the main merits of Fraser’s work is his attempt to counteract this tendency and to draw on Grice and Searle for his typology of illocutionary acts. 2.1.4.2. Leech (1983). Illocutionary force has been considered by a number of researchers as the focus of those mitigating operations that have a direct bearing on politeness. Geoffrey Leech (1983) is one of the linguists who have acknowledged the link between mitigation as indirectedness and mitigation as politeness. The comprehensive model proposed by Leech, particularly his distinction between textual rhetoric and interpersonal rhetoric, is a significant contribution to the development of multidimensional pragmatics. His maxims of politeness are all relevant to mitigation. It is therefore worth mentioning them here: Tact Maxim: Minimize cost to other / maximize benefit to other. Generosity Maxim: Minimize benefit to self / maximize cost to self. Approbation Maxim:
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Minimize dispraise of other / maximize praise of other. Modesty Maxim: Minimize praise of self / maximize dispraise of self. Agreement Maxim: Minimize disagreement between self and other / maximize agreement between self and other. Sympathy Maxim: Minimize antipathy between self and other / maximize sympathy between self and other. (Leech, 1983: 132)
12
With reference to the main lines of the argument presented in this book (which, as already pointed out, aims to integrate a number of ideas of mitigation in pragmatics around the different scopes of the utterance), I would like to stress the connection between politeness and indirectedness. This relationship reflects the formula ‘the more indirect, the more polite’. As Leech puts it: Indirect illocutions tend to be more polite a) because they increase the degree of optionality, and b) because the more indirect the illocution is, the more diminished and tentative its force tends to be. (Leech, 1983: 108)
Leech’s idea of the strategic indeterminacy of both propositions and illocutions is further developed by Hübler (1983), who adopts the distinction made by Hare (1970) between phrastic assertive acts (focusing on proposition) and neustic assertive acts (focusing on illocution). Hübler then moves on to claim that understatements result from a de-intensification of the phrastic component, whereas hedges result from a de-intensification of the neustic component. Thus, a similarity can be found between Hübler’s understatements and the concept of bushes in this book: both are means of reducing the speaker’s commitment to the propositional content of the utterance. In the same way, Hübler’s hedges are similar to the hedges described here, in that both serve as means of reducing the speaker’s endorsement of the illocutionary force of the utterance. Unfortunately, Hübler’s analysis, although insightful from a theoretical point of view, is restricted to assertive acts and is not backed by empirical evidence. 2.1.4.3. Holmes (1984). The work of Janet Holmes is centered around strategies attenuating (weakening) or boosting (emphasizing) illocutionary force. Accordingly, the author identifies two categories of mitigators: ‘downtoners’ and ‘boosters’. Moving from Fraser (1980) which will be dealt with in greater detail in the following 12
As Sifianou (1992b: 29) points out, Leech assigns more importance to sub-maxims of the first type than to those of the second type. Hence, his model is biased towards the ‘avoidance of disagreement’ rather than aimed at ‘seeking agreement’. As a consequence, strategies falling within the category labeled mitigation here are of paramount importance for the development of interaction.
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section, Holmes (1984) treats mitigation as a particular case of attenuation. Specifically, she claims that mitigation occurs when the predictable effects of a speech act are negative. In my review of her paper (Caffi, 1990), I point out her misleading use of ‘strength’ as a free variable of ‘force’. Here, a lexeme belonging to everyday English vocabulary is mistaken for a metalinguistic lexeme, thus merging a technical concept (i.e. illocutionary force) with a nontechnical one and ignoring de facto the heuristic character of the former. In this section I will confine myself to summarizing some of the attenuation strategies mentioned by Holmes. According to Holmes, attenuation devices affecting illocutionary force can be grouped into the following four categories: 1) prosodic devices (e.g. a falling-rising intonational contour to realize the epistemic mode in English, decreased emphasis, lower voice, etc.); 2) syntactic devices (e.g. tag questions, impersonal constructions, double negatives in formal discourse, etc.); 3) lexical devices; 4) discourse devices (e.g. digression indicators like by the way, which, as already observed by Brown and Levinson (1987: 174), reduce the relevance of the utterance they introduce). Lexical devices are further divided into: x
attenuating devices focusing on the speaker (for instance, parenthetical expressions such as I gather, I guess, I suppose);
x
attenuating devices focusing on the hearer (e.g. you know, if you don’t mind, if you are sure that it’s ok);
x
attenuating devices focusing on content or ‘other’.
This last category includes deresponsibilization mechanisms realized by epistemic adverbials like possibly and probably, or adverbials displacing the responsibility for what is being said to other sources (e.g. allegedly, reportedly, presumably). The membership of downtoners like possibly and probably to a different category from that of parenthetical expressions is questionable. Despite the fact that adverbs are more impersonal than verbs, as noted by Urmson (1952: 487), both downtoners and parenthetical forms have the proposition as their scope; in other words, both are means of realizing the epistemic attenuation in the degree of speaker’s commitment toward the truth of propositional content. Holmes’ study has the merit of being the first to have identified a link between the two complementary poles of modulation, namely mitigation and reinforcement, to have mentioned the ambivalence of some strategies that can be used for both weakening and emphasizing and to have pointed out the importance of context in disambiguating such ambivalence.
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2.1.5. Mitigation as de-focalization of deictic origin So far I have considered two scopes of mitigation, namely propositional content and illocutionary force. A third scope of mitigation is the deictic origin of the utterance. In 2.0.2. I labeled mitigators focusing on deictic origin ‘shields’. The strategic manipulation of one or more components of deictic origin to achieve mitigation has been investigated by different authors from different points of view. As already mentioned in 2.1.2., Brown and Levinson deal with such manipulation by observing the way it either increases or decreases the implied distance between speaker and hearer. Mitigating devices of this kind are subsumed under the category of ‘impersonalization mechanisms’ (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 273). In this connection, Kerbrat-Orecchioni (1992: 204) mentions désactualisateurs, while Havertake (1992) makes the first explicit reference to deictic origin as a scope of mitigation. The related notion of débrayage is introduced by Greimas and Courtés (1979) and can be seen as a forerunner of impersonalization and de-focalization mechanisms, although in the Greimasian semiotic perspective such a concept is supposed to apply only to written narratives. According to Greimas and Courtés, débrayage indicates the separation of the subject of the énoncé from the subject of the énonciation, i.e. the detachment of the utterance from its deictic origin. This notion is complementary to that of embrayage, which indicates the reverse process by which the utterance is ‘anchored’ to its deictic origin. A typical example of débrayage is the use of impersonal structures in scientific texts. 2.1.6. Mitigation as removal of unwelcome perlocutionary effects (Fraser, 1980) Fraser is the founder of the concept of mitigation in pragmatics. In his 1980 paper he defines mitigation as the modification of unwelcome effects on the addressee, as opposed to mitigation as a general weakening of the speech act (as suggested by Larry Horn in a personal communication quoted by the author). Fraser’s definition has been used by subsequent research without any significant change. Fraser focuses on the idea of conversational agreement, i.e. a set of mutual rights and obligations between speaker and hearer that can be renegotiated during conversation. The object of such renegotiation, he says, can be either the type of illocutionary act or the style of conversation. For instance, participants in a conversation can negotiate address terms. Moreover, Fraser introduces the distinction between ‘self-serving’ and ‘altruistic’ mitigation. These two kinds of mitigation can occur within the same act. However, while the former aims at removing negative effects for the speaker, the latter attenuates negative effects for the hearer. Therefore, in Fraser’s account, the privileged scope of mitigating operations is perlocution.
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The linguistic devices by which mitigation is realized have a common macro-function: speaker’s deresponsibilization. Among these devices are the following: x
indirect acts and justification moves;
x
non immediacy indicators, as defined by Wiener and Mehrabian (1968) and illustrated in 4.5. These include passive and impersonal constructions where references to speaker and hearer are deleted;
x
epistemic disclaimers (e.g. If I’m not wrong…) and non-epistemic disclaimers (e.g. I hate to do this, but…, If you wouldn’t mind…), parenthetical forms, and modal adverbs reducing commitment to the proposition;
x
tag-questions;
x
hedges, such as technically in contexts where adverbs of this kind are used “to move your displeasure from me, the conveyor of the information, to those who drew up the technical criteria” (Fraser, 1980: 349).
As pointed out by Fraser, the use of the above-listed devices does not automatically produce a mitigating effect. In fact, the hearer must decide on each occasion whether or not unwelcome effects have been mitigated. In this respect, knowledge of rhetoric seems to be a sine qua non for a pragmatic investigation of mitigation and analogous phenomena. Fraser defines mitigation as a strategy used to remove or sweeten the unwelcome effects of speech acts expressing orders, bad news, criticism, etc., thus shifting the focus from illocution to perlocution. This shift is facilitated by the notion of intended illocutionary force, which is very close to the Searlian concept of illocutionary point in that it mixes up intentionality and conventionality. Fraser does not draw any distinction between a speech act’s expected results (i.e. the perlocutionary effects usually associated with it) and its possible, although not predictable, results (i.e. its perlocutionary sequels). Basically, what Fraser seems to have in mind are perlocutionary objects like warning, annoying, offending, etc. The focus on perlocution raises various questions. First, which illocutionary acts must be mitigated? Second, what are the true objects of mitigation? For example, ordering, criticizing, dismissing, etc. all correspond to illocutionary acts. However, if we consider ‘giving bad news’, what is the object of mitigation: the illocution or the proposition? Third, which illocutionary acts are negative to speaker and hearer? And finally, since the rights and obligations of both speaker and hearer are affected by the actual execution of each speech act, is any speech act, at least in principle, completely free of negative perlocutionary effects? It should be noted that, in order to find answers to these questions, is necessary to reread Austin’s approach and clarify the distinction between illocution and perlocution. In particular, researchers must rethink the separation between the felicity of a given illocutionary act and its perlocutionary success (cf. Wunderlich, 1976: 115-118). At any rate, the distinction between illocution and perlocution should not be blurred. The illocution, as the conventional level of a
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speech act, ‘takes effect’, aims at achieving an effect and elicits a response (cf. Austin, 1962: 117-118). These aspects of the illocutionary act should not engender a confusion with the perlocutionary act, which consists in the achievement of a (factual or psychological) response, being it the response aimed at by the speaker or something different. It must also be noted, however, that distinguishing between the conventional effects of a given illocutionary act and its perlocutionary effects is not an easy task in the analysis of authentic speech. The major problem seems to be precisely finding a satisfactory balance between a philosophicallygrounded and an empirically-grounded treatment. A framework that takes illocution into account within an extended theory of action can probably help shed light on this theoretical problem. For instance, the relation between illocution and perlocution can be interpreted from a cognitive psychological perspective as an interdependence of high strategic levels and low operational levels. The former focus on general plans of action, while the latter center on the organization of specific strategies (cf. Cranach et al., 1980; Bange, 1992: 85-86). Besides, a satisfactory analysis must necessarily be based on large multilingual corpora of authentic speech. In this respect, as pointed out by Levinson (1983: 241), “there seems to be no clear reason why what is perlocution in one culture may not be an illocution in another”. Going back to Fraser’s definition, the view of mitigation as affecting perlocution is a transitional notion between natural and non-natural mitigation (cf. 2.3.1.). Such a definition is problematic in that perlocution is in itself non-conventional and each illocutionary act could cause unwelcome perlocutionary effects. Moreover, an act can be positive to the speaker, but at the same time it can be seen as an aggressive or face-threatening (hence potentially negative) act in terms of both its propositional content and illocutionary force. It may be not only possible but also advisable to mitigate acts that are positive to the hearer. As has been noted by many authors (Simmel, 1983 [1906]; Holly, 1979; Kerbrat-Orecchioni, 1994, among others), there are acts such as compliments and expressions of appreciation or approval that are sometimes embarrassing to addressees and territorially somewhat invasive, which must therefore be attenuated. In conclusion, the possibly ‘unwelcome perlocution of the act’ – and with this, the face-threatening effect – is only one possible reason for mitigation. It is not a stable definitional criterion (with the exception of acts having negative effects per se, like reproach). In fact, such a notion does not account for the conventional nature of illocutions, being instead the result of arbitrary, personal, or idiosyncratic evaluations. In this respect, it must be noted here that mitigation is definitely associated with speakers’ strategic planning abilities and with their empathic ability to identify themselves with their hearers. For this reason, mitigation interfaces with other dimensions, particularly the emotive dimension. It is therefore reasonable to assume that a number of interactional parameters connected to illocution or to larger units are simultaneously affected by mitigation. This is exactly what I will try to show in the following chapters.
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2.1.7. Prince, Frader, and Bosk (1982) The short paper by Prince, Frader and Bosk (Prince et al., 1982) has some points in common with the present treatment. First, it addresses the problem of hedges starting from empirical data; second, the data are taken from a corpus of therapeutic interaction (i.e. physicianphysician discourse); third, the terminology used partly overlaps with the one adopted here. However, Prince et al.’s typology differs from mine in ways which are worth briefly discussing here. Leaving aside the insights concerning the interaction between doctors and the sources of their uncertainty and uneasiness, I will concentrate on Prince et al.’s theoretical proposals. Relying on a corpus of interactions among physicians in a pediatric intensive-care unit, the authors draw a basic distinction between two classes of hedges. The first class makes the propositional content fuzzy and corresponds to Lakoff’s (1972) definition of hedges. These expressions, which indicate non-prototypicalness with respect to class membership, e.g. His feet were sort of blue (p. 85), are called ‘approximators’. The second class, which “correlates with fuzziness in the relationship between the propositional content and the speaker” (p. 85), is called ‘shields’. The reason for distinguishing these two types of expressions is theoretically grounded: only the first class is formed by expressions that affect the truth conditions of the propositions associated with them. The second class leaves them unaltered. Hence, as argued by the authors, while the first class of hedges pertains to semantics, the second class pertains to pragmatics. Further distinctions within these two main classes are put forward. As to hedges on the propositional content, i.e. approximators, the authors claim that they can be divided in two subgroups. The first subgroup is called ‘adaptors’ and is made up by expressions which indicate that “the actual situation is close but not identical with the prototypical situation” (p. 88). The second subgroup of approximators is called ‘rounders’ and includes the expressions a speaker may use instead of a precise term, to indicate that there exists a range (over time, over methods, etc.) to which a given item belongs. As to expressions “conveying some markedness with respect to speaker’s commitment” (p. 86) that Prince et al. call ‘shields’, the authors draw a distinction between two subclasses: plausibility shields, e.g. I guess, it seems that, etc. which weaken the speaker’s commitment to the truth of the proposition, 13 and attribution shields, which assign “the belief in question to someone else than the speaker, the speaker’s own degree of commitment being only indirectly inferrable” (p. 89). I have come to know Prince et al.’s paper only recently, after formulating my typology of mitigators, with the tripartition of bushes, hedges and shields. I was pleased to find points of convergence, including the use of the term ‘shield’ (though with a substantially different 13
Incidentally, Prince et al.’s (1982) ‘plausibility shields’ (‘hedges’ in my terms) roughly correspond to Urmson’s (1952) parenthetical verbs.
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meaning) for which I have been criticized. Let me briefly highlight the main divergences between Prince et al.’s approach and mine. I agree that it is possible to draw a distinction, at least in principle, between mitigators on the (act of reference within the) propositional content, i.e. approximators in Prince et al.’s terms, bushes in mine; and mitigators centered on the speaker’s commitment, i.e. shields in Prince et al.’s terms, hedges in mine. I have used the term ‘shields’ to refer to a third, different class of mitigators, i.e. mitigators centered on the deictic origin of the utterance (cf. 2.1.5.). This is not just a matter of terminology: I believe the authors fail to recognize that ‘plausibility shields’ and ‘attribution shields’ work on the basis of different mechanisms. While the former (which I have called ‘hedges’) are centered on one aspect of illocutionary force, i.e. the commitment to the truth of the expressed proposition – ‘neustic’ in Hare’s (1970) terms – the latter (which I have called ‘shields’) are employed to ascribe the whole utterance to someone else than the speaker. Moreover, ‘plausibility shields’ are scalar devices, covering different degrees of uncertainty on the part of the speaker, whereas ‘attribution shields’ are dichotomous devices. A drawback in Prince et al.’s treatment is the mixing up of form and function, specifically of abstract domains of the downgrading operation and resulting effects. Furthermore, in my approach there is no space for a sharp distinction between approximators belonging to semantics and shields belonging to pragmatics. As I claimed in 2.1.3.1., the operation of bushes on the propositional content has repercussions on the whole speech act. In other words, a weakened (marked) precision in the reference act has the effect of weakening the commitment to the truth of the proposition and this in turn has the effect of weakening the subscription to the whole speech act. Propositions are independent objects only in philosophers’ mind. In real usages, they cannot be isolated from the rest of the utterance in which they occur as there is not a locution without an illocution (cf. Austin, 1962; see footnote 16) within a goal-directed and contextually-constrained behavior. 2.1.8. The notion of weakening (Abschwächung) Some German linguists have described a concept that is similar to the notion of mitigation used in the present work. I am referring to a paper by Meyer-Hermann and Weingarten (1982) and to a book by Langner (1994). These two works show some similarities. First, they both employ the term Abschwächung, which can be translated as ‘weakening’ or ‘attenuation’. It should be noted that the definition provided by Langner, though more elaborate, is substantially the same as that as Meyer-Hermann and Weingarten’s. Second, they take illocutionary force of the speech act to be the privileged scope of weakening strategies. Third, they are both based on data collected in specific interactional contexts, i.e. psychotherapeutic conversations and Hochschulseminar (college classroom interaction) respectively. This last feature makes the two works compliant with a fundamental precondition for an integrated
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pragmatic approach: i.e. they meet the need to connect different kinds of mitigation and interaction to one another by formulating hypotheses that rely on a sound empirical basis. 2.1.8.1. Meyer-Hermann and Weingarten (1982). One of the merits of the work by MeyerHermann and Weingarten is that, in their discussion of mitigation, they address questions related both to the reduction of obligations and to the participants’ interactional expectations. As a starting point, the authors make some methodological remarks on the difference between their own approach and other studies on Abtönungspartikeln and Gradpartikeln. While research on the latter tends to concentrate on identifying the communicative functions of lexical units in isolation, the authors’ main concern is to find interactive categories for interpreting lexical devices and describing interaction among them. Meyer-Hermann and Weingarten’s definition of mitigation is the following: In a first approximation, we define the concept of weakening (Abschwächung) – relative to a hypothethical, less weakened variant of an utterance – as that function of an utterance or of part of an utterance that reduces the imposition of obligations or the commitment to obligations. (Meyer-Hermann e Weingarten, 1982: 242, my translation, C.C.)
14
Some of the questions raised by Meyer-Hermann and Weingarten are particularly interesting for the perspective adopted here, in particular, the question: “which components of the utterance act are affected by the modulating devices realizing weakened and emphasized utterances?” (“Worüber operieren Realisierungsmerkmale von abgeschwächten und verschärften Äußerungen?”, 1982: 251). This crucial issue will be addressed throughout the present book, but let us try now to specify this general point through the following questions which will be addressed in the following chapters:
14
a)
which linguistic scope, whether lexicalized or not, is affected by the mitigating operation?;
b)
is there a correlation between the abstract scope of the linguistic mitigating device and the inferrable effect with respect to the value assigned to a given interactional dimension?;
c)
how does each device contribute to Abschwächung?;
d)
do mitigating devices change according to speech act type? And, if so, how?;
e)
how do different kinds of mitigating devices interact? With which results? And finally,
The original passage reads as follows: “Das Konzept der ‘Abschwächung’ explizieren wir vorläufig als Funktion einer Äußerung bzw. eines Äußerungsteils, welche darin besteht, daß – relativ zu einer hypothetischen, weniger abgeschwächten Variante der Äußerung – schwächere Obligationen aufgebaut oder übernommen werden” (Meyer-Hermann and Weingarten, 1982: 242).
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f)
from a psychological point of view, what is the relationship between the use of different types of mitigation and speakers’ constructions of the ‘self’, i.e. their self-presentations beyond mere face-work (cf. Chapter 1)?
2.1.8.2. Langner (1994). Michael Langner’s definition of Abschwächung draws on the one given by Meyer-Hermann and Weingarten (1982) and on Brown and Levinson’s (1987) model. Langner says: I take Abschwächung, in a first approximation, to be a communicative strategy by which the participants in a (linguistic) interaction (e.g. communication during a university seminar) try to minimize territorial violations that would inevitably arise in case of more direct communication. (Langner, 1994: 22)
15
Langner identifies the following levels corresponding to the functional domains of the weakening operation: x
the level of obligations constructed and modified through lexical and grammatical elements;
x
the level of face, which can be threatened by specific interactional sequences;
x
the level of institutional conditions, further subdivided into speech acts peculiar to institutions and speech acts simply linked to institutions (1994: 50-51).
He then moves on to specify the following scopes of Abschwächung: x
weakening of the realization of the illocution;
x
weakening of the truth-value of a proposition, further subdivided into: weakening of the reference act (weakening of categorizations of objects or states); weakening of the predication (weakening of claims to truth of assertions about objects or states (1994: 57)).
According to Langner, Abschwächung is realized by the following linguistic means:
15
x
phenomena pertaining to modality (modal particles, modal adverbs, modal verbs, Konjunktiv II, modal use of future tense);
x
metacommunicative prefaces to utterances (e.g. wenn ich mich richtig erinnere);
x
use of sentence structures in which the syntactic mood and the pragmatic modality are incongruous (unterschiedlicher Satztypgebrauch), for instance the use of an
Langner’s original definition is the following: “Unter Abschwächung verstehe ich in einer ersten Annäherung eine Kommunikationsstrategie, mit der die Teilnehmer an einer (sprachlichen) Interaktion – z.B. in Hochschulseminar-Kommunikation – versuchen, die Territoriumsverletzungen zu minimieren, die sich bei direkterer Kommunikation zwangsläufig ergeben würden” (Langner, 1994: 22).
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interrogative sentence to make a request; x
means expressing a particular attitude towards the proposition (e.g. epistemic verbs, normative verbs, etc.);
x
impersonalization forms (e.g. the use of man, wir, etc. instead of ich);
x
hedges (Heckenausdrücke);
x
hedged performative utterances (verdeckte performative Äußerungen) (cf. Fraser, 1975);
x
use of verbs or nouns with a specific meaning within the proposition (e.g. “können Sie das mal erklären?” instead of beweisen);
x
bipartite structures, i.e. zweigliedrige Konstruktionen (e.g. “Ich freue mich sehr, wenn Sie heute abend kommen”);
x
marked register;
x
various kinds of reported speech;
x
use of definite articles, particularly with reference to a third person (e.g. “der Helmut Kohl, der Helmut”).
I will not dwell on the above-listed points. Suffice it to say that Langner’s work is an important reference for the framework developed in this book, as it is the first comprehensive empirical attempt at providing a systematic treatment of mitigating phenomena within a specific institutional activity type.
2.2. INTENSITY The discussion of hedges in Section 2.1. has emphasized the idea that no locutionary act can occur without an illocutionary act. When we refer exclusively to the former and disregard the latter, we are loosing sight of the total speech act that is the real object of pragmatics. This thesis, which was first advanced by Austin, is at the basis of the present work. 16 But if we move from theory to real language, how are illocutionary acts produced and recognized in everyday interaction? It is easily enough to admit that the understanding of the illocutionary force heavily relies on our metapragmatic competence. My claim here is that intensity factors that converge in the latter are an integral part of this understanding. How can this idea become an operational criterion? In Caffi (1990), the term ‘modulation’ is introduced to designate the rhetorical and stylistic form of the utterance. In that paper, mitigation is 16
The reference is, among others, to the following passage: “in general the locutionary act as much as the illocutionary is an abstraction only: every genuine speech-act is both” (Austin, 1962: 147). The idea that every locution is also an illocution is highlighted with interesting arguments by MorpurgoTagliabue (1972/1973: 71).
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described as one of the two possible and complementary directions of modulation, the other being ‘reinforcement’. My main concern at the time the paper was written was to devise a conceptual framework in which Austin’s ideas could be substantiated by authentic speech rather than simply by examples invented by linguists. I had in mind what Bally (1965 [1925]) calls ‘living language’, i.e. real language that is inherently affect-loaded, evocative, ambivalent, and able to convey subtle expressive nuances and shades, in a constant oscillation between downgrading and upgrading, attenuation and reinforcement. The term modulation was chosen to make specific reference to this tension between the opposite directions along an intensity scale which can be conceptualized by scalar aspects of illocutionary force, while remaining within the general metaphorical field of force. As we will see in 2.2.2. below, it was Strawson who opened up the issue of intensity within the speech act theoretical reflection. Before addressing this specific point of connection between speech act theory and stylistics, which is my main concern in this section, a brief look at Bally’s idea of intensity will be useful to introduce the stylistic perspective on the problem. 2.2.1. Intensity according to Bally (1970 [1909]) In this section I will briefly look at Bally’s remarks on intensity that are particularly relevant to the idea of mitigation discussed in this book. In the stylistics of langue (linguistic stylistics), which he founded, Bally assigns a crucial role to the notion of the intensity of expressive choices. Intensity is defined as a principle of classification holding for expressions that form an ideologically-oriented set (“norme de classement pour les expressions constitutives d’une rubrique idéologique” Bally, 1970 [1909]: 171) and reflects the convergence of intellectual and emotional factors, the latter prevailing over the former or vice versa. Bally’s inquiry centers on the lexicon – specifically, on expressive choices of synonyms. However, the speaker’s subjective stances are not only a matter of lexicon. In fact, in Bally’s work, the study of the lexicon is integrated with the study of syntactic dislocation and cleft structures of different kinds (Bally, 1965 [1932]) and their different expressive and emotive impact. 17 Moreover, Bally illustrates how different tournures (i.e. syntactic constructions) can often cover whole turns, sometimes corresponding to a sort of repartee following a dialogic microscript. His examples are taken from instances of spontaneous speech and legitimate the possibility, at least theoretically, of extending the idea of intensity to larger linguistic units such as discourse chunks. Although Bally neglects the illocutionary dimension of the utterance, his remarks have a pioneering pragmatic nature, also from the point of view of emotive 17
The theoretical core of Bally’s syntactic approach consists in the identification within the sentence of what he terms a modus and a dictum. This anticipates the distinction between modality and propositional content. By means of the modus vs. dictum distinction, the attitude of the speaker (modus) towards her/his utterance (dictum) is given an abstract representation.
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communication (cf. Caffi and Janney, 1994b: 333-335). In his seminal discussion of expressiveness, Bally (1970 [1909]: 250 ff.) draws a distinction between ‘direct’ (lexical) and ‘indirect’ (syntactic and prosodic) expressive linguistic choices. I will draw on this distinction later in the book. What is important at this juncture is to stress Bally’s idea of the pervasiveness of expressive resources in discourse: expressivity, subjectivity and affect are the intertwined distinctive features of spoken language which Bally sees as a goal-directed activity. 18 In his discussions of the concept of intensity in Traité de stylistique française (1909), Bally explicitly deals with attenuation. After illustrating the use of diminutive suffixes that, he notes, are much more widely used in Italian, he attributes the pervasiveness of attenuation in spoken language to social and emotional factors. Bally also recognizes that neither social nor emotional factors alone can account for the complex use of attenuating expressions as compared to unmarked expressions, which say things plainly as they are (“disent la chose telle qu’elle est”, 1970 [1909]: 175). In his discussion of different degrees of intensity in adjectives and semantically corresponding evaluative expressions, Bally puts forward the idea of a continuum of choices within an ascending and descending range resulting from a real transposition of the affective tone. Nobody denies the extremely delicate, sometimes subtle, nature of these nuances. However, we would like to have convinced the reader by now that a tendency [i.e. attenuation, C.C.] does exist and that this tendency affects the practice of language. (Bally, 1970 [1909]: 175, my translation, C.C.)
19
Bally often implies that the linguistic choice is influenced by a mixture of intellectual, emotional, and social factors. He distinguishes between two dialectically opposite modes of communication characterizing each message: the intellectual mode (mode pur) and the affective mode (mode vécu). In real language, Bally argues, mode vécu prevails over mode pur. The latter represents, above all, an abstract possibility which offers the identifying term. In other words, the intellectual, logical mode represents the neutral choice against which the expressive choice can be detected, compared and evaluated. As already mentioned in 1.5., Bally’s idea of a constant, often unconscious, comparative process at work in communication (“les mots ne sont compris et sentis que par une comparaison incessante et inconsciente qui se fait entre eux dans notre cerveau”, Bally, 1970 [1909]: 22) foreshadows recent developments in cognitive psychology. This idea provides early historical support for the claim that pragmatic categories are not discrete, but may, as Givón (1989: 5) says, “display shades and 18
This idea was later expanded by the Italian historical linguist Benvenuto Terracini (Terracini, 1963; cf. 1.5.), who dealt with the link between expressive tone and social tone. 19 The original passage is the following: “une gamme montante et descendante, résultat d’une vraie transposition du ton affectif. Que ces nuances soient extrêmement délicates, ténues, subtiles parfois, personne ne le nie; mais qu’il y a une tendance, et que cette tendance est en action dans la pratique du langage, voilà ce dont nous voudrions avoir convaincu le lecteur”. (Bally, 1970 [1909]: 175)
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gradations”. These very shades and gradations (both stylistic and pragmatic) can be understood thanks to the umbrella-category ‘mitigation’. Bally’s observations can be reframed within a wider framework that accounts for a view of language as action (thus shifting the focus from locution, Bally’s main concern, to illocution). This framework will also account for a view of interaction as negotiation (thus foregrounding the negotiating process of meaning construction and consensus-building). This framework will preserve, however, Bally’s kernel idea of style as something which is not added to the linguistic system but is inherent in it. Furthermore, Bally’s stylistics provides a set of criteria for focusing on the complex object of analysis of the present book, namely contextually and emotionally modulated linguistic action. In Bally’s vein, it is perhaps worth reaffirming here that mitigated choices are empirical in nature. They are not just lexicological or linguistic units but rather interactional units; and they are mitigated by virtue of some type of implicit comparison. The comparison process may be unconscious or it may involve evaluating a given mitigated choice against other possible and/or expected non-mitigated choices in that particular co-text and context. Mitigated choices can therefore be explained in terms of co-textual and contextual factors, notably in terms of different expectations shaped by the interactions in which these choices take place. Among the set of multiple expectations referred to here we can find expectations related to intensity: One of the linguistic variables about which we have expectations is intensity of the persuasive appeal. (McCann and Higgins, 1990: 20)
2.2.2. Intensity according to Strawson (1964) As already said, this section aims mainly at finding an answer to the following question: is it possible, within the historical theoretical core of analytical philosophy, to find a link between the concepts of modulation and illocutionary force? Austin (1962: 72-79) and Searle (1975: 348, 350) both hinted at the problem of intensity of illocutionary force. More precisely, Austin has basically in mind the strength of the attempt to reach the perlocutionary goal via an illocutionary act. In this connection, his considerations about the different realizations of a speech act (1962: 79 ff.) have a bearing on the issue of intensity. He says: We can qualify the force of ‘I shall’ by adding ‘probably’ – or in an opposite sense – by adding ‘without fail’ (p. 75) […] an imperative may be an order, a permission, a demand, a request, an entreaty, a suggestion, a recommendation, a warning. (pp. 76-77)
Though clearly Austin’s main concern is to compare different devices used to perform an
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illocutionary act, his attention to real linguistic usages brought him to touch on the problem of intensity. Degrees of intensity also underlie the list of expressions on p. 79 of How to do things with words, e.g. I thank vs. I am grateful vs. I feel grateful. As to Searle (1975), he recognized the role of intensity factors in two of his twelve dimensions of variation of illocutionary acts. The latter can differ one from another in “the force or strength with which the illocutionary point is presented” (p. 348). Also, according to Searle, illocutionary acts can differ in the style of their performance (p. 350). However, it was Strawson (1964) who first envisaged a non occasional connection between modulation and illocutionary force in his paper “Intention and convention in speech acts”. In this foundational paper, Strawson’s main goal is to put forward an account of illocutionary force and to clarify the bearing that speaker’s intentions and social conventions have on it. One major conclusion is that we have to distinguish between non-conventional illocutionary acts, where the appeal to convention is limited to the conventionality of linguistic means and where the notion of force is ‘exhausted’ by the notion of meaning, and conventional illocutionary acts (e.g. marrying, redoubling, giving out, pronouncing sentence, bringing in a verdict). Starting from Austin’s notion of ‘securing uptake’, i.e. the hearer’s understanding of the illocutionary force of an utterance, Strawson claims: We tentatively laid down as a necessary condition of securing understanding of the illocutionary force of an utterance that the speaker should succeed in bringing it about that the audience took him, in issuing his utterance, to have a complex intention of a certain kind, namely the intention that the audience should recognize (and recognize as intended to be recognized) his intention to induce a certain response in the audience. (Strawson, 1964: 454)
Another important point made by Strawson is that the intentions which make up illocutionary force must be avowable (p. 454). This essential feature explains why acts such as ‘showing off’ and ‘insinuating’ can not be seen as illocutionary acts. Against this background, Strawson considers the possibility of accounting for the difference between requests and entreaties in terms of illocutionary force. In so doing, the problem of the intensity of an illocutionary act within a given illocutionary type (e.g. exercitives in Austin’s terms, directives in Searle’s terms) is introduced. Strawson does not speak of ‘intensity’ but of “variation of an act” (p. 455). He maintains that: Entreaty, for example, is a matter of trying to secure the primary response not merely through audience recognition of the intention to secure it, but through audience recognition of a complex attitude of which this primary intention forms an integral part. A wish that someone should stay may be held in different ways: passionately or lightly, confidently or desperately; and it may, for different reasons, be part of a speaker’s intention to secure recognition of how he holds it. The most obvious reason, in the case of entreaty, is the belief, or hope, that such a revelation is more
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likely to secure the fulfillment of the primary intention. (Strawson, 1964: 455)
A major conclusion can be drawn from these considerations: the mode of performance, i.e. intensity, is part of the complex intention that is at the basis of illocutionary force. Moreover, the recognition of such a mode can contribute to the achievement of the complex primary response. In other words, variation of an act, which I call ‘modulation’, as that category that captures the mode of performance of an illocutionary act and makes the notion of intensity operational, is part of the intention held by the speaker which the hearer must recognize. To understand an illocutionary act amounts to, among other things, understanding its intensity. Intensity, it can be claimed, is not only a matter of stylistic choice: it can also facilitate the attainment of speaker’s goals. In Strawson’s terms, while in acts such as ‘insinuating’ the recognition of the intention to insinuate leads to a failure, in acts such as ‘entreaty’ the recognition of the intention, or more precisely, of that part of the speaker’s intention which concerns intensity factors, is not only avowable, but it “makes [it] more likely to secure the fulfillment of the primary intention” (p. 454). In keeping with Sbisà (1989), I disagree with Strawson on the general account of illocution he puts forward. Suffice it to say here that, first, he confines the notion of illocution to that of intention; second, he deals with force conventionality as if the latter were simply a matter of the conventionality of linguistic devices. As a result, the idea of illocutionary force is not clearly separated from that of meaning. Nevertheless, Strawson’s remarks prove useful in identifying a direct link between locution and illocution, formulation styles affecting the locutionary act and performance styles affecting the illocutionary act. In a word, he connects action style and action performance in the concept of intensity. As we can gather from the quotation above, according to Strawson, illocutionary force includes intensity factors that must be recognized by the addressee. And, crucially, the recognition of these makes the attainment of speech act goals easier. Less abstractly, what is crucial in the present context is how intensity, or its operational counterpart, i.e. modulation, is realized by different linguistic, prosodic and kinesic devices. Illocutionary force depends on a number of indicators and cues that shape the act as such and give it its overall and stylistic physiognomy. 20 In real communication, illocutionary acts are usually modulated. It is the non-modulated act that is the marked choice. Sometimes modulated illocution is given a name, as in the case of ‘prototype peaks’ (Givón, 1989: 152) like statements, questions, requests, or in the case of ‘entreaties’ mentioned by Strawson. In most cases, however, it is given no label, so that illocutions are qualified in various ways within our dictionaries and ‘folk taxonomies’. So, we easily recognize a request as ‘pressing’, an excuse 20
In a 1991 paper (Bazzanella et al., 1991), Carla Bazzanella, Marina Sbisà and myself pointed out that illocutionary force must be regarded as a scalar notion in order to account for intensity factors not envisaged in traditional speech act theory.
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as ‘heartfelt’, a statement as ‘categorical’ and so on. In other words, intensity factors are an integral part of our metapragmatic competence. In my view, there is no clear-cut distinction in the utterance between indicators of illocution and indicators of modulation (both in mitigating and in reinforcing directions). In addition, it is not possible to separate mitigation from multilayered and multi-dimensional processes of meaning construction and negotiation which pragmatics tries to unravel (be they illocutionary-related or not). Mitigation affects these processes in many ways. For instance, it influences content, as in conversational sequences or texts where topic-related moves may coincide with disqualification strategies (cf. Haley, 1959; Sluzki et al., 1967; Chapter 4). It can also influence style, producing slight propositional and morphosyntactic adjustments (e.g. use of diminutive suffixes). In any case, as noted by Strawson, modulation is part and parcel of the complex intention that the speaker wants the hearer to recognize. This leads us back to a question already raised in Chapter 1: which subjects do the terms ‘speaker’ and ‘hearer’ (regardless of changes in what Goffman calls ‘footing’) refer to? In my view of pragmatics, the model subject is not only a speaker but also a competent participant in a given interaction, who knows which behavior is appropriate in a given situation and can interpret specific communicative practices. Interlocutors have more than one identity and constantly shape and (re)construct their selves through discourse. They are acknowledged players with an ability to act according to contextualized appropriateness criteria close to the notions of pršpon, or aptum in classical rhetoric (Lausberg, 1967: §48). In other words, speakers are endowed with a metapragmatic competence (cf. Caffi, 1994a) which is not only linguistic, but also semiotic, and constitutionally intertextual. Such competence refers to a knowledge which concerns not only language as social (culturally and historically determined) behavior, but also our ‘being in the world’, as philosophers throughout the twentieth century have put it. 21 This competence includes the understanding of illocutionary force as well as of its modulations. The whole issue of style, of what is appropriate in a given context, is rooted in this understanding. Illocutionary force – which associates forms with functions and gives them names within different folk taxonomies – can be thought of as an interface between language and world. Clearly, this is not the only interface we can think of. It must be complemented by the implicit metapragmatic awareness (i.e. the knowledge of how to do things) 22 evinced by mitigation strategies. Mitigation affects procedural aspects of implicit metapragmatic competence; we 21
The language/world metaphor runs through twentieth century philosophy from Heidegger to Wittgenstein and has deeply influenced Western ethnomethodology. In this respect, it must be noted that the connection between formal facts and meaning construction procedures stressed by Garfinkel (1967) dates back to Weber (1978 [1922]: 23 ff.), who, in his discussion of soziale Beziehungen, assigns a crucial role to the interplay between the construction of a particular meaning and a given behavior. 22 Knowing how to do things does not necessarily imply knowing how to explain the way things must be done (cf. Caffi, 1994a).
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know much more about language than we are actually able to make explicit. We are not only able to understand whether a given utterance expresses thanks or apologies, but we can also distinguish a formal apology from a remorseful expression of regret, or a heartfelt thanks from a mere mark of politeness. Moreover, relying on very subtle cues (cf. Chapter 4), we can even go so far as to guess whether apologies, thanks, etc. are sincere or not.
2.3. TOWARDS AN EXTENDED NOTION OF MITIGATION 2.3.1. Some conceptual distinctions In this section, I will look at some ways in which we can move from the restricted notion of mitigation based on Brown and Levinson’s (1987) narrow concept of face-threatening act (cf. 2.1.2.) to a broader idea of mitigation. In order to do this, some distinctions are required. My major goal in drawing the following distinctions is to lay the conceptual premises of this broader account. i)
Mitigation as a process versus mitigation as a result
First, the term ‘mitigation’, as an action noun (nomen actionis), can be used in two senses: to refer to the mitigating operation (or process) itself, or to refer to its result, i.e. the fact or condition of being mitigated. In the first sense, the mitigating strategy or action is foregrounded and its goal or outcome is backgrounded; in the second sense, the goal or projected outcome of mitigation is foregrounded and the strategy used to achieve it is backgrounded. Second, mitigation is a relational notion. From a logical point of view, it is a predicate with three arguments, i.e. (i) someone (ii) mitigates something (iii) by using something else. The present book deals with instances of mitigation in which one of the arguments involved in this predicate is the mitigating device (the Abschwächendes) while the other (the Abschwächtes) is an abstract component among the cluster of semantic-pragmatic features of the utterance (cf. Langner, 1994: 83). The presupposition linked to the lexeme ‘mitigation’ – both in its everyday sense and in its metalinguistic sense – is that its object, i.e. what is mitigated, is negative. This negative object may exist as an ontological reality (e.g. an action, event, process, or condition) or it may only be a possibility (e.g. a potentially unwelcome perlocutionary effect). For instance, a mild southern wind can mitigate the rigors of winter (both arguments being extralinguistic); an encouraging word can mitigate my anxiety (an argument being linguistic while the other being not); a reassuring circumlocution can mitigate a diagnosis (both arguments being linguistic).
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When the term ‘mitigation’ designates an ontological reality, it is being used in its everyday sense; when it designates objects that exist only as possibilities, it is being used in a technical, metalinguistic sense. The designated objects of mitigation in the everyday sense either exist at present or have already happened; those of mitigation in the metalinguistic sense have either already happened, in which case mitigation is co-extensive with repair, or they are about to happen, in which case it is an anticipatory strategy based on metapragmatic competence that is directed toward avoiding a possible negative result. The difference between repair and anticipatory mitigation can therefore be described in terms of the different ontological statuses of the objects of the two operations. In the case of repair, the object already exists and corresponds to some feature of a preceding sequence, while in the case of anticipatory mitigation, the object is only potential. In pre-sequences or grounders preceding the head act, the object of anticipatory mitigation has been planned, i.e. somehow calculated. ii)
Natural mitigation versus non-natural mitigation
The distinction that has just been drawn between ‘mitigation’ in its everyday sense and in its metalinguistic sense can be further expanded. On an analogy to the Gricean opposition between natural meaning and non-natural meaning, it is possible to refer to the former as ‘natural mitigation’ (MitN) and to the latter as ‘non-natural mitigation’ (MitNN). This opposition, however, could hardly be said to capture anything more than a general, ontologically grounded, conceptual difference, and it is reminiscent of the Gricean distinction only in a weak sense. To push the analogy any further would commit us to the view that a speaker successfully mitigates in a non-natural way when the hearer’s recognition of the speaker’s intention to mitigate is part of the speaker’s complex intention to mitigate. Attractive as it may be from a speculative viewpoint, there is no evidence that a description of this kind is suitable for mitigating processes in the real world. It can even be hypothesized that in many cases such a recognition may hinder the mitigation to take place successfully. If we take mitigation as an all-embracing category which is useful to unlock the communicative dynamics affecting the stylistic quality of meaning construction, we are bound to adopt a weaker version of this distinction. In the real world, mitigation takes too many forms and plays too many functions involving too many intertwined variables to allow us any simplification, however elegant. So, all we can concede to idealization in this respect is to argue that the label ‘natural mitigation’ (MitN) covers all instances where the term ‘mitigation’ is used in its everyday sense (cf. above). In natural mitigation, the objects involved in the mitigating process (i.e. the mitigating device and the mitigated object) may be both non-linguistic. A smile, for instance, may mitigate a feeling of uneasiness between speaker and hearer. On the other hand, one object – the mitigating device – may be linguistic, while the other – the mitigated object, for instance
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a worry – may be non-linguistic. The label ‘non-natural mitigation’ covers all instances where the term ‘mitigation’ is used metalinguistically. In non-natural mitigation both objects involved are linguistic: the mitigating device is an actual linguistic choice and the mitigated object is an abstract component among the cluster of semantic-pragmatic features of the utterance, e.g. the precision of reference, the commitment to the truth of the proposition, the intensity of the illocutionary force, etc. The vast majority of mitigating strategies that have been studied in the literature as well as the examples that will be discussed in the present book (cf. Chapter 5 and Chapter 6) are cases of non-natural mitigation. Between the two types of mitigation there are, however, transitional cases. Mitigation of speech acts whose propositional content is inherently negative for the hearer, typically the breaking of bad news, can be seen as a case of natural mitigation. Acts whose illocutionary force is inherently negative for the hearer (e.g. accusing, cursing, threatening, reprimanding, etc.), what Leech called “conflictive illocutionary functions” (Leech, 1983: 104-105), can be seen as transitional cases between natural mitigation and non-natural mitigation (an example of which will be discussed in 6.4.). This is because both cases of mitigation (in acts whose propositional content and in acts whose illocutionary force are inherently negative for the recipient) share the negative feature of the projected object, but differ with respect to the nature of this negativity. The basic function of natural (e.g. propositional) and non-natural (e.g. negative illocutionary acts) mitigation is the same: both weaken predictably unpleasant effects or unwelcome perlocutions ensuing from the speech act. The main difference between them, however, is the different status of the ‘negativity’ involved. In the case of natural mitigation, negativity is contextual: something is negative to someone in a given situation; the same content could be neutral or even positive if communicated to someone else. In the case of non-natural mitigation, on the other hand, the negativity is conventional: in particular, in illocutionary acts which are intrinsically negative for the recipient, the negativity is part of the stable, coded, context-independent meaning of the metalinguistic lexeme focusing on the illocution (e.g. ‘criticism’, ‘curse’, ‘accusation’ etc.). To put it differently: as to propositional mitigation, since every proposition and every act might in principle be negative to someone in some way, it is the degree of the shared knowledge (in particular, knowledge deriving from previous exchanges) that has a crucial role in determining whether or not a given act has potentially negative effects on the hearer and must therefore be mitigated by the speaker. For instance, a sentence like “You put on your gray jacket yesterday evening, darling”, which is neutral with respect both to proposition and to illocutionary force, can be a reproach (instead of a matter-offact statement), mitigated by the endearment term, if uttered by a wife reminding once more her husband that she hates seeing him in that jacket. In these cases, an act is projectively thought of by the speaker as negative for the hearer: ‘negativity’ is crucially connected with the
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interlocutors’ knowledge of, and their ability to empathize with, each other. By contrast, negativity is a stable feature of inherently negative illocutionary forces such as accusing or cursing. Non-natural mitigation – for instance, mitigation employed in invasive requests or requests that are difficult for the hearer to fulfill – is closely connected to the predictability of the consequences of discourse, which can also be thought of in terms of calculability of implicatures. In other words, non-natural mitigation is related to the ability to plan discourse and engage in strategic communicative prevention (cf. Caffi, 1990) by making choices from a wide repertoire of communicative options. As we will see, this is also related to the capacity for empathy on the part of the speaker (cf. Chapter 4). What has been said so far strongly supports the idea that there is a close connection between various types of mitigation and subjects’ shared knowledge of both the outer and the inner worlds, of things and how to do things and of people and the ways people and their different ‘selves’ enter into discourse. Such a connection can be conceptualized in terms of scripts, scenarios, schemata or other cognitive metaphors, or in terms of activity frames which “reflect conventionalized and stereotypical notions of interpersonal relationships” (Gumperz, 1992: 45). These different types of conceptualizations which could be employed in explaining mitigation phenomena, however, leave the personal, experiential and emotive side of this complex knowledge unaccounted for. The connection between mitigation and knowledge of the world can also be dealt with in terms of metapragmatic awareness, which encompasses (different forms of) social competence and (different forms of) emotive capacity (Caffi and Janney, 1994b). In the third sense of the term I have put forward in Caffi (1994a: 2464 ff.), metapragmatics is the management of discourse, based on common knowledge and reflexivity. 23 Mitigation can be thought of as deriving from a complex knowledge which also affects the possible deontic consequences of an illocutionary act for both speaker and hearer (for instance, the obligation on the part of the speaker to believe in what s/he is saying, the attempt at making the interlocutor believe something; cf. Sbisà, 2001). iii)
Illocutionary mitigation versus perlocutionary mitigation: mitigation of doing (prâxis mitigation) vs. mitigation of making ( poíesis mitigation)
As we have seen, potentially unpleasant consequences are implicit or explicit either in an utterance’s propositional content or in its type of illocution. Typical examples of propositional mitigation occur in connection with utterances expressing bad news, while typical examples of illocutionary mitigation occur in connection with inherently face-threatening illocutions such 23
The first two senses of ‘metapragmatics’ I have distinguished in Caffi (1994a) are the following: 1) the metatheoretical and epistemological reflection on pragmatics; 2) in a Kantian vein, the study of the possibility and felicity conditions of communication (e.g. research on dialogue-constitutive universals, or on the universals of the act of promising).
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as criticism or reproach. As already said, both forms of mitigation presuppose the negativity of the mitigated object and can be explained by resorting to the basic meaning of the verb to mitigate. Indeed, what is mitigated is an inconvenience, a potential damage or injury related to uneasy or embarrassing situations, negative circumstances, etc. In Fraser’s (1980) terms, both forms of mitigation can be regarded as ‘altruistic’, in that they aim at removing unwelcome perlocutionary effects on the interlocutor (for instance, when giving bad news, a speaker may want to mitigate the ensuing ‘alarm’ effect). This, of course, does not mean that altruistic forms of mitigation cannot at the same time be ‘self-serving’, as we will see later in the book, in that they reduce the speaker’s commitment to either proposition or illocution. Among the different cases covered by the notion of non-natural mitigation given above, different types of mitigation centered on locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts can be distinguished. Locutionary mitigation is related to the vagueness or weakening of the locutionary act (its reference act and its predication act respectively), illocutionary mitigation centers on the indirectness of the illocutionary act and perlocutionary mitigation is geared toward the attenuation of perlocutionary effects which are by definition non-conventional. An interesting way of thinking of the difference between illocutionary and perlocutionary mitigation is grounded in a passage from Aristotle. Drawing on the Nicomachean Ethics (VI, 4, 1140a, b; English translation pp. 334 ff.), 24 it can be said that mitigation of an illocution involves an attenuating action affecting the execution of the act, the doing, i.e. prâxis (Lat. actio, ‘practice’, doing). By contrast, mitigation of a perlocution involves an attenuating action implicitly affecting the goal of the act, the making, i.e. poíesis (Lat. factio, ‘production’, making). The former could be called ‘pragmatic mitigation’, while the latter could be called ‘praxeological mitigation’. Intriguing as it may be, the usefulness of this Aristotelian distinction in the analysis of real data remains to be assessed. Indeed, the major implication of such a distinction has probably to be sought in the fact that the two different cases it captures could lead to different kinds of misfires. Pragmatic mitigation runs the risk of making the act invalid (i.e. a given illocutionary act might no longer be recognized as such, and might thus fail to trigger its conventional effects), while praxeological mitigation runs the risk of making the act ineffective. What is important to stress is that, if saying is a form of action, it must be an effective 24
The passage of the Nicomachean Ethics that I am referring to is the following: “doing and making are generically different, since making aims at an end distinct from the act of making, whereas in doing the end cannot be other than the act itself: doing well is in itself the end” (VI, 4, 1140a, b.; English transl. pp. 334 ff.). Conte (1997) refers to Aristotle’s distinction in her discussion of counter-performativity. On this latter notion cf. also Azzoni (1998: 27-30). It must be noted, however, that the distinction referred to by Conte needs an adequate contextualization. In the Nicomachean Ethics (VI, 4, 1140a, b. English transl. pp. 334 ff.) the distinction between prâxis and poíesis is made with reference to the definition of prudence, or practical wisdom, and is associated with the distinction between science, whose object’s existence is said to be necessary and eternal, and art, whose object is said to be contingent.
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action. It seems reasonable to claim that mitigation links the pragmatic dimension to the praxeological dimension by connecting action with effective action, grammar with rhetoric, and illocution with perlocution (cf. Leech, 1983). iv) Lenitive mitigation versus tempering mitigation In Chapter 6 I will analyze non-natural mitigation in examples of a) exercitive-directive acts; and b) assertive-verdictive acts. 25 I will then borrow from the terminology of Matteo Peregrini’s seventeenth century treatise on rhetoric Trattato delle acutezze and call the first group ‘lenitive mitigation’ and the second group ‘tempering mitigation’. 26 Lenitive mitigation operates on illocutions pertaining to deontic modality, i.e. on illocutions that are more or less openly manipulative and invasive (e.g. directives) and affect relations between the interlocutors. Tempering mitigation, on the other hand, operates on assertiveverdictive illocutions pertaining to the epistemic-doxastic modality and mainly affects the relation between the speaker and the object of her/his utterance. In the former type of mitigation, the act relates to a state of affairs to be attained. To use one of Searle’s (1975) typological criteria, the direction of fit goes from words to the world. In the latter type of mitigation, the act relates to a state of affairs that has already been attained, and the direction of fit goes from the world to words. In lenitive mitigation there is above all a reduction of the act’s claim to validity and its ensuing obligations for the recipient. In tempering mitigation, on the other hand, there is a reduction of the act’s claim to truth and its ensuing obligations for the speaker, including those related to potential face-threats. To further clarify this distinction, we could state that tempering mitigation is realized by operations affecting the proposition and its connection to the speaker, whereas lenitive mitigation is realized by operations centered around perlocution. It seems reasonable here to make reference to the previously mentioned distinction taken by Conte from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, between prâxis (actio, practice, doing) and poíesis (factio, production, making). In tempering mitigation the weakening operation can be said to affect prâxis (i.e. the actual performance of the act), while in lenitive mitigation it can be said to affect poíesis (i.e. the attainment of a goal). The former, we could say, is a case of pragmatic mitigation, while the latter is a case of praxeological mitigation.
25
Sbisà (1994) rightly warns against a hasty identification of Austin’s exercitives with Searle’s directives. A meta-theoretical analysis of the issue of illocution typology can be found in Sbisà (1972). 26 I am referring here to the treatise Delle acutezze, che altrimenti spiriti, vivezze e concetti volgarmente si appellano by Matteo Peregrini (Peregrini, 1960 [1639]; cf. 6.3.), which introduces the concept of ‘tempering particles’; these can be re-defined as markers of metapragmatic awareness with approximating functions.
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v) Strategic mitigation versus formulaic mitigation Mitigating devices can be interpreted according to a non-dichotomous version of Jespersen’s (1924: 18) distinction between ‘free expressions’ and ‘formulas’. 27 ‘Free expressions’ are employed in ‘strategic’ mitigation, i.e. mitigation involving more or less conventional techniques used in complying both with global interactional frame-related expectations and goals and with expectations and goals emerging locally during the exchange. Formulas are employed in ritual mitigation, i.e mitigation typically realized by routine formulae or ‘indirect speech acts’ that have become catachreses, such as clichés expressing politeness. The corpus analyzed in the present study contains instances of strategic mitigation which will be discussed in detail in Chapter 5 and Chapter 6. It also includes instances of formulaic, ritual mitigation, e.g. requests realized by questions or by asking the permission of doing something, like in example A8, sentiamo i polmoni (…) (‘let’s have a listen to your lungs’ …). vi) Paradoxes of mitigation: mitigation as an aspect of analogic communication Since every instance of metalinguistic mitigation can be interpreted as an attempt to ‘smooth out’ the act in which it occurs, the mitigating operation itself can be seen as reflexively marking the mitigated act as potentially face threatening. Hence the potentially paradoxical nature of mitigation. As we will see in Chapter 4, some instances of mitigation can be described as cases of micro double-bind, to use Bateson et al.’s (1957) category (cf. Chapter 4, footnote 13). At the same time, at a meta-communicative level, mitigation presents the speaker as a tactful, considerate, obliging partner, someone who strives to comply with the interlocutor’s needs, someone who tries, to quote Spitzer (1922: 115; cf. 4.1.1.), to be entgegenkommend, i.e. helpful or forthcoming. But at this point another paradox lurks on the background: precisely this effort on the part of the speaker to behave thoughtfully and considerately can be seen as symptomatic of calculation, distance, or non-immediacy. Far from being an abstract subtlety, this double nature is probably the basic reason why there is a lack of agreement on the general definition of politeness, given the different weight assigned by different cultures to one aspect of mitigation, or its reverse. Wierzbicka’s observations (1985) on Polish, Blum-Kulka (1992) on Israeli, Rathmayr (1999) on Russian, as well as many papers in the recent volume edited by Lakoff and Ide (2005), to quote just a few among a vast range of studies, all point to this polarity. Recall the two macro-functions put forward by Giles et al. (1979) and applied to mitigation in Chapter 1. These are the instrumental function, which affects the style of performance, and the identity building or self-presentation function
27
Subtle remarks about methodological problems in explaining the shift from free expressions to formulas can be found in Nunberg (1981).
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(expressing the kind of people we want to appear to be; cf. Caffi, 1999a), which affects the way we interpret roles. It is interesting that the potentially positive effects of mitigating strategies with respect to such macro-functions are in no way guaranteed: mitigation at all times runs the risk of being self-defeating. It can be argued that the ambiguous, antiphrastic, paradoxical nature of mitigation is related to its being part of analogic communication. In Pragmatics of human communication, Watzlawick et al. (1967: 64 ff.) introduce the concepts of ‘digital’ module (carrying the ‘content’ aspects of communication) and analogic module (carrying the ‘relation’ aspects of communication). They illustrate analogic communication by means of the following examples: There are tears of sorrow and tears of joy, the clenched fist may signal aggression or constraint, a smile may convey sympathy or contempt, reticence can be interpreted as tactfulness or indifference, and we wonder if perhaps all analogic messages have this curiously ambiguous quality, reminiscent of Freud’s Gegensinn der Urworte (antithetical sense of primal words). (Watzlawick et al., 1967: 65)
As we will see in detail in the next few chapters, the main advantage of mitigation, i.e. minimizing responsibility, is counterbalanced by a major drawback, i.e. the fact that mitigation can be given opposite interpretations. 2.3.2. The multidisciplinary relevance of mitigation If mitigation calls for a broader account, this is chiefly because of the conceptual horizons opened up by the notion. Let me recall them briefly. As mentioned at the outset, mitigation has been traditionally subsumed under politeness research. In this research area, the a) sociological relevance of mitigation is widely acknowledged. However, mitigation is relevant to a number of other research areas as well. In fact, it has a: b) cognitive relevance The category ‘mitigation’ is closely connected to rationality of human action. In other words, it is linked to the use of cognitive schemes based on anticipatory strategies and aimed at achieving specific goals. Anticipatory strategies have been given different definitions. According to van Dijk: A strategy is a property of a ‘plan’, that is, a (cognitive) representation of an action sequence that will be executed. It is a property of a plan that guarantees that the action sequence is carried out effectively and optimally, given the (known or assumed) circumstances of the action itself. In
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other words, a strategy is a partial plan, about the way a goal can or should be reached (Dijk, van 1984: 115, my emphasis, C.C.).
This definition makes it possible to account for a number of interrelated factors. First of all, mitigation as partial plan corresponds to the choice of a specific strategy. Moreover, since it is related to the ability to predict the consequences of an action, by connecting locution to perlocution, i.e. a given linguistic structure with a given goal, it also has a c) rhetorical relevance In van Dijk’s definition “the way a goal can or should be reached” represents the tactical stylistic aspect of a given strategy. Since mitigation has to do with choices of specific forms in different contexts, it also has a d) stylistic relevance My idea of mitigation as downgrading or Abschwächung is indeed a way of dealing with what Antos (1982) calls Formulierung (processes of linguistic formulation). This can also be referred to as ‘style’ (in the sense of Gumperz’s contextualization cues; cf. 1.8.), provided that style is not regarded as something separated from content. Stylistic modulations are not additions to an unchanging content. Rather, they are part and parcel of specific speech acts, in specific contexts, with specific forces, and specific forms. There is no such thing as fixed content from which one can deviate. On the contrary, the process of meaning construction goes hand in hand with that of consensus-building, and actual formulations are implicitly compared with interlocutors’ contextual and co-textual expectations. The general point I would like to make is the following: indicators of mitigation are evidence of metapragmatic monitoring activities and are used to adjust distances between speakers and hearers. Mitigation therefore also has an e) emotive relevance Mitigation reflects the partners’ constant interactive monitoring of each other’s mutual adjustment moves. In such monitoring, emotive displays provide information about the speaker’s emotive involvement (Chapter 4) and the interpersonal ‘temperature’ of interaction. To sum up, indicators of mitigation signal caution towards the utterance and consideration towards its addressee. In particular, they calibrate: x
the defeasibility of utterance content and
x
the distance between speaker and hearer.
The basic function of mitigators is deresponsibilization with respect to both content and addressee. The advantage of deresponsibilization is counterbalanced by the possibility that the mitigated message can have contrasting interpretations and hence be ambiguous.
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2.4. CONCLUSIONS Metapragmatic awareness, as deriving from both common knowledge and reflexivity (cf. Caffi, 1994a) includes speakers’ knowledge of the appropriateness of both their own utterances and those of their interlocutors. This inherently indexical awareness takes the form of a constant, although often only implicit and sometimes unconscious, interactional monitoring. The monitoring activity focuses on what is appropriate (or ‘happy’ in Austin’s terms) for interlocutors to say, do, and infer at the various stages and layers of sense co-construction. Therefore, appropriateness is not simply something to be regarded only as a matter of stylistic adequacy, or a matter of what Sandig (1978: 24) calls stylistic competence (“stilistische Kompetenz”). Rather, it encompasses both the how and what of communication processes. Mitigation is not just a question of politeness, nor is it just a question of the way of putting invariant contents: it has to do with a much larger, more general, complex system of frames of knowledge about actions and activity types (Levinson, 1992) as well as the style of their accomplishment. Indeed, how and what cannot be dealt with separately (cf. Sandig, 1978; Caffi, 1992). Appropriateness can vary at any stage during the exchange and can be neither considered as a static property nor determined from the outside. A non-transparent, reticent, or somewhat disguised, even misleading discourse choice can be ‘appropriate’ in a given context at a given stage. Vagueness may even be an interactional resource (cf., among others, Adelswärd and Linell, 1994). Metapragmatic awareness enables interlocutors to continually map their purposes onto both their own language production and their reception of their partners’ language production. The appropriateness of a given choice, at different degrees of intensity, is calculated on the basis of linguistic criteria (our knowledge of language), sociological criteria (our knowledge of the world), and psychological criteria (our knowledge of ourselves, our inner selves, and of others). Together, these criteria enable us to decide what (and how much) we can disclose about our inner world and our attitudes, and how emotionally close we can get to our interlocutors. Metapragmatic awareness and discourse monitoring influence all levels of language production and reception; they affect the degree of explicitness, directness, and intensity of the exchange and determine what we can take for granted and what we can expect from our interactional partners. The result of the observations made so far in this chapter is that mitigation is a complex object of study that requires researchers to pay attention to various interrelated dimensions of communicative exchanges. In particular, mitigation is a question of style. Style, in turn, as envisioned in this book, is a set of formal linguistic features that signal and calibrate the degree of cognitive and emotive commitment to the utterance, to the interlocutor, and to communication itself (cf. Wiener and Mehrabian, 1968; Chapter 4). Interactional strategies captured by mitigation are the result of both propositional and emotive subject’s stances, which can move towards two opposite directions along the axes of approach/withdrawal and engagement/disengagement.
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3 PRAGMATICS OF MITIGATION: BUSHES, HEDGES AND SHIELDS Will wished that she would speak and bring some mitigating shadow across his own cruel speech, which seemed to stand staring at them both in mockery of any attempt at revived fellowship. But she said nothing. George Eliot, Middlemarch, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998 [1871], p. 734.
3.0. INTRODUCTION In the present chapter I will analyze mitigation from a functional perspective. In particular, I will consider the functioning of specific operational categories and will test their actual explicative power on real examples. First of all, however, I will resume the major points made so far with some general remarks, in order to stress, once again (cf. Chapter 2), the relevance of the umbrella-concept of mitigation to pragmatics within a multi-dimensional model of discourse. The different aspects of mitigation and the interplay of various grammatical, semantic, pragmatic and psychological mechanisms, which are inextricably linked, call into play a number of factors, which can be roughly summarized as follows: the (contextually and co-textually) appropriate wording of a speech act with respect to current interactional goals; the work of negotiation aimed at assigning a meaning to conversational moves; the construction of the image of the self that speakers want to convey – be it conceptualized in Goffman’s somewhat reductive metonymy of face, or in the more general concept of self-presentation; the inferential steps that are invited by mitigation, also on an interpersonal, relational, hence emotively loaded, level. An important point that I will put forward in this chapter is that some attenuating mechanisms are used by the speaker – in this case a doctor – to attain deresponsibilization with
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a view to meeting in the first place the needs of the hearer (be s/he intended in terms of face and/or in terms of self). Example 3) below illustrates this case. By contrast, as illustrated by example 8) below, other attenuating mechanisms, while still aiming at some forms of obligation avoidance, meet above all the needs of the speaker (again either in terms of face and/or in terms of self). Therefore, the former types of mitigation mainly aim at protecting the hearer, whereas the latter mainly aim at protecting the speaker. That is the basic reason why the relational effects ensuing from mitigation can be, on the one hand, solidarity, immediacy and empathy; on the other hand, they may result in a widening of the gap between the interlocutors’ roles and degrees of power, thereby enhancing the asymmetry and increasing the emotive distance. In other words, in its inherent ambivalence (cf. Chapter 4), mitigation serves both other-protection and self-protection ranging from ritual polite openings, conversational greasers, phatic routines, and sequential strategies which support both the recipient and the coproduction of conversation, to more complex textual techniques. When protection is a prevailing purpose and leads the speaking subject to withdraw from the role of utterer, even at the grammatical level (as in deictic and quotational shields, cf. 3.3.4., 3.4.), then mitigation can be perceived and described as a form of masking. In these cases, e.g. in deictic shields, when the speaker employs a ‘non-I’, what is lurking on the background of the communicative scene is a form of disqualification (cf. Haley, 1959; 4.7.). In the present chapter I will suggest some further steps towards the explanation of the ways mitigating strategies can produce these kinds of opposite effects. Given these premises, my first goal in this chapter is to substantiate through the discussion of non-construed examples one of the points made at the very outset of this book (cf. 1.9.), i.e. that mitigation operates in a multi-level, multi-dimensional way, as it affects simultaneously different linguistic levels and interactional dimensions. As already noted, the negative consequences of the act for the recipient, i.e. the fact that the act might be face-threatening, is only one of the aspects involved. In fact, the mitigating operation involves a number of parameters that are hierarchically organized according to the type of interaction and its goals. Moreover, I will explore the possibility of clustering mitigating devices around the three main scopes of mitigation. As already argued, the scope of mitigating devices within a speech act seems to be a suitable criterion for a functional classification of mitigating devices. In the next few sections, I will illustrate the functioning of the three categories of mitigating operations, i.e. ‘bushes’ (on the propositional content), ‘hedges’ (on the illocution) and ‘shields’ (on the deictic origin of the utterance) (cf. 2.0.2.). Finally, I will underline the fact that the attenuating operation concerns both the instrumental dimension of the interactional effectiveness and the relational dimension of the identity building. My claim is that mitigation allows us to deal with a number of psychological and emotive aspects that have so far been neglected in favor of sociolinguistic aspects of linguistic activity.
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The examples presented in the following few sections will illustrate the multi-level process that I believe to be at the very core of mitigation functioning, i.e. the inferential process whereby grammatical and semantic facts result in pragmatic modes, which in turn result in psychological effects. I will consider how mitigation may increase or reduce distance between the interlocutors, representing, therefore, an important interactional resource for the monitoring and mutual adjustment of emotive communication (cf. Chapter 4). The transcript of an entire doctor-patient encounter from which some of the following examples are taken will be given in Appendix A and discussed also in Chapter 5. Some examples will be also given in Appendix B and discussed in Chapter 6, where I will glean and classify the formal devices of mitigation detected in my corpus of therapeutic dialogues. All of them are only mildly rhetorical in the sense that they are close to, but not fully identifiable with, true rhetorical figures. Furthermore, the fact that they have been extracted from their contexts will produce the inevitable impression of dealing with lab items. This impression is grounded, as the idea this chapter wants to convey is precisely that of a small laboratory where micro-phenomena can be dismantled. My main task is to provide an experimental basis for further investigation. Nevertheless, the discussion of all the examples has been weighed against the background of the whole conversation. Hopefully, the highly complex functioning of the interactional system as it emerges from the following integrated discussion of examples, simple as they may appear, will make us reflect on the frequent hastiness of many interpretations in pragmatics, as well as in other fields.
3.1. MITIGATION AS A BRIDGING CATEGORY The issue of mitigation can be considered at the junction between what Goffman (1976) calls ‘system constraints’ and ‘ritual constraints’, i.e. between linguistic and socio-interactional rules. As already mentioned (cf. 2.1.8.1.) the core of mitigation concept is nicely encapsulated by Meyer-Hermann and Weingarten’s (1982) idea of the reduction of obligations for both the speaker and the hearer. This idea makes it possible to find a functional connection between epistemic and deontic mitigation. As a matter of fact, the former implies a weakening of the speaker’s commitment to the truth of the proposition conveyed in the utterance, while the latter implies a reduction of the recipient’s obligation to perform the requested act. The connection between these two types of mitigation will also be confirmed at a micro-structural and grammatical level by the analysis of formal devices of mitigation, in spoken Italian, in assertive-verdictive acts (tempering mitigation) and exercitive-directive acts (lenitive mitigation) that will be proposed in Chapter 6. At this juncture, some major points should be made. To sum up, mitigation is a pragmaticrhetoric category connecting:
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a) the pragmatic dimension to the praxeological dimension, i.e. between doing (prâxis, actio, practice) and making (poíesis, factio, production) (cf. 2.3.1; 6.3.). In fact, as is indexed by the action noun (nomen actionis) itself, ‘mitigation’ can refer to either a process (prâxis) or a result (poíesis), thus mirroring also semantically the link between doing and effective doing, between grammar and rhetoric. Within the framework of speech act theory, we may well maintain that mitigation bridges illocution and perlocution (cf. Leech, 1983). This bridging can be viewed against the background of metapragmatic awareness, the pragmatic version of the classical rhetoric concept of pršpon or aptum in classical rhetoric, which enables speakers to decide what is appropriate to a given circumstance. In other words, the speaker decides the linguistic choice that is suitable to the situation, thus anticipating some predictable consequences of the modulated speech act in that given context, and choosing, on the basis of these anticipations, the strategy as well as the phrasing to be adopted; b) the two directions of discourse, namely cataphora and anaphora. Mitigation can be either a preparatory strategy (which paves the way for the main speech act) or a therapeutic strategy (i.e. a form of repair). The latter can be achieved by means of a move (or a number of moves) that is syntactically independent though pragmatically subordinated; c) the social dimension to the individual psychological dimension, particularly instrumental needs to identity needs (cf. Chapter 1). The two dimensions I am referring to here have been conceptualized in recent literature through the distinction between social and individual politeness. The next few sections will address in particular this last point and discuss some selected examples by making reference to the distinction drawn by Giles et al. (1979) (cf. 1.7.) between practical needs and relational needs. In particular, I will group the different functions of mitigation into two main interrelated dimensions, i.e.: 1) the interactional effectiveness, whereby mitigation serves mainly instrumental needs, since it eases the attainment of interactional goals; 2) the identity building, whereby mitigation serves mainly relational needs, as it is used to monitoring the emotive distances between the participants in the interaction. 1 I would like to mention, in passing, that this last point (i.e. the fact that both dimensions shape and organize mitigation, especially in assertive-verdictive acts) was already made by the seventeenth century rhetorician Matteo Peregrini in his treatise Delle Acutezze. After 1
Peregrini’s original formulation of the point that I paraphrased above, i.e. the reason why a tempering particle can function as it does, is the following: “La ragione è perché in simil caso o il temperamento leva il vizio affatto della locuzione […] o toglie la nota di stolto al dicitore, perché si dichiara per questa guisa ch’egli conosce il difetto, ma per alcuna palese ragione giudica bene l’ammetterlo” (Peregrini, 1960 [1639]: 161).
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introducing the notion of tempering particle, Peregrini illustrates the way these particles work. In particular, the author highlights the twofold effect of the tempering operation. On the one hand, he says, the downgrading particle reduces the sharpness of the locution; on the other, it neutralizes the self-threatening effects of the speaker’s ‘carelessness’, inasmuch as s/he acknowledges and shows her/himself to be (metapragmatically) aware of the inadequacies of the utterance. The reason why I mention this is not to show erudition but to ground with evidences other than the usual fashionable ones my idea of mitigation as a concept bridging many different communicative dimensions. In particular, if we reread Peregrini’s above mentioned remark with current pragmatic categories, we can argue that this seventeenth century passage envisages the distinction between content-oriented mitigation and speakeroriented mitigation. The former meets cognitive, instrumental needs and corresponds, in assertives, to the speaker’s need to reduce her/his commitment to the truth of a proposition which s/he is not absolutely certain about. The latter meets relational needs and contributes to the building of identity, as it shows the speaker’s awareness of the shortcomings of her/his formulation. This last type of mitigation signals, at a metacommunicative level, the underlying work of self-presentation.
3.2. TYPES OF MITIGATING DEVICES (HABERMAS, 1987 [1981]) In order to sketch a functionally oriented typology (cf. Hölker, 1988) we need to go back to an issue that has already been dealt with in Chapter 2, namely: what is the linguistic object of mitigation? In this section, in order to start building a systematic treatment, I will focus on speech acts as units of analysis, thus excluding instances of sequential mitigation or mitigation covering more than one turn. In particular, what I will leave out for the moment are cases of giving bad news or ‘perspective display’, a type of mitigation which is often associated with a diagnosis (cf. Maynard, 1992). Here, I will also skip external mitigation realized by presequences, preparatory moves, grounders, etc. (cf. Blum-Kulka et al., 1989). I will dwell instead on various kinds of mitigation, paying particular attention to the scope of the mitigating operation, i.e. the speech act’s abstract components it affects. As I have maintained throughout this book, mitigation is centered around three main domains: the proposition (and within it reference and predication); the illocutionary force indicating device (IFID), and within it, for assertives, the speaker’s commitment to the proposition, or the neustic element in Hare’s (1970) terminology; and the deictic origin, i.e. the ‘I-here-now’ of the utterance (cf. Bühler, 1934). Bushes, hedges and shields are the labels I have selected to refer to the propositional, illocutionary and deictic mitigation respectively. More than one mitigating device may be employed at the same time and, vice versa, a single mitigating device may simultaneously affect more than one aspect of a speech act. I also
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maintain that there are no clear-cut distinctions between these three classes, as the three different components of a speech act cannot be easily separated. Moreover, the three types of mitigating devices are heterogeneous. On the one hand, bushes and hedges are lexicalized expressions or even markers, the latter being by definition not integrated in the syntactic structure of the utterance. On the other hand, shields do not include any explicit mitigating device; rather, they consist in an attenuating operation that affects a deeper, more abstract level. This downgrading can take place at the syntactic level, as it happens in the shift to the passive voice, or at the morphological level, as in the shift from first-person singular pronouns to other pronouns. By way of a simplification, we may well say that bushes and hedges realize a deintensification of the phrastic and the neustic element respectively (cf. Hare, 1970; Hübler, 1983). Bushes typically reduce the speaker’s commitment to the propositional content of the utterance, while hedges reduce the speaker’s subscription to its illocutionary force. It can be claimed that the former operation leads to the latter inasmuch as the commitment to the truth of the proposition in assertive acts is one of the dimensions of the whole speech act, the dimension that can be labeled ‘epistemic certainty’. To use once again the botanic metaphor, one could venture to claim that many bushes make a hedge. Example 6) below illustrates such a case. By contrast, shields realize an overall shift of responsibility, for instance by introducing a different utterer or by deleting the deictic origin of the utterance. This results in an overall cognitive and emotive lack of subscription to the speech act. In his sociological approach to communicative action, Habermas (1987: 62 ff.) puts forward a threefold distinction that is similar to the one suggested here. Habermas distinguishes in the linguistic action: the propositional component, the illocutionary component, and the expressive component. While the first two elements are given traditional definitions, the expressive component “remains implicit in the normal form, but it can always be expanded into an expressive sentence” (Habermas, 1987: 62). More precisely, Habermas claims: The latter [the expressive component] is constructed with the first-person pronoun (as subject expression) and an intentional [in Husserl’s sense] verb (with a predicative function), while the place of the logical object is occupied either by and object (e.g., ‘I love T’) or by a nominalized state of affairs (e.g.,‘I fear that p’). (Habermas, 1987: 62)
The point that is worthwhile mentioning here is that, in his treatment, Habermas alternates between a formal and a substantial vision of the three structural components. On the one hand, he maintains that the three components are mutually independent one from another, as each of them “exhibit significant peculiarities” (ibid.). On the other hand, he reifies the three scopes, by identifying them with assertive sentences, performative sentences, and expressive sentences respectively. According to Habermas, each type of sentence is linked to cognitions, obligations,
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and expressions respectively. However, the three components of the speech act are also viewed as illocutionary elements; as such, The illocutionary components express the fact that the speaker is explicitly raising a claim to propositional truth, normative rightness, or subjective truthfulness. (Habermas, 1987: 72)
The main difference between Habermas’ view on this subject and my own lies in the fact that I consider the three aspects of a speech act to have intertwined abstract scopes, which do not necessarily correspond to syntactically recognizable, formal structures. Rather, it seems to me, they are inseparable within the speech act in context. On the whole, however, Habermas’ treatment appears conceptually and theoretically of relevance to my purposes, not least because it identifies three different ranges of the negotiating process which aims at reaching the agreement between speaker and hearer. This consensus-building process operates in three different, though intertwined, fields, namely: knowledge, power and feeling. These are precisely the three areas that I deem to be the crucial dimensions in doctor-patient interaction. According to Habermas, knowledge – as part of a collective transferable competence – plays the fundamental role. In particular, he claims that every act can be read, even from a grammatical point of view, as an assertive proposition. I do not intend here to discuss this position, since the present work aims at describing modulated enacted discourse rather than constructing an abstract model of social interaction. Nevertheless, leaving aside the discussion of Habermas’ overall argumentation – which reflects a shift in the sociological paradigm – the identification of the three components of the speech act as ‘roots of communicative action’ confirms, from an independent area of research, the pragmatic value of the threefold distinction drawn in the present approach and the various theoretical horizons it allows us to disclose. Rough as it may be, this threefold distinction is heuristically useful. Moreover, it represents a possible linguistic empirical and operational criterion that can be used to build a typology of linguistic devices of mitigation. A typology of this kind may at least have the advantage of avoiding the uncontrolled proliferation of maxims. Most importantly, the perspective adopted here is pragmatic rather than taxonomic, that is to say that the main goal is not a classification of expressions but an explanation of occurrences. Simply put, I am not interested in words as such, but in the way they are used.
3.3. THE FUNCTIONING OF MITIGATION In this section I will deal with some examples that I will discuss from a formal point of view in Chapter 6. In so doing, I will try to integrate different perspectives, which can, together,
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shed light on how mitigation works. I will focus on micro-sequences, which often correspond to single speech acts. In fact, as we have seen, mitigation can be an extensive strategy realized over many conversational turns or large discourse chunks, for instance an entire narrative rather than a single statement (cf. Labov and Fanshel, 1977). The following discussion does not aim to be exhaustive. However, the analysis of the examples will be based on the whole conversation they are extrapolated from. Among its objective shortcomings is that it does not account for non-verbal cues, particularly kinesic and proxemic aspects such as gaze, smile, posture, etc. (cf. Arndt and Janney, 1987; Mitchum, 1989). As to prosody, rough as it may be, the transcript attempts to render at least the three main intonation contours in Italian, i.e. rising intonation, falling intonation, and suspensive intonation (Canepari, 1985). This kind of transcription is sufficient for an analysis that is centered around local mitigating strategies affecting micro-linguistic phenomena, even within single utterances. In particular, moving from a systemic perspective, my main goal in this chapter is to highlight, in each example, the interdependence of interactional parameters which involve, either synergically or conflictually, both instrumental and relational aspects. The English translation is literal and only tentative. 3.3.1. Bushes In bushes mitigation focuses on the propositional content, Austin’s locutionary (rhetic) act, which is typically made less precise. The attenuating operation centers on the interactional parameter ‘precision’ (cf. Bazzanella et al., 1991), the pragmatic counterpart of Lakoff’s (1972) logico-semantic concept of ‘fuzziness’ which is at the basis of his notion of ‘hedge’. As already mentioned in 2.1.3.1., Lakoff introduces the idea of hedge to account for expressions like ‘a sort of’. According to the author, such phrases are used to define objects with respect to a scale of prototypicality. 2 In the present work, I have used ‘hedge’ to refer to attenuating devices focusing on illocution, while I have used the label ‘bush’ for mitigators reducing precision of the propositional content. The introduction of this new botanical metalinguistic term makes it possible to highlight the shift from a semantic to a pragmatic perspective. This is because, while the former is centered around the opposition between precision and imprecision in the categorization of objects, in the latter the contrast between precision and imprecision is used to reduce or hide responsibility for the utterance. I believe that the indiscriminate use of ‘hedge’ in the fields of semantics and 2
More recent studies have employed the term ‘hedge’ to refer both to expressions making a definition (with respect to the scale of prototypicality) more precise and expressions making it less precise (cf. Ballmer and Pinkal, 1983). More often, however, ‘hedge’ has been used to label the latter (cf., among others, Kolde, 1989, Markkanen and Schröder, 1997 and Clemen, 1997). See also Chapter 2, footnote 5.
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discourse analysis, for either descriptive or formal purposes, has generated much confusion. As already mentioned (cf. 2.1.4.1.), the label – and the corresponding notion – that has enabled a shift of perspective in the use of the metaphor has been indeed ‘hedged performative’ (cf. Fraser, 1975). From a pragmatic point of view, the idea of bushes as vagueness-generating devices can be connected to Austin’s (1962) second B-felicity condition, i.e. the condition which states that the procedure must be executed completely for the act to ‘take effect’. Bushes, which often correspond to approximators (cf. Channell, 1994), signal that this condition has not been fully fulfilled. Bushes can be found in examples 1)-4) below. Example 1): 1)
D. le do uno sciroppino da prendere. +due cucc* P. +sciroppi:no* D. +due cucchiai al giorno* P. +qualco:sa* (PC, TR4) D. I’ll give you ((lit. I give you)) a cough syrup+DIM to take. +two table sp* P. +cough syrup+DIM* D. +two table spoons per day* P. +something*
is close to a case that Austin would have labeled ‘suiting action to words’, similar to, though not identical with, true performatives, a sort of on-line preface of the action while starting its performance. The doctor utters 1) as he is about to write a prescription. Even a quick glance is sufficient to note that dare (‘to give’) is a mitigated choice compared to prescrivere (‘to prescribe’) which is actually what the doctor is going to do. But let us consider the diminutive sciroppino (lit. ‘a cough syrup+ DIM’). Clearly, it makes the reference act in the prescription fuzzy. The patient seizes precisely this aspect and, by means of repeated overlapping in the subsequent turns, after showing her agreement by repeating the word sciroppino, she reinforces the referential vagueness by adding the word qualcosa (‘something’). She insists on having something prescribed, in fact anything provided that it is effective. The parameter of precision here interacts with other even more salient aspects. The diminutive suffix –ino, with its semantic feature [-SERIOUS] (cf. Dressler and Merlini Barbaresi, 1994: 17; Spitzer, 1922: 71), has the function of reducing both the severity and the unpleasantness of the therapeutic prescription, thereby both downgrading the imposition on the patient to comply with it, and indirectly mitigating her possible worries about her pathology. Locutionary, illocutionary, and
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perlocutionary levels are simultaneously affected by a single morphological device. 3 More precisely, the achievement of the perlocutionary object is furthered by a device that operates on the reference within the locutionary act, which in turn affects the illocutionary level, decreasing the directive’s weight of imposition (cf. Brown and Levinson, 1987) – the scalar dimension of illocutionary force that has been labeled ‘obligation on the hearer’ (cf. Bazzanella et al., 1991). On the interpersonal level, diminutives in asymmetrical interaction frequently seem to exploit the function of “stressing the in-group membership” (Blum-Kulka, 1992: 267). This function, which is typical of “internal modification” (ibid.), has been criticized by a number of works reviewing Brown and Levinson’s model from a contrastive perspective (cf., among others, Sifianou, 1992b; Terkourafi, 1999). In doctor-patient interaction, diminutives often instantiate a diminutivum puerile which further encourages the patients’ natural tendency toward regression. In a less pessimistic and more general version, diminutives “may at large be seen as in-group identity markers that fall into the sphere of our notions of familiarity, intimacy and decreased psychological distance” (Dressler and Merlini Barbaresi, 1994: 233). As Dressler and Merlini Barbaresi recall, Brown and Levinson (1987: 103) had already pointed out that diminutives may also function as accelerators of intimacy. In the psycholinguistic framework developed by Wiener and Mehrabian (1968) and presented in Chapter 4, the diminutive in 1) could also be described as an indicator of immediacy. Here the diminutive highlights the interlocutors’ compliance with expected roles within the shared script, i.e. ‘playing the doctor’ and ‘playing the patient’ (cf. Sacks, 1998 [1992]), rather than membership in a given social group. Significantly, in my corpus of therapeutic interaction, the use of this morphological mitigating resource, which also occurs in 2) and 3) below, is extremely frequent, sometimes becoming a distinctive feature of doctors’ communicative style that makes it very close to a variety of baby-talk. Now, if the benefits of the kind of mitigation sketched above are clear both from an instrumental and a relational viewpoint, it also implies potential costs. For instance, in 1) the patient, feeling her/himself treated like a child, may reject this definition of the relationship (saying something like ‘not as bad as the last one you gave me’) or may continue the exchange on an excessively intimate terms, so that intimacy ‘brakes’ would have to be employed by the doctor. Examples 2) and 3) are understatements in diagnosis, which is an act of assessment, a verdictive speech act in Austin’s (1962) sense. In both cases mitigation – again centered on 3
The fact that all speech act levels are contemporarily affected by the diminutive suffix, particularly in its pragmatic use, which is called Satzdiminutivum or impressionistisches Diminutiv, is captured by Spitzer in the following passage which also somewhat anticipates the feature [-SERIOUS] advanced by Dressler and Merlini Barbaresi (1994) as the basic feature of the diminutive suffixes: “Das Diminutiv ist gewissermaßen ein Konvexspiegel, der alle Dimensionen verkleinert und beliebig angewendet werden mag, um den Hörer über die wahren Dimensionen der Realität zu täuschen. Es ist auch ein Ventil des Humors, der sich in derlei Vexierscherzen gefällt“ (Spitzer, 1922: 71).
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propositional content – affects the parameter ‘precision vs. vagueness’. Example 2) is taken from the dialogue between a general practitioner and a shoemaker in a big Northern town which will be analyzed in Chapter 5. In 2): 2)
D. non è la sua una vera e propria ernia. - è solo un p pochino:= P. =una puntina. D. una puntina (PC, TR1, Appendix A, ll. 361-366) D. yours isn’t a real ((lit. real and true (FIG) )) slipped disc. - it’s only a li little+DIM bit:= P. =just a touch+DIM D. just a touch+DIM
the doctor, after his attempt at mitigating the diagnosis – by using an understatement and a minimizer in the predication (‘it is just a bit of a hernia’; un pochino is a diminutive form of un po’) – accepts the non-technical definition suggested by the patient in his turn-completion. The doctor’s mitigation is reformulated through the patient’s mitigation on which agreement is finally reached. This means much more than a simple terminological agreement. This is a convergence of two codes, i.e. a typical case of accommodation in Giles and Coupland’s (1991) terms: the powerful participant in the interaction adapts her/his code to the other’s code. Further, not only does the convergence concern definitions and codes (the technical and the non-technical), but also styles, reached via mitigation: the patient volunteers a reformulation of the diagnosis (una puntina) which is both colloquial and mitigated through a bush (the diminutive suffix). Through the joint sequential definition, as well as through mitigation, different kinds of effects are reached. First, on a purely referential level, the health problem is, though imprecisely, co-defined along a three-turn sequence as a non-prototypical, and therefore not particularly serious, case of a given disease. On a relational level, not only the social but also the psychological distance between the interlocutors is diminished. Certainly, the sequential format of the exchange plays an important role in producing this effect: the co-production of the problem definition is an interactional achievement which contributes per se to the building of a co-operative climate. My point is that this co-production also involves, however, stylistic aspects. The partners’ sharing of the minimizing attitude expressed in the mitigated informal style redefines their relationship, and puts it on a more friendly basis. This example can also be described as a sequence of empathic attunement (cf. Chapter 5). In conclusion, 2) shows the interplay of sequential and stylistic aspects of the interaction, thus prompting a general remark:
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a pragmatic account that separates, as Levinson (1992) does, structural and stylistic aspects is at best partial if not misleading. The interaction between content and form, structure and style, must be re-established. In the two-part turn of 3): 3)
D. ma quello è un problemino. - non è mica un problema grosso. (PC, TR2) D. but that’s a problem+DIM. - it’s not a big problem.
mitigation is obtained through morphological devices, i.e. the diminutive suffix and the pronoun quello (‘that’). The latter is a case of empathic deixis, which is characterized by a feature of [-PROXIMITY], in paradigmatic opposition to questo (‘this’), which should have been selected as the unmarked choice in spoken Italian in this particular co-text, since the problem at stake has just been introduced by the patient in the adjacent turn. The non-proximal demonstrative Quello conveys a negative emotive attitude as it indexes a lower degree of immediacy (cf. 4.5.). Mitigating syntactic devices are used by the doctor in the second part of the turn, i.e. a litotes shaped as a negative opposite, a negatio contrarii (non è mica un problema grosso), which is used to reformulate the propositional content of the first part with a stylistic variatio. From an instrumental viewpoint, these are bushes that minimize the seriousness of the problem, which in any case remains undefined by the expert in precise terms. From a relational viewpoint, it could be observed that the reassuring function of these minimizations – the benefit – works somehow to the detriment of the interlocutor’s reliability. In other words, the hearer is implicitly treated as excessively worried, a bit fussy, maybe even an anxious subject. This conclusion is consistent with the results emerging from research on doctor-patient interaction, which has repeatedly shown that a typical doctors’ strategy is to treat requests for information on the part of the patients as boring symptoms of anxiety. 3.3.2. Hedges In hedges the scope of mitigating devices centers on the illocution, i.e. on illocutionary force indicating devices (IFIDs). Hedges can be found in examples 4) and 5). In 4): 4)
D. […] io le proporrei se vuole una medicina apposta per vedere se riescxx - se riesco a farla dormire= (PsV, TR18) D. […] I’d propose to you if you want a special medicine to see if I caxx - if I can make you sleep=
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the mitigating devices are the following: a)
io le proporrei (‘I’d propose to you’), a hedged performative, where the verb in the conditional mood is a weaker form than the performative expression ‘I propose’; according to Blum-Kulka et al.’s (1989) model, this is a case of internal mitigation;
b)
se vuole (‘if you want’), a routine formula, a consultative device (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989: 19);
c)
the final clause per vedere se riesco a farla dormire (‘to see if I can make you sleep’). The latter is a supportive postponed move – a case of external mitigation – a grounder (of the head act) which, according to Blum-Kulka (1992: 267), applies the negative politeness principle by appealing to the hearer as a rational partner who cannot be forced to do something that s/he does not fully understand.
From a relational point of view, on the one hand, the doctor presents the therapy as an attempt whose possible success will be his personal merit, thereby indirectly affirming his strong role as the ‘healer’. On the other hand, he formally downgrades his directive to a proposal, which it is up to the patient to accept. Besides, from this relational and emotive point of view, there is an ambivalence in the doctor’s utterance about who is the main actor, the protagonist, of the therapeutic process. If we read the doctor’s utterance as a response to the ‘narratological’ question ‘who is the protagonist and who is the helper in this story?’, we can easily catch this ambivalence. The utterance is ambivalent inasmuch as it oscillates about two different answers to this question – and correspondingly between two different ideological models of the professional role. In 5): 5)
D. probabilmente è:, - dove c’è l’attaccapanni - probabilmente è una:: conseguenza di un problema intestinale: che è cominciato con l’influenza eh:? (Rt, TR14) D. probably it is - where the clothes-stand is - it is probably a consequence of an intestinal problem: that began with the flu eh:?
the scope of mitigation is that aspect of the illocution that is the speaker’s commitment to the propositional content. In 5) the content disjunct (cf. Quirk et al., 1985: 620) probabilmente (‘probably’) occurs twice and is accompanied by a number of suprasegmentals indicating uncertainty, i.e. pauses, drawls and suspensive intonation. Probabilmente weakens the speaker’s degree of certainty about the whole proposition: the overall effect on the utterance is that the diagnosis is downgraded to a hypothesis, nothing more than an attempt to trace abductively the temporal and causal sequence of facts. Furthermore, the diagnosis can be analyzed as a verdictive speech act in Austin’s (1962) terms. This is a type of illocutionary act
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whose preparatory felicity conditions have to do with the authority or the competence of the speaker-agent. For these reasons, the diagnosis lends itself easily to show the interplay of different parameters – knowledge, power, role – in the same speech act. The assignment of a minor value to the parameter of knowledge in 4) and 5) goes together with a downgrading of the parameter of power. The semantic indeterminacy associated with the litotes in 4) (cf. Caffi, 1990) and the downgrading of certainty on the part of the speaker in 5) are mirrored by the upgrading of the hearer’s active role, i.e. her/his involvement in deciding what the case is, in confirming the hypothesis, in providing further evidence, etc., in a word, in sharing the responsibility for the abductive process. From a relational perspective, this means a redefinition of the role of the patient as slightly less passive. Further, if the patient is also entitled to some kind of knowledge, the relationship may proceed on a more symmetrical basis. At this point, a range of possible emotive inferences opens up. And this range includes the possible interpretation on the part of the patient that the doctor’s decreased epistemic commitment to the content of her/his utterance may be paralleled by a decrease in assertiveness, to use a psychological category (cf. Arndt and Janney, 1987), or by the doctor’s decreased emotive identification with her/his communication. The fact that modal adverbs are listed by social psychologists as nonimmediacy indicators – for instance, they appear in the ‘modification’ class in Wiener and Mehrabian’s work (Wiener and Mehrabian, 1968: 44; cf. 4.5.) – seems to confirm this correlation. In conclusion, what the examples clearly show is that epistemic certainty, social power, and psychological distance are intertwined parameters in a multi-layered process which, especially in its less conventionalized steps, remains to be analytically dismantled. 3.3.3. Combination of bushes and hedges In the following examples, mitigation affects both the proposition and the illocution. In example 6), the parameter ‘epistemic certainty’ is crucially affected by mitigation and is assigned a minor value, while the parameter ‘intimacy’ or ‘emotive closeness’ is indirectly assigned a major value. In particular, this example raises an important theoretical question: what is the threshold beyond which mitigation produces not only a deintensification of the same act, but rather a different act, i.e. when the issue at stake is not a matter of degree but a matter of type (cf. Givón, 1989)? In 6) the weakening of ‘epistemic certainty’ has a strong impact on ‘social role’ – here a professional one – in the overlapping area of ‘competence’. This weakening, obtained through a combination of bushes and hedges, is such that the speech act seems to shift from one type to another. In particular, it becomes, more than a hypothesis (a verdictive), the giving up of any hypothesis, the expression of a doubt, a behabitive, the report of a mental state, which is
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hopefully limited in time. This shift occurs when the sincerity condition – Austin’s (1962) Gamma conditions – prevails over the competence-knowledge condition – Austin’s (1962) Aconditions – the latter being crucial to verdictives. In 6): 6)
D. magari è un periodo così - va a sapere - qualcosa del genere. (PC, TR3) D. maybe it’s a sort of bad moment ((lit. it’s a period like that)) - who knows something like that.
Magari / va a sapere (‘maybe/who knows’) are hedges that focus on that aspect of the assertive illocution which is the commitment to truth (the neustic): va a sapere is an explicit admission of uncertainty; è un periodo così / qualcosa del genere (‘a sort of bad moment/something like that’) are bushes that make the proposition semantically fuzzy (cf. Channell, 1994: 132; Jucker et al., 2003). On the relational level, in 6) the downgrading of the parameter ‘knowledge’ (through the above-mentioned means), which is even stronger than in 5), increases social symmetry from a social viewpoint and the (not necessarily welcome) intimacy from a psychological viewpoint. It is as if the doctor, by giving up his knowledge, also gives up his social role based on that knowledge. Both seem temporarily suspended. Also example 7) illustrates the combined use of bushes and hedges. In 7): 7)
D. niente mh sì - allora se ho capito bene - il suo problema è che ogni tanto le capita di svenire. P. °sì°. (PsV, TR18) D. well ((lit. nothing)) erm yeah - now if I’ve understood correctly - your problem is that you sometimes happen to faint. ((lit. it happens to you to faint)) P. °yeah°.
after four starters (niente mh sì allora) signaling hesitation, the therapist says se ho capito bene (“if I’ve understood correctly”). This is a ‘disclaimer’ in Fraser’s (1980) sense, i.e. a control reformulation, or a ‘gist’ in Thomas’ (1989) sense, a ‘hedge’ in the sense proposed here, since its scope is on the whole illocution. This reformulation is both self-serving (obeying cautiousness) and altruistic (cf. Fraser, 1980), as it is the client that has to check whether the reformulation is correct. Such a device functions as a metacommunicative anticipation/neutralization of a possible disagreement. Ogni tanto (‘sometimes’) is a bush, focused on the propositional content, more precisely on the predication since it reduces the frequency of the symptom, thereby also reducing the
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severity of the problem (the fainting). Le capita (‘it happens to you’) is another bush focused on the propositional content. It is this lexical choice of the predication which allows the therapist to background the client’s responsibility: the event of fainting ‘happens’, rather than being brought about intentionally by an agent. From a relational point of view, the combination of bushes, which globally aim at minimizing the problem, and hedges, which here is instantiated by the hypothetical premise leaving open a different version of facts, shapes the relationship as one where the expert – a psychiatrist – can also make mistakes. This combination also weakens the asymmetry between therapist and client and calls for a the client’s co-definition of the problem, thereby implicitly stating her control capacity. 3.3.4. Shields In the following examples, the scope of mitigation is Bühler’s (1934) deictic origin, i.e. the ‘I-here-now’ at the core of every utterance act, Benveniste’s (1970) instance of discourse (instance d’énonciation) (cf. 1.3.1; 1.3.2.). In shields there is no explicit operator of mitigation which works on a more abstract level. In fact, in shields, the act is not mitigated by explicit linguistic devices, but rather it is dislocated by means of backgrounding and de-focalizing strategies, or even by the deletion of the utterance source. This idea, though it so far lacks a systematic account, has to some extent been anticipated by the rhetorical notions of enallage and aversio (cf. Lausberg, 1967: §431), the semiotic and narratological notion of débrayage (cf. Greimas and Courtés, 1979), Brown and Levinson’s (1987: 273) pragmatic-linguistic notion of ‘impersonalization mechanisms’, Haverkate (1992), and by others (cf. 2.1.5.). Jespersen (1924) highlighted the psychological motivational ground underlying the choice of different kinds of ‘generic person’ in various languages (e.g. the French on and the Italian si): this is the place to point out that for this notional “all-persons” or “no-person” each of the three grammatical persons is, as a matter of fact, found in actual language: 1) as we know = comme on sait, 2) you never can tell = on ne saurait le dire, 3) one would think he was mad = on dirait qu’il est fou, what is a fellow to think = qu’est-ce qu’on doit penser? (…il faut…) they say (people say) that he is mad = on dit qu’il est fou. The choice between these several expressions depends on a more or less emotional element: sometimes one wants to emphasize the fact that one is included oneself in the general assertion, sometimes one wants to make a kind of special appeal to the person addressed at the moment, and sometimes one wants to keep one’s own person in the background, though what is meant is really the first person more than anything else (one, a fellow). But the name “generic person” covers the notion underlying all these uses of various grammatical persons. (Jespersen, 1924: 215, italics in the original)
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What Jespersen calls the “emotional element” of this kind of grammatical choice – which depends on the speaker’s willingness to either include her/himself in the utterance or being excluded from it – is motivated by a superordinate reason, whereby the speaker as the utterer is backgrounded. In other words, Jespersen, after having identified different forms of personal deixis, connects their use with deresponsibilization, i.e. the feature that in the present treatment is considered as central to mitigation. As will be clear from the following examples, shields work in a dichotomous, yes-no way, rather than in a scalar way. In other words, they release a number of interactional effects through a process of contrast with the unmarked, expected, preferred choice. More precisely, shields seem to realize some strategies of displacement linked with the three basic components of the deictic origin, the source of the utterance act. The first component is the ‘I’ and the shield resulting from an operation on this component could be labeled ‘actantial’, to borrow a term from narratology. Shields on this component are prototypically represented by cases where the act is ascribed to someone else, or by cases where the author is simply deleted, as in impersonal constructions or agentless passive constructions. Symmetrically, we can have a deletion of the ‘you’, when no reference is made to the actual addressee of the message. Objectivization, with impersonal subjects like uno/a or si (‘one’), as in 11) below (quando uno diventa nervoso, ‘when one gets nervous’), is a shield of this kind. In discourse production there can be various shifts to and from the ‘I’, and there are several ways in which the responsibility for the speech act can be subtly shifted away or given up. It is precisely what happens with shifts in the participants’ role, in Goffman’s (1979) ‘footing’ (cf. Levinson, 1988). There are two other means of displacement. These are interconnected and can be labeled ‘spatio-temporal’, since the displacement involves the ‘here and now’ component of the utterance, as in 14) below. Here a narrative replaces a sequence focusing on the present context. What is produced is a fragment of a story (something that happened to the speaker) – the ‘I’ of the utterance being neither deleted nor disguised but shifted to another space and time. The displacement can even involve another possible world, opened up by either a hypothetical device, e.g. the ‘as if’ which is very frequent in psychotherapeutic sessions (cf. Gaik, 1992), or by a hypothetical sentence. I have called these devices ‘fictionalization’ and ‘eventualization’ (cf. Haverkate, 1992) shields respectively. These shields can work locally, at the level of a single utterance, or globally, as textual strategies. Example 8) illustrates a ‘non-I’, a non-ego strategy of objectivization. In 8): 8)
D. c’è un’i:perplasia estrogenica - c’è scritto qui. (PsV, TR8) D. there’s an estrogenic hyperplasia - it is written here.
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mitigation focuses on the utterance source, the deictic origin and is realized by a defocalization of the speaker as the agent of the utterance. As a matter of fact, the utterance is ascribed to some other impersonal source, that is made more authoritative and unquestionable by the channel (the written code) and by the use of the technical register. Shifting responsibility to another source – which is not shared by, or immediately accessible to, the addressee – amounts to weakening the doctor’s personal commitment to his diagnosis. Moreover, no reference is made to the two interlocutors: the utterance projects not only a ‘not-I’ but also a ‘not-you’. There is no reference to the patient either: the disease ‘is there’, and this is a fact for which a piece of evidence is invoked. At the same time, the disease is very accurately identified, which means that a high value is assigned to the parameter ‘precision of propositional content’. Thus, while the cognitive informativeness of the act is reinforced, and with it, its argumentative power, the overall relational effect is one of distancing. A somewhat similar case, where the doctor shifts from the first-person singular to the firstperson plural is discussed by Gumperz (1982). This case of ‘we’, however, is neither inclusive, thus expressing solidarity – as in the example 12) that will be discussed in Chapter 6, sentiamo i polmoni…guardiamo la gola un attimo (‘let’s have a listen to your lungs…let’s have a quick look at your throat’) – nor exclusive (e.g. ‘we are going to discharge you on Saturday’, TR12). Rather, it conveys an effect that is similar to that produced by impersonal constructions. According to Gumperz (1982: 184-185), this ‘we’ is used to “signal personal distance and to distinguish descriptions of impersonal laboratory procedures from statements about personal opinions or self-initiated actions”. In 9): 9)
C. eh che praticamente inizio a mangiare e non smetto più. fino a quando non mi sento scoppiare: continuo. cioè non mi fermo mai. ma >non è il fatto di aver fame< non lo so perché lo faccio. devo proprio: mangiare mangiare mangiare. T. mh. questo succede eh:: - occasionalmente. succede più volte: in relazione a: (PsS, TR19) C. erm it’s just that I start eating and I just can’t stop. until I feel that I could explode I continue. I mean I never stop. but >it’s not because I’m hungry ((lit. it’s not the fact of being hungry))< I don’t know why I do it. I just: have to keep eating eating eating. T. umh. this happens e::rm - occasionally. it happens often: it’s associated with:
the shield used by the therapist centers on the ‘you’. This is the initial phase of the first interview by a therapist with a bulimic client. The therapist asks her client to provide some more details about the symptoms connected to bulimia that the client herself has just reported. In all utterances composing her turn, the client has used the first-person singular (‘I just have to keep eating’). The therapist deletes this reference to the subject of the utterance in her
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interlocutor’s turn and encapsulates it by shifting to an impersonal third person (‘this happens’). This enables her to temporarily thematize/foreground the symptom she would like to know more about. In fact, she asks for some factual specifications on its frequency, thus postponing to a later stage all inquiries about the possible causes of the problem, which, however, seem to be anticipated by means of the truncated sentence ‘it’s often associated with’. From a relational point of view, the shield in 9) makes it possible to look at the problem from the outside at least temporarily, therefore avoiding any form of judgment or accusation and somewhat slowing down the excited pace of C.’s self-incriminations. Example 10) is interesting since it overtly deals with negotiations about responsibility for what is said and done. This example illustrates different shields of objectivization and impersonalization. Further, it shows oscillations between downgrading and reinforcement. In 10): 10)
C. non ci sono pensieri. T. non ci sono. C. non c’è ideazione. non ci sono pensieri. non c’è (h) emotività. non c’è reattività agli stimoli dell’ambiente. non c’è:: ->bò.< T. e quindi ha distrutto la propria intelligenza. C. ma. ‘ho’ (citazione polemica della formulazione di T.) è: è stata. si è. adesso non mi vorrei proprio assumere la responsabilità completamente (ride) (PsS) C. there are no thoughts. T. there aren’t. C. there is no capacity of thinking. there are no thoughts. there’s no (h) emotivity. there is no capacity of reaction to stimuli from the environment. there isn’t:: ->I don’t know.< T. so you have destroyed your mind. C. but. ‘I have’ (polemical quotation of T.’s formulation). it is: it has been. it has. now I wouldn’t want to take the whole responsibility (laughs)
the client speaks of her feelings as a matter of fact. Her utterance is objectified through the use of the perfective aspect. In fact, she does not say ‘I don’t have thoughts’ (io non ho pensieri), but ‘there are no thoughts’ (non ci sono pensieri). Grammatically speaking, the ‘I’, i.e. the ego or source of the utterance, has been deleted and what is described is not an action but a state of affairs. It is as if the client was watching her thoughts from the outside, as an external observer. The therapist (a psychoanalyst) reformulates the client’s words using a reinforced, almost brutal paraphrase, with a move that we could call Aktivierung/Dynamisierung (cf. Weingarten, 1990). Such move takes the client’s account literally and transforms it into an action that she has actually performed. At this point, the client changes her mind and, after a false start, where she echoes the therapist’s formulation in a polemical tone, she uses other shields to create a
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‘generic person’ (cf. above). These are impersonal and passive constructions, which, however, are still not sufficient to express her refusal to completely undertake the responsibility for ‘having destroyed her mind’. Hence, she feels she needs to make this point explicit. Example 11) illustrates a sub-case of objectivization, i.e. a gnomic-proverbial statement. A generic, impersonal third-person subject is used instead of the second-person subject (‘when you get nervous’) and her/his behavior is considered to be prototypical. At the same time, there is no surface trace of the actual utterer, as if the expert’s opinion had become a matter of general knowledge. Examples of this kind are included in Brown and Levinson’s (1987: 231) thirteenth strategy of negative politeness, which they call ‘hyper-generalization’. According to rhetoricians, this kind of strategies is used to establish (or increase) immediacy and communion with the audience, they are figures de la présence et de la communion (cf. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1958: §42). It easy to see their closeness with the pragmatic categories variously labeled as common knowledge, background knowledge, shared belief, etc. In 11): 11)
D. quando uno diventa nervoso fa così. (PsV, TR18) D. when one gets nervous one acts that way.
the patient’s behavior is treated as anybody’s behavior, i.e. as normal in those circumstances. Moreover, since the statement is pronounced by an authority, it acquires the status of an unquestionable, atemporal, apodictic truth. I will not pursue the question of gnomic-proverbial constructions any further, aware as I am that they would deserve a thorough pragmatic inquiry. However, given its relevance to the perspective adopted here, I would like to mention in passing a specific point made by Bouacha (1993) with reference to constructions where the ‘I’ does not designate the actual utterer, but a generic speaker. The author calls this type of syntactic structure a ‘generalizing utterance’ (énoncé généralisant) i.e. an utterance construed as a representative token of a class of equivalent modulated utterances (ibid.: 321). 4 According to Bouacha, the main function of these kinds of utterances is to foster agreement on the part of the recipient. The point that is important to highlight here is the following: despite the relational distance that can be inferred from such constructions in examples like 8) above, it can be argued that generalizing utterances seem often exemplify what Bouacha calls an ‘overinvestment’ (surinvestissement) on the part of the speaker. In particular, 4
An example of generic utterance is: “La baleine est un mammifère” (‘whales are mammals’), whereas an example of generalizing utterance (énoncé généralisant) is: “Un enfant aggressif est souvent un enfant malheureux“ (‘an aggressive kid is often an unhappy kid’). According to Bouacha (1993: 313), souvent (often) in the second example is “une modulation de l’énoncé pour le rendre plus acceptable à l’auditoire” (‘a modulation of the utterance which aims at making it more acceptable to the hearer’, my translation, C.C.).
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This kind of utterances, far from being decontextualized, without a pragmatic impact and a reference, instantiates on the contrary a sort of an overinvestment on the part of the speaker. In short, these utterances, far from suppressing the intersubjectivity, somehow radicalize it. (Bouacha, 1993: 314, my translation, C.C.)
This type of description highlights a type of “emotional element” among the ones noted by Jespersen in the passage quoted above (Jespersen, 1924: 215). The major drawback of this type of description is that it ignores the actual context of the utterance. Actually, as Jespersen argued, generalizing utterances as well as “the generic use of ‘man’, ‘one’, ‘si’ as a disguised ‘I’” (Jespersen, 1924: 205) 5 can have the aim either of protecting the speaker, keeping her/him in the background, or of emphasizing her/his role both as a particularly competent speaker and social member. As a matter of fact, such constructions may convey the presupposition that the speaker feels for some reason entitled to speak on behalf of the speech community. Once again, we are faced with the pervasive ambivalence of stylistic choices. A typical shield in doctor-patient interaction is the first-person plural. Before Brown and Levinson (1987) listed the ‘inclusive we’ among positive politeness strategies, Spitzer and Jespersen had already pointed out its typical pragmatic function, i.e. the function of shaping mutual understanding and agreement. Spitzer (1922: 75) introduces the concept of plurale sociativus,which corresponds to the ‘inclusive we’: by means of the fictitious sharing of the action by the speaker and the hearer enacted by this pronominal choice, mutual understanding, as well as solidarity are furthered. 6 A further point that is relevant for my purposes is made by Jespersen who advances the notion of ‘paternal we’. Jespersen writes: Among substitutes for notional second person I shall first mention the paternal we, often used by teachers and doctors (“Well, and how are we to-day?”) and denoting kindness through identifying the interests of speaker and hearer. This seems to be common in many countries, e.g. in Denmark, in Germany (Grimm, Personenwechsel, 19), in France (Bourget, Disc. 94 “Hé bien, nous deviendrons un grand savant comme le père?” / Maupassant, Fort c.l. m. 224 “Oui, nous avons de l’anémie, des troubles nerveux” – immediately followed by vous). The usual tinge of protection in this we is absent from the frequent Danish “Jeg skal sige os” (Let me tell you). (Jespersen, 1924: 217-218).
5
Jespersen does not draw a sharp distinction between ‘indefinite person’ and ‘generic constructions’. On the contrary, he states: “The difference between this ‘indefinite person’ and the generic use of man (in ‘man is mortal’) is not easy to define, and seems often to be emotional rather than intellectual” (Jespersen, 1924: 205). 6 The original passage I am referring to is the following: “Unter den Mitteln, sich das Einverständnis des Partners zu sichern, sei vor allem der soziative Plural erwähnt: eine Handlung, die im Grunde nur der Partner ausführt, wird in den Plural gesetzt, damit der Partner in der Fiktion lebe, er sei nicht allein (socios habuisse malorum), mit ihm gemeinsam wirke der Sprecher” (Spitzer, 1922: 75).
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Significantly, Jespersen associates the use of this kind of first personal plural pronoun with didactic and clinical discourse. Example 12) is a directive. Here the shield focuses on both the ‘I’ and the ‘you’. In 12): 12)
D. dobbiamo fare una radiografia dell’articolazione del femore con l’anca. (PC, TR2) D. we’ll have to do an X-ray of the hip joint.
the first-person plural signals a personal involvement on the part of the doctor; its function here seems to be opposite to the above quoted function hypothesized by Gumperz. 7 It is a pseudoinclusive ‘we’ (cf. Haverkate, 1992), a solidarity ‘we’ that replaces both the ‘I’ (e.g. ‘I suggest an X-ray’) and the ‘you’ (e.g. ‘you must do an X-ray’). In other words, the shield is on the utterer, thus avoiding an explicit prescription, as well as on the addressee, thus being exempted from an individual obligation. The performance of the action prescribed is depicted as if it was somehow shared by the doctor: the first-person plural is the visible grammatical trace of this sharing. The dislocation of the act to someone else, which is obtained by substituting the first-person pronoun with other personal pronouns, is known in rhetoric as ‘enallage of persons’ (cf. Perelman and OlbrechtsTyteca, 1958: §42). The use of the deontic modal dovere (‘must’), which imposes the obligation, is the second mitigating device in 12). Modal devices can be both mitigating and reinforcing depending on the context and on the criterion of analysis. For instance, it is easy to see that, from a logical point of view, on a scale of modals, dovere (‘must’) is a downgrader compared to è necessario (‘it is necessary’), while it is an upgrader compared to potere (‘can’, ‘could’). Besides, from a psychological point of view, ‘must’ could be seen as an upgrader with respect to ‘it is necessary’, which is impersonal, hence less immediate from the partner’s standpoint. In 13), which will be further examined later on in this work (cf. Chapter 5), the architecture of the ‘eventualization’ shield is more complex. In 13): 13)
D. poi oltre a tutto lui lavora al xxx [nome di ospedale] di xxx [nome di luogo] ci fosse da fare non so paradossalmente da operare, (PC, TR1, Appendix A, ll. 352-353) D. what’s more, he works at xxx [name of hospital] in xxx [name of place] so if it was necessary ((lit. there was (SUBJ))) to do I don’t know paradoxically to operate,
7
Among the many possible pragmatic values of the use of the first-person plural, it is worth mentioning the following, which is exactly the opposite of the rhetorical device called plurale maiestatis: “le persan et le turc se servent d’un pluriel ‘nous’ pour réferer à l’addresseur, par fusion (dépréciative, et donc polie) de son individualité dans l’anonymat d’une collection” (Hagège, 1985: 279).
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what is mitigated is the speech act ‘supposition’. This is done in order to make the (actually realistic) hypothesis of an operation more distant and unlikely. However, an evaluation lurks in the background, something like ‘maybe an operation will be necessary’. Example 13) instantiates a cumulative use of linguistic devices. These are: textual, i.e. oltre a tutto (‘what’s more’) which introduces the message as one among the many possible topics, thereby decreasing its importance; syntactic, i.e. the subjunctive in the hypothetical construction; and lexical, i.e. the marker non so (‘I don’t know’) and the evaluative adverb paradossalmente (‘paradoxically’). The latter is a kind of metacommunicative gloss affecting both the speech act as a whole (‘I’m only saying, as a paradox, that…’) and the propositional content, which is thus further removed. Moreover, it is a stylistic cue that opens the way to a more formal register. The shifting away from one aspect of the deictic origin of the utterance can become a global strategy, as in 14). This example enables me to move on to the category of topical shields. Example 14) illustrates a ‘narrativization’ shield, i.e. a global strategy of de-actualization of a topic. In this case the topic is the patient’s present state, which is salient in that specific context, namely the first session in a course of psychotherapy. A negative affect toward the topic can be inferred from this removal, this process of de-actualization which signals a separation from the present communication (cf. Wiener and Mehrabian, 1968). At another level of analysis, it can be claimed that this strategy aims at self-protection (traditional psychoanalysis would describe it in terms of ‘resistance’), as the client’s shield is first and foremost focused on herself and her present pain. Whatever the interpretation of the strategy may be, what is crucial is to explain how this self-protection is achieved. In this case, a present feeling is shifted to the past and is told in a rather detached style instead of being enacted. To use Benveniste’s famous distinction (Benveniste, 1959), what the client says is an histoire that finds it hard to become discours. In narrativization there is an ‘I, not-here, not-now’ vs. an actualization or focalization on the ‘I-here-now’, which indeed the analyst tries to restore. This type of shield was pointed out by Labov and Fanshel (1977: 336) under the label ‘narrative response’. The authors identified it as one of the typical mitigation strategies used by the anorexic girl (Rhoda) they based their work on. Let’s consider the following example: 14)
C. e poi: dall’85 all’87 i due anni diciamo in cui: stavo male ma non: per altri versi ma non così male come sto adesso sono comunque riuscita a continuare a lavorare mi hanno cambiato la respo*nsabilità+ T. *adesso sta male?+ in questo momento? C. be’ adesso io sono qua e sono entrata per degli accertamenti: ulteriori= T. =no dico adesso ora qui. C. sì.
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T. sta male? C. be’ - certo. T. perché parla con me? C. no: non mi dà nessun fastidio parlare con lei. (PsS) C. and then from 85 to 87 the two years when: let’s say I felt bad but not in other respects but not so bad as I feel now anyway I managed to keep working they changed my du*ties+ T. *now are you feeling bad?+ at the moment? C. well now I’m here and I’ve come in for further tests= T. =no I mean now at this very moment here. C. yes. T. are you feeling bad? C. well - of course. T. because you are speaking to me? C. no: I don’t mind speaking to you. Example 14) is suitable to close this section because it is a transitional case between deictic shields, particularly ‘objectivization’, and topical shields, which will be discussed in the next section. The main difference between them is the following: while deictic shields, i.e. shields based on the negation of one of the aspects of the deictic triad ‘I-here-now’, work by an overall substitution (e.g. one utterance is replaced by another bearing a ‘not-I’, ‘not-here’, ‘not-now’ feature), quotational and topical shields operate on ‘something’ which actually appears on the discourse surface. In other words, they both operate on observable linguistic objects. While deictic mitigation is in absentia – deictic shields are in paradigmatic opposition to other unmarked choices in a given context – quotational and topical mitigation are in praesentia, as is the case with bushes and hedges. Let us consider what this ‘something’ – these ‘observable linguistic objects’ – may be.
3.4. OTHER STRATEGIES OF MITIGATION: QUOTATIONAL SHIELDS AND TOPICAL SHIELDS My aim in the present section is to list some discourse strategies in which mitigation can be inferred as a second-degree/side-effect. The operations I have in mind are of two basic types: a) the suspension of literal interpretation, and b) the strategic backgrounding of a topic, obtained
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through specific textual devices. 8 I have called the former ‘quotational shields’ and the latter ‘topical shields’. In the case of quotational shields, a meta-level is introduced by means of expressions like fra virgolette (‘in quotes’), which are used by the speaker to explicitly distance her/himself from what s/he is saying. In other words, the signaled suspension of the literal meaning implies that the speaker’s subscription – both cognitive and emotive – to her/his utterance, or part of it, is suspended too. Similar effects are obtained through the use of markers such as per così dire (‘so to speak’) and diciamo così (‘let’s say’). It can be envisaged a sort of continuum from: a) true quotational cases; b) cautionary markers evoking a meta-level, e.g. per così dire (‘so to say’), and c) bushes, e.g. quasi (‘almost’), praticamente (‘practically’), etc. All these devices can be placed along a scale of decreasing transparency (cf. Hölker, 1988). In order to clarify the differences between them, it may be useful to observe again that class a) is linked to a yes-no property of communication in general terms, namely literality, while class b) signals metacommunicatively what can be seen as a non-complete fulfillment of Austin’s (1962) first B-condition, namely, the condition which prescribes that the procedure must be executed correctly. Finally, devices referred to under c), without making reference to a meta-level, signal what can be seen as a nonfulfillment of Austin’s (1962) second B-condition, namely, the condition which prescribes that the procedure must be executed completely. This latter can be seen as related to the scalar parameter ‘precision of the propositional content’ (Bazzanella et al., 1991). Topical shields comprise the strategic backgrounding of a topic whose occurrence is expected – typically an embarrassing, unpleasant, thorny topic – through a decreased value assigned to the interactional parameter that can be labeled ‘relevance of a topic for the present purposes of the exchange’. Topical shields are a particular case of topical action regarding the topic management in conversation (cf. Bublitz, 1988). They can be further subdivided into strategic digressions, and strategic examples (on examples, cf. Caffi and Hölker, 1995). Strategic digressions correspond to the rhetoric notion of aversio a materia or digressio (cf. 8
As pointed out by Bublitz (1988: 135), topic shifts are widely acknowledged as suitable means to avoid disagreement and conflict in discourse. For instance, Maynard (1980) adds ‘topic change’ to Pomerantz’ (1978) list of linguistic means considered as preventive or therapeutic measures against disagreement. Bublitz (1988: 134) associates the action of ‘breaking off the topic’ with politeness strategies aimed at avoiding taboos or face-threats for the recipient. In other words, the author highlights the mitigating potential of the strategic manipulation of topical structure. This connection is also identified by Brown and Levinson (1978), who, however, only mention it when dealing with ‘relevance hedges’. The latter do not comply with Grice’s maxim of Relevance, since they introduce a digression together with some sort of apology for it (ibid.: 173-74; cf. 2.1.2.). Psycho-pathology studies which will be discussed in Chapter 4 make it possible to shed light on the other side of the sword. In fact, besides being connected to the intentional protection of both speaker and recipient, topical shift is also linked to disqualification of the enacted communication and can be a way to deny the other and her/his utterance. As we will see in the next chapter (cf. 4.8.), topic change, together with the lack of uptake signals on the part of the hearer, is one of the parameters involved in Sluzki et al.’s (1967) transactional disqualification.
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Lausberg, 1967: §434), where the mechanism at work is the ‘lateralization’ of a topic. This is obtained through the use of connectives such as tra l’altro (‘by the way’, ‘what’s more’, ‘besides’) or per caso (‘incidentally’, ‘by any chance’) as in example 15) below: 15)
D. ha avuto per caso qualche altra gravidanza che si è interrotta spontaneamente così o no?= P. =no. (PsV, TR18) D. have you accidentally/incidentally had any other pregnancies with a miscarriage or not?= P. =no.
Example 15) sounds funny to an Italian speaker because of the ambiguity of the scope of the Italian mitigator per caso (similar to the German zufällig / zufälligerweise), which is another passe-partout downgrader like un attimo. Each of the two possible English translations selects only one of the two simultaneous possibilities in Italian. The former, ‘accidentally’ (i.e. ‘by any chance’), is a bush since it has at its scope the propositional content. The latter, ‘incidentally’ (i.e. ‘by the way’), has at its scope the whole question, presented as a side topic in a hypothetical hierarchy of topics. In this latter case, the device per caso realizes a topical shield in which the inferrable mitigating effect is obtained through the ‘lateralization’ of the topic. Clearly, the topic itself is extremely delicate and both positively and negatively facethreatening for the patient, although in such an institutionalized context the therapist is entitled to be somewhat intrusive and to redefine the usual boundaries of ‘negative politeness’ (cf. Brown and Levinson, 1987). Having recognized this, however, we also have to explain how the speaker manages both to ask an embarrassing question and to protect the addressee’s face. These conflicting goals are simultaneously pursued by the use of the co-textual shield, which introduces the topic and at the same time downgrades its relevance and urgency in the context. Strategic examples are those cases where again the parameter which is reduced is the ‘relevance of the topic for the present purposes of the exchange’. Crucially, this reduction amounts to a contrast with the expected, preferred choice in that specific context. The mechanism by which this reduction is achieved is the paradigmatization of the topic, obtained through the use of connectives such as ad esempio, per esempio (‘for example’, ‘for instance’), as in 16) below: 16)
C. va be’ problemi in casa: li ho sempre avuti quindi: T. che problemi ci sono? C. va be’. ad esempio c’è mio papà che: *ogni tanto beve+. (PsS, TR19)
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C. well as to problems at home: I’ve always had them so: T. what are the problems? C. well for instance there is: my father who *sometimes drinks+. Here mitigation is obtained by downgrading the ‘topical relevance’ dimension. Basically, this mechanism works as follows: a topic is included in a paradigm of possibilities rather than being presented in a hierarchy. From a relational point of view, downgrading the relevance of a topic implicitly means downgrading the emotive salience of the topic for the speaker in that particular communicative situation. If the topic is actually recognizable as salient in that context, as is in 16) the topic of the father’s alcohol addiction (further mitigated by the bush ogni tanto, ‘sometimes’), its backgrounding triggers an implicature concerning the unwillingness on the part of the speaker to handle it. 9 There is a clear similarity between this type of shields and the rhetorical figure of reticentia, although the former activates a textual dimension that is not necessarily involved in reticence. To sum up, topical shields are the surface device that de-intensify the interactional parameter of topical relevance, which is connected by implicature with the parameter of emotive salience of a topic. In other words, the fact that a topic is given a limited textual salience – since it is either ‘lateralized’, or set in a paradigm of equipollent possibilities – enables us to infer that such a topic is of a minor emotive salience to the speaker in the given context. Now, if in that context or stage of interaction (i.e. in a given co-text or sequential structure) that topic is in fact both textually and emotively salient, and dealing with it in that slot represents the preferred choice, the topic organization action will be interpreted as strategically motivated and can be defined as a type of mitigation.
3.5. CONCLUSIONS The examples discussed in this chapter confirm the hypothesis that mitigation affects various linguistic levels and involves different interactional dimensions, with a number of repercussions on the management of discourse responsibilities, from both a cognitive and an emotive perspective. As to the hypothesis that mitigating devices focus on different scopes within the utterance, the threefold distinction I have adopted in this book has proved useful to illustrate different semantic and pragmatic aspects that can be modified by mitigation. From a relational perspective, some light has been cast on the connection between types of 9
The backgrounding of the topic is also ‘multimodal’ in that it is also achieved by means of prosody, as the relevant part of the turn is pronounced in a lower voice.
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mitigation and their potential relational impacts. As we have seen, inferrable effects of mitigating devices include both instrumental and relational aspects, which can be either congruent and mutually reinforcing or somehow conflicting. The issue of the links between such aspects will be specifically addressed in the next chapter where psychological categories will be examined. In conclusion, mitigators mitigate because they manage speech act responsibility in different ways. In the case of bushes, what is weakened is the subscription to the proposition; in the case of hedges, what is weakened is the endorsement of the illocution; in the case of shields, what is avoided is the self-ascription of the utterance, which is ascribed to another source or displaced to another situation. While bushes and hedges are scalar devices – i.e. they work along a scale of degrees of epistemic commitment to the proposition and degrees of endorsement of one of the scalar dimensions of illocution respectively – shields are yes-no devices (e.g. ‘I’/’non-I’, ‘now/nonnow’, etc.) that are centered on the core of the utterance act, its deictic origin, the formal support of subjectivity (cf. Benveniste, 1970; cf. 1.3.). Furthermore, while bushes and hedges work in praesentia, i.e. they are lexicalized expressions, shields operate in absentia, by substitution. What is involved in shields is not a downgrading of the quality of some interactional scalar dimension, but, at a more abstract level, an emotive clash between cotextually and contextually bounded expectations and the actual choice. The rhetorical categories that are closest to bushes and hedges are euphemism, litotes, understatement and periphrasis, whereas the closest psychological categories are immediacy (cf. Wiener and Mehrabian, 1968), disqualification (cf. Haley, 1959), equivocation (cf. Beavin Bavelas et al., 1990) and some of the emotive devices listed in Caffi and Janney (1994b), particularly those of specificity, evidentiality, and volitionality (cf. Chapter 4). The rhetorical categories that are closest to deictic and quotational shields are enallage, reticence, aversio ab oratore (which can be shaped as sermocinatio, ethopeia; cf. Lausberg, 1967: §432): in those cases the speaker detaches from her/himself and put her/his speech in someone else’s mouth. Also the rhetorical category of aversio ab auditoribus, apostrophe, (Lausberg, 1967: §441) can be seen as a deictic shield: the speaker detaches her/himself from the hearers and addresses someone else, typically an imaginary audience. The closest psychological categories are the following: disqualification of the ‘I’ and ‘you’ component of the message (cf. Haley, 1959), avoidance strategies (cf. Lewin, 1935), what traditional psychoanalysis views as the defense mechanisms at work in ‘resistance’, and proximity devices (cf. Caffi and Janney, 1994b; cf. Chapter 4). Finally, topical shields can be connected to the rhetorical category of aversio a materia, or digressio (cf. Lausberg, 1967: §434) and the psychological category of disqualification of the component ‘in this context’. Quotational and topical shields exhibit the strategic mitigating potential of discourse texture, thereby offering new themes for further inquiry on the visibility
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of the speaking subject. Table 3.1. summarizes possible correspondences between rhetorical, psychological, and pragmatic categories. The psychological categories will be discussed in Chapter 4. These correspondences, however tentative, can be considered as possible non generic starting points for future research aiming at connecting fields which have for too long been unrelated. This research should rediscover the unity of our knowledge about our words, ourselves, and our relationships with others that ancient rhetoric set up at its very outset. Making these links explicit and proving that they are synergically explicative of pragmatic mechanisms in real interaction is a major goal of the next chapters of this work.
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Table 3.1. Rhetorical, psychological and pragmatic categories Rhetorical categories Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1958); Lausberg (1967)
Immediacy Wiener and Mehrabian (1968) denotative specificity indicating devices
periphrasis euphemism understatement negative opposite (negatio contrarii)
selective emphasis indicating devices
litotes rhetorical questions
modification indicating devices
politeness formulas
automatic phrasal indicating devices
enallage of persons aversio ab oratore (sermocinatio)
Disqualification Haley (1959); Beavin Bavelas (1985); Sluzki et al. (1967)
non ‘am saying something’
bushes
non ‘I’
hedges
non ‘I’ agent-object indicating devices
non ‘you’
aversio ab auditoribus (apostrophe)
enallage of tenses
Mitigation Caffi (1999a; 2001)
actantial shields shields of objectivization
temporal indicating devices
aversio
non ‘in this context’
aversio a materia (digressio)
transactional disqualification evasion
shields of narrativization quotational shields of fictionalization topical shields (of lateralization)
4 MITIGATION AND EMOTIVE COMMUNICATION: STEPS TOWARD A PSYCHOSTYLISTIC APPROACH HAMLET: Sir, I cannot ROSENCRANTZ: What, my lord? HAMLET: Make you a wholesome answer. Hamlet, III, II.
4.0. INTRODUCTION As pointed out in Chapter 1, mitigation markers are a subcategory of linguistic markers that meet relational and practical needs in conversation and function importantly in identity maintenance (Giles et al., 1979: 351). In particular, mitigation, in more ways than one, affects the emotive profile of the interaction. The question to be asked is now: What are the links between mitigation and emotion in everyday interaction? In this chapter I shift attention to this question, regarding mitigation as a general pragmatic-stylistic category for the mutual cognitive and emotional adjustment of speaker and hearer. This very definition forces us to face the problem of the role of emotion in communication which will be dealt with from different perspectives in the following sections. 1 The more general question behind the present chapter is the following: in a given interaction, how can we trust that others’ feelings are not too distant from our own? To rephrase this question in pragmatic terms, as constant interpreters of messages in interaction, how do we decipher others’ feelings, and how can we count on the fact that others will be able 1
In this chapter, I will use the terms ‘affect’ and ‘emotion’ interchangeably. I am aware of the fact that, in so doing, some important theoretical distinctions in social, cognitive, and clinical psychology will be blurred. On the other hand, similarly simplistic uses of linguistic categories are found in these fields when linguistic phenomena are dealt with as well. Oversimplification, however unfortunate, is to some extent unavoidable when entering disciplinary fields different from our own. For a preliminary discussion of the terminological and conceptual distinctions between ‘feeling’, ‘affect’, and ‘emotion’, cf. Caffi and Janney (1994b: 327-328).
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to decipher ours? There are of course many ways to answer a question like this. One way would be to start from the consideration that in our ‘normal’ communicative lives, we tend to assume a certain similarity between our own inner selves and the inner selves of others. This assumption breaks down in pathological communication. In many different pathologies the ‘emotive capacity’, to use Caffi and Janney’s (1994b: 327 ff.) phrase, is impaired. Schizophrenic patients, for instance, suffer from an incapacity of empathy, which is basically an inability to identify themselves with others and adopt others’ points of view. This empathic disability surfaces in misuses (or non-uses) of mitigation (and results in behavior like that of Piaget’s egocentric child (cf. 1.3.3.)). In an important contribution to psychoanalytic theory, Heinz Kohut defines empathy as a form of “vicarious introspection”: 2 The inner world cannot be observed with the aid of our sensory organs. Our thoughts, wishes, feelings, and fantasies cannot be seen, smelled, heard, or touched. They have no existence in physical space, and yet they are real, and we can observe them as they occur in time: through introspection in ourselves, and through empathy (i.e., vicarious introspection) in others. (Kohut, 1959: 459)
This definition opens the way for a possible conceptualization of the connection between outer and inner world. My major concern here, however, is not with empathy per se but with the linguistic means by which empathy is realized, and with the following important point: it may be argued that thus far mitigation has been mainly seen as the linguistic realization of empathy. But this view, however justified it may seem to be in view of current research findings in the field about positive politeness, is reductive, inasmuch as it blurs the essential double nature of mitigation and its paradoxical core. As a matter of fact, mitigation can often be given opposite interpretations and can be seen as functioning in both empathic and antiempathic directions. Inasmuch as it aims at controlling the ongoing interaction, mitigation implicitly marks the speech act in which it occurs as potentially problematic, thus running the risk of being anti-empathic. In particular, mitigation is often linked to forms of indirectness, reticence, and evasive messages. This link, though recognized in early studies on mitigation (cf. Fraser, 1980), still lacks a multidisciplinary treatment that reconstructs its conceptual underpinning and its practical functioning. Some steps toward a treatment of this kind, which integrates pragmatic, stylistic and psychological insights, are advanced in what follows. My own approach to the question of the role of mitigation in ‘emotive communication’ (cf. Caffi and Janney, 1994b) is operational and can be formulated with the following questions: are mitigation markers and strategies connected to emotive markers and strategies? If so, in what sense? In the present chapter, to start answering these questions, I will approach the 2
A discussion of the theoretical implications of these remarks is beyond the scope of this chapter.
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mitigation issue ‘from the outside’, as it were, from the viewpoints of various psychological disciplines. In the next few sections, I will first discuss the link between mitigation and deresponsibilization as a possible reason for the paradoxical double nature of mitigation. After some general remarks on conceptualizations of language and affect, I will discuss some recent conceptualizations of emotive features of communication in pragmatics, and then briefly introduce some concepts borrowed from experimental psychology, social psychology, and clinical psychology of communication: i.e., notions of ‘involvement’, ‘immediacy’, and ‘disqualification’, and the Freudian concept of ‘undoing’ (Ungeschehenmachen). These conceptual categories, which can be seen as mutually explicative, represent potential bridges between pragmatics and psychology. In some of the following sections, the direction of the bridging will be from pragmatics to psychology (cf. Sections 4.1., 4.2., 4.3., 4.4.); in others, it will be from psychology to pragmatics (cf. Sections 4.1.1., 4.5., 4.6., 4.7., 4.8., 4.9.). Although the notions above come from different areas of psychological research, they are all useful, I think, for a better understanding of interactional mechanisms. Some of the mechanisms they capture operate in dramatically systematic ways in pathological exchanges but are also intermittently observable in everyday interaction. As is well known, there are not sharp boundaries between ordinary and pathological communication. On the contrary, they share some patterns, which can be categorized in terms of mitigation (on the ‘everyday’ side), or in terms of disqualification, equivocation, negation and the like (on the ‘pathological’ side). The point most relevant to my line of reasoning is that these mechanisms all contribute, to some extent, to weaken the speaker’s responsibilities. This, it can be argued, is the common thread binding the individual mechanisms and connecting these, in turn, to pragmatic mitigation strategies. As we will see, my hypothesis about the ‘deresponsibilization’ trait lying at the very core of mitigation is confirmed by the results of research in independent fields, such as studies on schizophrenic communication. The conceptual path that I will follow in this chapter (which also takes ‘the other edge of the sword’ into account – i.e., the different ways mitigation can work in an anti-empathic direction) is hoped to help shed light on the pervasive, fuzzy component represented by emotive communication, and highlight some notions that allow us to preserve, if only partially and reductionistically, its intrinsic dynamic, indexical quality.
4.1. STYLE AS A PSYCHOLINGUISTIC ISSUE: THE ROLE OF EMOTION One of the theoretical premises of this book is that style conceptually links linguistic and psychological phenomena, as first suggested by Benveniste (1971: 106) in his discussion of unconscious’ symbolism. Throughout the book I will assume that a close connection exists
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between linguistic and communicative choices on the one hand, and expressions of, and hypotheses about, speakers’ feelings on the other. This assumption can be reformulated by observing that style, viewed as some type of modulation of a given utterance in a given context, is not determined solely by sociolinguistic factors (cf. Chapter 1). Being the way actions are performed (cf. 2.3.), style is rather a responsive interface between competing dimensions of influence on the performer. Stylistic choices can be viewed as the surfacing traces of monitoring processes shaped by emotive features of interaction. Stylistic choices can be regarded from different perspectives, and some of these can be fruitfully integrated. From a linguistic point of view, they can be thought of as ‘evoked effects’ (effets par évocation) (Bally, 1970 [1909]: 203-249; cf. 1.6.), or as ‘contextualization cues’ (Gumperz, 1982a; cf. 1.8.). Once a given rhetorical threshold is exceeded, a configuration of stylistic traits can be identified as a ‘figure of speech’ and be classified as litotes, understatement, euphemism, periphrasis, reticence, etc. From a psychological point of view, stylistic choices can be seen as cues that authorize hearers to make inferences about speakers’ positive or negative attitudes toward communication or its components (cf. Section 4.5. ff.). For the hearer, mitigation can be a starting point for inferring non-immediacy. The hearer, that is, can perceive mitigation strategies as indicating the will on the part of the speaker to control the interaction and reduce her/his engagement, by eliciting inferences of a) cognitive non-commitment and b) emotional detachment. At this stage, it is worthwhile clarifying two general methodological points: first, in this book, psychological aspects of metapragmatic competence are dealt with from a ‘naïve’ perspective close to an ethnomethodological perspective. The assumption of the primary relevance of folk categories is inherent in this perspective. By ‘folk categories’ I mean categories that are adopted by competent members of a social group to make sense of actions performed by their partners and to form hypotheses about partners’ goals and strategies for reaching these goals (cf. von Cranach et al., 1980). Bearing this in mind, my analysis moves from the discourse surface to underlying ‘layers’ of authorized inferences. 3 Second, the aim of 3
I borrow the notion of layer from Piro’s (1967) interesting work on schizophrenic language. Sergio Piro (1967: 139) discusses the distinction between referential meaning and emotive meaning and maintains that, while the former can be seen as operating at different ‘levels’, the latter can be analyzed into ‘layers’. While in my opinion it is necessary to go beyond the dichotomy ‘referential-emotive’ and think of emotive communication as a complex, multi-faceted, dimension interacting with other dimensions, it is useful to retain the notion of the layer. In fact, it is important to draw a distinction, at least in principle, between the linguistic concept of meaning, which can be analyzed at different levels, and the extended interactional concept of meaning, which can be analyzed at different layers, for instance, the layer of conventional implicatures. The interactional construction of meaning can be described as a process affecting different layers, rather than different levels, from the most conventionalized and stable ones to the most blurred and subtle effets de sens. Mitigation is a bridging category which connects layers of communication (rather than levels of meaning), whose interpretation on the part of the hearer goes along with inferential processes. The way in which this chain-process can
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analysis is not to speculate about the causes of people’s actions – which are unfathomable in any case – but to describe their probable interactional effects and the actual linguistic means used to obtain these. Against this background, issues of sincerity and questions of ‘true’ intentions are out of the picture. In this connection, the case of ‘expressive’ illocutionary acts whose sincerity felicity condition is merely that they are appropriate to the situation in which they are uttered are particularly instructive. Apologies and thanks, for instance, ‘take effect’ as illocutionary acts (Austin, 1975 [1962]: 117), whether they are sincere or not, simply due to the conventionality of the rituals they trigger when performed (cf. Norrick, 1978). Interestingly enough, conventionality is crucial in social psychological perspectives as well. The identitybuilding process realized by means of speech includes emotive factors related in part to what social psychologists call ‘expression management’. As already said, when analyzing this process, it is necessary to adopt the perspective of the ‘interpreter’ who is entitled to infer immediacy or non-immediacy from textual cues. In this way, the vicious circle of subjective, idiosyncratic, ever-changing strategies can be avoided (one could pretend to feel involved and weigh the effects of such attitude, or try not to show involvement but then reveal one’s feelings, etc.). Without dwelling on the matter further here, I will tacitly make these assumptions throughout the book. Returning to the main point, the upshot of the psychological studies referred to in this chapter is that many communication mechanisms related to mitigation are used specifically to modulate emotive distances and regulate the temperature of interaction. These mechanisms will be discussed in the next few sections. 4.1.1. Mitigation as an empathic strategy: attunement (Stern, 1985) As already noted, Leo Spitzer, in his ante litteram pragmatic study of Italian spoken language (Spitzer, 1922), introduces the notion of entgegenkommen, or ‘going toward the other’ in dialogue. Spitzer subtly describes expressive markers that indicate tact, consideration, and respect, and that today would be considered positive politeness strategies. At the same time such markers signal the speaker’s effort ‘to go toward the other’, however, Spitzer notes, they can also be interpreted as lacking naturalness and denoting calculation and manipulation on the speaker’s side. Thus Spitzer’s conceptualization beautifully captures the ambivalence of stylistic markers, and mitigation among them. This is not the place to indulge in a discussion of Spitzer’s important contribution to politeness theories. 4 What matters here is rather the following question: can we find a counterpart to Spitzer’s stylistic notion of entegegenkommen in the field of psychology? I think that this can be found in Stern’s notion of ‘attunement’ be depicted has already been sketched in the discussion on hedges in Chapter 2 and will be further illustrated in Chapter 5. 4 A discussion of Spitzer’s (1922) model of politeness can be found in Caffi (2005).
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(Stern, 1985). The notion of attunement deserves to be briefly introduced at this point. Stern’s work belongs to a research field which is of great potential interest for pragmatics. It is aimed at constructing a developmental psychological theoretical framework in which a relationally-oriented psychoanalytical perspective is founded on the empirical analysis of directly observed ‘child-mother’s’ behavior. In his approach, the child-mother is regarded as a couple. From direct observation of this couple, a kind of mothers’ behavior emerges that Stern calls “affect attunement” (Stern, 1985: 140). If it may appear at first sight that affect attunement is close to imitative behavior, they are actually different; attunement, he claims, is a special category of behavior. Stern defines this new category as follows: Affect attunement […] is the performance of behaviors that express the quality of feeling of a shared affect state without imitating the exact behavioral expression of the inner state […] The reason attunement behaviors are so important as separate phenomena is that true imitation does not permit the partners to refer to the internal state. It maintains the focus of attention upon the forms of external behaviors. Attunement behaviors, on the other hand, recast the event and shift the focus of attention to what is behind the behavior, to the quality of feeling that is being shared. (Stern, 1985: 142)
I won’t dwell here on Stern’s ideas and their complex relationship with psychoanalysis (especially Melanie Klein’s approach) and the conceptual paradigm of attachment (especially Bowlby’s approach). More important, in the present connection, is the relevance of an adapted, revised, and extended notion of attunement for the integrated approach to emotive monitoring in interaction. The ability to achieve attunement, the “experience of feeling-connectedness, of being in attunement with another. It feels like an unbroken line” (ibid.: 157), is vital in order to avoid breaking down the conversational pact. The use of the notion of attunement in this book will differ from Stern’s original notion in two main respects. First, due to his interest in the early infancy, Stern has nonverbal behavior in mind – for example, the matching of the intensity level of the child’s voice by the mother’s body movements. Here, attunement is “a recasting, a restatement of a subjective state […] by way of non-verbal metaphor and analogue” (ibid.: 161). Second, Stern draws a distinction between empathy and attunement: empathy, he says, unlike attunement, requires “the mediation of cognitive processes” (ibid.: 145). In the present treatment this distinction will be overridden by my lack of concern in defining what empathy is: what is important for my purposes is rather to set up operational tools to deal with linguistic downgrading phenomena that can be seen as attunement-related. With these caveats, a pragmatic version of Stern’s notion may lead to an enhanced understanding of mitigation mechanisms and prove to be useful in the analysis of real encounters. In applying this notion to a pragmatically-oriented description of therapeutic interaction, I have drawn a distinction between topical attunement, which is exemplified by (re)formulations, and stylistic attunement, in which mitigation plays a key role (cf. Caffi, 2001;
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Caffi, 2002; 5.8.1., 5.8.2.). Once we give prominence to the intersubjective sharing of affect (cf. Stern, 1985: 138 ff.), the category of attunement seems to be a core candidate for explaining mitigation. In this connection, if we assign a fundamental role to affect in communicative processes, the next step is to take the direction ‘ego vs. the inner world’ into account, which has so far been largely neglected in the literature (cf. 1.1.). To begin with, we can assume that mitigation strategies can serve both emotional and emotive personal needs (cf. Section 4.4.1. below). That is, as far as emotional needs are concerned, they may help speakers both achieve consistent inner states, and enhance their self-effectiveness (cf., among others, Leary, 2003). Although the intentional and strategic emotive dimension of communication is certainly the main focus of a pragmatic approach, the deeper layers involved in the production of interactional meaning have certainly a bearing in the production of interactional meaning. Significantly, there seems to be growing interest in both cognitive and social psychology in what can be labeled the emotional dimension of communication. That the spontaneous emotional dimension of communication is intertwined with the intentional, strategic emotive dimension is a common experience which is beginning to be recognized and conceptualized in different fields of research. In particular, recent research in social psychology provides evidence of various ways in which this intertwining takes place in interaction. For instance, Clark and Brissette (2003) discuss the correlation between intimacy (called ‘closeness’ by the authors) and expressions of emotion, which is one among the many possible intersections between emotive and emotional dimensions of relationships. Starting from the assumption that “relationships can be distinguished from one another based on the degree of responsibility that we feel for one another’s needs,” Clark and Brissette (2003: 828) argue: The more communal the relationship, the more we should express emotions such as fear, sadness, and happiness and experience and express emotions such as guilt and empathic sadness and happiness. Furthermore, once these emotions are expressed, our partners ought to react to them more positively. Such positive reactions should include such things as listening carefully and sympathetically to our emotional expressions, providing help in the case of our negative emotion, sharing positive emotions, and welcoming our empathic sadness as well as guilt. (Clark and Brissette, 2003: 828)
It is easy to see the role played by mitigation in the communicative processes mentioned by the authors. How the interplay between emotive and emotional dimensions can be handled from a pragmatic standpoint is a question that remains open. In fact, it is not part of my purpose, and not the task of pragmatics, to explore relationships between outer expressions of emotion and inner experienced emotional states. This does not mean, however, that we should not take this important double-orientation of the emotive capacity into account. Actually, if we ignore the fact that this capacity functions in both directions (toward both the inner and outer
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worlds) we miss an important opportunity to get the whole picture of what happens in interaction. I am well aware that this point may be challenged. The resistance against any approach designed to account for our intuitive appreciation of this point is strong. However, as already noted at the outset of this book, pragmatics can no longer afford to dismiss the importance of affect and its influences on linguistic choices. Since no fully adequate pragmatic theoretical account of the role of the emotions in the communicative processes is presently available, we can only glean insights from other fields of research which have a bearing on mitigation phenomena and start outlining some steps of what may be, if not a comprehensive theory, at least a consistent framework. To add another piece to the picture sketched so far, drawing again on empirical developmental psychology, the notion of ‘prototypical expectations’ developed in psychoanalytic theories of attachment it is also worth mentioning (for a review, cf. Ammaniti and Stern, 1996). Prototypical expectations are anticipatory strategies derived from ‘working models’ (cf. Bowlby, 1973) based on interactional experiences and instances of failed relational attunement. From the very first stages in the life of an individual, the main function of prototypical expectations is to avoid the “disorganization originating from a lack of interactive coordination” (Seganti, 1995: 66; my translation, C.C.). Seganti (1995) refers to Stern’s research on prototypical expectations in mother-child relationships. At a first phase, if the child feels that the adult’s expectations are too high, s/he will prefer to withdraw from the interaction. This phase of withdrawal is followed by a phase when complex representations of interactive expectations begin to be constructed. These expectations, which pave the way for negotiating processes, can be seen as: pairs of opposites, like ‘stop and go’. The central adaptive element of these kinds of basic expectations of the self (which, in the first development stage, is referred to as ‘emerging’ by Stern) seems to be precisely the setting up of two different modes for achieving congruence of inner states. One mode is based on commitment to the interaction, while the other mode realizes non-commitment… Sequences of instructions like ‘stop and go’ seem to be organized in a wide variety of complex representations, ranging from ‘stop for a little while and start again’ to ‘go on without stopping’, etc. These categories mark the experience of subsequent emotional and verbal relational developments. (Seganti, 1995: 67; my translation, C.C.)
These remarks make it possible to envisage, at least in principle, connections between interactional and pragmatic perspectives on conversational adaptation in an integrated framework. In particular, they are consistent with the idea that modulations of linguistic forms can index adjustments of emotive distances in both attenuating and reinforcing directions. Further, the acquisition of what has been called here ‘metapragmatic competence’ seems to be primarily associated with developmental processes by which the child learns to modulate
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distances. These complex processes by which the child learns to negotiate meanings and, in Stern’s terms, learns ‘to be with’ in a relationship, involve both cognition and emotion. Moreover, they lend themselves easily to being described in terms of regulatory messages aimed at the attunement of both emotional and cognitive interactional distances. Such adjustments surface interactionally in modulations of different kinds of mitigated and reinforced choices. What can be called the acquisition of modulation, which replaces binary interactional patterns, seems to play a remarkably important role in the development of adaptive, relational capacity. Metapragmatic competence requires (and reflects) knowledge of both the world and one's language and makes it possible for participants in interaction to assign meanings to given social actions. In addition, it reflects knowledge of the self and is connected to self-awareness (cf. Leary, 2003). The emotive capacity plays a key role in metapragmatic competence as the interface between social emotive dimensions of interaction on the one hand, and individual emotional dimensions on the other – in other words, in any given interactional context, it mediates between the participants’ outer and inner worlds. In this chapter I am trying to bring together the convergent insights of different fields of research in order to deepen our understanding of this interface and its linguistic repercussions. 4.1.2.
The other edge of the sword: mitigation as an anti-empathic strategy
As said earlier, mitigation can be given opposite interpretations and therefore has a paradoxical core. Ultimately, the paradoxical core of mitigation is but one instance of a general feature of human communication – whether we want to call it ‘analogic’ or something else – i.e. its pervasive ambivalence, which was well captured by classical rhetoric. This paradox may be explained in terms of Watzlawick et al.’s (1967) distinction between ‘analogic’ and ‘digital’ communication. As I have claimed elsewhere (cf. Caffi, 1990), the main benefit of mitigation, regardless of the many forms it may take, is the avoidance or attenuation of the speaker’s responsibility. This benefit is rooted in the ‘deniability’ of analogic communication. In the analogic mode, the speaker can, to a certain extent, retrace her/his steps and simultaneously ‘undo’ what s/he is doing. This benefit, however, is counterbalanced by a cost: the risk of a clash between the instrumental and identity functions of discourse (cf. Chapter 1). The risk involved in using (not merely ritual) mitigation devices can be described as affecting two main levels along a quantitative scale. On the first level, the hearer may perceive cognitive and emotive distance. On the second level, the hearer may interpret a somehow equivocal or self-contradictory utterance as as sign that the speaker has metaphorically ‘left the field’. ‘Leaving the field’ is precisely the expression used by Beavin Bavelas to refer to speakers who opt for ‘equivocation’, which will be dealt with in Section 4.6. below. The only way to ‘leave the field’ while in fact continuing to play (i.e., the only way to
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‘be there’ and ‘not be there’, or to ‘do’ and ‘undo’ at the same time) is precisely to produce ambiguous messages that can be assigned conflicting interpretations. At the first scalar level, an inference of non-immediacy may be elicited (cf. 4.5.), grounded on an inference of cognitive non-commitment. At the second level, what the hearer may infer is a form of ‘disqualification’ – which is a psychological category subsumed within the idea of incongruent behavior (cf. 4.7.). At either level, the hearer may infer a lack of naturalness and spontaneity on the part of the speaker. What is more, the speaker may infer that the speaker is using some kind of manipulative strategy to reach goals in a hidden agenda; and herein lies a problem: following Strawson (1964; cf. 2.2.2.), the speaker’s complex communicative intention may not actually involve the hearer making such an inference. On the contrary, in this case, the recognition on the part of the hearer of a complex (hidden) intention on the part of the speaker may even prevent the speech act from attaining its intended goal. If we adopt this kind of conceptualization, and accept the idea that not only the force, but also the intensity of an act must be acknowledged, we can see how mitigation could entail the risk of ‘doing’ and ‘undoing’ by the speaker in the same act. How this risk and the conflicting needs behind it can be neutralized in an actual communicative situation must be decided by the speaker against the background of what s/he assumes is appropriate, or the ‘right measure’, corresponding to the pršpon of classical rhetoric, in that particular exchange. Obviously, this varies across cultures, social groups, and communication codes, and within the latter, across specific activity types and speakers’ expectations about different types of linguistic events. Any natural language encodes very subtle stylistic nuances in linguistic structures that represent different realizations of the same illocutionary force. This is the case, for example, with different possible formulations of conventionally indirect requests, which may differ in nearly imperceptible ways. It is now widely accepted (after an initial ethnocentristic ‘universalistic’ stage of research) that such stylistic variations are culture-bound. Interethnic pragmatic research on politeness has proved that, for instance, what is regarded as polite for an American may be perceived as insincere by an Israeli (cf. Blum-Kulka, 1992). Moreover, if less obviously perhaps, so-called cultural ‘display rules’ also play a vital role in speakers’ decision about appropriate choices (cf. Ekman, 1973). 5 These are part and parcel of a given culture, are learned during the process of socialization, and interact with innate expressive plans. It is a well-recognized fact that emotion, in addition being spontaneously motivated by speakers’ subjective inner states, follows many subtle rules whose source is symbolic and whose function is to regulate the expression of the state the speaker intends to convey (cf. among others, Buck, 1984: 20). These rules change emotional expressions from spontaneous outbursts into intentional, goal-directed, 5
According to Ekman’s model, these rules can modify the emotive expression in four basic modes: a) intensification; b) de-intensification; c) neutralization (by showing indifference); d) and concealment (by dissimulation) of real emotion (cf. D’Urso and Trentin, 1992: 89-90).
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culturally shaped, emotive moves. The point that is crucial to my line of reasoning is that these rules define not only which emotions are appropriate to which situations, but also in what forms and intensities these emotions must be conveyed. For this reason, in an integrated approach to language and affect, we need to consider not only intentional, conventionalized signals, but also less conventionalized cues. In particular, we have to look for those cues that are relevant to answering the following question: How near/far can we go to/from our interlocutors? Clearly, we have to bear in mind that ambivalence operates very subtly whenever stylistic variation is feasible. Apart from cases of unequivocal modulations – for example, cases of few very strong signals or many weak signals, which together form a cluster clearly aimed at reaching a specific effect, e.g. irony – a single choice can be given conflicting interpretations. To put it in rhetorical terms, antiphrastic tension, which is usually thought of as ambiguity (in its negative connotation), is a constitutive and pervasive feature of real communication. From an integrated pragmatic perspective, such tension is not simply an accident caused by a ‘flaw’ in the semiotic system ‘natural language’. On the contrary, and far from being a shortcoming, it is actually an important resource of the analogic part of that system responsible for the multifunctionality of its expressions. As Beavin Bavelas et al. remark: Communication has been studied mostly as it “should” be. For example, it should be effective, clear, persuasive, efficient, and noise-free. If it is not, then it should be improved, edited, or ignored as error. (Beavin Bavelas et al., 1990: 19)
This analogic, inherently ambivalent part of the system is linked to emotional and emotive aspects of communication in ways that have still to be clarified. Aware as we may be of the lack of an even remotely satisfactory account of these links, we can still venture some general remarks. A pragmatic way of thinking about emotive aspects of communication consists in seeing these as being traceable back to stylistic (micro-)phenomena or cues that instantiate cognitive-emotive monitoring processes on the part of the speaker and serve as starting points for contextual inferences on the part of the hearer. The umbrella term ‘mitigation’ includes the whole set of stylistic phenomena that contribute to the downgrading of utterances. Their pragmatic functions can only be assessed against the background of the ongoing interaction. Bearing this idea in mind, the present work is an attempt to find answers to a number of questions about these phenomena, in particular: what is their role in the identity-building process and in its negotiation? Are these cues comparable to emotive indicators? And, if so, in what sense? The question to be asked now is: how do these cues work in real interactions? These are all very general questions that need to be split into smaller ones and considered from the point of view of the addressee. In other words, we need to reconsider the issue of the speaker's intentions and inner states and re-read it as the issue of the effects the recipient
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interpreting the utterance is authorized to infer from the cues provided in the message. In this vein, I will try to add further details to the general picture emerging from past studies of the emotive aspects of communication (cf., for instance, Caffi, 1992; Caffi and Janney, 1994b; Janney, 1996; Caffi, 2000; 2002).
4.2. ON THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF EMOTION IN LINGUISTIC THEORIES A comprehensive survey of conceptualizations of emotion in modern linguistics is beyond my present goals. Instead, in this section, I will restrict myself to one matter of theoretical interest, namely the levels of analysis at which issues of affect have been dealt with in linguistic theories. We may start by noting that Black’s (1948: 112) assertion about “the lack of a consistent and coherent theory of ‘emotive meaning’” is basically still true. 6 Despite the growing number of studies devoted to ‘language and affect’, philosophical and linguistic theories still lack a systematic account of ‘emotive communication’, to use Caffi and Janney’s (1994b) label. The dichotomy between emotive meaning and referential meaning is still a convenient reification in most philosophical and linguistic research and does not help understand the mechanisms operating on the fuzzy periphery – to quote Stankiewicz (1964: 267) – where emotive dimensions of linguistic choice can be collocated. In most cases, linguistic research has marginalized the emotive dimension, regarding the expression of affect is either residual or completely absent (cf. Daneš, 1989), or confining emotive communicative functions to specific devices (for instance, ‘emotive’ suffixes). This marginalization seems to contradict the thought of a number of twentieth century authors who assigned a vital role to affect in linguistic theories. I am thinking here in particular of Bally (1965 [1925]; 1965 [1932]; 1970 [1909]), Bühler (1934), and the Prague school, who considered the emotive function as one of the main functions of language. Suffice it to mention here the following passage in the third Thesis of the 1929 Travaux:
6
In his more critical than propositive paper, Black (1948) focuses on the issue of literary works and, more in general, on the meanings of aesthetic objects. Black expresses dissatisfaction and disagreement with the proposals made by Richards (the philosopher who edited, together with Ogden, The meaning of meaning, 1949) and the way he, as well as other authors, has dealt with the issue of emotive meaning. Richards views emotive meaning from a dichotomous perspective, making a clear-cut distinction between emotive uses of language and referential, scientific uses of language. According to Black, this approach is one of the “venerable problems of the relations between ‘Heart and Mind’, Religion and Science, Faith and Reason, or the other antitheses that obfuscate philosophical discourse” (Black, 1948: 111).
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Features important for the characterization of language are the intellectuality and the emotionality of language manifestations. Both these features either interpenetrate each other or one of them prevails over the other. (Prague Linguistic Circle, 1983 [1929]: 88; original emphasis)
If the model subject of linguistics traditionally has been emotionless, the model subject of psychology is traditionally speechless. In many psychological studies of affect, language is conceived as a static, lexicological notion without indexical or textual dimensions relevant to the emotional coloring of utterances or the interactive negotiation of interpersonal identities. The dominant psychological approach is essentialist in either an onomasiologic sense (e.g. ‘what is emotion x?’) or a semasiologic one (e.g. ‘what do we call fear?’), and varies depending on the relative importance assigned by scholars to cognitive appraisal. 7 Even approaches that can be considered closer to pragmatics, for instance Fiehler’s (1990), make a neat distinction between emotion expression (Emotionsausdruck) and emotion thematization (Emotionsthematisierung). In Fiehler’s approach, the former is seen as the signaling of emotions by nonverbal means, e.g. prosody and kinesics (ibid.: 100 ff.), while the latter is said to occur whenever emotive experience (Erleben) is communicated verbally and becomes the main topic of interaction (which is typical of a self-disclosure). In this type of approach, affect is hence either conveyed by para- or nonverbal means, or, if language is involved, relegated to the status of a discourse topic. From such a perspective, the pervasively emotive character of linguistic communication is lost and out of the picture. Unfortunately, a comprehensive study of the ways modern linguistics has dealt with affect is still to be conducted. In particular, the central role that foundational works in twentieth century linguistics, at least in principle, have assigned to affect, has not yet been fully recognized. Moreover, current linguistic approaches to affect still lack an adequate general theoretical background and a practical descriptive methodology. This does not mean, however, that the issue of how emotion is expressed in language has been completely ignored. Rather, it has been either marginalized or restricted to specific kinds of manifestations. At this stage, in order to enhance our metatheoretical awareness, it may be useful to ask which conceptual objects, at which level of description, have been labeled ‘emotive’ in modern reflection on language? The list that follows is just a first, sketchy answer:
7
x
Affect pertains to langage. One of the basic functions of language is the ‘emotive’ function. The most well-known proponents of this idea are, among others, Marty (1908), Bühler (1934), Jakobson (1960), and Halliday (1970).
x
Affect pertains to langue (not to parole). Indeed, langue is inherently ‘emotive’. This is the way Bally perceived langue, as opposed to the way Saussure perceived it.
For authors like Richard Lazarus, cognitive appraisal is a crucial feature of affect; for authors like Robert Zajonc, it is secondary.
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According to Bally (1970 [1909]), langue, as expression of life, is inherently linked to subjectivity and affect. x
Affect pertains to the speech act as a type. ‘Emotive’ is a condition of the speech act. It is the expression of an inner state, as in Austin’s (1962) Gamma felicity condition or Searle’s (1975) sincerity condition. 8
x
Affect pertains to the speech act as a token. A contextualized act of speech is emotive in the sense of being ‘emotively loaded’. During a given encounter, the emotive aspects of an act or sequence of acts of speech can overlap with, and be integrated into, their cognitive and illocutionary features. Among the possibilities listed here, this latter is probably closest to a ‘pragmatic’ way of thinking about affect. In fact, such a conceptualization does not exclude other levels of analysis, but retraces them to specific contexts where heterogeneous parameters interact.
In the next few sections I will present some theoretical suggestions that may be useful in reconsidering affect at the different levels of analysis just mentioned. Meanwhile, a few points should be emphasized. As to the first level of analysis, that of language, it is worthwhile mentioning what Fairclough (1992: 64-65) calls the ‘identity function’. This function is related to the ways social identities are built into, and changed through, discourse. In particular, Fairclough says that: When one emphasizes a construction, the identity function of language begins to assume great importance, because the ways in which societies categorize and build identities for their members is a fundamental aspect of how they work, how power relations are imposed and exercised, how societies are reproduced and changed... Focusing on expression, on the other hand, has completely marginalized the identity function into a minor aspect of the interpersonal function. (Fairclough, 1992: 65)
In other words, the attention paid to the self in speech is flattened down to the concept of ‘expressiveness’. This finds its typical representation in the notion of the expressive/emotive function of language used to explain why people often formulate their messages differently to show different feelings or attitudes towards these. This perspective, however, does not account for the role of speech in the ongoing construction of the self, an issue that will be dealt with in 8
Heringer (1972) criticizes Austin’s (1962) claim that violations of Gamma felicity conditions make the speech act infelicitous without invalidating it. Heringer maintains that non-compliance with Gamma conditions may cause the speech act to be denied, backing his thesis with examples of promises and threats where Gamma conditions are crucial to the fulfillment of the corresponding speech act. Differently from Austin, Heringer states that Gamma conditions can sometimes be violated without making the act unhappy. This is the case, for example, in diplomatic language where perlocutionary aspects prevail over illocutionary ones, making the fulfillment of sincerity conditions irrelevant.
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greater detail in the next few chapters. As to the level of langue, it was Bally who first pointed out the inherently subjective, affective character of a natural language. Bally’s (1970 [1909]) analysis of what he originally called ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ emotive means (i.e. lexical devices and syntactic devices respectively) is a landmark in linguistic thought. The mitigating devices mentioned in Chapter 2 and in Chapter 3, which will be further listed and discussed in Chapter 6 and in the Conclusions, could be seen as belonging to a hypothetical group of features of natural language that are used to express emotively relevant attitudes and distances. Bally’s point was that affect is not always directly conveyed by lexical devices; it can also be indirectly reflected in syntactic choices, as is the case with a modus expressing the speaker’s attitude towards a dictum (cf. 2.2.1.). Following Bally, it may be argued that the inventory of expressive/emotive resources of a single langue includes different kinds of abstract devices expressing modality. Still, it is impossible to set a limit on the inventory of emotive dimensions of speech because of the pervasiveness of this dimension and its close connections to co- and contextual factors. The pervasive nature of affect is recognized even by authors who confine the role of emotions within narrow limits, such as Stanckiewicz (1964: 242), for instance, who notes that “practically every word can be endowed with emotive connotations if it is placed in an appropriate social situation or verbal context”. In this respect, Hübler’s (1987) proposal is theoretically promising. Beginning with Bally’s (1965 [1925]) distinction between mode pur and mode vécu (cf. 2.2.1.), Hübler draws a distinction between conventional symbolic emotive meanings and indexical emotive meanings, the latter being “an invitation to the receiver for further interpretative processing” (ibid.: 370371). In this way, Hübler introduces the concept of strategic markedness in addition to the two categories of lexical-semantic markedness (e.g. lexemes with specific connotations) and formal morphological markedness (e.g. diminutives). As we will see in Section 4.4.2., the idea of strategic markedness is close to the notion of emotive contrast proposed by Caffi and Janney (1994b). Moving to the speech act level, I have already mentioned Hübler’s suggested (1987: 371) integration of Grice’s maxim of Quality (which corresponds to the sincerity condition in speech act theory; cf. 1.10.) into the speaker’s emotive identification with the utterance. This interesting idea should be further developed and refined, bearing in mind the need for corroborating conceptual introspective findings against an evidence base. One way to pursue this suggestion is to explore the ways similar ideas have been formulated in non-linguistic fields, particularly in the fields of experimental and clinical psychology, where correlations between linguistic choices and attitudes and emotive stances have long been productively investigated. In the next few sections, I will present some results of these investigations. A further point pertaining to the speech act level worth noting here is the special status of the sincerity condition in speech act theoretical approaches, in particular Austin (1962) and
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Searle (1975). The sincerity condition is the only condition whose fulfillment can be referred to by the speaker in a non-mitigated way. In fact, for the speaker, the only possible modulation of a reference to the sincerity condition is to express it more forcefully, emphatically, or assertively. Against this background, we may now raise the issue of the role of affect in an integrated pragmatic theory of mitigation. In connection with the broader issue of interactional meaning construction, I assume that mitigation can be seen as a result of both co-textual and contextual inferences within an open system of interacting parameters. The salience of the ‘emotive closeness’ parameter within the system depends on expectations triggered by the style adopted by the interlocutors in the opening moves of a given encounter. From a relational psychological point of view, interaction can thus be imagined as a sort of circuit with a current of emotive voltage (low to high) flowing through it between two poles (attachment vs. detachment), in which mitigation acts as the voltage regulator. The multidimensional analysis of a whole doctor-patient dialogue carried out in the next chapter will clarify how this happens in real interaction.
4.3. A FOLK PSYCHOLOGICAL CATEGORY: INVOLVEMENT In pragmatics, emotive dimensions of speech have often been subsumed under the folk psychological category of involvement (cf. Caffi, 1992; Caffi and Janney, 1994b). Elsewhere (Caffi, 1992), I have raised three main questions with respect to this notion: 1) how has involvement been defined?; 2) what is the opposite of involvement? and 3) which linguistic units have been associated with involvement? In the next few paragraphs, I summarize the results of my inquiry. As to the first question, the term ‘involvement’ has been used in extremely different ways. It has been defined with reference to: a)
speakers’ inner states, as a precondition for interaction (cf. Katriel and Dascal, 1989);
b)
speakers’ emotive identification with speech acts, as a sort of addition or complement to the sincerity condition (cf. Hübler, 1987);
c)
uses of linguistic techniques and strategies, as “conventionalized ways of establishing rapport” (Tannen, 1984: 30);
d)
general rhetorical effects, such as ‘vividness’ evoked by the strategic use of narratives, reported speech, imagery, etc. (cf. Tannen, 1989);
e)
speakers’ cognitive orientations to shared discourse topics (cf. Katriel and Dascal, 1989: 285); and
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f)
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meta-messages of rapport, shared feelings, or empathic emotive attitudes enhancing social cohesion (cf. Tannen, 1989: 13).
In this list, it is possible to envisage a shift from an individual psychological orientation to an interpersonal social orientation, via a rhetorical-stylistic orientation. As to the second question, a number of opposites to the notion of involvement can be identified in the literature. These include: a) detachment (cf. Chafe, 1983); b) integration (cf. Chafe, 1983). According to Chafe, oral discourse is marked by ‘involvement and fragmentation’, while written discourse is characterized by ‘detachment and integration’; c) considerateness (cf. Tannen, 1984); d) commitment (cf. Katriel and Dascal, 1989); and e) sincerity in the Gricean sense, as presupposed in any unmarked utterance act in Bally’s mode pur (cf. Hübler, 1987). Finally, as to the third question, among the linguistic units that have been associated with involvement in the literature are the following: a) b) c) d) e)
communication channel (oral vs. written) (cf. Chafe, 1983); conversation (cf. Tannen, 1984; Katriel and Dascal, 1989); narrative style (cf. Tannen, 1989); utterance (cf. Katriel and Dascal, 1989); speech act (cf. Hübler, 1987).
These provisional lists make it clear that current theoretical assumptions about involvement are at best heterogeneous and in some cases probably mutually incompatible. It is also clear that the concept of involvement needs further clarification. In Caffi (1992), I raise the question of how to restrict the notion of involvement, while at the same time including it in the theoretical apparatus of an integrated, all-embracing approach to emotive communication. As we will see in the next few sections, many different kinds of linguistic phenomena are relevant to emotive communication and no single notion can be expected to capture all of these. My idea is that, when communicating, we perceive something that goes beyond the dimension of modality but cannot be equated with the overall conversational style of the exchange. Modality, even in its non-logical, non-propositional definition as expression of the speaker’s attitudes (cf., for instance, Kiefer, 1987), pertains to the sentence level, whereas conversational style pertains to the discourse level. It is related to a whole system of congruently oriented choices within a larger, contextualized communicative project. From a metatheoretical viewpoint, both modality and conversational style are relevant categories for an integrated pragmatic description of emotive communication, but whereas the
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former is rooted in, and deeply influenced by, logic, the latter is closely connected to sociology. Involvement is a hybrid category between linguistics and psychology. It is employed to capture a wide range of phenomena related to emotive intensity, such as egoidentification and detachment (or ego-nearness and ego-distance) that leave their traces on discourse. Another step toward a better understanding of the entangled notion of involvement is Hübler’s (1987) proposal that it be considered a non-dichotomous category, i.e. a continuum along a scale of attitudes. From this perspective, both attachment and detachment can be seen as ways of expressing involvement. Following Hübler, the two ends of the continuum represent different solutions to the methodological question of how to externalize one’s involvement in terms of linguistic behaviour. The mode of attachment represents the mode of ‘living’ one’s involvement. The mode of detachment is a mode of suppressing it… the attempt not to appear involved is too obvious not to be communicatively relevant. (Hübler, 1987: 373)
These observations constitute an important break with the simplistic equation of involvement with emphasis (cf. Lausberg, 1967), allowing us to regard a detached communicative attitude, at least in theory, as potentially emotively relevant and opening the way toward analyses of various rhetorical ‘forms of subtraction’ and deminutio (e.g. reticence, ellipsis, preterition, understatement, silence, etc.) as ‘cold’ means of emotive expression. Nevertheless, conceptually useful as it may be, Hübler’s proposal is not backed by empirical work. Caffi and Janney (1994b) attempt to provide this intuition and related notions with an evidence base by drawing on different disciplines. The main results of this work are summarized in the next section.
4.4. AN APPROACH TO EMOTIVE COMMUNICATION (CAFFI AND JANNEY, 1994b) Caffi and Janney’s (1994b) “Toward a pragmatics of emotive communication” is an attempt to integrate linguistic and psychological approaches to emotive communication. Let me briefly recapitulate some findings of that paper which will be applied to the analysis of doctor-patient interaction later (cf. Chapter 5). 4.4.1. Emotive communication and emotional communication Caffi and Janney (1994b: 328) follow Marty (1908) in distinguishing between emotive and emotional communication. Marty (1908) originally claimed that it is important to distinguish
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between intentional and unintentional forms of affective expression in speech and writing. Whereas the intentional strategic signaling of affective information is characteristic of persuasive, coercive uses of language, the unintentional spontaneous leakage or bursting out of affect, he said, is characteristic of expressive, cathartic uses of language. In view of the clear functional differences between these two uses of language, he suggested that we call the former emotive communication and the latter emotional communication. This distinction was reflected in Bühler’s (1934) notions of the Appell and Ausdruck functions of language, which later were further subdivided and expanded in Jakobson’s model of language functions. 9 Such a distinction is fundamental, in that it highlights the strategic, intentional nature of emotive communication. This is linked to the distinction in social psychology between strategies of ‘self-presentation’ and ‘impression management’ (cf. Tedeschi, 1981) and ‘real’ inner affective states. Both authors who adopt a narrow perspective on the issue (cf. Stankiewicz, 1964) and authors who adopt broader views (cf. Arndt and Janney, 1991) agree that emotive communication is subject to conscious control and socio-cultural learning. This last point allows me to advance the notion of the emotive capacity, which is central to metapragmatic competence. Each speaker in a given linguistic community has certain basic, conventional, learned, affective-relational communicative skills that help her/him interact smoothly, negotiate potential interpersonal conflicts, and reach different ends in speech. The emotive capacity has been investigated from both general and social psychological viewpoints. As already said in 4.1.1., it is of importance in the present approach that recent research, especially in social psychology, indicates a need to integrate the emotive, interpersonal dimension into an emotional, intrapersonal dimension. Indeed, the emotive capacity is not only related to interpersonal communicative skills. It is also related to, and influenced by, emotional congruence and self-effectiveness, i.e. the ability to recognize one’s own emotional experience in a climate of inner consistency. The emotive capacity is linked to one’s identity in many ways, and includes self-awareness (cf., among others, Leary, 2003). How emotional experience is related to one’s self is a field of investigation covered by psychology; how emotional experience can become, at some extent, shared experience through language is a field of investigation open to pragmatics. 4.4.2. The notion of emotive contrast In order to account for the indexical and contextual nature of emotive communication, it is necessary here to evoke the well-known (if variously interpreted) linguistic notion of markedness. In particular, Hübler’s idea of strategic markedness is relevant to my purposes. Markedness is basically seen by Hübler as divergence from expectations. Thus envisioned, this 9
Marty neglected Darstellung, the representational function (cf. Graffi, 1991: 17).
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category overlaps partly with the traditional linguistic category of markedness and partly with the conversational category of preference. The type of markedness I have in mind is both syntagmatic (sequential) within a given co-text and paradigmatic with respect to a given communicative situation (cf. Caffi, 1992: 274 ff.). Further, it operates in conjunction with different sets of background expectations against which specific choices can be evaluated. Studies of interaction have shown that markedness works mainly by means of comparisons and contrasts. Unexpected behaviors are particularly significant in interaction, both cognitively and emotively, as they are often experienced by the participants as intentionally divergent activities requiring interpretation. We can therefore ask: against which assumptive or anticipatory frameworks can given communicative behaviors be judged? Can they also be evaluated in the light of unexpected degrees of intensity? As already mentioned in 1.5., Sapir’s (1927: 893) idea of nuclear patterns of behavior is reformulated in Caffi and Janney (1994b: 351) in terms of anticipatory schemata. This category is further divided into: a)
b)
c)
linguistic anticipatory schemata consisting of assumptions about ‘unmarked’ uses of language in given contexts, at different levels (from lexical choices to syntactic construction, from pronunciation to intonation); contextual anticipatory schemata consisting mainly of expectations about kinds of communicative behavior that different types of speakers are likely to produce in different discourse situations. These expectations involve both general assumptions about values, feelings, desires, motivations, interpersonal attitudes, and social affiliations in one’s culture (as well as assumptions about how these are typically communicated in different situations), and situational assumptions about how specific interlocutors are likely to act in the immediate situation. For instance, if we assume that new employees are not usually intimate with their bosses, a new employee who is very informal or personal is likely to attract attention. Similarly, if we assume that married couples do not talk like strangers, a married partner who is unexpectedly formal or exceedingly polite attracts attention, etc.; co-textual anticipatory schemata consisting mainly of expectations about types of communicative behavior that are likely to occur in particular stretches of discourse preceded by previously negotiated behaviors. For instance, in a context characterized by informal speech, unexpectedly formal speech seems out of place. Similarly, in a context of neutral non-evaluative language, a strongly evaluative lexical choice, like an axionym, generates a contrast, etc. 10
10 The idea of emotive contrast is similar to the idea of sudden expressive changes, which are valuable cues in psychotherapeutic interviews. These changes are dealt with by Fromm Reichman (1950).
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4.4.3. Types of emotive devices As already mentioned, Caffi and Janney (1994b) attempt to bridge the gap between psychological and pragmatic research on emotive communication. Working from a psycholinguistic perspective, Osgood et al. (1957) distinguish between the following three main emotive dimensions: evaluation, potency, and activity. Different categories of emotive devices found in the pragmatic literature can be grouped according to these three dimensions, as shown in table 4.1. Table 4.1 A comparison of psychological and linguistic emotive categories (Caffi and Janney, 1994b: 344) Psychological categories
Evaluation
Potency
Activity
Main contrasts
positive/ negative
powerful/ unpowerful
aroused/ unaroused
Linguistic
Evaluation
Proximity
Specificity
positive/ negative
near/far
clear/vague
Evidentiality
Volitionality
confident/ doubtful
assertive/ unassertive
Quantity
categories
Main contrasts
more/less intense
The following six classes of emotive devices have been identified: 1)
Evaluation devices [main distinction: positive/negative] This class includes all types of verbal choices that suggest an inferrable positive or negative evaluative stance on the part of the speaker with respect to a topic (or part of it), a partner, or partners in discourse. Such choices can be interpreted as indices of pleasure/displeasure, agreement/disagreement, like/dislike. They include choices of terms of emotion, diminutives (cf. Dressler and Merlini Barbaresi, 1994; Volek, 1987),
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emotional lexicon (cf. Lutz, 1982; Jefferson, 1984), evaluative adjectives, predicative adjectives, adverbs of manner, anaphoric references (or encapsulators) with evaluative terms (cf. Conte, 1996). 2)
i.
ii. iii. iv.
Proximity devices [main distinction: near/far] This class includes all verbal choices affecting the ‘distance’ between the speaker and the content of her/his utterance, and the speaker and her/his interlocutor. These devices can be further subdivided into: spatial proximity markers, which regulate metaphorical distances between inner and outer events, i.e. with respect to either external, objective space or internal space as experienced by the speaker. A typical example of such markers is the empathic use of demonstratives (cf. Conte, 1999); temporal proximity markers, which regulate metaphorical distances between ‘present’ and ‘non-present’ events, with respect to real and inner time; social proximity markers, which regulate metaphorical social or interpersonal distances (for instance, vocatives and address terms); selective order proximity markers, which regulate distances between concepts in discourse. These are often referred to in the pragmatic literature in connection with such phenomena as ‘topicalization’, ‘left/right dislocation’, ‘foregrounding’, ‘thematic progression’, etc., and include the position of a given referent within the utterance.
3)
Specificity devices [main distinction: clear/vague] This category includes all linguistic devices used to vary the precision, accuracy, or pointedness of reference to topics, parts of topics, the speaker’s self, or partners in discourse. Specificity can be regarded here as the extent to which a conceptualized object of communication is referred to either directly ‘by name’ or only implicitly hinted at. Specificity phenomena include particular versus generic referents (e.g. definite vs. indefinite articles), entire referents versus parts of referents (e.g. “the dinner was great” vs. “the salad was great”), specific interlocutors versus generalized interlocutors (e.g. “can you help me?” vs. “can anyone help me?”), and so forth.
4)
Evidentiality devices [main distinction: confident/doubtful] This category includes all linguistic devices that regulate the truth value, reliability, correctness, or validity of what is expressed. Evidentiality is typically realized by modal verbs and modal or parenthetical adverbs, but it also includes hedges (cf. Lakoff, 1972), commitment to the proposition (cf. Lyons, 1977), Chafe’s (1986) evidentiality, and Tannen’s (1989) identification with the topic.
5)
Volitionality devices [main distinction: self-assertive/unassertive] This class includes all linguistic choices and discourse strategies used by speakers to vary
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levels of self-assertiveness vis-à-vis partners, and all choices used to cast selves or partners in active versus passive discourse roles. Self-assertiveness is indexed in discourse by choices of self vs. other pronoun agents (e.g. “I want to leave” vs. “do you want to leave?”), active vs. passive voice (e.g. “I decided” vs. “it was decided”), verb mood (e.g. “I want the book” vs. “can I have the book?” or “give me the book”), etc. 6)
Quantity devices [main distinction: more/less intense] This category includes all intensifying and de-intensifying choices of quantity, which in turn include various phenomena (cf. Stankiewicz, 1964), like drawls (e.g. “it’s huge”, “it’s hu:ge”, “it’s hu::ge”), prosodic emphasis (cf. Mathesius, 1939), repetitions, intensifier subjuncts (e.g. “I’m fairly/very/absolutely happy with my work”; cf. Quirk et al., 1985: 445 ff.; 589 ff.), and intensifying adjectives (e.g. “it was a real/complete/total catastrophe”; cf. Quirk et al., 1985: 429 ff.).
4.4.4. Emotive closeness and distance: empathic deixis The above-mentioned categories can be further analyzed with the aim of identifying possible relations between them, particularly hierarchical relations. An analysis of this kind reveals that a hierarchical order does indeed exist and that proximity devices rank first among the others, which suggests that the near/far dimension of emotive communication controls all other dimensions. This seems to confirm Frijda’s (1982: 112) observation that in interaction, we tend to perceive others as “opening up” or “closing down”. Establishing a comfortable operating distance is the first emotive activity, both logically and chronologically, in interaction. Before evaluating something, committing ourselves to it, being more or less assertive with respect to it, emphasizing it, or playing it down, we have to take a stance and establish a metaphorical distance with respect to it. In addition, proximity devices enable us to shift Bühler’s deictic origin of utterances. As explained in 1.3.2. and in Caffi and Janney (1994b: 364-365), it is possible to consider Bühler’s (1934) ‘phantasmatic’ deixis within an emotive framework. In Bühler’s Deixis am Phantasma, the speaker tacitly guides the hearer’s imagination (Phantasiesteuerung) to an imaginary space through an act of conceptual transposition (Versetzung) (cf. Conte, 1999). I believe that phantasmatic deixis can also be used for realizing perspective shifts into or away from the speaker’s inner world, i.e. into or out of the self and its inner affective states (feelings, fantasies, attitudes, desires) and other potential subjective psychological objects of communication. An example of this shift is the empathic use of demonstratives. For instance, if a speaker uses an utterance like “those people who say X” to refer to people in the same room, there is a potential discrepancy between the outer and the inner deictic fields (that can be thought of in
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terms of Bühler’s ‘fields of indication’ Zeigfelder). In other words, what is near in the outer, physical world (the people who are in the same physical space as the speaker) seems to be far away from the inner, emotive world (“those people” is a choice of non-proximity). In order to interpret such an utterance correctly, the hearer must infer that: 1) 2) 3)
a metaphorical shift from the speaker’s and the hearer’s shared ‘outer world’ to the speaker’s private ‘inner world’ has occurred; the zero point of deictic co-ordinates, the origin of the speaker’s act of reference, is now in the speaker’s inner world; and some type of complementary symmetrical shift on the hearer’s part is necessary if s/he wishes to attune with the speaker and understand her/his utterance correctly.
Similar inferences are at work in Rogers’ psychotherapy, where he assigns great importance to the therapist’s ability to achieve this transposition, or Versetzung in Bühler’s terms, into the client’s personal inner world (cf. Caffi, 2001). To sum up, the inner world is not just a kaleidoscope of subjective states that one can refer to in self-disclosures, or a ‘pool’ of topics one can use as thematic resources. Rather, it can have a more abstract linguistic role, functioning as the deictic frame used by the speaker to make her/his acts of reference. It can hence be argued that proximity devices are fundamental means of emotive communication. They allow speakers to shift the deictic origins of utterances from points in the shared outer world to points in their own personal inner worlds and make it possible to express subtle variations of distance with respect to their topics and partners in discourse. The important point here is that the linguistic devices used for outer and inner deixis are the same (Conte, 1999), regardless of whether they be personal, spatio- or temporal-deictic. 11 This fact suggests that there is a certain degree of isomorphism between the outer Zeigfeld and the inner Zeigfeld. In other words, as pointed out in 1.3.2., it suggests that we can hypothesize a sort of parallelism in the structuring of the intersubjectively shared external worlds of social processes on the one hand and the internal worlds of individual emotional processes on the other. While the sharing of the outer world is taken for granted in the prototypical uses of deixis, in the empathic deixis the sharing of the inner world has to be constructed through complex inferential and attunement activities. In order to further explain the importance of emotive distances, ‘opening up’ and ‘closing down’ processes, and ‘being there’ or ‘not being there’ in communication, I will introduce the category of immediacy.
11
‘Inner’ deixis is referred to variously in the literature as ‘empathetic deixis’ (cf. Lyons, 1977: 677), ‘emotional deixis’ (R. Lakoff, 1974), or ‘impure deixis’ (Lyons, 1981: 232).
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4.5. IMMEDIACY (WIENER AND MEHRABIAN, 1968) Studies conducted in the 1960s by the American social psychologists Morton Wiener and Albert Mehrabian are particularly relevant to the view of mitigation adopted in this volume. Following Wiener and Mehrabian (1968), I begin by assuming that there is a correlation between linguistic choices and affective states. Wiener and Mehrabian provide a starting point for formulating hypotheses about the functions of mitigation in the attunement of emotive distances, and about correlations between patterns of mitigation and negative affect. In experiments conducted with small groups of untrained raters, Wiener and Mehrabian observed variations in linguistic choices that they associated with different degrees of separation between speakers, different attenuations of assertiveness, changes in intensity, and different types of negative affect. They called the conceptual category chosen to account for these variations immediacy. The changes observed during interaction were not interpreted as simple stylistic or sociolinguistic responses to contextual factors. Rather, they were regarded as cues (ibid.: 30) of the test subjects’ subjective inner states that could be used to make inferences about: i. ii. iii.
speakers’ specific experiences of events; speakers’ relations to their partners during interaction; and speakers’ relations to their own utterances.
Wiener and Mehrabian’s theoretical framework is based on the key concept of the ‘boundary condition’, which is similar to the notion of the specific communicative context affecting a speaker’s choices. The informativeness of so-called ‘immediacy markers’, like that of semiotic markers (cf. 1.6.), depends on the options available. Hence, the analysis of immediacy markers makes sense only if alternative choices are possible in the situation as well – that is, only if the choice of a given linguistic device on the part of a speaker can be regarded contrastively as a variant of the other possible choices that the speaker could make in the context under examination (cf. Wiener and Mehrabian, 1968: 5). It is therefore necessary to distinguish between choices motivated by cultural, social, and linguistic-grammatical factors, and choices motivated by psychological factors, personal experiences, inner stances, and so forth. Following Wiener and Mehrabian, the only choices relevant to immediacy are choices motivated by inner stances. The idea of boundary conditions is useful in drawing such a distinction, as it indicates “a rubric which limits, constrains and specifies to some extent the particular forms and interpretations of communication” (ibid.: 17). Only incongruous or inconsistent variations can be a starting point for making inferences about speakers’ emotive stances. The possible incongruity depends on the norms specified in the different boundary conditions. In other words, when a speaker’s choice cannot be said to comply with the norms, one can presume that the choice is motivated or influenced by a psychological state. This idea
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is closely connected to the phonological idea of markedness on the one hand, and to the conversational idea of preference on the other. It can also be related to the idea of emotive contrasts: i.e., to contrasts rooted in sets of complex expectations and conjectures used by speakers during interaction to make and recognize emotively marked choices (cf. 4.2.). The convergence between Wiener and Mehrabian’s perspective and a stylistic one is quite clear. Wiener and Mehrabian introduce the following seven categories of non-immediacy indicators: Spatio-temporal indicators This category includes the demonstratives this and that, which express spatial proximity, and the use of verb tenses, which can be employed to signal the temporal distances from the utterance. This category is similar to that of ‘proximity devices’ as identified by Caffi and Janney (1994b). 1)
Denotative specificity indicators This category is based on the degree of precision with which the speaker identifies the referent of the utterance. The lack of a direct, unambiguous reference to a given object indicates a lack of denotative specificity (Wiener and Mehrabian, 1968: 38). For instance, the parents of a young man may refer to his fiancée as “our future daughter-in-law”, “our son’s girlfriend”, “his fiancée”, “Jane”, “she”, “that girl”, etc. Depending on the communicative context (or ‘boundary condition’, in Wiener and Mehrabian’s terms) and the expectations it triggers, these choices can be located on scales of decreasing denotative specificity corresponding to decreasing levels of immediacy, i.e., the less specific, the less immediate (ibid.: 36). Another example of specificity devices is the use of negatives (e.g. “I don’t mind going” vs. “I’m glad I’m going”). On the whole, the category of denotative specificity indicators can be said to be similar to Caffi and Janney’s (1994b) class of ‘specificity devices’. 2)
Selective emphasis indicators This category can be exemplified by the order in which different objects are introduced in discourse. According to Wiener and Mehrabian, the order selected by the speaker is greatly influenced by emotive distances. They claim that objects that have been experienced and evaluated positively, and to which greater importance or emotive relevance is attached, are likely to appear first in conversation (ibid.: 33). The selective emphasis category can be compared with Caffi and Janney’s (1994b) ‘proximity’ category. 3)
Agent-action-object indicators There are different ways to express relations between the agent performing an action and the action itself, and between agents or actions and their objects. For instance, in describing two people talking, we can say “they are talking”, “he is talking to her”, etc. Similarly, the 4)
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ratification of a new contract by steel workers can be described by headlines like “Agreement found on new labour contract”, or “Government reaches agreement with Unions (on new labour contract)”, or “Unions reach agreement with Government (on new labour contract)”. Moreover, we can choose the passive voice to shift the emphasis from the agent to the object, as in “she is being talked to by him”, or we can use impersonal sentences to attribute responsibility for the action to an external agent or factor. Similarly, utterances like “it is time to go”, as opposed to “I want/would like to go” or to “I’m going”, can be seen as expressions of non-immediacy, since in impersonal constructions responsibility for, or participation in, the action by the agent is reduced. Agent-action-object devices are similar to Caffi and Janney’s (1994b) ‘volitionality devices’. 5) Modification indicators These are in turn divided into: a) qualification devices, e.g. “I think”, “I believe”, and other verbs expressing a given evidential stance with respect to propositional content; and b) objectification devices, e.g. “it is simply true that”, “it is obvious that”, “everybody says that”, etc. Wiener and Mehrabian (1968: 44) assign a low degree of immediacy to messages raising what they call “the issue of consensus”. This view is grounded on the assumption that, in immediate communication, the consensus between interlocutors is taken for granted. If a speaker raises this issue, the authors argue, it means that s/he feels that it may be lacking. In objectified communication the speaker introduces the issue of consensus by making reference to her/his own experience. As the authors point out, in qualified communication, the speaker implies uncertainty about his communication. In the instance of qualification, there is a separation of, or a discreteness introduced between, the speaker and others including the addressee. In the instances of objectification, there is a separation of the speaker from the objects of his communication. (ibid.: 44-45)
This is because in objectification the speakers feels the need to state that the “reported experience of the event is consensual” (ibid.: 44), instead of simply taking it for granted. The qualification category is similar to Caffi and Janney’s (1994b) ‘evidentiality’ category. Objective orientation indicators vs. egocentric orientation indicators Let us consider the following pairs: “I haven’t found a place” vs. “it was too crowded” and “I lost a friend” vs. “a friend of mine passed away”. Wiener and Mehrabian (1968: 45-46) consider the first utterance in each pair above as ‘egocentric’, and the second as ‘objective’. An objective orientation, they say, indicates a lower degree of involvement on the part of the speaker, and can be interpreted as an attempt to avoid expressing commitment to the content of communication. For this reason, objectifying options are regarded in their theory as less immediate than egocentric options. 6)
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Automatic phrasing indicators These include discourse markers like “you know”, “I mean”, etc. Wiener and Mehrabian (ibid.: 47) call these ‘non-immediacy cues’. In fact, the prerequisite for communication characterized by immediacy is a cooperative attitude that does not need to be continually confirmed or tested. Due to their confirmational character, markers like those above thus tend to be interpreted as indicators of separateness from the partner in communication. Other examples include false starts, pauses, and hesitation phenomena. The great interest of Wiener and Mehrabian’s work for linguists is due to the fact that it casts light on aspects of communicative competence that traditionally have been neglected. Their experimental data show that untrained subjects can easily infer speakers’ emotions on the basis of linguistic choices. Ultimately, Wiener and Mehrabian were the first psychologists to point out recurring patterns of affective interpretation related to specific types of linguistic structures. Their early research on systematic connections between linguistic forms and inferences of relational non-immediacy was subsequently further developed by others. Kuiken (1981), for instance, reports on four experiments in which the concept of immediacy was used to account for instances of mismatch between personal judgments and expressed judgments. An interesting result of Kuiken’s study is that communication involving negative affect appears to be grammatically more complex than communication involving positive affect. In a similar vein, Collier et al. (1982) show that a non-immediate linguistic style often occurs in connection with mismatches between expressed affect and experienced affect. Such mismatches are characterized, for example, by the use of negatives (e.g. the preference for litotes instead of direct statements in utterances like “I’m not nervous” as opposed to “I’m calm”) and, more generally, by a reluctance to use straightforward, unqualified statements. 12 The relevance of these studies for the present approach is that they take both the psychological affective dimension and the linguistic dimension into account. The investigation of these two dimensions surely benefits from approaching them from a systematic, mutually integrated 7)
12
During a seminar, which was part of a course of applied and general linguistics, a group of students and I conducted a study on how the immediacy model could be applied to Italian. Moving from a complex work of translation and adaptation of the linguistic cues identified by Wiener and Mehrabian for the English language, we made a first preliminary survey to test the hypotheses presented by the two psychologists and to collect information for spoken Italian language. A questionnaire was administered to 108 students at the University of Genoa, of whom 71 were females and 37 were males, with an average age of 24. The questionnaire presented some situations pertaining to an imaginary scene. The students were asked to list construed utterances on a scale of decreasing immediacy. The results of the experiment, although provisional, have shown a clear preference for some solutions. Indeed, the interviewees were able to judge consistently different degrees of involvement and immediacy, thus confirming the ability of untrained raters to recognize immediacy-related phenomena, and substantiating the hypothesis of an implicit procedural competence with respect to emotive aspects of communication.
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point of view. The point of this discussion is that experimental and social psychology may benefit from taking a closer look at linguistic facts that are too often dismissed as lexical minutiae. In pragmatics, studies of affective cues and of different levels of grammatical encoding of emotive competence in different languages may eventually provide a deeper (and more interethnically-grounded) understanding of the affective workings of language. On the whole, this is a research area that linguists can no longer afford to dismiss.
4.6. EQUIVOCATION (BEAVIN BAVELAS, 1985; BEAVIN BAVELAS ET AL., 1990) In an article that appeared in La nouvelle communication, Paul Watzlawick classifies processes of pathological meta-communication into three groups with different communicative structures: tangentialization and disqualification, mystification, and paradox (Bateson et al., 1981: 243 ff.). Watzlawick (1981) describes the case of tangential response by quoting an example from Ruesch (1957). Moreover, he refers to the work by a group of researchers from Buenos Aires on a particular kind of deviant response called ‘transactional disqualification’. The work cited by Watzlawick is that by Sluzki et al. referred to in Section 4.8. The insightful categories dealt with in this and in the next few sections are all rooted in what can be broadly labeled Palo Alto’s model of communication, in particular in the key-concept of double-bind. 13 Working in the tradition of Watzlawick, Bateson, and Ruesch, the psychologist (and coauthor of Pragmatics of human communication) Janet Beavin Bavelas (1985; cf. also Beavin Bavelas et al., 1990), co-founder with Bateson, Jackson, and Weakland of the double-bind theory, focuses on the notion of equivocation in connection with double-binds in everyday communication. The term ‘equivocation’, she explains, is traditionally defined in studies of political language as communication “having two or more significations equally appropriate, capable of double interpretations: ambiguous (…) of uncertain nature, undecided” (cf. The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 1993: 628). In other words, “equivocation is nonstraightforward communication” (Beavin Bavelas et al., 1990: 28). Equivocation can be also defined as incongruence and strategic ambiguity. Beavin Bavelas’ proposed model of equivocation is essentially based on Haley’s disqualification theory, which will be discussed in the next section. According to this model, every message has the following four dimensions: speaker, addressee, content, and context. Beavin Bavelas’ and her colleagues’ work is directed toward discovering ways of measuring degrees of equivocation on these four above-mentioned dimensions. The authors’ major goal is to propose methodological tools for quantifying the judgments in terms of equivocation that 13
In Bateson et al.’s (1956) definition, the double-bind pattern can paradigmatically be of two forms, and precisely: “a) ‘Do not do so and so, or I will punish you’, or b) ‘If you do not so and so, I will punish you’” (Bateson et al., 1956: 253).
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trained raters assign to a message. The authors “transform these judgments into numbers that range from -2 to +2, representing low to high equivocation” (ibid.: 29). Among the reasons of the relevance of this work in the present connection is that Beavin Bavelas et al. (1990: 22-28) explicitly mention the links between their psychological notion of equivocation and the pragmatic notion of indirect speech acts. Citing Austin, Searle, Grice, Brown and Levinson, and other students of speech act theory, they claim that indirect speech acts can be seen as examples of equivocation. They then criticize speech act theorists (or “rule theorists”, as they call them) for focusing on constructed data rather than on real messages and for not being interested in messages as such or in the specific situations in which messages are produced. The only objective of this type of research, they claim, is to propose models of communication based on hypotheses about inferences, plans, intentions, strategies, and other mental processes: Hence, in this view, the ‘real’ nature of communication is hidden from us; the actual messages are only the surface manifestations of mental processes that we will never see. We propose, in contrast, that the data of communication can be the messages themselves and that the explanation of a message can be sought in the immediate, observable interpersonal situation in which it occurs. We need not use communicative behavior solely as a means of studying the mind; nor should it be treated as a superficial manifestation of more interesting mental processes. We can study it as a systematic and fascinating behavior in its own right. (Beavin Bavelas et al., 1990: 27-28)
As said, Beavin Bavelas et al.’s equivocation model is based on Haley’s (1959) disqualification theory, which I will now briefly discuss.
4.7. DISQUALIFICATION 4.7.1. Haley (1959) Jay Haley, a colleague of Gregory Bateson’s at the Veterans’ Administration Hospital in Palo Alto and a founder of systemic family therapy, analyzed dialogues by schizophrenic patients using the double-bind communication model he developed together with Bateson. According to the most general formulation of this model (Bateson et al., 1956), every instance of communication has a content aspect and a report aspect, whereby the latter qualifies the former and can be therefore seen as form of metacommunication. Relevant to my argument here is that stylistic choices 14 are seen in the model as forms of ‘report’ that qualify the 14
The Palo Alto school first confined these to non-verbal metacommunication; only later did they extend their approach to include verbal behavior.
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relationship between partners and function as meta-communicative cues. Style is linked to the relational qualification of messages. According to Haley, one cannot not qualify a message... subtle qualifications are always present…it is difficult for a person to avoid defining, or taking control of, his relationship with another...Whenever a person tries to avoid controlling the definition of a relationship, at a different level he is defining the relationship as one in which he is not in control... However, there is one way in which a person can avoid indicating what is to take place in a relationship, and thereby avoid defining it. He can negate what he says. Even though he will be defining the relationship by whatever he communicates, he can invalidate this definition by using qualifications that deny his communications. (Haley, 1959: 323-325)
In Haley’s approach, invalidation does not have to be interpreted as logical invalidation. Rather, it is a form of qualification that is inconsistent with the message it qualifies. When speakers qualify messages in ways that suggest they are not responsible for their own behavior, they can avoid defining their relationships with their interlocutors (ibid.: 325). This insight makes Haley’s model highly relevant to the investigation of links between disqualification and mitigation. Haley begins with the following assumption: every form of communication must include, either explicitly or implicitly, four formal components, i.e.: 1) 2) 3) 4)
“I”, “am saying something”, “to you”, “in this situation”.
In other words, every message involves a speaker, some type of content, an addressee, and a context. According to Haley, each of these four components can be negated. ‘Disqualified’ messages are messages in which at least one of the above-mentioned components is concealed or made unclear. The (in)directness of a message can be measured by answering the following questions about the four components of communication: 1. To what extent does the message reflect the speaker’s (or writer’s) personal opinion? (speaker dimension). 2. To what extent is the message clear? (what literally has been said?) (content dimension). 3. To what extent is the message addressed to the other person? (addressee dimension). 4. To what extent does the message reflect the context in which it is produced? (context dimension). Haley exemplifies the denial of the four components as follows. To deny the “I” component
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(“I am communicating”), speakers can indicate that they are speaking on behalf of others (e.g. an authority) or that they are affected by uncontrollable external factors (e.g. insanity, drugs, etc.). In this way, they become mere instruments transmitting their messages. To negate the “am saying something” content component, speakers can resort to contradiction and ambiguity. In particular, they can indicate that they are not actually using language to communicate but merely speaking nonsense or listing “letters of words” (ibid.: 326). To negate the “to you” addressee component, speakers may simply indicate that they are talking to someone else. Rather than speaking directly to their interlocutors, for instance, they may show that they are talking “to the person’s status position” (ibid.), professional role, etc. Finally, to negate the “in this situation” contextual component of communication, speakers may indicate that their utterances refer to some other time or place than the specific time and place in which their utterances are actually being produced. This last point distinguishes Haley’s model from Beavin Bavelas’ (1985) and Beavin Bavelas et al.’s (1990) application of the model itself. Beavin Bavelas and her colleagues reinterpret Haley's component “in this situation” as “in this sequence, in this context”. This makes it possible for them to evaluate the (ir)relevance of messages in discourse sequences and assess their (in)adequacy or (in)appropriateness as responses to previous turns in the sequence, and marks a significant shift from Haley’s broad notion of the external situational context to a more sharply focused notion of the sequential co-text of interaction. This perspective shift is a methodological consequence which follows from the different types of data on which the analyses of Haley and Beavin Bavelas are based (cf. Caffi, 1999a: 903), the former centering on dialogues with patients affected by schizophrenia, while the latter focusing on everyday interaction. 4.7.2. Mitigation and disqualification This cursory glance at disqualification theories shows the central role of minimizing responsibility in interpersonal interaction. In Haley’s model, deresponsibilization coincides with a type of avoidance in which the speaker avoids defining her/his relationship with the interlocutor(s). This type of avoidance is tragically typical of inconsistent schizophrenic communication, which, as Haley’s and others’ work shows, systematically over-employs deresponsibilization mechanisms also found in ‘normal’ everyday interaction. Why are we following, if only cursorily, this apparently distant path of research? The reason is that, as already explained, avoiding or minimizing responsibility crucially pertains to mitigation. Moreover, inferences and effects linked to mitigated utterances are not automatic. In fact, in communication, both relational and instrumental aspects of identity-building (see the distinction made in 1.7.) are subject to pervasively ambivalent process of negotiation between
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the partners. However, it is possible to trace some ways in which this ambivalence is produced, and to suggest some steps by which mitigation contributes to defining – or not defining – interpersonal relationships and co-identities in communication. Prototypical cases of mitigation such as hedges, bushes and shields are similar to Haley’s different types of disqualification (cf. Caffi, 1999a). Deictic shields, in particular, which shift the deictic origin of the utterance, correspond to the denial of the components “I”, “to you”, and “in this situation” in Haley’s model. The underlying mechanisms of both processes, despite their differences, have interactional advantages and disadvantages. The main advantage is that they enable speakers to avoid assuming direct responsibility for their utterances; the main disadvantage, according to Haley, is that, by using them, the speaker avoids defining the relationship, making this definition uncertain: thereby the speaker’s communication is to some extent invalidated. In a word, s/he is doing and undoing at the same time, being there, in the actual communication, and leaving the field. This is also precisely the relational dilemma of shields, which, on the one hand, allow the speaker to mask under someone else’s voice, while increasing emotive distance and hindering empathy on the other. Further research is needed, however, to explain the connection between shields and emotive distance in interaction and draw meaningful generalizations about it. At any rate, it is possible here to put forward the following hypothesis: given a specific context and a particular boundary condition, the distancing effect of a shield depends on the margin of uncertainty that the shield itself creates in the relationship. As interlocutors faced with shields, we may wonder who is talking to whom. Whose plan underlies the utterance? Who is the speaker speaking for? And why does s/he feel compelled to conceal her/himself behind someone else? Hedges, on the one hand, exemplify disqualifications of Haley’s “I” component of communication, which is related to the speaker as the utterer and endorser of a given illocution. Bushes, on the other hand, seem mainly to affect the “am saying something” component. Uncertainty about the relationship, however, is not a crucial point in either of these two types of mitigation, as there is no the dislocation to another ‘I-here-now’ that is typical of shields, but only a reduction of the speaker’s endorsement of the utterance’s illocutionary force or a weakening of the speaker’s commitment to the truth of the proposition (cf. Hübler, 1983). It can be claimed that the strongest disqualifying potential in mitigation mechanisms is hence not attached to hedges or bushes, but to shields. Further research of great relevance in this connection is the psychiatric study on dialogic mechanisms that can be seen as related to co-textual relevance and that are covered under the label of transactional disqualification. It is the study of Carlos Sluzki and his colleagues in Argentina, which will be dealt with in the next section.
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4.8. TRANSACTIONAL DISQUALIFICATION (SLUZKI ET AL., 1967) In 1967, a group of psychiatrists mainly from Buenos Aires – namely Carlos Sluzki, Janet Beavin, Alejandro Tarnopolsky, and Eliseo Veron – developed the notion of transactional disqualification as a sub-type of the general double-bind model. Sluzki et al. (1967: 494) describe this as a new type of disqualification not accounted for by Haley’s notions of ‘selfdisqualification’ and disqualification of the addressee (ibid.: 496). Sluzki et al.’s use of the adjective ‘transactional’ underscores the salience of the sequential perspective behind their approach to disqualification. 15 To illustrate the explicative power of the concept of transactional disqualification, the authors discuss a number of real examples taken from interviews with families of schizophrenic patients. The examples all share one common sequential feature: a paradoxical injunction (often tripartite), followed by a reply from the addressee, who is the ‘victim’ of the injunction. Incidentally, Sluzki et al. claim that the designation ‘victim’ for the addressee of such a message, however, is not entirely appropriate, insofar as addressees in interaction normally can neutralize such double-bind patterns. Instead, they use the less negatively connotated expression “recipient of the bind” (ibid.) for the addressee of the paradoxical injunction. In Sluzki et al.’s approach, the addressee’s reply and the message that triggers it are equally important. There is thus a clear conceptual affinity between the point of view adopted by Sluzki et al. and the pragmatic, conversational point of view underlying the present book. All the more so, as the authors emphasize that their theoretical focus is not simply on the interactional exchange in general, but, more specifically, on interactional strategies and their sequential, co-textual functions. This leads them to concentrate on analyzing instances of conversational interaction that meet the requirements of what we could call ‘adjacency’ structures. A feature that transactionally disqualified messages share with equivocal and disqualified messages is that they, too, can be given double interpretations depending on whether they are interpreted in isolation or in their immediate sequential context. Transactional disqualification is hence by nature paradoxical. Because of this, the recipient is usually confused or uncertain about which of two (or more) possible meanings should be assigned to the message.
15
Although it is certainly true that discourse sequences are important in the production of virtually all paradoxical messages (double-binds arise only when incongruent messages are not metacommunicatively repaired, after they have been produced), work up to this time had not taken the implications of sequentiality in disqualification fully into account. Incidentally, the theoretical and historical relationships between sequentiality and the notion(s) of coherence, cohesion, and the like advanced in the 70’s in discourse analysis (especially in the Textlinguistik developed in Germany) are still in need of a systematic pragmatic investigation.
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4.8.1. Types of transactional disqualification As said, Sluzki et al. (1967) analyze recordings of interviews with families of patients whose diagnosis was schizophrenia. In their analysis, the authors distinguish between the following kinds of transactional disqualification: 1) Evasion – change of subject. The authors give the following as an example of this category: a Son:
b Mother:
Well, then, I’ll have to repeat again what I said. You, shall we say, started [in this interview] – of that I am sure – started to attack her first, that is, with nothing clarified, very hurried. I love both of you, and I always try to make things at home work out better, but I can’t manage it ” (Sluzki et al., 1967: 497)
This is the case when speaker A produces a statement a, in which the topic mentioned is not clearly concluded. At this point speaker B produces an utterance b, which refers to another topic, but does not signal the topic shift. In this case, it is said that message b disqualifies message a. According to Sluzki et al., the disqualifying effect is caused not by the meaning of b in itself, but by the lack of connection between b and a (i.e., the preceding message). In conversational terms, there is a lack of conditional relevance between the two messages. From a Gricean perspective, it can be claimed that in these kinds of sequences, the Relevance maxim has been violated, but this does not necessarily mean that speaker B breaks the Cooperative principle. Indeed, non-compliance with the Cooperative principle would require more direct and reiterated moves. 2) Sleight-of-hand. This kind of disqualification is more openly paradoxical than evasion. In this case, the speaker B uttering b not only fails to reply relevantly to speaker A’s utterance a but also, at the same time, claims or suggests that her/his reply is relevant. This does not necessarily mean that speaker B actually says “I am answering you”, s/he may simply produce indicators of reception of the first message. Within the ‘sleight-of-hand’ category, two sub-types can be identified, namely: 2i) literalization. In this case, utterance a, which is not intended to be interpreted literally, is interpreted literally in utterance b (e.g. son: “you treat me like a child”; mother: “but you are my child”); 2ii) specification. In this case, utterance b is a specific response to utterance a, and is true in itself, but
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contextually irrelevant (e.g. daughter: “we went swimming together all last summer”; mother: “not the last week, you didn’t”). In both literalization and specification, reactive moves in the opposite direction are potentially disqualifying. In other words, both reactive moves interpreting a literally meant message metaphorically and moves giving generic interpretations to messages meant in a specific sense can be seen as cases of disqualification. The parameters involved in these cases are metaphoricalÆliteral and generalÆ specific respectively. 3) Status disqualification. As an example of this category, which “involve more than the basic change of subject”, the authors give the following: “Mother: a Daughter: b Mother:
I have seen, lately, that’s my impression, I have observed, that she doesn’t mix very well with Daniel. Why not, Mama? Well, a mother knows… ” (Sluzki et al., 1967: 499)
In this case, what is disqualified is not the content of a, i.e. the first move, but rather the person who has uttered it, i.e. speaker A. For instance, B may suggest that message a is not valid by virtue of “B’s superior knowledge, right, etc.” (ibid.: 498). In order for disqualification to take place, a must not openly address the issue of the (alleged) asymmetry of competence or power between A and B. This kind of disqualification has both immediate and future effects, as subsequent statements by A may be disqualified in the same way. 4) Redundant question. In this case, a is a statement and b is a (partial or total) repetition of a in the form of question. Such a reply implies doubt or disagreement without openly stating it (e.g. son: “I get along well with everybody”; father: “well with everybody, Peter?”, implying “I don’t believe that”). 5) Nonverbal disqualification. A typical example of this category is silence: silence on the part of B after A produces a message requiring an answer has a disqualifying function. The importance of other non linguistic channels, in particular proxemics, in the production of disqualification, is recognized though left aside by the authors. Much work on the incongruence between channels had been already carried out by the Palo Alto school starting from the seminal paper by Bateson et al. (1956). To sum up, in the five sub-types of disqualification listed above, two parameters basically come into play: “the continuity between contents of messages and the indication of reception of a message” (Sluzki et al., 1967: 499; original emphasis) – in other words, a macro-semantic,
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topical parameter (lack of congruence), and a pragmatic parameter (explicit or implicit feedback confirming ‘uptake’ on the part of the hearer). Typically, transactional disqualification results from some sort of intertwining of these two parameters. In Sluzki et al.’s words, it is a result of a “discontinuity of content without (accurate) indication of reception” (ibid.: 500; original emphasis). Such parameters are clearly not unlike to those involved when emotive contrasts are perceived against backgrounds of what Caffi and Janney call ‘co-textual anticipatory schemata’ (cf. 4.4.2.). Sluzki et al. also mention a third parameter involving face needs and territorial claims called ‘status disqualification’, which is related to challenges to the speaker’s legitimacy as an interlocutor: i.e., challenges to her/his right/competence to say what s/he is actually saying. In this case, disagreement shifts from the content of the message to the person producing it, thus becoming an implicit ad personam attack that turns out to be extremely difficult to manage. 4.8.2. Reactive moves to transactional disqualification Sluzki et al.’s (1967) approach to dealing with the pathogenesis of disqualification is analogous to Haley’s (1959), and both are rooted in Bateson et al.’s (1956) concept of doublebind. Sluzki et al., however, maintain that disqualification, in addition to characterizing pathologic schizophrenic communication, is also found in ‘ordinary’ interaction. Further, the authors suggest that disqualification is connected to play, fantasy, psychotherapy, and humor. As an isolated communicative event, they say, disqualification is not inherently pathological in nature. Rather, the danger of pathological communication lies in the reiteration – as well as in reinforcements produced by reiterations – of the disqualifying pattern. According to Sluzki et al. (1967: 501), there are four possible responses to transactional disqualification: explicit comment, withdrawal, acceptance, and counter-disqualification. Bateson et al. (1956) claim that explicit comment and withdrawal can prevent double-binds, although the latter is not always possible. After discussing various instances of acceptance and counter-disqualification, Sluzki et al. suggest that there is a positive correlation between communication in families with schizophrenic members and occurrences of tripartite sequential patterns. The latter patterns tend to be sequences in which disqualifying moves are followed by moves that consolidate the paradox and reinforce the idiosyncratic nature of the ongoing communication. Ultimately, according to the authors: [i]n this process, which implies a whole style of relation with the world and in which certain stimuli are systematically denied, certain meanings are systematically repressed, lack of recognition is reinforced and rewarded, and clarification is punished, in this, we concur in believing, might rest the pathogenesis of schizophrenia. (Sluzki et al., 1967: 504)
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In this quotation, the reiterated use of degree words (e.g. the repetition of the adverb ‘systematically’, the choice of predicates such as ‘reinforce’, etc.) in depicting the “whole style of relation” is striking. Incidentally, we have found the same stress on scalar factors in a very distant field, namely the developmental psychoanalytic research dealing with prototypical expectations (cf. 4.1.1.). Nothing could be further from the idea of style as embellishment, ornament, outward trill, emotive coloring, etc. than this bare picture of one possible source of schizophrenia. And nothing could be nearer to the psychostylistic approach pursued in this book.
4.9. THE FREUDIAN CONCEPT OF ‘UNDOING’ (UNGESCHEHENMACHEN) In this section, I would like to raise a topic that deserves further discussion, namely the possible connections between disqualification and the Freudian concept of ‘undoing’ (Ungeschehenmachen). No attempt will be made to give even a summary account of the use of this notion in Freud’s work. All that need be said here is that the concept of undoing may be related to paradoxical behavior, and thus at least to some extent to mitigation. The Freudian concept of undoing is defined by Fachinelli (1992: 35 ff.) as the retroactive cancellation of an event. This type of cancellation is described by Freud in Rat man notes (Freud, 1955 [1909]) and Inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety (Freud, 1961 [1926]) as a ‘defensive mechanism’. Such a mechanism consists of a number of biphasic actions in which the first phase is deleted by the second. According to Fachinelli, who studied temporal aspects of psychoanalytical concepts, undoing is too often understood merely as a neurotic defensive strategy for canceling the past. In fact, according to Fachinelli, undoing is a theoretically powerful notion which covers a wide range of different experiences: “Ungeschehenmachen is a way of dealing with and processing time; it is a temporal technique, and this is, I believe, the only element that various instances of such a mechanism have in common” (Fachinelli, 1992: 37; my translation, C.C.; original emphasis). I will not pursue this question any further here, but I would like to suggest that there is a twofold analogy between undoing and disqualifying on the one hand, and between disqualifying and certain prototypical objects of pragmatic analysis on the other. As to the first analogy, it can be said that while transactional disqualification, like Ungeschehenmachen, is a type of retroactive cancellation, Haley’s disqualification (or ‘equivocation’, as Beavin Bavelas et al., 1990 call it) is marked by a simultaneous selfcancellation that may result in a sort of ‘dispraxia’ (cf. Azzoni, 1998). I am referring here to the potentially self-defeating element that can be found in messages in which some components are inconsistent with, or contradictory in relation to, other parts of the message – that is, messages in which there is a co-existence of doing and undoing, or of ‘being there’ and ‘not being there’.
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As to the second analogy, the Freudian notion of ‘undoing’ can be also applied to indirect speech acts. Beavin Bavelas et al. (1990) explicitly suggest this in describing indirect speech acts as examples of equivocation. On the basis of this, we may hypothesize that indirect speech acts are linguistic correlates of certain kinds of ‘undoing’, and we may well conclude that pragmatic communication, in being inherently retractable, cancelable or defeasible, is marked, however slightly, by forms of potential ‘undoing’.
4.10. CONCLUSIONS In the present chapter I have dealt with emotive communication from a pragmatic perspective. In particular, I have discussed concepts related to mitigation mechanisms from different research fields. Some of these concepts (involvement, immediacy, emotive devices) are static while others (attunement, emotive contrasts, strategic markedness, discontinuity as a constitutive feature of disqualification) are dynamic and can be measured against systems of expectations. A pragmatic, psychostylistic perspective makes it possible to highlight the ambivalent nature of communication and the constant tension in speakers’ choices between showing and concealing, saying and not saying, attenuating and reinforcing, doing and undoing, being there and not being there. A weak way of ‘undoing’ in discourse is to make some aspects of the message unclear. Incongruent discourse is discourse that is marked to some extent by ‘disqualification’ or ‘equivocation’ or that is in some way ambiguous or non-immediate. It could be compared to Penelope’s web were it not for the fact that the undoing occurs at the same time as doing: something is both done and undone in the same speech act. Precisely this simultaneity of doing and undoing raises once again the issue of the different layers of communication involved in disqualification. It is easy to see that this issue is analogous to the pragmatic issue of the links between different types and scopes of mitigation addressed in Chapter 2. As suggested in my previous work and in the present book, in ordinary communication, mitigation, whether epistemic or deontic, is based on avoidance or minimization of responsibility. This non-assumption-of-responsibility feature, what can be called the ‘deresponsibilization feature’, accounts for the pervasiveness of mitigation in particularly sensitive institutional contexts like doctor-patient interaction. In this chapter we have seen that the same deresponsibilization principle operates in schizophrenic communication where it takes the form of specific disqualifying patterns. Haley’s (1959) category of disqualification is precisely based on the idea of the speaker’s avoidance of responsibility, obtained by denying a component of a message. What is peculiar to schizophrenic communication itself is that the deresponsibilization principle is applied recurrently. The interlocutor becomes trapped in
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ambiguous and equivocal discourse moves whose intended meaning is undecidable: to use Sluzki et al.’s (1967: 497) phrase, s/he “is left hanging in mid-air”. Haley’s (1959) work in this area is especially relevant for pragmatics, and helps to shed light on the mechanisms and effects of mitigation in institutional contexts. Another insightful contribution to the approach presented in this book is the work by Sluzki et al. (1967), who introduce the sequential dimension for the first time into the study of schizophrenic communication. Sequentiality is crucial to Sluzki et al.’s definition of schizophrenic communication and figures importantly in their analyses of conversational sequences that deny the other’s existence either as a partner in the immediate interaction or even more drastically deny the other as a person. The explicative power of the deresponsibilization principle is thus substantiated and confirmed by psychiatric studies rooted in the theoretical tradition of the Palo Alto school. This group of researchers operates on the assumption that schizophrenic communication and ordinary communication share certain identifiable, common patterns of self- and other-invalidation that lead to the speakers’ deresponsibilization for their own utterances/actions on the one hand, and to the denial of partners via the denial of their roles as ratified interlocutors on the other. The final theoretical point to be made concerns inferential chains (cf. 2.1.3.1.). The longer these chains are, the higher the degree of motivation and involvement by the person interpreting the message. This kind of interpretation is referred to by Arndt and Janney (1987: 137) as ‘explicative’, as opposed to descriptive and predictive interpretations. It is important in the present connection to stress that inferential chains move through different, intertwined cognitive, emotive, and emotional layers of communication. The higher the motivational drive, the greater the probability that interpretations will affect, and be affected by, deep emotional layers. This last point is clearly of the outmost importance in doctor-patient interaction, where the patient’s motivation is often particularly high because what is at stake, totally or partially, is her/his life. In describing a doctor-patient interaction from a pragmatic point of view in the next chapter, I will focus on different aspects of ‘emotive closeness’ in its interplay with other parameters, in particular ‘epistemic certainty’ and ‘knowledge-power’ (competence and institutional role). Assuming that the near/far dichotomy is superordinate with respect to other dimensions of emotive communication, I will try to make the concept of proximity operational (cf. Chapter 5).
5 DOCTOR-PATIENT DIALOGUE: A CASE STUDY Ah – questo medico vale un Perù Ah – this doctor is worth a fortune Così fan tutte, Act I, Sc. XVI.
5.0. INTRODUCTION The subject of this chapter is a case-study which will enable us to field-test the tools set up so far and to test their effectiveness. Mitigating devices which are useful in managing the interaction and its potential conflicts will be analyzed in a specific encounter. The aim of the circumscribed analysis of an entire dialogue presented here is to show how different (mis-)uses of mitigation work within the complexity of pragmatic and stylistic processes. It will be immediately apparent that it is impossible to isolate mitigation from the overall dynamics of the dialogue. On the contrary, mitigation invests the dialogue in various ways ranging from topical moves, i.e. content shifts equivalent to forms of disqualification (as is the case for topical shields, cf. 3.4.), to slight propositional or stylistic adjustments, obtained for instance with the use of diminutive suffixes (as is the case for bushes, cf. 3.3.1.). The various layers of meaning production built into the dialogue will be reconstructed in a way plausibly similar to that employed by the interlocutors. The main issue addressed is the description of the monitoring of the various mitigation devices used by the speakers to tailor their cognitive subscription and emotive involvement with respect to what they say and to their interactional partner. The interlocutors go through a continuous process of propositional and relational commitment/non-commitment and of cognitive and emotive approaching/distancing. It thus turns out that mitigation is an extraordinarily important resource through which both protagonists, the professional and the lay participant can, on the one hand, at the instrumental level, more easily reach their aim, and on the other hand, at the interpersonal level, constantly
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and mutually regulate social and emotive distances. If interlocutors have an emotive capacity (Caffi and Janney, 1994b; 4.4.), i.e., the ability to capture emotionally-laden signals and to attune themselves with these in a non-defective way, it may well be that initiating or responding moves are organized empathically (Seganti, 1995). In other words, mitigating micro-choices play a crucial role in attunement processes (cf. Chapter 4). As we will see, such an ability is basically not displayed in the linguistic micro-choices of the two interlocutors of the dialogue under examination. It is precisely the above-mentioned micro-choices that will be exemplified in the next paragraphs. Such micro-choices are at times equivalent to ‘defective’ responses also at an emotive level and can be described according to the categories presented in the preceding chapters. As interpreters-abductors at various levels of abstraction, we will try in this analysis to cover the articulation of the different but interacting circuits of meaning production, starting from the most superficial layers – the linguistic micro-choices and their modulations – up to the emotive layer of the inferrable effects of these choices. It is important to state once again that it is the emotive rather than emotional layers that are at issue, by referring back to the distinction made in 4.4.1.: the emotive communication we are trying to fathom here, mainly oriented towards the manipulation of signals whose aim is to present a certain self-image (Arndt and Janney, 1991: 529; Caffi and Janney, 1994b: 328), does not deal with the speakers’ ‘real’ inner emotional states but rather with those layers concerning both self-presentational needs (cf. Suls, 1993) and the strategic assumption of a communicative role or impression management, which social psychologists talk about (among others, Tedeschi, 1981). In short, what type of person – and also what type of doctor and patient – we want to be taken for; which identity, among the more or less vast repertoire of identities which together, more or less consistently and in continual reshaping, delineate our self, we want to activate and to put in the foreground and which one – to use a metaphor propounded by Eco (1975) – we want to ‘narcotize’ and put in the background. And yet, even social psychologists have recently raised the question of the legitimacy both of a separation of intrapsychic theories and theories based on impression management (e.g. Tetlock and Manstead, 1985) and of a rigid distinction between the intrapsychic and the interpersonal (e.g. Leary, 1993: 129 ff.). As exhaustive treatments and satisfactory conceptual frameworks do not yet exist, we can presume for the time being that the emotive layers filter the ‘emotional’ quality of the interaction and influence the ways we perceive and interpret the relation with our interlocutors. Together with other social and cognitive factors, in particular the type of encounter, the type of aim pursued and the type of topic dealt with, these diverse and mutually permeable layers determine the stylistic profile of the encounter. We are entitled to venture albeit carefully, hypothetically and abductively, into these layers, characterized by uncertain boundaries, only as far as we are authorized by the initiating or responding choice – signal or clue – which appears on the surface of discourse. We do not have
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direct access to the speaker’s mind and all that we can offer is a description of the recognizable effects, which is compatible with a given context and co-text. The main purpose of this description is to try and reconstruct, although in a rudimentary fashion, an interface among linguistic, sociological and psychological micro-dimensions. In other words, we will start to make explicit what we instinctively know as speakers. Although this type of knowledge is operative in the inferential activities continually carried out in our everyday discursive practices, it is still an almost totally unexplored area.
5.1. ANALYSIS OF A DIALOGUE AT A PRIMARY CARE PHYSICIAN’S The transcription analyzed in this chapter, which will be referred to as TR1 and is given in Appendix A, reproduces a dialogue at a Primary Care Physician’s – presumably a young physician with a marked Northern Italian accent – in a large town in the North of Italy. From an initial comment made by the patient we can reasonably infer that the doctor is a substitute, perhaps a temporary one, of the regular doctor. The patient is a fifty-seven-year-old cobbler; although tempered by a presumably long period spent in the North, the phonological, prosodic and morphosyntactic features of his speech appear to be typical of a central-Italian region. The above information and presumptions can all be derived from the recording: as anticipated in the Introduction, in order to further guarantee the interlocutors’ privacy and to avoid introducing distracting factors into the analysis, such as for instance my personal acquaintance with the doctor, I have used materials obtained through third parties who acted as intermediaries and guarantors. Regarding method, I will move from the general to the specific and this will bring about a closer and closer examination of the text. This will allow me to situate mitigation phenomena and to observe their role. First, a macro-structural analysis will be proposed. I will borrow from narratology the distinction between two types of summaries: the fabula and the plot. According to the Russian formalists, the fabula is the set of narrative motifs as rearranged in their logical, causal and chronological order. The plot is the set of motifs as they appear in the story, i.e. the actual content. Tomashevsky (1928) draws a related distinction between ‘bound motifs’, which cannot be omitted and ‘free motifs,’ which “can be omitted without damaging the integrity of the causal-temporal connections of events”. Bound motifs are relevant to the fabula. As far as the plot is concerned, free motifs are often the most important, as in the case of digressions. 1 With this distinction in mind, I will propose a thematic-topical analysis at a macro-level in order to bring out the bound themes which together make up the fabula. Then I will describe the most significant moments of the encounter by considering not only the global ‘syntax’ of 1
For a discussion on these issues, cf. Segre (1979: 1-55); Eco (1979).
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communicative actions, but also the local adjustments of the emotional atmosphere. By means of a table which will make it easier to grasp the simultaneous analysis of the different dimensions involved, I will cover the communication dynamics in the various phases of the encounter. This will be done at a micro-level that can be likened to the plot. In addition, I will identify micro-sequences of attunement or non-attunement which can be detected from the occurrence of various types of superficial phenomena, in particular mitigation devices. Lastly, within the different phases, using the categories discussed in the previous chapters, I will focus on various effects of rhetorical-stylistic meaning and of psychological meaning. On a whole, mitigation will be the main path I will pursue. I would like this analysis to be as bland and simple as possible from a theoretical viewpoint. In other words, I want the explicative categories to arise from the discourse itself and from the way in which the interlocutors construct it, without external, unnecessary superimpositions or recourse to a particular theory elaborated elsewhere. However, this goal will be only partially achieved, as there is no doubt that the notions used, such as “adjacency pair” or “illocutionary act” trigger theoretical frameworks and interpretative programs. Still, I intend to make a statement of limited theoretical commitment: I will employ these and other categories belonging to a specific framework only as far as they are useful and will avoid forcing them beyond their explicative capacity. The analysis which will be carried out is not proposed as anti-theoretical, but as pre-theoretical: a comprehensive, integrated pragmatic theory does not exist. An essential condition for constructing one is the examination of discourse free from predetermined categories. The limitations of this analysis, in particular the unsatisfactory rendering of the prosodic devices and of the voice quality, whose emotive impact is so easy to catch in real interaction and so difficult to describe technically, must be stressed yet again. It is useful at this point to read a perspicuous passage taken from Labov and Fanshel (1977): The lack of clarity or discreteness in the intonation signals is not an unfortunate limitation of this channel, but an essential and important aspect of it. Speakers need a form of communication which is deniable. It is advantageous for them to express hostility, challenge the competence of others or express friendliness and affection in a way that can be denied if they are explicitly held to account for it. (Labov and Fanshel, 1977: 46)
As I have claimed more than once, the avoidance or weakening of responsibility is basic to mitigation. This non-assumption-of-responsibility feature is the common denominator of different types of mitigating devices. One of the purposes of this study is to focus on a repertoire of linguistic means which offer advantageous retractability and deniability options analogous to those of the intonation signals noted by Labov and Fanshel in the passage quoted above. To compensate at least in part for the
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unsatisfactory rendering of intonation signals, I have added in the transcription, next to the indications relating to the three basic types of prosodic contour in Italian (Canepari, 1985) – i.e. rising, falling and suspensive – some comments meant to give an idea of the ‘expressive’ tone, such as “scolding tone” or “disheartened tone”. It is important not to conceal the objective weakness of this unsatisfactory rendering and first of all to recognize it as such. However, we must also remember that the hypertrophic role assigned here to the verbal choices compared to the non-verbal ones at least partially makes up for the opposite way, followed at first by studies on communication carried out in the 1960s (studies by Argyle, Scheflen, Birdwhistell, Ekman and Friesen to mention only a few) and, more recently, by studies on emotions, which assign a predominant role to the non-verbal, prosodic and kinesic components. In a bestselling book, Oliver Sacks recounts the reactions, on the one hand amused and on the other hand bewildered, but both negative, to a presidential speech, of two types of patients in his neurological ward. The first group was made up of people affected by receptive aphasia. This type of aphasia rendered them incapable of grasping the referential meaning of the words. At the same time, this pathology made them extremely sensitive to the emotive tone and to the expressiveness of the speech. The second group was made up of only one patient, affected by a serious form of tonal agnosia, which meant she could not grasp the emotive tone of the speech. Instead, her ability to decode the meaning of words and phrasal structures was intact and indeed enhanced. 2 A comprehensive multimodal account is not yet available. 3 Until now research on communication has oscillated between these two opposite poles, over-emphasizing at times the verbal and at times the non-verbal aspects of communication. I am aware that the analysis which will be carried out in this chapter is far from avoiding a similar imbalance, since it will mainly consider verbal, linguistic phenomena. However, it will try to consider both types of abilities (i.e. the understanding of words and the understanding of the emotive tone carried by words), which, together, make up the physiological communicative competence in its striking complexity.
5.2. THE BROADER SUMMARY OF THE ENCOUNTER: THE FABULA I will now summarize “what happens” in the encounter, synthetically presenting its global articulation, the fabula. This should help to better understand the more detailed analyses of the phases which will follow, and the role played by mitigation within them.
2
The story can be found in the chapter entitled The President’s Speech, in Oliver Sacks, The man who mistook his wife for a hat. New York: Harper and Row, 1985, pp. 80-84. 3 Promising insights in that direction can be found, however, in Goodwin (2005).
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Both the extra-linguistic action (his being there) and the communicative actions of the patient (hereafter P.) have one main purpose: his request for a cure for a specific problem, namely a pain in the leg which will not go away despite various types of therapy. The urgency of the request can also be grasped from the fact that P. makes it at his first turn (l. 3), going straight to the point. The main purpose of the communicative actions of the doctor (hereafter D.) is to see what the situation is like and to defer the definitive diagnosis to a specialist, an orthopedist. Various ‘sub-goals’ that are mutually recognized and dealt with and that correspond to various derived communicative actions are embedded in the dominant communicative macroactions. The initiating linguistic acts (Wunderlich, 1976) or the main topical acts (Bublitz, 1988) along whose lines the dialogue is articulated are made by P. P.’s most important communicative act, subordinated to the main one and programmed before the encounter, is this: considering the lack of success of the treatments already tried out, he proposes to follow the advice of a non-expert who is geographically and perhaps affectively close to him. He would like to try a certain type of injections, advised by a “fellow-villager” who has tried them successfully (ll. 51-52). The general gist of the encounter is constructed around the incompatible lines of therapy the interlocutors speak up for. On the one hand P., tired of his pain and let down by the ratified experts, asks permission to try the injections advised by a non-expert. Implicit in this move is the complaint about an official knowledge which nonetheless he does not completely give up on. If the doctor agreed, a paradoxical situation would arise: the expert, in a self-defeating move, would ratify the defeat of himself and of the experts as a category, admitting the greater efficacy of remedies suggested by the patients who are, what’s more, “fellow-villagers”. P., although inconsistently, threatens the constitutive asymmetry of the encounter in one of its crucial variables: the therapeutic efficacy, that is, knowing how to cure. The complaint, more ‘grumbled’ than openly expressed, which comes to light in P.’s discourse against the ratified experts derives not only from the fact that they have not known how to cure him, but also from the fact that they have prescribed him many examinations of whose usefulness he does not seem to be completely convinced. This was especially due to the fact that, as P. seems to imply, the same doctors have not taken them adequately into consideration. For these reasons P., in order to obtain the necessary attention, is resigned to pay for a visit: “even if I have to pay I’ll go [...] to one [...] who will look at all the X-rays I’ve got” (ll. 255-261). On the other hand, D. avoids an open conflict with his interactional partner but, to neutralize the complaint and the implicit accusation, thus re-establishing the asymmetry of power and knowledge, defends himself by attacking. In fact, reversing the roles of accuser and accused that P. seems to imply, D. stresses both P.’s responsibility in procuring his illness and his inadequacy in coping with it.
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5.2.1. The phases of the encounter The criterion I will follow is a hybrid between a thematic criterion and a clinical criterion. This hybrid criterion allows us to highlight at the same time the major topical moves corresponding to the bound motives in Tomashevsky’s (1928) narratological model and the phases (corresponding to the goals of that type of institutional activity) along which the visit unfolds. As a result, it is possible to disassemble the dialogue in the following phases: Phase 1, opening (ll. 1-3): 1a) greeting; 1b) comment on the interlocutor and on the setting (“we’re new: around here”). Phase 2, case history (ll. 3-61): 2a) P.’s definition of his problem (clinical tests, etiologic hypothesis, unsuccessful treatments); 2b) D.’s redefinition of P.’s problem (l. 31): professional formulation; 2c) P.’s request to follow the advice of the non-expert, trying a new treatment; 2d) D.’s refusal to grant the request. Phase 3, diagnosis (ll. 61-155): (therapeutic non-linguistic actions = phase of the real consultancy); 3a) D.’s definition of P.’s problem (ll. 86-87/101/111-112/58/146-147) 3b) P.’s redefinition of P.’s problem (“a bit of that”). Phase 4, lateral sequence (ll. 155-217): (problem of hypertension): 4a) D.’s ascertainment of P.’s new problem; 4b) P.’s minimizing of this problem. Phase 5, treatment (ll. 219-380): 5a) P.’s request for a solution to his main problem; 5b) D.’s proposal of a solution to the problem; 5c) P.’s refusal of D.’s proposal; 5d) new proposal by D.; 5e) P.’s acceptance of D.’s new proposal. Phase 6: closing (ll. 383-385): 6a) take-leaving formulas; 6b) take-leaving formulas.
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In pragmatics, to say that an encounter is co-constructed is to state the obvious. In conversational analysis, to say that a doctor-patient interaction is asymmetric seems equally obvious. And yet, neither of these statements is satisfactory. With regard to the former, in the study of the co-construction of conversation, stylistic aspects, which are also the object of negotiation, and which herein are regarded as a starting-point for emotive calibration, have not been sufficiently taken into consideration. As for the latter, asymmetry is not given beforehand, but is constructed and negotiated and is one of the results which derive from assigning values, which vary during the interaction, to the various interactional parameters. It is therefore necessary to be equipped with tools which permit a dynamic and at the same time integrated description of the different processes at work. In the case being examined, the co-construction occurs in a peculiar way and in some respects it is (even) symmetric: in fact, the coconstruction has a mirror-like quality also at the emotive communication level (cf. 5.8.1. on non-attunement sequences). As we can see even at a first glance, the phase in which the process of negotiation at an argumentative macro-level (proposal/rejection; new proposal/acceptance) is articulated the most is phase 5, the phase where the treatment is decided on. Each phase has a recurring trend: after a sequence of more or less open conflict, a reconciliation and an agreement are reached. Indeed, each phase closes with a series of moves which locally renegotiate different aspects dealt with in the previous turns, aspects which both the interactional goals of the interlocutors and (attempts at) reshaping of the relation correspond to. Let’s see how. 5.2.2. The recurrent trend of the phases Moves of phase 1: opening. 4 P. does not reply to D.’s greeting with the preferred adjacent move which consists in acknowledging the greeting, but with a comment on the interlocutor (who is temporarily or permanently substituting a colleague) and on the interactional setting: “we’re new around here”. The comment in itself, the informal register and the first person (plural) inclusive of ‘affiliation’ already indicate, in that context, P.’s non-alignment to a communicative style of deference towards the role of the expert. We do not know if this behavior is intentional, in which case the comment would be interpreted as an attempt to shape the relationship on an equal basis, or if it is unintentional, caused by inadequate metapragmatic awareness. Perhaps the doctor interprets the first person plural as disrespectful, perhaps even derogatory, and therefore close to the pragmatic function of the use of the first person plural found in Persian or Turkish noted by Hagège (cf. Chapter 3, note 7). It is, however, a reply which, even if interpretable as harmless in a non-institutional symmetric context, in the context 4
For a discussion of the issue of the openings in doctor-patient consultations cf. Coupland et al. (1994).
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in question can be interpreted as threatening the interlocutor’s professional identity (Drew and Heritage, 1992; Hall, Sarangi and Slembrouck, 1999). The markedness of this choice can be seen in three respects simultaneously: sequencing, content and style. This choice is indeed marked from a sequential viewpoint in that it replaces the preferred adjacent move which is by default the “acknowledgement of the greeting”. It is also marked from the point of view of content because P. takes the liberty of making a comment on his interactional partner. And finally it is marked from a stylistic point of view because not only does P. avoid any sign of deference, but he also displays a vaguely paternalistic tone, albeit softened by the use of “we”. The doctor, who for the moment has not been assigned an asymmetric status, might feel authorized to interpret this marked choice as a disqualification, in particular as a disqualification regarding the “you” (second person singular) component of the message, according to Haley’s model (cf. 4.7.1.): this choice would amount to a “non-you”. Here an emotive contrast is triggered by a choice which can be ascribed to the class of proximity within Caffi and Janney’s (1994b) categories (cf. 4.4.). Concluding moves of phase 2: case history and definition of the problem. This phase ends with the negotiations concerning the proposal of self-managed treatment (advised by a non-ratified expert), a proposal which P. introduces cautiously (“I don’t know if:”) after having prepared it by recounting the lack of success of the other treatments he has tried out. The expert, firmly and at the same time indirectly rejects the proposal. He does not explicitly prohibit taking the medicine nor does he state the dangers of taking it. This latter move would have been the preferred move inasmuch as inferentially closer to a prohibition or at least to deontic modality. Instead, D.’s rejection is conveyed through an ironic, almost sarcastic, utterance. An interior monologue which ruffles the surface of the discourse with polyphony can be detected here (see the cancelled premise, the focus particle addirittura - ‘even’, etc.). In other words, D. operates a strong rhetorical-stylistic modulation, indexing an (irritated) affective mode. The markedness is again sequential, illocutionary and stylistic, and depicts an emotive contrast. Concluding moves of phase 3: diagnosis. This phase ends with the negotiations on the technical and non-technical definition of the problem (ll. 133-142). This has a tail-end where the prohibition of the use of the medicines suggested by the fellow-villager is renegotiated. Both closures of this phase, the provisional one at line 140 and the definitive one at line 155, are interesting from a stylistic viewpoint. The first closure is made up of a quadripartite sequence which can well be described in terms of accommodation theory: the more powerful speaker, after correcting (“IN THE VERTEBRA!”) P.’s formulation (“the cartilage was worn out in the kneecap”) accepts, in fourth slot, the non-technical definition of the less competent speaker (“it’s that”). The greater symmetry resulting from such an acceptance is also obtained
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through the implicit definitions of the relationship: Not only does P. not adopt a deferential style, but his non-alignment also reaches peaks of aggressiveness. The second and definitive closure of this phase (l. 155) is a reconciliation sequence: the doctor mitigates the prohibition by resorting to a type of external mitigation. This consists in additional explanations which appeal to the interlocutor’s rational capacity (cf. Blum-Kulka, 1992), almost as if to confirm the greater relational equality which has just been reached. Concluding moves of phase 4: measuring blood pressure (lines 155-217). This phase gives the doctor the chance to restore the asymmetry in its most retrograde variant. In this phase, having detected P.’s hypertension, almost as if he had caught P. red-handed, D. interprets, so to speak, the role of the ‘bad’ doctor, scolding the patient and treating him like an irresponsible child. P., being attacked, gets confused, stammers the distorted name of the medicine and gives evasive answers which the ‘bad’ doctor completes for him more and more impatiently. D., while cooperating at a conversational level (he provides turn-completion moves in third position), attacks at an interpersonal level. The definitions of the relationship in this phase are all in terms of complementarity in Watzlawick et al.’s (1967) sense. D. changes course at line 208, shortening the emotive distance. Indeed, D. in fact resorts to a shield, an enunciative mitigating device (EMD), in the first person plural, with an enallage of the person, so as to formulate the proposal of trying out a different medicine in alternative to the one which caused side-effects (“we can try other t t tablets, mmm?”). This phase ends with the agreement on how to solve the problem which has arisen. Referring to the medicine which P. already has at home, D. concedes “well do start taking it then” and so the prescription takes on the milder deontic tone of authorization. Concluding moves of phase 5: treatment (lines 219-380). This phase ends on the negotiation on the mitigated definition of P.’s problem (“just a touch”), on the negotiation of the probable therapeutic approaches (“if it was necessary to do I don’t know paradoxically to operate”) and on the renegotiation of and definitive confirmation of the prohibition to take the medicine recommended by the non-expert. As was to be expected, on close scrutiny, the general view is much more troubled and uneven than that of a more distant and comprehensive glance. It already seems clear that the heterogeneous communicative parameters modulated by the two parties with different effects are intertwined. Regarding asymmetry – if, for the present purposes, we take this as a useful though generic descriptive category – at the sequential level focused on in this paragraph, this relational variable is not particularly evident; this will emerge more clearly where the focus of the analysis will be on the illocutionary aspects of the exchange (cf. 5.6.).
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5.3. BETWEEN FABULA AND PLOT: SALIENT MOMENTS OF THE ENCOUNTER At an intermediate level between the fabula level and the plot level, between what cannot be omitted and what captures the actual shape of the interactants’ communicative behavior, in this section we can zoom in on the salient moments of the encounter. D. implies P.’s inadequacy in terms of both behavior and understanding of medical knowledge, as evidenced in particular by his lack of comprehension of the results of the tests and of their evaluation by the experts, introduced as other voices. For example, D. says: ll. 101-102
D. xxx [person’s name] probably explained this to you
and he repeats the concept, reinforcing the assertive illocutionary force of his utterance (at line 101 it is just a hypothesis, as is indicated by the modal epistemic future) through reference to the accuracy of the source, rendered more authoritative by the impersonal phrasing and the recourse to the written code: l. 107
D. in your file it’s written perfectly clearly:,
During the whole encounter D. treats P. as if his illness were his (P.’s) own fault. D.’s tone of voice is often annoyed, at times aggressive, at times patronizing. This blaming attitude surfaces after just a few exchanges, at line 35: ll. 35-36
D. = but how did you manage to do this thing to yourself.=
this is a question characterized by a marked sudden shift of register, if compared to the co-text, that is, with reduced formality and the triggering of an emotive contrast (Caffi and Janney, 1994b; 4.4.2.). The anaphora with the most generic and colloquial noun phrase “this thing” reformulates the technical designation “a muscular tear of that muscle. of the iliopsoas” of line 31 (cf. Stirling, 1981). The intended illocutionary force of the question is that of an accusation. Several devices point towards this: among others, the polemic ma (“but”) at the start of the turn, the choice of very generic and informal vocabulary: fare (“to do”), cosa (“thing”). That this interpretation is correct is shown by P.’s reaction in the adjacent reply, where he feels the need to defend himself, saying with a self-justifying tone: “Well I don't know you see. I’m a co:bbler”. Curiously enough, but far from unusual in this activity type, the patient produces an
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excuse for his illness. Another example of D.’s blaming attitude is the exchange at lines 119-123: ll. 119-123
D. how old are you? P. I’m fifty-seven.-D. and. you’ve never been to an orthopedist’s?
where the additive connective e (“and”), with a prolonged vowel-sound indicating a sort of hesitation in completing the utterance which indeed implies a negative evaluation for P., can be interpreted, within the implications produced, as an adversative-concessive marker. Within that co- and con-text, D. in fact produces a conversational implicature (Grice, 1975), which can be reconstructed as follows: “you have never been to an orthopedist’s even though you’re fiftyseven years old?”, alluding to an alleged rule of behavior (“at a certain age one should consult an orthopedist”) and the indirect scolding of P. for having ignored it, in the twofold sense of not having known about it and of breaking it. D.’s tone is irritated: the illocutionary forces triggered are colored by more or less strong behabitive nuances, in Austin’s (1962) sense. For instance, the warning at lines 145-148 is modulated in such a way as to become almost a challenge: ll. 145-148
D. you can even do all the therapies you want but the slipped disc - [... ...] remains, eh? -
Consistently with the global type of activity, which is transactional (Brown and Yule, 1983) and inherently cooperative, open conflict is avoided by both parties, although a certain amount of tension is palpable. The two basic questions we are addressing here are precisely: how is the current of this dialogue produced? How can it be smoothened out? One strategy for avoiding conflict consists in displacing it onto other actors. The patient refers to the lack of success of the experts’ – doctors, specialists, physiotherapists and masseurs’ – knowledge and his interest in the parallel knowledge of an unofficial expert who simply offers her own experience. P. is attracted by the idea of following the advice of his “fellow-villager”, an idea which he will try to propose again a few turns later and which he will unwillingly give up on (l. 376), continuing to suggest its application right to the end, despite D.’s repeated attempts to dissuade him. This theme will therefore become the object of further negotiations: after a first reaction of sarcastic refusal (Slugoski and Turnbull, 1988) of the alternative proposal, D. will then mitigate the prohibition, by motivating it with a series of more and more bland reasons, finally admitting that “this can do something, but very little”. The doctor’s first reaction to the proposal of trying the medication is the following (ll. 61-62):
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173
D. these they’ve even taken these off the market eh because:: queste addirittura le hanno tolte dal commercio eh perché::
followed by a topic change introduced by a topical rehierarchization marker (“more than anything”): l. 62
D. but more than anything we have to see. ma più che altro bisogna vedere.
The focus particle addirittura (“even”), in the sentence with left-dislocation (queste addirittura le hanno tolte dal commercio), signals the extreme limit of an underlying argumentative path. At lines 154-155, it is as if D. invited P. to follow a similar path of reasoning, by choosing a predicate which indicates a phase of argumentation where the hortative subjunctive is a directive, with an explicit indicator of exercitive illocutionary force, and the predicative mitigation – a bush – takes the form of a cautious litotes: ll. 154-155
D. bear in mind that those medicines there have been taken off the market now precisely because: not very useful.
D. therefore realizes that P. is not convinced that to follow his fellow-villager’s advice would be a bad idea, or maybe a dangerous one. The professional is aware of the possibility that his interlocutor has not correctly interpreted the previously formulated speech act regarding those medicines, perhaps because he has not carried out the necessary inference to shift from the literal illocution ‘assertion of a state of things’ (“they have taken them off the market”) to the intended non-literal illocution ‘prohibition’ (“you musn’t take them”). Despite this, instead of clarifying the intended (exercitive) illocutionary force by pronouncing an explicit prohibition or a clear sanction, D. adopts again the indirect strategy of a hint, choosing once more to affirm a factual state of things (“they have taken them off the market”). On hearing such a statement, a cooperative and inferentially active hearer ought to assign the status of consequence to the implied premise (“those medicines are dangerous”) in order to get the meaning. Even more curiously – in spite of the fact that the previous exchanges have shown quite plainly that P. is pursuing an idea of his own – it is precisely to this phantasmal cooperative interlocutor that D. explicitly appeals (“bear in mind”). D. mentions an additional reason for the removal of those medicines from the market, which mitigates the reason already given. We don’t know if the medicine in question was actually present during the encounter, even if only in the form of its box or the instructions leaflet. If not, then we might presume that “those medicines there” is an example of non-immediate choice (Wiener and Mehrabian, 1968; 4.5.), a case of empathic deixis: the demonstrative “those there”, in which the non-proximity feature is inherent, would
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indicate not a physical but an emotive distance, the speaker’s negative evaluative attitude (cf. Conte, 1999). It is at this point that a new fact occurs. The measurement of P.’s blood pressure reveals a state of hypertension. l. 156
D. you’ve got high blood pressure haven’t you?
From line 155 to line 217 a clinical action which is important for D.’s decision-making process, i.e. measuring P.’s blood pressure, is carried out. This action is however subordinated to the main one of formulating a diagnosis of the problem which has determined the encounter. From a conversational viewpoint, this is a long digression (Bublitz, 1988: 100 ff.). But in fact this description in terms of topical shift is only one of the possible descriptions of what, overall, considering not only the topical actions but also the therapeutic actions, constitutes a lateral sequence of the visit. It must be remembered that what we are analyzing is not, so to speak, a conversation whose end is internal to the conversation itself, that is, an autotelic conversation. It is rather an instance of “discourse to do”, a type of goal-directed activity aimed at reaching an operational decision which P. must comply with in his future behavior. Although minimizing the seriousness of the situation, P. admits to knowing about the problem, saying: l. 159
P. ah, my blood pressure I’ve always got fairly high blood pressure ((lit. ah the blood pressure I’m always a little always high of pressure.) eh la pressione io sono sempre un po’ sempre alto di pressione
This sub-standard construction with a sort of relation genitive “alto di pressione” is perhaps due to an analogy with Italian widely used idiomatic constructions such as “giù di morale” (lit. ‘down of moral’, meaning ‘discouraged’), “sano di mente” (lit. ‘healthy of mind’), “svelto di mano” (lit. ‘fast of hand’, meaning ‘light-fingered man’), etc. This sentence shows again P.’s uncertainty regarding the position of adverbials and markers. P. admits to having started treatment and then giving it up. D. scolds P. for having neglected the problem and for having suspended the treatment: he repeats the affirmative phrase and adds to it an explicit warning, which is modulated as angry intimidation through emphasis, an aggressive tone and the final reinforcement obtained by use of a question-tag, which is a signal that agreement is being sought: ll. 187-189
D. now however your blood pressure is 180 over 105 Your blood pressure must be lower, musn’t it?
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For his part, P. doesn’t seem to be particularly intimidated: he doesn’t consider the problem of hypertension a dominating one but a collateral one. And sure enough, at line 219, with a significant topic change, P. reintroduces the subject of his sore leg, a problem he is much more interested in, thus effectively concluding the “hypertension” topic. In this case he again shows careful control of the ‘syntax’ of actions, even if not of the sentences. l. 219
P. well I never. just to have this leg looked at a bit=
D. accepts the reintroduction of the initial problem and defers its solution to another expert: l. 222
D. = but you need to see an orthopedist for this leg
P. refuses the proposal of visiting a specialist through the national health scheme because of the long waiting-lists. The doctor then tells him of a specialist, and provides some practical information such as address, telephone number and visiting times. The final phase of the encounter revolves around whether or not it is a good idea to consult the specialist. P. says he is prepared to pay for the visit in the hope that someone will at last fully consider his case: ll. 274-280
P. ah! so I’ll go there for an examination I have to pay for never mind it makes me= [... ...] -- so I’ll take him all the th all the things that I’ve done
For his part, D. explains the advantages of the fee-paying visit, including the fact that, in the event of having to undergo surgery, the specialist in question has a hospital structure to back him up. The encounter closes with the negotiations on the definitive conclusion of the problem and its solution. At the end of the visit, the patient has not reached his aim, namely to be diagnosed and to be informed on treatment. What he has obtained is to be deferred to a specialist’s for another, feepaying, visit and, we might add, to be provided with a series of mitigations. In reply to the main clinical question “is it a slipped disc or not?”, D. first states “you have a slipped disc” (ll. 145-146), then reinforces his statement with “this course is absolutely typical” (l. 232), then attenuates it with “yours isn’t a real slipped disc” (ll. 361-362), and in the end concedes “just a touch” (l. 366). To the consequent main therapeutical interrogative “is an operation necessary or not?”, he replies with a litotes: “this can’t can’t +can’t* be excluded ((lit. is not excluded
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this thing))” (ll. 354-355). The next paragraph will concentrate on the analysis of these and of other mitigations.
5.4. MULTIDIMENSIONAL MICROANALYSIS OF TR1: THE PLOT Zooming in on the dialogue with a view to providing a fine-grained description of it, in this paragraph I provide a turn-by-turn description of TR1, by using a scheme in which various dimensions of analysis are taken into consideration simultaneously. Next to the number corresponding to the lines of the transcription, the first column presents a co-textual and contextual description, or in other words, a sequential and illocutionary description of the head act carried out in each turn. The second column sketches the rhetorical-stylistic description of the turn, and the occurrence of various types of mitigation or strategies that can be related to it. In this second column the following abbreviations are employed: EMD, for “enunciative mitigating device”, i.e. shields; IMD, for “illocutionary mitigating device”, i.e. hedges; PMD, for “propositional mitigating device”, i.e. bushes. The third column focuses on a level of description of what happens at the psychological level, employing the conceptual categories of immediacy and of the various types of disqualification discussed in Chapter 4. The fourth column, by means of the simplified recourse to the base parameter of emotive distance, covers the inferrable results, the interpretations authorized on the basis of the linguistic choices disassembled in the first three columns, that is to say, the speaker’s moving away from or getting close to what s/he says and to or from her/his partner: I indicate this with +/- emotive distance (+/- em dist). The hypothetical character of this last description is also indicated by the use, for this column, of the dashed line. As specified in Chapter 4, referring to a distinction between emotive and emotional originally made by Marty (1908), what is crucial herein is the first term of the paradigmatic opposition: what is relevant is not so much the inner state of the interlocutors, to which we do not have access, but rather the effect of approaching or distancing projected by a surface choice, and its presumptive repercussions on the definition of the relation and on the management of the interaction. Of course, we do not know if the interpretations proposed regarding the emotive distances have been activated or not: for our purposes, namely making some steps forward in the understanding of an up-to-now ‘shadowy’ area of communicative competence, it is sufficient that these interpretations are plausible, i.e. inferrable by a speaker endowed with standard communicative competence, and that they are compatible with a given context and co-text. The purpose is to evaluate whether it is possible to perceive, if not yet conventional effects, then at least probable correlations between the various dimensions of meaning production. On the one hand, what is interesting is that a given choice of form (the various types of mitigation) displays, to some extent, a certain type of markedness, that is, that
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it brings about an emotive contrast (cf. 4.4.2.), thus authorizing a given interpretation. On the other hand, what is interesting is the ‘reply’ made by the partner and the occurrence of ‘mirrorlike’ marked choices in it. As we are dealing with effects of meaning which are often subtle and wavering, my reconstruction as interpreter-abductor may be considered arbitrary. However, the diminution of the degree of certainty of the analysis is made up for by the extension of the range of dimensions taken into consideration and by the possibility of establishing correlations among these. If we do not want to study the functioning of communication in segments, ‘one piece at a time’, the alternative left is to be satisfied with various types of more or less mysterious and unanalyzable entities (noumenons, in Kantian terms), from “expressive tonality” to “emotive coloring”, to “empathy”. Lines No.
Co-and contextual description
Rhetorical-stylistic description and mitigation indicators
Psychological description and emotive indicators
+Immediacy
Inferrable emotive distances
1
D.’s greetings; invitation to sit down
3-4
P.’s comment on the setting; P.’s introduction of his problem (topic 1)
EMD (shield), enallage of person (1st p.p.)
6
D.’s question
Falling intonation
+em dist
8-9
P.’s answer. Sub-topic 1 (X rays)
Hesitation (difficulty with formulation)
+em dist
11
D.’s turn completion
Co-operative sequential format
-em dist
15-16
D.’s question
High register, patronizing tone
+em dist
18-19
P.’s answer; P. gives more detail to the subtopic 1; introduction of sub-topic 2 (CAT-scan)
21
D.’s request of confirmation
23-29
P.’s confirmation and clarification of sub-topic 2; attempt to introduce sub-topic 2 (CAT-scan)
Politeness ‘Imperfetto’
31
D.’s summary of P.’s problem
Use of technical lexicon
Transactional disqualification (evasion)
+em dist
33
P.’s reformulation of his problem
Use of non-technical lexicon; deictic terms, sentence adverbs
Counter-disqualification; +Immediacy
-em dist
-em dist
178
Mitigation
Lines No.
Co-and contextual description
Rhetorical-stylistic description and mitigation indicators
Psychological description and emotive indicators
35-36
D.’s question implying he ascribes responsibility to P.
PMD (bush): designation with colloquial anaphoric noun-phrase: style shift (decreased formality)
Heightened evaluation stance
38-39
P.’s justification and his aetiological hypothesis
Justification tone, captatio, PMD (bush): epistemic future
43-46
P.’s story of therapeutic failures
50-53
Quotation of a nonratified expert’s suggestion on a possibile cure: indirect request for D.’s opinion
Cautionary marker (“I don’t know if:” – “non so se:”). Suspensive intonation
61-63
D.’s indirect refusal to endorse the advice (by stating a consequence of a cancelled premise)
65
P.’s answer; statement; repetition of l. 8, l. 33, l. 44
67
D’s. request for more details
69-70
P.’s clarification, repetition
72
D.’s request for further information
74-75
P.’s answer; statement; repetition
77-82
D.’s request
84
P.’s assent
86-88
D.’s attempt at a diagnosis; request
90
P.’s assent
96-97
recommendation: D.’s question
Inferrable emotive distances +em dist
-em dist
+Immediacy
-em dist
Sarcasm; topical re-hierarchization (“more than anything” – “più che altro”), aversio a materia
Elusion
+em dist
Repetition; body-centered deixis, sentence adverb
+Immediacy
-em dist
Repetition
+Immediacy
-em dist
Repetition
+Immediacy
-em dist
Equivocation (saying something)
+em dist
IMD (hedge): indicative mood with a jussive function; falling intonation; PMD (bush) “a moment” – “un momento”; external IMD (hedge): grounder
Negation: external IMD (hedge): grounder of the request
Doctor-patient dialogue: a case study
Lines No.
Co-and contextual description
Rhetorical-stylistic description and mitigation indicators
Psychological description and emotive indicators
-Specificity deictic shield
99
P.’s affirmative answer
101-102
D.’s diagnosis. Hypothesis implying a criticism
PMD (bush): generic designation; IMD (hedge): modal adverb whose scope is on the neustic; EMD (shield): reference to another enunciative source
104
P.’s affirmative answer; addition of more detailed information
Repetition (complaint)
106-108
D.’s conclusion of his argumentation; side move of explanation and ending of the visit on the examination table
EMD (shield): reference to an anonymous and authoritative source, strenghtening modulation
110
P.’s confirmation
112-115
D.’s diagnostic hypothesis; D.’s diagnostic hypothesis; Lateral move with a request for confirmation
179
Inferrable emotive distances
+em dist
+em dist
+Evidentiality and professional assertiveness
+em dist
EMD (shield): reference to a decisive evidence (CATscan); PMD (bush): marked lexical choice (“demonstrate” – “dimostrava”); IMD (hedge: conditional mood (“it could be” – “potrebbe essere”)
117
P.’s confirmation; repetition of the diagnosis
119
D.’s question
121
P.’s answer
123
D.’s question (indirect criticism)
Left-dislocation; counterargumentation
126-129
P.’s justification; storytelling with temporal specification
Counter-argumentation and complaint; repetition
131
D.’s order
Absence of mitigation
+Volitionality
+em dist
133-134
P.’s report on another expert’s opinion
Indirect speech with the present tense in the verb of saying in the present tense; non technical register
+Immediacy
-em dist
136
Other-correction of D. .
Technical designation, irritated tone
Negative attitude
-em dist
Repetition (turn overlapping)
-em dist
+Evaluation
+em dist
+em dist
180
Mitigation
Lines No.
Co-and contextual description
Rhetorical-stylistic description and mitigation indicators
Psychological description and emotive indicators
138
P. repeats the nontechnical designation
P.’s polemically goes on with colloquial register
Definition of the relationship
140
D. accepts P.’s formulation; closing of the accommodation sequence
Adoption of colloquial register
-em dist
P. states his uncertainty
Suffering tone
Recalibration in the definition of the relationship (P. attenuates his ‘victory’ after D.’s ‘giving in to’ his definition)
144-146
D.’s therapeutic indications
IMD (hedge): (“probably” – “probabilmente”); introduction of an alternative possibility; EMD (shield): impersonal construction (“it’s necessary” – “bisogna”)
Disqualification in the alternative possibility (“or wait and see”, “o vedere un po’”)
146-148
D.’s diagnosis; warning about the uselessness of palliatives
Reinforcement of certainty
+Assertiveness; challenge tone
147-149
D. admits the possible effectiveness of the medicine recommended by the non-ratified expert, then withdraws his admission
142
Downgrading of the importance and urgency of the request; deferential; self-ascription of less competence
-em dist
-Volitionality recalibration, elements of negotiation
151-152
P.’s justification
154-155
D.’s recommendation; disqualification of the non-expert’s advice
PMD (bush): litotes (“not very useful” – “non tanto utili”)
Recalibration; negotiation elements
156-157
D.’s verdictive
Reinforcement (tag requesting agreement)
Alarmed tone
159-160
P.’s statement justification
Mitn (of the perlocutionary sequel ‘alarm’)
162
D.’s question
164
P.’s answer: statement
Uncertainty about the name of the medicine (-competence, -power)
Inferrable emotive distances
+em dist
Doctor-patient dialogue: a case study
Lines No.
Co-and contextual description
Rhetorical-stylistic description and mitigation indicators
166
D.’s reformulation (otherinitiated repair)
-Competence, -power
168-169
P. adds further details; lack of uptake of the repair within hints at another visit
175
D.’s conclusion and scolding
177-178
P.’s confirmation and justification
180-181
D.’s warning and scolding
183-185
P. reports doctors’ divergent opinions
Uncertainties about the name of the medicine; lack of deference; PMD (bush): vague designation
Psychological description and emotive indicators +Professional assertiveness
181
Inferrable emotive distances +em dist
Transactional disqualification; -Immediacy (-denotative specificity)
+em dist
+Evaluation (critical attitude)
+em dist
Reinforcement (tag)
Patronizing and irritated attitude
Topic-shift (shifting responsibility to experts)
Transactional disqualification (evasion)
Aggressive tone
Attitude aiming to make P. feel guilty and alarmed
Transactional disqualification (evasion)
187-189
D.’s behabitive and verdictive (he sides with an opinion on the best medicine); restatement of P.’s hypertension
191
P.’s commissive (he promises to follow the therapy)
193
D.’s question, request for details
195
P.’s answer
Reticence
197-198
D. gives an explanation confirming P.’s inadequacy; question about dosage
Polemic tone
+em dist
Negotiation markers (“but” – “ma”, “so” – “così”, “isn’t it?” – “no?”)
-em dist
200 202
204-206
P.’s answer D.’s question (attempt at understanding P.’s reasons) P.’s justification; commissive (promise to restart the therapy )
+em dist
182
Mitigation
Lines No.
Co-and contextual description
Rhetorical-stylistic description and mitigation indicators
Psychological description and emotive indicators
208-209
D. offers alternative drugs; he accepts P.’s justification
EMD (shield): 1st person plural; Echoic repetition
Increase of solidarity markers
-em dist
211
P. refuses alternatives; he explains the reasons of the refusal
Self-disqualification (saying something)
+em dist
217
D. invites P. to start the therapy
219-220
P. closes the digression. P. introduces the initial topic again
P. weakens his commitment to the behavior promised
Evasion
+em dist
222-226
D.’s advice (coconstruction of the agreement on the diagnosis and therapy)
IMD (hedge): indirect speech act; external IMD (hedge): grounder of the advice; objectivization (“it is necessary”, – “bisogna”)
Co-operative attitude
-em dist
Convergent sequence: confirmation (“precisely” – “esatto”)
+Solidarity, +epistemic certainty
-em dist
Convergent sequence (mutual confirmation)
+Solidarity, co-operative climate
-em dist
+Immediacy
-em dist
228 230-232
P.’s confirmation D.’s clarification of the diagnosis; request for confirmation
234-235
P.’s confirmation; P. reports a symptom which confirms the diagnosis
237
D. completes the description of the symptom
239
P. confirms D.’s description
241-243
D.’s completion of P.’s turn; confirmation of the diagnosis; therapeutic instructions
245
250
P.’s acceptance D. suggests a visit through the public health system P.’s objection
253
D.’s counter-objection
255-256
P. requests a fee-paying visit
247-248
Body-centered deixis (“it goes right down to here” – “fin qui”) Oscillations between subjective (“I think” –“io credo”) and objective (“the best thing is” – “la cosa migliore è”) modalizations
Disheartened tone Colloquial register ( cleft sentence)
Inferrable emotive distances
-em dist
Doctor-patient dialogue: a case study
Lines No.
Co-and contextual description
Rhetorical-stylistic description and mitigation indicators IMD (hedge): indirect advice (“you have to decide” – “infatti lei veda”); external mitigation (grounder)
263-264
D. gives the name of an expert
270
P. accepts the advice and its justification
Convergent sequence
272
D. states his willingness (commissive)
Mode vécu: sentence adverb (“really” – “proprio”); universal quantifier (“everything” – “tutto”)
274
P. states again that he is ready to fix a fee-paying visit
277
D.’s question; topic shift
279
P.’s answer; P. re-states that he accepts the advice
282
D.’s indication
284-287
P. starts again to report his clinical ordeals
293-297
D.’s indications (address and hours); hypothesis on a visit in a short while (commissive)
299
P.’s repetition; request for further information
305
D.’s further information.
307
P. repeats D.’s indication
318 320
D. adds further information; reccomendation P.’s commissive
Mode vécu: parenthetical eclamative utterance (“never mind” – “pazienza!”) Truncation of a possible digression
Psychological description and emotive indicators
+Volitionality
183
Inferrable emotive distances
-em dist
+Immediacy
+em dist
IMD (hedge): downgrading of the commissive
Echoic utterances
Patronizing tone
Co-operative climate; relational definition: complementary roles
-em dist
184
Mitigation
Lines No.
Co-and contextual description
Rhetorical-stylistic description and mitigation indicators
Psychological description and emotive indicators
322
D. tries to provide more details
Manifestation of cooperative intentions
Emotive indicator+quantity
324
P. asks D. to add more detailed information
326-327
Interior monologue; reccomendation about the specialist
329-334
P. restarts his story about his disappointing therapeutic experiences
336-337
D. gives the specialist’s phone number
339-340
P.’s question
IMD (hedge): “maybe” – “forse”, “also” – “anche”, “shouldn’t I?” – “no?”
Affiliation request
342-343
D.’s answer; authorization to go on his behalf
EMD (shield), 1st p.s. instead of 3rd p.p. (enallage)
lapsus?
349
P. starts a negative sentence
Argument in favor of a thesis
Inferrable emotive distances -em dist
IMD (hedge): indirect speech act (statement with a request for agreement)
-em dist
Textual mitigation: topical shield of lateralization (“and what’s more” – “oltre a tutto”); 351-355
359-362
D.’s argumentation in favor of a fee-paying visit
D. presents diagnosis and therapy just as merely hypothetical ones; explanations about therapy; warning; new diagnostic formulation
hypothetical sentence with a sentence adverb (“paradoxically” – “paradossalmente”; PMD (bush), litotes (“this can’t be excluded” – “non è esclusa la cosa”) Eventualization; PMD (bush): verdictive litotes, designation of the pathology using a non-technical register (diminutive suffix) (“it’s only a little bit” – “è solo un p pochino”)
-Immediacy
+em dist
-em dist
Doctor-patient dialogue: a case study
Lines No.
Co-and contextual description
Rhetorical-stylistic description and mitigation indicators
364
P.’s minimizing designation
PMD (BUSH): bush
366-369
D. repeats P.’s designation; D. explains the possible evolution of the disease; warning
Convergent sequence IMD (hedge): indirect speech act
371-372 374
376
378
380-381 383 385
P. confirms; he restates his aetiological hypothesis D.’s assent P.’s final acceptance of the advice; he definitively abandons the idea of following the advice of the non-ratified expert D. restates the prohibition adding new grounders for it P.’s echoic-repetition; leave-taking greeting
185
Psychological description and emotive indicators
Inferrable emotive distances
Co-operative climate
-em dist
IMD (hedge): epistemic future Tone of information receipt Inclusive 1st p.p.; resigned tone (“okay”, “va be’”)
-em dist
Inclusive 1st p.p. of solidarity
-em dist
1st p.p.; deferential allocution
Co-operative climate
-em dist
D.’s leave-taking formula P. repeats the leavetaking formula
5.5. THE ARGUMENTATIVE LAYER It can be claimed that at the core of the script ‘medical visit’ lies the retroactive meaning assignment to a story made by the other party. The visit, in such as version, is basically seen as a problem-solving process: starting from the clinical data and from P.’s account, D. formulates a diagnosis, by drawing on his cognitive categories. To put it in other words, D. identifies (reformulates) X, the event or the constellation of symptoms P. is the bearer of, as Y, that is, as an event or marked constellation identified and recognizable by medical knowledge, token of a known and classified type. By means of this interpretative act of selective abduction (Magnani and Ramoni, 1988: 65), P.’s event becomes D.’s event (Lacoste, 1981), moving from one speaker’s territory to the other’s (Kamio, 1994; 1995). Even if we leave aside the emotive aspects, this version of facts has the major drawback of blurring the argumentative status of this type of encounter, linked to the speakers’ interactional goals (Lacoste, 1981: 170; Have, 1995a). And we must note that both speakers, for different reasons – usually, politeness and deference to the role on the patients’ part; caution (self-defense) and tact (to protect the patient) on the doctors’ part – opt for different strategies.
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In the various phases of the encounter under examination, the all-pervasive negotiation taking place does not regard only meaning assignment – ascribing a token, the specific ailment, to a type, the classified and denominated illness – but also, crucially, the building of consensus. The latter, as we will see, is delayed by the lack of agreement in defining the relationship because P., precisely at an interpersonal level, does not provide the signals expected by D., and D. does not supply the signals expected by P. The building of consensus regards, retroactively, what happened, that is, P.’s medical history, his case history; indexically, in the “here and now” of the visit, it concerns the definition of P.’s problem, i.e. the diagnosis; proactively, it concerns what needs to be done, i.e. the treatment. My point is that this building of consensus regards, beyond the decisionmaking process in cognitive and operational terms, also the two protagonists’ ways of interpreting their roles. This process affects interactional layers that can be described in cognitive, pragmatic and social terms, but also affects the interaction in its emotive layers. The argumentative status of the dialogue, which surfaces particularly clearly in only a few phases, actually pervades the entire encounter. In the case history and diagnosis phase, the two interlocutors struggle to impose their definition of the facts and the relationship, and the atmosphere is antagonistic rather than cooperative. We witness not so much the building of agreement but rather the attenuation of disagreement.
5.6. THE ILLOCUTIONARY LAYER: OVERALL ILLOCUTIONARY DESCRIPTION OF THE PHASES Is a well-recognized fact that the type of illocutions enacted by the interlocutors is strictly related to the construction of their roles and to the negotiation of their asymmetry due both to the implicit meanings and the effects triggered by illocutions per se. We know for instance that an exercitive illocutionary act, in order to be successful, expects the preparatory felicity conditions – Austin’s (1962) A conditions – to be met with regard to some form of power or knowledge of the speaker. On the contrary, behabitive illocutionary acts, which express a feeling, can be carried out by anyone, even by speakers who have no power (Sbisà, 1989). Let us now examine the phases listed in the previous paragraph from the viewpoint of their overall illocutionary profile, asking ourselves: which illocutionary acts dominate in each phase, on both D.’s and P.’s part? In the scheme which follows I mention: the main sequential patterns, that is to say, the adjacency pairs which recur in the various phases, D.’s main illocutionary acts and P.’s main illocutionary acts.
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Phase 1, opening: Behabitive (D.: greeting, P.: complaint). Phase 2, case history: Main sequential pattern: question-answer (ll. 6-8, 15-18, 21-23). P.’s main illocutions: constative/representative, i.e. description, summary, narration of events, guesswork; request for authorization. D.’s main illocutions: constative: questions; and exercitive: formulation of the professional upshot (l. 31); prohibition (l. 61). Phase 3, diagnosis: Main sequential pattern: question-answer; accommodation sequence: formulation, other-repair (ll. 133-140). D.’s main illocutions: verdictive (ll. 86-87, 101, 112-114, 144); exercitive (“sit down”). P.’s main illocutions: representative-expositive (story-telling). Phase 4, lateral sequence: Main sequential pattern: constative/minimization. D.’s main illocutions: verdictive/exercitive (evaluation; order). P.’s main illocutions: representative/commissive (promise to take Tenoretic). Phase 5, treatment: Main sequential pattern: proposal/refusal/acceptance; request for confirmation/prohibition. D.’s main illocutions: exercitive/representative (reasons, explanations); presumptions. P.’s main illocutions: exercitive (refusal)/representative (questions). From this scheme we can draw the following conclusions about the predominance of an illocutionary macro-type in the speech acts of the two interlocutors: D. utters illocutions of a mainly exercitive/verdictive type; P. utters illocutions of a mainly representative/behabitive type. This result is goes toward confirming the expected roles, given the centrality of the dimensions of power and of knowledge in the exercitive/verdictive illocutions, and the centrality of the dimension of knowledge, on the one hand, and of the expression of the inner emotional states, on the other, in the representative/behabitive illocutions. In the Searlian model of speech acts, the dimension of knowledge corresponds to a preparatory felicity condition, and the dimension of the expression of inner states corresponds to an essential condition. The illocutionary macro-type prevalent in P.’s discourse, the representative one, is exemplified by speech acts where ‘knowledge’ is such with regard both to the account of the events and to the representation of the state of things, which are “close to the speaker” (Kamio,
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1994), as they regard P.’s direct experience. We are therefore dealing with a self-centered type of knowledge which does not presuppose further competences or powers and which can be expressed by direct and non-modulated acts. At this level of analysis we can therefore claim that the two interlocutors, in their illocutionary acts, give an interpretation of their mutual roles which shapes and confirms the asymmetric status of the encounter. Having said this, the picture is far from complete. In fact, to begin with, in each of the different phases, as we have seen while examining the outcome of each one, there is a triggering of a further, complex, interactional dynamics which cannot be reduced to illocutionary phenomena, but which is intertwined with these. Secondly, in each phase, a phenomenon which is particularly important for our aims comes to be known: if we keep the description still in terms of illocutionary acts but integrate it with other categories, we can confirm the recurrence of a modulation of both P.’s and D.’s illocutionary acts in a behabitive sense. Two general expressive-stylistic tonalities, comparable to musical keys 5 which run through the whole dialogue prevail here: we might define this general tonality as “of complaint” in P.’s case, and “of criticism” in D.’s case, as I have already shown for some of the turns previously discussed. D.’s tone of criticism surfaces for instance in the previously analyzed exchange of lines 119-123, which follows P.’s stating his age, in particular in D.’s utterance: “and you’ve never been to an orthopedist’s?”; or in the warning of lines 146-148, modulated in a challenging tone: “you can even do all the therapies you want but the slipped disc [...] remains, eh?”; or again, at lines 187-189, when D. repeats that P.’s blood pressure is high, adding the statement of P.’s duty, which the emphasis, the aggressive tone and the reinforcement obtained through the final tag – a marker requesting for agreement – modulate in annoyed intimidation: “now however your blood pressure is 180 over 105. Your blood pressure must be lower mustn’t it?”. 5
The concept of key can be found in Hymes’s (1974) model of communication, condensed in the very famous acronym SPEAKING, with reference to prosodic or non-verbal traits which intertwine with linguistic production. In Hymes (1972: 62) this is defined as the “tone, manner or spirit in which a thing is done”. Hymes compares it to the grammatical category of modality and says that it can become significant in interactional analysis when placed in open contrast to the content of an act or where a new key is used in an unexpected way, when an utterance is, indeed, rekeyed. Ochs and Schieffelin (1989) write about affect keys, referring to signals given by the interlocutor on the affect frame triggered in the case of affect specifiers, or in reference to the intensification of the same in the case of affect intensifiers. According to the authors, affect keys can operate: a) on a referent, b) on a proposition, c) on a sequence of propositions. Moreover, compared to the subject they modify, they can occupy three positions: antecedent, concurrent and subsequent. My use of the term and of the concept of key, taken directly from musical lexis, is wider than that of Ochs and Schieffelin because it refers to an overall expressive tonality which runs through the whole encounter. The concept I employ might roughly correspond to that type of affect key identified by Ochs and Schieffelin which refers to a sequence of proposition. As for the problem posed by Ochs and Schieffelin of the position of the key, this presupposes a separation between affect keys and propositional or otherwise cognitive keys which my current work precisely aims to remove.
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5.7. MITIGATION AND INSTITUTIONAL POLITENESS IN TR1 Institutional politeness – should we decide to maintain this somewhat vague label – for lay participants, within their personal style and their minor or major experience of that type of interaction, will be revealed in various degrees of adherence to a deferential style (use of deferential allocutions, phatic speech, behabitive speech acts). Institutional politeness, however, is not only a matter of style. It can be seen as the result of triggering a sector of metapragmatic competence which regards stylistic choices, but above all the foundation itself of the special conversational pact established with the doctor. From the patient’s point of view these basic assumptions are the following: a) the interlocutor is more competent; b) the interlocutor’s conversational moves are relevant. Patients’ (and doctors’) conversational behavior is not understandable if we disregard these two basic assumptions, which allow the Gricean cooperative principle, or a version of it, to work even if the doctor’s agenda is invisible and inaudible (Heath, 1992) in a given encounter. Starting from her/his (extralinguistic) assumption of competence and (linguistic) assumption of relevance of what the other person says and does, the patient’s institutional politeness will precisely be shown in her/his not opposing the doctor’s hidden agenda and in facilitating its unfolding, for instance, by accepting brusque topic shifts or providing brief yet thorough answers to the questions s/he may be asked. If we assume that the co-production of meaning is layered, with layers overlapping with one another with no sharp boundaries, we can still restrict our analysis and deal with those cases of mitigation which concern above all social and institutional dimensions, that is, the construction of face and role. As I have already said, neither separately nor together do these two dimensions entirely cover the complexity of communication in general and in doctor-patient communication in particular. However, they are in the foreground in the manifestations of ‘ritual’ mitigation, i.e. formulaic, phatic mitigation and routine formulas of politeness, which I have distinguished from ‘strategic’ mitigation (cf. Chapter 2), which works for the speaker’s various aims. In TR1, D. does not indulge in forms of ritual mitigation; on the contrary, we can say that he uses it only where absolutely indispensable. Moreover, in this dialogue, D.’s rare ritual mitigation blends into strategic mitigation because the weakening of invasive acts typically brought about by justifications or grounders (Blum-Kulka et al.’s (1989) external mitigation), responds not only (perhaps more) to reasons of politeness but to practical reasons, in particular that of explaining to the patient what the doctor has to do and what the patient has to do. An example of this is found at lines 77-82:
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ll. 77-82
lie down on the examination table for a moment ((lit. you lie down a moment on the bed+DIM)) [...] because there’s something I want to have a look at
This is a request to lie down that D. makes to P., before the visit itself. As I have shown in the multidimensional analysis of Section 5.4., the request is made by using a type of illocutionary mitigation achieved by operating on the syntactic mood of the utterance: the utterance can be described, if we are willing to use a Searlean category by now obsolete in pragmatics, as an indirect speech act. Form and function are not co-oriented, as the indicative mood has the jussive function of a command: the action which the doctor expects from the other person is stated rather than prescribed, and consistently with this choice, the statement is accompanied by a falling affirmative intonation contour. Two types of mitigation, internal and external, give the act its physiognomy: the internal one is given by the passe-partout mitigator “a moment/a little” (cf. 6.6.1.; 6.6.1.2.); the external one consists in adding an explanation – a grounder – to the request, attenuated by the imperfetto of politeness, a modal use of this past tense widely attested in Italian (cf. Bazzanella, 1990). Also at lines 87-99, D. backs up his nonlinguistic therapeutic actions – the visit itself – with explanations which attenuate their invasiveness and also make it easier for him to carry out the institutional task expected in that phase: ll. 87-99
D. no well you have to keep your trousers on+because* P. +right. yes. yes* D. I need to do something which otherwise:, P. right. D. now keep your leg limp, okay?- does it hurt here at the back if I do +this:?* P. yes--+xxx*
the exercitive/directive speech act of l. 87 which takes shape in the direct and brusque order (“you have to keep your trousers on”), is ‘externally’ mitigated by the justification “because I need to do something”. This is a grounder which is then reinforced by an elliptical allusion to the hypothetical alternative “otherwise”, pronounced with a suspensive intonation. In D.’s next turn the directive is reinforced by the recommendation given in the tag closing the turn. As far as P. is concerned, I have already observed the absence at the opening of the encounter of the expected “acknowledgement of greeting” to D.’s greeting and its replacement with a dispreferred marked choice, a comment on the interactional setting: “we’re new around here”. The style of this comment is not only non-deferential but is also slightly paternalistic
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such that D. might interpret it as irreverent and anyway deviating from the routine patterns of institutional politeness. P. will not conform to a deferential style in the rest of the dialogue either. We do not know if this is intentional or not, maybe caused by his inadequate metapragmatic competence. Judging by D.’s communicative behavior, he would seem to have opted for the first interpretation, attributing intentionality to P.’s non-deferential behavior, reading this not as a clue but as a signal. After all, it is a well-known interactional norm that unexpected behavior tends to be interpreted as intentional. During the whole dialogue, P.’s adherence to institutional politeness towards the professional is rare, to say the least. For instance, he utters the deferential allocution “doctor” only twice: once when taking his leave (l. 381) and once at line 151, at the crucial moment of the measurement of his blood pressure when, in the brief stretch of reported speech concerning the possibility of trying out the medicine suggested to him, he refers to his interlocutor as “doctor”. Apart from these two cases, P.’s lack of compliance with a deferential style which D. instead presumably expected, also on behalf of the professional category in general, can be observed also at lines 123-131: ll. 123-131
D. and. you’ve never been to an orthopedist’s? P. well. I went to one erm - once but he didn’t know the first time before I had all of these X-rays taken you know? and he goes to me he says that - he wants to see the X-rays and then I never went back:= D. = sit down.
In this excerpt P. designates the expert in question as “one” who “didn’t know”: no wonder if he “never went back”. D.’s reply, without pausing between the turns, is meaningful. Perhaps to put P. back in his place, D. uses a bold, non-mitigated directive, i.e. an order in an imperative mood with falling intonation: “sit down.” Once more devoid of any trace of deferential and ‘impolite’ trait is P.’s designation of the expert introduced at lines 168-169: ll. 168-169
P. Tenor tenore: Tenoretic that the doctor here who got me to do these X-rays gave me.
In this case too the doctor’s irritated reaction is very quick: at the first chance, three lines later, he chips in to stress P.’s bad behavior: l. 175
D. and then you stopped taking it.
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And also in this case the evaluating attitude, the criticism veiled with sarcasm, does not produce an inhibitory effect on P. who, of the two possible illocutionary forces of the utterance – report of an action or scolding – activates the first. As a matter of fact, instead of justifying himself, he calmly repeats “and then I stopped taking it”, putting forward (sensible) reasons for his behavior, i.e. the suspension of the anti-hypertension medicine. D. will again try to reprimand P. for this suspension re-reading it as inconsiderate behavior: “because you couldn’t be bothered to take it anymore”. We can gather from these observations that D. has certain expectations regarding the interlocutor’s (appropriate) behavior, which P. does not meet, and vice-versa: the idea that the two participants have of appropriateness, of what is fitting in the “medical visit” type of activity, is not shared. We can presume that D.’s expectations regard, on the one hand, in a positive sense, manifestations of respect for his role and, on the other hand, in a negative sense, manifestations of sensitiveness to prohibitions or inhibitory moves made by him. As we have seen, P. refrains from both the former and the latter. This supposition on D.’s expectations might be corroborated by the fact that the same doctor will behave in a much more understanding and tolerant way in a dialogue with an elderly female patient who shows a scrupulously deferential style. For instance, she utters the allocution “doctor” twenty-three times during the visit.
5.8. MICRO-SEQUENCES OF (NON)-ATTUNEMENT 5.8.1. Topical and stylistic non-attunement In the TR1 there is only one example of formulation, which I have indicated as a moment of possible topical attunement (cf. 4.1.1.; Caffi, 2002) and which is about the content conveyed by the interlocutor. I have already examined this formulation in Chapter 3.3.1. to give an example of a case of professional formulation. In this paragraph I examine how this works inside a sequence, integrating a description based on conversational categories with a description based on categories of psychological provenance (cf. Chapter 4). The sequence in question is to be found at line 31, in the turn where D., with a formulation of the professional upshot (Hak and de Boer, 1996: 96; Thomas, 1989), picks up again and summarizes, translating it into medical language, the information given by P. up till then, which is also drawn from clinical sources (the X-rays). As we have already noted in the overall description of the dialogue, D. simultaneously makes a truncation (Neustein, 1989: 62) not of P.’s story but rather of P.’s attempt to introduce a new topic. This attempt not only is not ratified, but is totally ignored. In fact, starting his turn, D. uses “right, well”, to indicate a fresh start and so implicitly brings the possibility of digressing to an end. From a psychological
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viewpoint, this is a transactional disqualification in Sluzki et al.’s (1967) sense. More precisely it is an ‘evasion’ (cf. 4.8.1.) from which emotive distance is inferrable. In the adjacent turn (l. 33) P. offers up an alternative formulation, “here it realx it really: hurts me”. This is a micro-sequence of failed attunement which can be further analyzed as follows: Sequence ll. 23-33 x 1) 2) 3) 4)
x
structural-topical description of the sequence: P.’s attempt to propose topic X (ll. 23-24); D. does not ratify X as a topic (a truncation, in Neustein’s 1989 terms) (l. 31); D. formulates the professional upshot (l. 31) P. ignores this formulation and reformulates the problem according to his point of view (l. 33). relational description of the sequence (Sluzki et al., 1967):
In the doctor’s turn (l. 31), an evasion, more specifically a variant of topical disqualification and a sub-type of Sluzki et al.’s (1967) transactional disqualification, is carried out. The two parameters typically affected in evasions, i.e. topical discontinuity and absence of signs of uptake (Sluzki et al., 1967; cf. 4.8.), are both involved in this case. Indeed, D. does not bring about a brusque topic change but rather a silent rejection of the possibility of introducing a topic put forward by P. in the previous turn. This amounts to metacommunicating: “you don’t have the right to introduce topics; I will introduce them”; and also: “I decide what we will talk about”. In this way, D. asserts an asymmetry of conversational (topical) powers regarding what can or cannot be promoted to the role of topic (cf. Bublitz, 1988). In the following turn (l. 33), P. redefines his problem and implicitly gives up on reproposing the topic not ratified as such. x
stylistic description of the sequence:
P.’s problem “this leg is really hurting me”, (l. 3), “it always hurts me here” (l. 8), is reformulated by D. in a technical register, with a formulation of the professional upshot (Hak and de Boer, 1996: 96). Yet, due both to his being worldly-wise and his knowledge of the cotext and of what Bally (1970 [1909]; cf. 4.1.) would have called “effects d’évocation”, i.e. starting from the register adopted until that moment, D. knows that P. is not familiar with this register. In this way, at the level of defining the relationship, D. affirms an asymmetry in the interlocutors’ knowledge and brings about a distancing effect.
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In the turn of D.’s (l. 31) under examination, compared to the style introduced by the two partners (ll. 1-28), a sudden stylistic shift takes place: it is a sudden shift from a colloquial register to a technical register which causes an increase of emotive distance (Caffi and Janney, 1994b). D. brings about a stylistic disqualification which can be summarized as: “I decide how to speak”. In the next turn (l. 33), P. ignores D.’s formulation and reproposes his definition of the problem, and he does so in a non-technical register and in a paradigmatic affective mode given by the use of body-centered deixis (“here it realxxx it really: hurts me”). The result of these two simultaneous disqualifications triggered by the doctor in one single turn can be described in terms of Haley’s (1959) model as a negation of the “you” (second person singular) component of the message. The doctor’s message brings about a “non-you”: from a thematic viewpoint, D. not only does not ratify a possible topic, but he completely ignores the attempt to introduce it. It is as if D. said not only “I decide what to talk about, and put limitations on your right to speak”, but also, from a stylistic viewpoint, “I decide how to speak”. The overall result of this is a negation of the other person: “I am not speaking to you”. P.’s reaction to these disqualifications is in a way equally disqualifying: his reaction is a counter-disqualification, a move which, as we have seen in 4.8.2., is one of those expected by Sluzki et al. (1967) as a possible reply to a disqualification. In Hak and de Boer’s (1996) proposal, the second preferred member following a technical formulation is a simple confirmation. Instead, in this case, without supplying any signal of confirmation or acceptance of the expert’s technical definition, P. confirms his definition of the problem. This is a definition which is analogous in terms of content and form to the one already provided in the opening (l. 3, ll. 8-9): not in the least bit affected by the professional clinical summary which D. has just provided, P. reproposes his problem in his own way, with the immediacy of pure deixis (Bühler’s 1934 deixis ad oculos). D.’s formulation is practically ignored by P., who carries on along his own lines. It is as if P. redefined in his turn both the thematic and the stylistic competence, thus metacommunicating: “I’m speaking about my problem, in my way”. To use Kamio’s (1994; 1995) theory of territory of information, P. brings the formulation of the problem back into his own territory and – as this is an experience of which he surely has greater competence, namely the pain in a part of his body – he can put forward this experience by means of assertions in direct form, which are enhanced by his repeated (ll. 65, 69, 74, 117) clarifications in painful lamentation (l. 65): “it’s right here: it hurts me right here”. In conclusion, due to the density of disqualifying micro-messages, D.’s formulation fails as an attempt at thematic attunement, in the sense that both parties stick to their parallel positions, and so D.’s definition of the problem is not integrated with P.’s one. The formulation also fails as an attempt at relational distancing, i.e. at putting P. back in his place, in the sense that, judging by P.’s reaction, it has no inhibitory effectiveness (Bliesener and Siegrist, 1981: 186) at all. The formulation fails as an attempt at re-establishing the complementarity of the
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interlocutors’ communicative roles: D.’s as the one who decides what to speak about and how, and P.’s as the one who accepts these prerogatives and implicitly recognizes D. as being endowed with powers (conversational and others). In short, this sequence is therefore one of non-attunement. A sub-topic is grafted onto this sequence: D. asks about the circumstances which caused the pathology “but how did you manage to do this thing to yourself”. The question is formulated with a return to a more colloquial style and with the clear intention of laying responsibility on P. This can be deduced from D.’s using the verb “to do” twice compared with the axiologically neutral statement “you have had a muscular tear” of line 31. Beyond the possible abductive interpretations which – as one should not fail to stress again – are interesting only if they can be anchored to some trace on the surface of the text, from the analysis of this micro-fragment, we clearly see the need to integrate descriptions from various viewpoints, both structural and stylistic, so as to reconstruct, at least in part, the complexity of the communicative exchange in the diverse parameters and diverse layers of meaning production simultaneously involved. 5.8.2. Micro-sequences of stylistic attunement I will now examine two fragments illustrating micro-sequences of stylistic attunement. The first, already mentioned in Section 5.2.2. with regard to the closures of the case-history phase, is the following: ll. 133-140
P. ah: he said that:: the cartilage was - was worn out in the kneecap, D. IN THE VERTEBRA! ((irritated tone)) P. huh! - a bit of that isn’t it? D. it’s that.
This is a quadripartite sequence which can well be described as a language negotiation sequence in Auer’s (1984) terms 6 where the more powerful speaker, after making a correction (IN THE VERTEBRA!) of P.’s formulation (“the cartilage was worn out in the kneecap,”) 6
In a field of sociolinguistic research devoted above all to code switching, Auer (1984: 21) defines a language negotiation sequence as that which begins with a disagreement among two or more participants “about which language to use for interaction and ends as soon as one of them ‘gives in’ to the other preferred language”, Giles’s accommodation theory will integrate the sociolinguistic perspective with a psycholinguistic one, in which cases of speech convergence are explained essentially by a speaker’s desire to gain approval from the interlocutors and those of divergence by her/his desire to differentiate her/himself from them (Thakerar et al., 1982: 205). Interesting proposals of a coding system which renders accommodation theory more operatively suitable by describing its different strategies are put forward in Jones et al. (1999).
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accepts, in fourth slot, the non-technical definition of the less competent speaker (“it’s that.”). It is as if the doctor capitulates in the face of the stubbornness, veiled with aggression (which is revealed also by the use of the end-tag) of the patient who, despite having been corrected repeats, almost defying the technical codes, “it’s a bit of that isn’t it?”. If, from D.’s viewpoint, the clumsy non-technical formulation with which the patient recounts the diagnosis of another doctor might sound rude, perhaps even threatening to the reputation of the experts in general, the semantically vaguer but at least not ridiculous paraphrase provided by the patient sounds like a possible personal threat. An open conflict can arise from this. So, this is why the doctor cuts off this possibility by accepting, even repeating, P.’s imprecise and impatient formulation. It is a mere echo-reply which has no content-value but seems to serve essentially at a relational level, metacommunicating something like “alright, okay, calm down”. At an interpersonal level the relationship is monitored in the direction of greater symmetry, given that even the less competent interlocutor is implicitly authorized to produce a contribution to the diagnosis and especially to produce it in his way. At the same time, P.’s lack of deference and D.’s aggressiveness produce not particularly well-concealed conflict zones on the surface of the dialogue. This sequence represents a solution, albeit temporary, to the open conflict: one party gives in to the pressurizing of the other, attuning himself to his wavelength, represented in this case by the stylistic register. The second example has already been discussed in Chapter 3 to illustrate, as well as the mitigation functioning, also the following thesis: to separate a sequential description from a stylistic description produces an inadequate and somehow misleading picture. The example is the following: ll. 361-366
D. yours isn’t a real slipped disc. ((lit. real and true (FIG) )) it’s only a li little+DIM bit: P. just a touch+DIM D. just a touch+DIM
This tripartite sequence can be described, as already noted, in terms of accommodation theory (Giles and Coupland, 1991) because here too the more powerful interlocutor adapts her/his register to that of the other party. But the accommodation implied by this fragment, as I have already maintained, goes beyond the sociolinguistic layer established by the choice of register, investing emotive layers too. P. completes D.’s turn on the latter’s attempt at an attenuated formulation of the diagnosis (first the litotes, then a marker of uncertainty) through the expression “just a touch”, which is both colloquial and also mitigated by means of a bush, the diminutive suffix. The partners’ sharing of a minimizing attitude expressed by an informal
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and mitigated style reshapes their relationship on more equal and friendly terms. This sequence produces temporary empathic attunement.
5.9. DISTRIBUTION OF MITIGATORS Some questions remain to be answered. First of all: which of the two interlocutors uses mitigation more often? It is both easy and difficult to answer this question: considering D.’s greater culture, it is easy (and the circularity of the reply can escape no-one) to predict that it is D. who is in charge and who uses a wider range of linguistic and stylistic means, among which those of attenuating modulation. This prediction turns out to be true, as expected. Having said this, it is difficult to establish correlations, on the one hand, in a sociolinguistic perspective, between mitigation and other fixed external factors other than the interlocutors’ professional roles (age, sex, geographic origin, etc.), and on the other hand, in the pragmatic perspective which is adopted herein, between mitigation and other discourse-internal factors. P. does not mitigate his utterances; rather, he reinforces them. Besides being characterized by the previously noted basic expressive tonality, or affect key of complaint, his utterances, in a strictly affective mode (Bally’s mode vécu; cf. 2.2.1.), often have the immediacy of substandard speech which readily uses direct speech as a strategy both of syntactic simplification and for the introduction of different opinions (ll. 53-54 “she said listen I had this injection”). When P. mitigates, saying in an excusing tone, “My blood-pressure I’ve got fairly high blood pressure” (l. 159), he does so by implementing a ‘natural’ (cf. 2.3.1.) mitigation of the perlocutionary purpose/outcome ‘alarm’ produced by D.’s assessment, a verdictive speech act, in the neighboring turn “your blood pressure’s high isn’t it?”. In this case we have a sort of role-reversal, given that it is P. who tries to soothe D., providing a topic which minimizes the problem, redepicting it as a habitual state. If then D. is the one who mitigates, the next questions are: are there significant correlations between types of mitigation and salient moments within the different phases of the encounter? Are there correlations between the distribution of the mitigators and the type of interactional aim pursued? Where is D.’s mitigation concentrated? In what phase of the encounter and in which acts are the mitigators more frequent? What type of mitigation is it? In order to answer these questions, we need to go over the analysis proposed in Section 5.3. once more, and observe the passages where the mitigators tend to be concentrated. Some of these, and the phases where they can be found, as well as being indicated in the analytical table, have also been analyzed in the previous paragraphs: here I will only briefly dwell on those passages where there is a concentration or even an accumulation of mitigating devices. It can easily be seen from the table of pp. 177-185 that the phases where the mitigating
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operations are the most frequent – and thus where column two is the most frequently used – are the diagnosis phase at lines 101-115 and the treatment phase at lines 351-378. Before examining the above-mentioned phases and excluding, because of their brevity, the two moments of opening and closure of the dialogue – and after all, the former has already been considered – phase 2, the case-history (ll. 3-61), deserves a quick comment. In this phase, apart from the two symmetric and consecutive cases of transactional disqualification of lines 31-35 (cf. 5.8.1.), it is at line 61, with the already noted sarcastic modulation by D., “these have even been taken off the market”, that we have the moment of greatest inferrable distancing which is at the same time cognitive and emotive: D. distances himself from the propositional and illocutionary subject “proposal to follow an alternative therapy”, and he does so in an emotively marked way with evaluation indicators (cf. Chapter 4). In doing so, D. also distances himself from the speaker of the proposal itself. In phase 3, (ll. 61-154), the occurrences of mitigation are concentrated in particular at lines 101-112, where the moment of diagnosis is weakened. In phase 5, that of the indication of treatments (ll. 219-380), instances of mitigation become more frequent and take the shape of objectivization shields (cf. 3.3.4.), that is to say, the ‘ego’ as the source of the utterance is cancelled and is replaced by impersonal constructions (ll. 222223 “it is necessary to hear an orthopedist”) or a third person. The use of mitigating means reaches its peak at lines 352-355: ll. 352-355
D. and what’s more he works at the xxx [name of hospital] in xxx [place name] so if it was necessary to do I don’t know paradoxically to operate [... ...] this can’t can’t +can’t* be excluded
One can make out in the background is an assertive evaluation which might be qualified as probable: “perhaps an operation will be necessary”. This evaluation is mitigated by an accumulation of lexical and syntactic means which tend to make it seem more distant: the prognosis is reduced to a mere hypothesis. In addition, the key-word “operate”, which triggers off the various instances of mitigation, is iconically more distant, deferred in the turn. The hypothesis of an operation is given almost incidentally, almost picked out at random from a vast range of possibilities. To use the categories presented in 3.4., it is a topical lateralization shield obtained by inserting “and what’s more”. An eventuality shield, given by the hypothetical construction, is grafted onto this topical shield. In this passage, mitigation is brought about by syntactic means, i.e. the subjunctive of the hypothetical construction and the impersonal construction; by lexical means, i.e. the speech marker “I don’t know”, which functions in this case as an exemplification marker, similar to “let’s suppose that”, “for instance”; and the evaluation adverb “paradoxically”. This can be
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paraphrased with a metacommunicative gloss such as “let’s assume”, “supposing”, qualifying the utterance in its totality. In fact, this is an utterance adverb which qualifies the possible world, a qualification which in its turn reacts with the propositional content: the authorized implicature is something like “I am not convinced that an operation is necessary”. The adverb, stylistically incongruous with the context and the co-text, marks a definite rising of register and can be interpreted as an emotive involvement cue (Arndt and Janney, 1987), although indexing detachment: indeed, the moment is a delicate one, in which D. must start to pass on a piece of unpleasant information and its predictable alarming perlocutionary effects. This example illustrates the simultaneous involvement and intertwining of heterogeneous interactional parameters: topical salience, epistemic certainty, institutional knowledge/power, formality (high register, syntactic complexity) and emotive involvement. What can we conclude from these observations? First of all, it is manifest that the instances of mitigation in phase 3, that of the diagnosis, and those of phase 5, that of the treatment, are aimed respectively at self-defense and at protecting the other party. Fraser’s distinction (1980) between self-serving mitigation and altruistic mitigation is a good starting point. Considering that it is impossible to make a clear-cut distinction between the two, because in interaction, saving one’s own face goes hand in hand with saving the other’s face (in accordance to Edmondson’s (1981) ‘hearer-supportive maxim’), mitigation can concern especially either one or the other face. In the diagnosis phase, D. protects especially himself; this is a sign of professional prudence, that is, caution (cf. Peyrot, 1987; Bergmann, 1992) at the moment when he takes on the responsibility of making a judgment about the pathology: the types of mitigation employed in this phase concern, above all, the reduction of responsibility by means of displacing it to other sources. Instead, in the prognosis phase, at the moment when he indicates the various treatment possibilities, D. protects especially his interlocutor, and, in his personal interpretation of tact, uses mitigation to remove the conflict between the duty to inform P. about a certainly undesired eventuality and the duty not to needlessly alarm a patient who already has several problems (among these, hypertension, which has just been ascertained). Apart from straying from the point a few times – I am thinking especially of “paradoxically” – the latter need prevails over the former, and D. lets himself go, even at the cost of becoming inconsistent with the previous diagnosis, and so he resorts first to the litotes and then to the diminutive of the colloquial lexeme (una puntina), in the already examined convergence sequence of lines 359362: “yours isn’t a real slipped disc [...] just a touch”. Recalling Giles et al.’s (1979) distinction between instrumental needs and relational needs (cf. 1.7.), we can conclude from these observations that, while self-serving mitigation in the diagnosis phase meets instrumental needs more than anything else, the second, altruistic
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mitigation in the treatment phase meets relational needs in particular. In the two central phases of the visit, there is an increase in the recourse to mitigation, which thus proves to be a useful tool in managing the most delicate interactional moments. The examples discussed in this paragraph confirm that the basic function of mitigation is to favor the achievement of the interactional goals of the speech acts (or of wider speech units) both at an instrumental and at an interpersonal level, both at a content and at a relational level. They also show that mitigation works in various ways on both the illocution, for instance reducing the diagnosis to a mere hypothesis, and on the perlocution, for instance distancing undesired effects such as alarm.
5.10. MITIGATION AND MONITORING OF EMOTIVE DISTANCES In the previous paragraphs I have tried to reconstruct on a presumptive basis how emotive layers are involved in the co-production of the dialogue. In other words, I have tried to integrate a pragmatic and at least in part sociolinguistic description of verbal interaction with a psycholinguistic one. The parameter of emotive closeness inferrable from the choice of utterances has been useful, in its generic form, in indicating the openings and closures that can be presumed at the level of emotive communication on the basis of subtle textual cues. As I have repeatedly stressed, such a dimension must not be considered in isolation with regard to the other dimensions which, on the contrary, it reacts to and interacts with. Moreover, it is by means of the observation of a sequence of turns, however brief it may be, that it is possible to reliably reconstruct the functioning of the interaction as a whole. I have already examined the outcome of P.’s non-attunement to institutional politeness that D. evidently expects, namely, D.’s brusque and almost military “sit down” of line 131. In the opposite direction, that of a rebalancing of the relation towards greater emotive closeness, here are two examples of moves by D. which can also be interpreted co-textually as a reaction to previous moves by P.. The first example is given by the sequence at lines 151155: ll. 151-155
P. but I: you know talking about it I said I’ll try with the doctor if I can do it I don’t know. - if they can do something for me,-D. bear in mind that those medicines there have been taken off the market now precisely because: not very useful.
In P.’s turn, the request made to D. in the previous turns regarding the latter’s endorsement of P.’s “fellow-villager”’s suggestion of trying other medicines becomes less urgent and less
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important. This is an example of an illocutionary mitigation aiming at weakening the intensity of the act. In fact, the previous request is commented on by P. at a distance with a gloss, through the reproduction of a fragment of an interior monologue which emphasizes the slightly casual character of the request (“you know talking about it”). By means of this strategy, which we may well define as “metacommunicative”, the previous request is rehierarchized: its importance for P. and its coerciveness for D. are reduced. In this turn, mitigation does not concern only illocutionary aspects but also aspects relating to self-presentation and the shaping of a self-image. Indeed, in the same turn P. attributes himself scarce competence and limited decisiveness, thus reducing his knowledge and power with if-clauses (“if I can do it”) and at the same time increasing D.’s knowledge-power. In addition, in the reported speech, he refers to D. as the “doctor”, a linguistic choice inherently characterized by a deferential trait of recognition of the interlocutor’s role. This deferential choice is even more remarkable because it is grafted in the authenticity of a fast live contact with the speaker’s inner world provided by the reproduction of the endophasic speech. How does D. react to this move? After having scornfully disposed of the alternative therapeutic possibility in the already quoted turn at l. 61, he resumes his indirect refusal also in a literal way (removing “even” and adding “bear in mind that”), but externally mitigates it with a cause-and-effect construction. The latter takes the form of a litotes “because not very useful”, which is barely credible at a referential level – perhaps more important reasons are necessary before a medicine is taken off the market – but which is significant at the level of the relationship and of a symmetrical shaping of self, as it is a clue to a willingness to compromise, in short of a sign of a more easy-going attitude. A second example of the chain of functioning of the various layers of meaning production, from the linguistic ones to the emotive ones, is the following, at lines 204-208: ll. 204-208
P. ah I was a bit dizzy and so I said to myself maybe it’s the tablet that makes me a bit:: +anyway, I’ll take them* D. we can try other t t tablets, mmm? - that don’t +make you so dizzy*
P.’s giving in to D.’s pressing orders concerns both the content and the relation: P. promises to start following the treatment again and, in doing so, in the punctuation of the sequence of events (Watzlawick et al., 1967), obeys D.; moreover, his compliant utterance is pronounced at a lower volume. 7 His adoption of a one-down role is complete, investing content and relation. After this giving in, and only at this point, does D. for the first time during the dialogue use an 7
As Anolli and Ciceri (1992: 151) point out, studies on the correlation between paralinguistic and personality traits, in particular Mallory and Miller (1958) identify an efficient sign of submission in an inadequate volume.
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inclusive first person plural, with an enallage of solidarity which will be used again at line 378. At a relational level, and integrating the other possible interpretations of the same turn, we can give the following, I think plausible, interpretation: once his one-up role, in the communication and in the institutional task in course, is assured, D. can then make some concessions to empathy.
5.11. CO-VARIANCE AMONG PARAMETERS In the examination of the dialogue which has been carried out so far, numerous cases of covariance among heterogeneous parameters have been pointed out. In particular, the parameters of ‘epistemic certainty’, ‘knowledge-power’ (competence and institutional role) and ‘emotive closeness’ are interdependent. Here I will dwell on a single example in order to further clarify this crucial point, which makes it possible, among other things, to project the handling of elements which modify the utterance, for instance modal verbs, as not limited to the speakerpropositional content relation, but sensitive also to the speaker-hearer relation, including the modal attributes (Sbisà, 1989) of both. Let’s consider the moment where D., closing the phase of the visit on the examination table, formulates the diagnosis. D. does this in a polyphonic way, making reference to other voices, mixed in with each other: more specifically, he defers to the “clinical file”, the “CATscan” and another, not better specified, colleague. This is at lines 106-117: ll. 106-117
D. = as a matter of fact in your file: > I just wanted to do this dio è passato neanche un mese< perciò non è:: però: (Rt, TR6, A42) P. I went to my primary care physician who prescribed strong Bactrin. then after a week of Bactrin the paxx pain: D. yes. ((lit. no)) but I had told you to come in if it didn’t improve didn’t I? P. yes. - right. but thxx the doctor had told me to try with strong Bactrin for a week: I thought in any case on the twenty-second: xxx I was busy ‘cause I have an elderly person with me at home= D. =I had told you to come in didn’t I? if the situation didn’t: didn’t: improve. >well ((lit. God)) it’s been not even month< so it’s not:: but:
In example 3), after the patient’s complaint, the doctor initially uses other-correction introduced by no. io però (‘yes but I’) (cf. Stame, 1994) and then reproaches her in io le avevo detto di venire (‘I had told you to come in’), where the ‘mild’ verb of saying ‘to tell’ does not
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reflect the full intensity of the illocutionary force of the original directive (for a discussion of intensity cf. 2.2.). The reproach is repeated in the fourth turn (‘I had told you to come in… didn’t I?’), underscoring the patient’s non-compliance with the instructions and contradicting the patient’s account. The underlying problem of the exchange is a conflict of competences as to who is responsible for the therapeutic process. On the surface (cf. Orletti, 1994), we have the patient’s agreement (sì. - esatto, ‘yes. - right’), which introduces a wide range of excuses (i.e. the opinion of another doctor introduced by the indirectly authenticity-enhancing m’ha detto ma provi con il…; the closeness of the following visit; the care of an elderly person). The doctor then repeats his reproach verbatim, but he also mitigates it by means of the restrictive protasis se non migliorava la questione (‘if the situation didn’t improve’) and the reference to an attenuating circumstance introduced by an interjection. This increases the degree of informality (dio è passato neanche un mese, ‘well, it’s been not even a month’). Other-repair occurs when the doctor accepts the patient’s excuse (ho detto tanto il ventidue, ‘I thought in any case on the twenty-second’) as a clinically relevant excuse. In other words, after telling off the patient, the doctor mitigates his original negative illocution to attenuate the patient’s failure to comply with his instructions: the doctor circumscribes his reproach thus reducing its severity. The risk of an open conflict at first seems to have been avoided thanks to the doctor’s conciliatory conclusion (perciò non è::, ‘so it’s not::’), but it re-emerges at the end of the turn, where però (‘but’) is uttered with a suspended intonation, signaling an incomplete absolution of the patient. We see here, at any rate, that mitigation plays an integral role in conflict comanagement (for a discussion of Italian examples, cf. Fele, 1991). The reason why the example can be seen as a transitional case between natural and non-natural mitigation can be summed up as follows: the doctor metapragmatically knows (i.e. not on the basis of some specific knowledge, but simply as a speaker of Italian) that a reproach is negative for the recipient and bears unwelcome perlocutionary effects. Hence, as we have just seen, he feels the need to mitigate it in more than one way, both locally and in a multi-turn sequence. The preceding discussion makes it possible to sketch a first answer to the issue raised in Section 6.1. – whether speech act theory alone can account for mitigating phenomena. The answer, I believe, is that despite being insufficient by itself, speech act theory is indeed compatible with conversational approaches. For, as the example clearly shows, the modulation or adjustment of both illocutionary and sequential phenomena contributes to the general mitigated shape of the exchange. Hence, it seems unreasonable to think that the description of any complex encounter can benefit from the use of mono-theoretical tools. I believe that the notions of speech act and mitigation must be integrated into a wider conversational approach involving a number of other criteria, in particular the sequential perspective. At the same time, a conversational approach alone cannot explain why a speaker uses a given utterance at a given stage of the exchange. Therefore, it is not possible to fully understand a sequential mechanism without having first understood and analyzed its component local mechanisms, and vice versa,
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it is not possible to fully interpret any given particular local mechanism without having first understood the sequential mechanism of which it is a part. The process of the co-construction of meaning, which was the object of the fine-grained analysis of Chapter 5, is affected by a number of different factors. In order to start exploring these, it is necessary to work with the tools we have, even if they are few and heterogeneous, and make an effort to try to integrate them into a wider, more flexible framework.
6.5. NON-NATURAL MITIGATION 6.5.1. Lenitive mitigation The phrase ‘lenitive mitigation’ is used in the present work to refer to mitigation affecting directive and exercitive speech acts, notably orders and, at a lower degree of authoritativeness, requests. Such acts are inherently manipulative. Following Searle (1975), their direction of fit is from words to the world (i.e. the world adjusts to the words) and their focus is on states of affairs to be attained. Such acts inherently intrude into others’ personal territory, thus being, in Brown and Levinson’s (1987) terms, face-threatening. The main function of mitigation in connection with directives and exercitives is to reduce the recipient’s obligations, while at the same time reducing the potential face-threats for both interactants if they are refused. It is extremely difficult in such a situation to make a clear-cut distinction between illocution and perlocution. In fact, the object of mitigation is not an external consequence of the act, but an aspect of the act itself, namely its counting as an attempt on the part of the speaker to make the recipient do something. According to Searle (1969), this is the essential constitutive rule for directives, the rule having to do with the very essence of a speech act, i.e., in the case of directives, what makes a speech act ‘count as’ an order, an instruction, a request, and so on. In addition, Searle (ibid.) claims that there is a preparatory constitutive rule – corresponding to Austin’s (1962) type A felicity condition – requiring an ability on the part of the recipient to perform the requested act. A number of pragmatic and sociolinguistic studies of requests in different languages (e.g. House and Kasper, 1981) have found that the most frequent strategy of mitigation – we might say the preferred lenitive mitigation – consists in asking whether this preparatory condition is valid, using expressions like ‘can/could you please do X?’. In order to provide a more general outline of mitigation that can cope with different types of speech acts, it is worth recalling Wunderlich’s (1976) concept of Erfolgreichsein. Wunderlich describes three kinds or degrees (Arten oder Graden) of Erfolgreichsein (‘being successful’), which are needed to fulfill the act. These are:
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1) the recipient must know (in compliance with the speaker’s intention) that the speaker is expressing a given stance; 2) the recipient must choose (in compliance with the speaker’s intention) a corresponding attitude; 3) the recipient or the speaker, depending on the type of speech act, must meet the interactional condition (Interaktionsbedingung) or obligation that has been introduced. These three conditions are summed up respectively in the ideas of understanding, acceptance, and compliance (Verstehen, Akzeptieren, Erfüllen). Understanding and acceptance belong to the same immediate interactive situation and are closely connected, at least if we assume that something has to be understood before it can be accepted. As Wunderlich points out, Grice (1968: 1-18) speaks of ‘exhibitive’ and ‘protreptic’ aspects of speech acts. A speech act shows something about the attitudes of the speaker while at the same time aiming at eliciting specific attitudes in the recipient. Should a speech act fail to be understood or accepted, further interactional elaboration (Ausarbeitung) is needed. Normally, a speaker who does not receive any signal that her/his act has not been understood or accepted by the recipient can infer that the latter has understood and accepted it. Wunderlich applies these notions to different types of speech acts, which he classifies differently from either Austin or Searle. 5 In terms of Wunderlich’s distinctions, we may say that lenitive mitigation is primarily linked to the erfüllen (i.e. the third level in the fulfillment of an illocution), whereas tempering mitigation (which will be discussed in the next section) is connected to the first two levels, i.e. understanding and acceptance. An interesting approach to these two types of mitigation is suggested by Ervin-Tripp et al. (1990) in a sociolinguistically oriented developmental psychological study of a large corpus (1269 acts) of ‘control acts’, above all requests, made by children aged 2-11 (cf. also French, 1984). Ervin-Tripp et al. introduce a ‘cost’ variable for the requested action, and observe, surprisingly, that for ‘low-cost requests’ where the speaker (a child) would normally tend to take the success of the action for granted, politeness (a term used by the authors in alternation with ‘mitigation’) actually increases the possibility of refusal by the recipient (an adult). ErvinTripp et al. conclude that “basically the best tactic for achieving cooperation in these cases of low cost appears to be a simple, explicit, direct form” (Ervin-Tripp et al., 1990: 322). During the past ten years, pragmatic and sociolinguistic investigations of lenitive mitigation, particularly studies of the illocutionary act ‘request’, have been extremely rich and detailed. 5
According to Wunderlich (1976), the third kind of Erfolgreichsein is not applicable to acts introducing new interactional conditions like ‘Satisfactives’ and ‘Retroactives’, or to acts introducing only specific interactional conditions like ‘Representatives’. Moreover, the second type of intention is not present in acts like ‘Declarations’ and ‘Vocatives’. Against this background, Wunderlich raises the issue of the interests and usefulness of fulfilled acts, i.e. who is a speech act successful for? However, he does not provide any answer to this question.
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Many of these have been rooted in Brown and Levinson’s theory of politeness and have approached different languages from a contrastive perspective. This rich body of research has made recapitulatory works like that of Kerbrat-Orecchioni (1990-1994) particularly useful. Nevertheless, there continues to be a need for similar research on Italian, which is still a neglected field despite some promising early work (e.g. Benincà et al., 1977). 6.5.2. Tempering mitigation Tempering mitigation reduces the validity of assertives and verdictives. The speaker either mitigates a judgment or limits its scope. According to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (2002: 1800) the verb ‘to mitigate’ means “make milder in manner or attitude, make less hostile”. In tempering mitigation, that which is made milder or less threatening is first and foremost the speaker’s obligation to take responsibility for what s/he is saying, which can entail the risk of losing face. Tempering mitigation results in a reduction either of the speaker’s commitment to what is said, in the case of assertives, or of the categoricalness of a speaker’s judgment, in the case of verdictives. Tempering mitigation thus fulfils the second sub-maxim of Quality, i.e. “do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence” (cf. Grice, 1975). It can affect either the ‘phrastic’ element of the assertive act or the ‘neustic’ element (cf. Hare, 1970; Hübler, 1983). That is, it can either call the validity of the act’s propositional content per se into question or project an attitude of uncertainty on the part of the speaker toward this content for the listener’s benefit. This latter element can be thought of in terms of the degree of epistemic commitment to the propositional content of the illocution. Tempering mitigation is of central importance in the modification of linguistic assertiveness, 6 which it can modulate in either upgrading or downgrading directions. In studying this type of mitigation in conversation, we see how logical-propositional aspects of speakers’ commitments to the truth of propositions interact with both sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic factors. Sociolinguistically, linguistic assertiveness is often related to the speaker’s and hearer’s respective power, while psycholinguistically, it often has to do with relations and images of the self that the speaker wants to convey to the hearer. Leech’s (1983) modesty maxim is an attempt to account for one aspect of this complex interplay: “in communicating to an interlocutor of higher status, one downgrades one’s own subjective certainty”. Nevertheless, even within a single language it is extremely difficult to find stable principles for analyzing real exchanges. This, in fact, is true of the modesty maxim in general, which is certainly too categorical and too clearly ethnocentric to be universally 6
In fact, assertiveness is a psychological category linked to the speaker’s self-confidence. No systematic study has been conducted as yet of possible connections between psychological assertiveness and linguistic assertiveness (aside from some impressionistic studies carried out mainly by psychologists) due to differences between these two quite different disciplines.
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valid. Moreover, the modesty maxim clashes even with the English use of understatement, which is so wide spread in British culture that it has become an unmarked form (cf. Hübler, 1983). Understatement is mainly related to self-presentation and the construction of positive face. Needs linked to self-presentation can, in fact, outweigh other social needs. In order to be operationally useful, Leech’s modesty maxim needs to be integrated into observations like those put forward by Kamio (1994; 1995) in his theory of the ‘territory of information’. Kamio’s theory, which is based on Japanese but can be applied to English, envisages links between modalizations of epistemic certainty in utterances conveying information and what he calls the speaker’s ‘territory’. He claims that in utterances conveying information about the speaker’s territory, (e.g. statements about her/himself as a person or about her/his private life), direct or non-modified forms conveying the certainty of the statement are unmarked choices, even if the interlocutor has a higher status. Lazzeroni (1994) discusses basic values in Indo-European verbal behavior from a diachronic perspective, focusing on the gradient nature of expressions of epistemic modality (from certainty to counter-factuality) and deontic modality (from will to desire). He seems to agree with Kamio in claiming that: in the epistemic modality, non-factual statements focusing on data of which the speaker has direct or personal experience are not compatible with the first person. The same cannot be said for factual and counter-factual statements focusing on the same kind of data. (Lazzeroni, 1994: 269; my translation, C.C.)
Lazzeroni envisions a connection between grammar and pragmatics in the form of a certain ‘compatibility’ between modality and the data making up the object of the dictum. This link has significant pragmatic implications that remain to be further elucidated for each language. In each individual language, specific phenomena have to be observed, especially co-occurrence restrictions on verbal moods, speaker’s inner states, and communicated contents. If supported by diachronic arguments like those provided by Lazzeroni, Kamio’s theory could be seen as an attempt to find relations between these variables in a broadly pragmatic framework. Such a framework, in turn, could lead to major generalizations about the languages observed. Going back to my main concern here – tempering mitigation in institutional contexts – irrespective of Kamio’s examples, 7 we still have to find an answer to the following question: in a given social group and within a given interaction, what are the speaker’s and recipient’s respective territories? Clearly, the answer to this question is crucial to analyzing doctor-patient encounters, where delimitations of territories and shifts between territories (cf., among others, Lacoste, 1981; Coupland et al., 1994) are major objects of negotiation between the participants. 7
It must be noted that some of these examples are artificial and highly unlikely.
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Despite these warnings, Leech’s intuition about status and displays of confidence is a first acknowledgment of the existing link between these two heterogeneous dimensions. We may therefore extend the modesty maxim by specifying that in tempering mitigation in real exchanges the two factors ‘epistemic certainty’ and ‘power/social role’ are interrelated and express a co-oriented co-variance. As I have tried to show in the multi-dimensional analysis of Chapter 5, this dyadic correlation has to be integrated into other parameters (e.g. immediacy) in a systemic perspective. Such a perspective is in accordance with Givón’s (1989: 128) non-idealistic pragmatic approach, which claims that epistemic modality itself is crypto-pragmatic. Indeed, in Givón’s view, there are no propositional modalities as such, but rather only different modes of knowledge of sources of information. These range from direct modes of experience to mediated modes like hearsay or inference. On the whole, he says, human communication involves an intricate network of conventions concerning what speakers and hearers are entitled to expect of each other when carrying out their respective roles in communication. Within this vast network, which is all part and parcel of the pragmatics of language, only a small portion deals with strictly epistemic matters of truth or subjective certainty. Rather, even those modes that are primarily epistemic tend to shade gradually into other – intentional, social, or manipulative – modes. (Givón, 1989: 129-130; original emphasis)
According follows: a) b) c) d) e)
to Givón, the gradual shading from epistemic modes to actional modes is as epistemic modes of truth or probability; psychological modes of subjective certainty; intentional modes of wish, ability, or need; social modes of status, authority, power, or obligation; action modes of causation or manipulation (ibid.: 130).
At partial variance with Lazzeroni (1994), who envisages individual gradations of epistemic and deontic modality, Givón envisages a link between the two modalities along a continuum of modes. Givón does not analyze any real data showing how the shift from one mode to the other actually takes place. Neither does he put forward diachronic arguments about processes of grammaticalization or co-occurrence constraints on grammatical data and pragmatic factors. Nevertheless, he does point out linguistic realizations of different combinations of modes, ranging from basic prototypical ‘peak’ realizations (in which pragmatic mode and syntactic mode correspond) to various other more ‘indirect’ realizations (Givón, 1989: 152 ff.); and he calls our attention to the fact that subjectivity plays an important role even in those linguistic modes that are more closely connected with truth. According to Givón (ibid.), there is an
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oriented subjectivity that is decisive for the shift between modes, particularly the shift between the epistemic and psychological modes, which are marked by the greatest discontinuity. From a meta-theoretical point of view, the continuum discussed by Givón may be interpreted as a linguistic argument in favor of the classic Austinian pragmatic proposal (which is still valid in my opinion) that statements, as modes of action, can be judged by various criteria in addition to the true-false criterion (cf. Austin, 1962). Although there is no fixed correspondence between pragmatic types and syntactic types, what has just been said seems to confirm the fact that statements cannot be strictly separated from other, seemingly more ‘manipulative’ modes. Against the background of my own systemic, integrated pragmatic approach, which focuses on pragmatic modalizations of utterances in context rather than on linguistic modalities of utterances in isolation, Givón’s abstract continuum can be re-interpreted as suggesting a coexistence of intertwined parameters in a given interaction. My main objective in this book is precisely to observe the joint functioning of such heterogeneous parameters in a given context. It seems reasonable at this point to provide an example of a shift from one mode to another, by employing some categories derived from Austin’s speech act theory. An important sub-group of types of tempering mitigation includes mitigation affecting the ‘preparatory constitutive rule’ (cf. Searle, 1969) 8 of assertive-verdictive acts. Similarly to lenitive mitigation (cf. 6.5.1.), the mitigation of assertive-verdictive acts is introduced by preparatory formulas like ‘if I understand correctly’, ‘I may be wrong, but’, etc., which are commonly regarded as disclaimers. Such formulas limit the categoricalness of a judgment by reducing the speaker’s implied self-attributed competence (which in medical examinations clearly involves issues of authority and power). When power or knowledge are at stake, as in an important clinical diagnosis, mitigation takes the form not only of acknowledgments of uncertainty and metacommunicative disclaimers (e.g. ‘I may be wrong, but…’), but also of expressions referring to the incompleteness of the evidence. For instance, a doctor may emphasize the insufficiency of clinical tests by using utterances like ‘the finding so far is’. In the former case of acknowledgements of uncertainty, the mitigating strategy will be represented as subjective – having to do with the speaker’s inner mental state. In the latter case, the mitigating strategy will be represented as objective – having to do with the incomplete fulfillment of the external conditions necessary for pronouncing a judgment. From a pragmatic point of view, a clinical diagnosis can be seen as a verdictive speech act, i.e. an illocutionary act whose preparatory felicity conditions require authority and competence on the part of the speaker-agent. The act of ‘diagnosis’ is thus ideal for illustrating how different parameters of knowledge, power, role, or, to use Givón’s categories, modes of truth, subjective certainty, ability, manipulation, and so forth interact within the same speech act. 8
Austin (1962), as noted earlier, calls these ‘A felicity conditions’.
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The preparatory modulation of the conditions for performing a verdictive act is symmetrically opposite to the type of modulation found in disclaimers. This former kind of modulation appears in utterances introducing diagnoses that reinforce the verdictive by strengthening the legitimacy of the verdict. For instance, in example 4) the doctor begins by referring to conditions favorable to making an accurate diagnosis. These conditions, which, in turn, are connected to additional felicity conditions (‘B conditions’ regarding the felicitous fulfillment of a procedure, as Austin, 1962 would call them) underscore the incontestability of results: 4)
D. ehm il materiale era abbondante quindi la diagnosi - si è fatta bene +non* ci sono stati dubbi. P. +bene*. (SpV, TR8, A41) D. erm the tissue was plentiful so the diagnosis - was made without problems +there* were no doubts. P. +without problems*.
6.6. LINGUISTIC MEANS OF LENITIVE AND TEMPERING MITIGATION In the next few sub-sections, on the basis of examples from my corpus collected in the Appendix B, I will provide a list of linguistic lenitive and tempering mitigating devices used in spoken Italian in the activity type ‘medical examination’. Following Hölker (1988), I will distinguish between primary means of mitigation, which cause mitigating effects directly, and secondary means, which produce mitigating effects by implicature. Primary means can be further divided into specialized means and non-specialized means. The former can produce mitigating effects alone, while the latter need to be combined with other means in order to produce mitigating effects. I will use the term ‘combination’ to refer to co-occurrences of different means of mitigation within the same speech act. If more than two means of mitigation occur in the same speech act – be these heterogeneous or belonging to the same grammatical category – I will speak of ‘cumulative use’. 6.6.1. Linguistic means of lenitive mitigation As we have seen, the ‘saying/doing’ of a doctor is inevitably characterized by a certain degree of directivity that is legitimized by her/his social and professional status. The doctor’s status reduces the need for redressive action. However, I still have not discussed the linguistic means by which this directivity is expressed or the connections between directivity and the
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construction of doctors’ self-images and of relationships that they want to convey to their patients. This twofold image-construction is depends importantly on mitigation. The following primary means of linguistic mitigation figure importantly in modifying directives: a) 5)
lexical means (see A1, A2, A3, A4) 9 D. si tiri un attimo su. (Rt, TR14, A1) D. sit up a little. ((lit. sit up a moment))
Example 5) is an explicit directive illocutionary act formulated in the imperative mood that is prototypical of orders. The only mitigating element in the utterance is the marker un attimo (‘a moment’), whose pragmatic function is the result of the lexicalization of its literal meaning. In other words, the imperative is attenuated through the doctor’s hyperbolic reference to the brevity of the patient’s first action in the examination. Through habitual use in spoken Italian, the phrase un attimo has reached what Salvaneschi (1995) suggestively calls the stage where it is “functionally exhausted” (my translation, C.C.), i.e. the semantic bleaching; having lost much of its semantic content, it has become a marker. Due to its semantics, this marker has come to be used not just in requests, but also in many other speech acts in spoken Italian. In the directive act above, the pragmatic effect of the attenuated order depends on the meaning of the marker itself. The temporal limitation of the requested act operates, by implicature, as a limitation on the doctor’s imposition and intrusion into the patient’s territory. After the visit, the doctor says: 6)
D. si vesta pure. (Rt, TR 13, 14, 16, A3) D. you can get dressed. ((lit. get dressed if you like))
6) is another example of an explicit directive in the imperative mood that is mitigated by a single lexical item. The adverb pure (‘if you like’) shifts the illocution within the deontic modality from an order to a permission. 7)
D. pian pianino si appoggi pure. (SpV, TR9, A4) D. now slowly ((lit. slow slowly+DIM)) lean if you have to.
9
As said before, the abbreviations A1, A2, A3, A4 etc. refer to the examples listed in Appendix B.
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Similarly, in example 7), the adverb pure combines with another mitigating lexical expression, the duplicated adverbial form pian pianino (‘slow slowly+DIM’) (cf. Wierzbicka, 1991), to limit the urgency of the predication of the required action. 8)
D. voglio controllarla un secondo. (PC, TR3, A2) D. I want to check you a second.
In example 8) there is a single mitigating element, un secondo (‘a second’), which BlumKulka et al. (1989: 119) would call an “understater”. Un secondo operates in this example similarly to un attimo in example 5). In contrast to example 5), however, the directive in example 8) is realized by means of a verb expressing volitionality in the indicative mood. According to Searle, this makes it an indirect act stating the validity of the sincerity condition for a directive. In some other approaches, however, a verb expressing the speaker’s will or need is seen as the most direct form and is claimed to have even more illocutionary intensity than an imperative (cf. Ervin-Tripp, 1976; Ervin-Tripp et al., 1990; Aronsson and Thorell, 1999). 10 b)
syntactic and intonational means (see A7)
Lenitive mitigation is often realized by combinations of syntactic and intonational devices. 9)
D. se si prepara, (Rt, TR16, A7) D. if you get ready,
In example 9, for instance, an incomplete if-sentence is combined with a suspensive intonation (indicated by the comma). Syntactically, the if-construction consists only of the protasis; the apodosis is missing, but can be easily retrieved from the extralinguistic context (i.e., ‘if you get ready’ [‘I can check you’]). The directive (‘get ready’) is mitigated by the fact that the accomplishment of the requested action is attributed to the patient’s will rather than to the doctor’s. In the psychotherapeutic conversations in my corpus, one of the psychotherapists (a woman) systematically uses suspensive intonation as an attenuating device to mitigate the intrusiveness 10
Ervin-Tripp’s and her colleagues’ research on requests in child-adult interaction was discussed earlier (cf. 6.5.1.). In their view, the requested action in the examples above is ‘low cost’, which means that the most effective strategy for obtaining the patient’s compliance would probably be a direct, explicit act (cf. Ervin-Tripp et al., 1990).
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of her request, and combines this intonational device with other discourse devices. One of these is ‘information fishing’ (cf. Pomerantz, 1980; 1984), i.e. claiming that either her knowledge of something is incomplete or she has no access to a state of affairs necessary for making a decision. Sometimes, this device is also accompanied by lists of potential alternatives (characterized by lengthened vowels) from which the patient is expected to select the most relevant options. c) 10)
lexical and morphological means (see A9) D. quello però bisognerebbe:: ehm: intensificare un pochino - gli esami magari sull’intestino eh? (Rt, TR12, A9) D. that however we should ((lit. it would be necessary to)) erm: do some more in-depth - testing ((lit. to intensify testing a little+DIM)) maybe to check your digestive tract huh?
In example 10), the doctor’s opinion that further tests are necessary is weakened morphologically by the conditional form of the impersonal verb bisogna (‘be necessary’). This is used in the anacoluthon resulting from the contrastive focalization of the theme quello però (‘that however’). Lexically, the utterance is weakened by the uncertainty marker ‘erm’, the multi-functional mitigating device un pochino (‘a little+DIM’), the eventualization connective magari (‘maybe’), and the final element requesting agreement (‘huh?’), which is uttered with rising intonation and is similar to a consultative device (cf. Blum-Kulka et al., 1989). d)
combined and cumulative forms (see A6, A8, A12, A15, A16, A17)
Lenitive mitigation is most frequently realized in the corpus not by individual additions but by combinations or cumulative uses of linguistic devices internal or external to the head act. 11)
D. le do uno sciroppino da prendere. (PC, TR4, A6) D. I’ll give you ((lit. I give you)) a cough syrup+DIM to take.
In example 11), for instance, the doctor’s prescription is mitigated morphologically by the use of the diminutive. The doctor uses this diminutive to increase the likelihood of attaining the desired perlocutionary effect. I have already discussed this example from another perspective in 3.3.1. Here, suffice it to say that the semantic trait [-SERIOUS], which Dressler and Merlini Barbaresi (1994) consider to be typical of diminutives, triggers a number of implicatures. It
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downgrades the doctor’s prescription and thereby also implicitly mitigates the severity of the disease and the patient’s possible concern, thus making the task more agreeable. In languages without diminutive suffixes like Swedish and English, this kind of mitigation is realized by restrictive qualifications of the designation, e.g. ‘little tuberculosis’, ‘little problem’, ‘little thyroidea’. These examples are taken from data collected by Aronsson and Sätterlund-Larsson (1987: 7), who label them instances of ‘euphemisms’. In example 11) there is also an instance of syntactic mitigation, i.e. the construction with the infinitive da prendere (‘to take’), which is introduced by the verb ‘to give’ and functions as an object predicate complement (cf. Skytte et al., 1991). There is also an instance of lexical mitigation, i.e. the choice of the verb ‘to give’ rather than ‘to prescribe’. The first person present tense le do (‘I give you’) is an example of suiting actions to words. Following Austin (1962, Lecture X), such a case is similar to an actual performative in that the doctor utters the words while writing the prescription. In examples 12), 13), and 14) combinations of devices generate so-called ‘external mitigation’ (cf. Blum-Kulka et al., 1989). Such combinations affect acts that are pragmatically subordinate to the head act realizing the general illocutionary function. 12)
D. sentiamo i polmoni - ha voglia di scoprirsi un attimo? guardiamo la gola un attimo. (PC, TR4, A8). D. let’s have a listen to your lungs - do you want to undress a moment? let’s have a quick look at your throat. ((lit. let’s look at the throat a moment))
In example 12), the main means of morphosyntactic mitigation is the use of the inclusive first-person plural ‘we’ indicating involvement (cf. Gumperz, 1982a). Similar uses are often found in baby-talk. Another morphosyntactic device in 12) is the so-called ‘imminent present’ (cf. Bertinetto, 1986: 338-339) which indicates a strategic intention, as Austin (1962) probably would have put it, to ‘suit actions to words’. This example instantiates other mitigating devices: in particular, the use of a consultative question (‘do you want to undress a moment?’) that externally mitigates the request (cf. BlumKulka et al., 1989). This is what conversation analysts call a ‘pre’ (or an indirect act, following Searle, 1975) referring to a preparatory condition for the request. In asking if the condition for the requested action holds, the doctor simulates a negotiation. The consultative question is further lexically mitigated by the multi-functional downgrader un attimo (see above). 13)
D. no ecco deve tenere su i pantaloni +perché* P. +ah sì. sì* D. ho bisogno di fare una manovra che se no:,
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P. sì. (PC, TR1, A12) D. no well you have to keep your trousers on +because* P. +right yes. yes* D. I need to do something ((lit. do a maneuver)) because otherwise:, ((lit. if not)) P. yes. Example 13) contains a bald on-record directive (‘you have to keep your trousers on’) characterized by a need-form, which, as we have seen, is considered by some analysts to be stronger than an imperative. The directive is mitigated by a grounder, i.e. perché ho bisogno di fare una manovra (lit. ‘because I need to do a maneuver’), which is reinforced, in turn, by the elliptical clause che se no (lit. ‘because if not’) uttered with suspensive intonation. The effect of this double mitigation is to introduce the possibility of a negative consequence (something to be avoided) if the patient does not comply with the doctor’s request. The strengthening of a grounder is a frequently-used strategy (see also example 14). Doctorpatient communication is often marked by alternating mitigating and strengthening strategies, even within a single short sequence. This creates a particular kind of pragmatic and rhetorical ambivalence that is typical of, and pervasive in, doctor-patient communication (cf. Chapter 4; Caffi, 1999a; Caffi, 1999b). In example 13) the reinforcement of the grounder takes place over a tripartite sequence, but in many other instances it occurs in a single turn. 14)
D. la cicatrice è un pochino aderente. dovrebbe massaggiarla un pochino così, +no*? P. +ah massaggiarla un po’?* (Rt, TR13, A15) D. the scar seems to have adhered to the surrounding tissue ((lit. is a bit adherent)). you should massage it a bit+DIM like that, +huh*? P. +massage it you say?*
In example 14) the lenitive mitigation of the directive (‘massage it’) reduces the scope of the duty imposed on the patient. This is achieved morphologically by the conditional form dovrebbe (‘should’), and lexically by the expression un pochino (‘a bit+DIM’). This latter expression is a variant of the generic mitigating expression un po’ (‘a little’), which, as said earlier, can be used in connection with many different types of illocutions. Here, un pochino is used as a tempering device in the first part of the turn, where it attenuates the predication of the assertive act, thus weakening the doctor’s negative assessment of the state of the scar. Such a turn-initial statement is also a textual mitigating device, a sort of grounder for the directive. At the end of the turn, the lexical agreement-seeking marker no? (‘huh?’) is used as what Blum-
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Kulka et al. (1989) call a ‘consultative device’. 15)
D. […] io le proporrei se vuole una medicina apposta per vedere se riescxx - se riesco a farla dormire= (PsV, TR18, A16) D. […] I’d propose if you want a special medicine to see if I caxx - if I can make you sleep=
Example 15) is mitigated morphologically by the conditional form proporrei (‘I’d propose’), idiomatically by the consultative device se vuole (‘if you want’), and syntactically by the final clause explaining the reason for the doctor’s suggestion. Finally, example 16) below illustrates a peculiar instance of cumulative use of different types of mitigating devices. During a doctor’s ward round, a patient hospitalized for an operation asks the doctors to allow her to leave the ward and go to another ward of the hospital where her child is: 16)
P. senta volevo chiedere siccome il bambino ce l’ho al, all’ospedale xxx [name of the hospital] - non è che mi potreste fare un permesso per un’oretta (WR, TR12, A17) P. excuse me ((lit. listen)) I’d like to ask ((lit. I wanted to ask)) since the child is at at xxx hospital [name of the hospital]- could you possibly ((lit. isn’t it possible for you to)) give me a leave just for an hour+DIM
In this request, the attention-seeking marker senta (lit. ‘listen’) is followed by the illocutionary force indicating device (hereafter IFID) chiedere which is mitigated by the modal volere (‘want’). The latter, in turn, is attenuated morphologically by the polite imperfect volevo chiedere (‘I wanted to ask’), which Meyer-Lübke (1899, III, 118-124) calls Bescheidenheitsimperfektum (‘the imperfect of modesty’) (cf. Spitzer, 1922: 71-72; Bazzanella, 1990). This device can be seen as a shield, since it deletes one of the components of the deictic origin, i.e. the ‘now’. Another morphological device used in the utterance is the diminutive un’oretta (‘an hour+DIM’), which further reduces the scope of the request. Two other mitigating devices are employed as well, one textual, the other syntactic. These are the causal proposition explaining the reason for the request, and the expression non è che (lit. ‘isn’t it possible’),11 which turns
11
The use of the construction ‘non è che’ in spoken Italian is described by Bernini (1992), who refers to the construction as a “cleft sentence with extrapolation of the non” (ibid.: 191; my translation, C.C.;
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the utterance simultaneously into a negation (from a formal perspective) and a question (from a functional point of view). In terms of Givón’s (1989) continuum from prototypical interrogatives to prototypical negatives, the utterance introduced by non è che can be placed at the boundary between the two groups. Lenitive mitigation also relies on the following secondary means: e) 17)
secondary semantic means (see A5, A10, A11, A14, A38) D. mi fa questi esami: - con calma in questo periodo: […] (Rt, TR14, A5) D. you have these tests run ((lit. you do these tests for me)) at your convenience ((lit. with calm))
In example 17), the mitigating effect is realized semantically by means of the adverbial con calma (lit. ‘with calm’), which reduces the urgency of the requested action. Mitigation in this case is secondary, i.e. achieved by implicature, and is reinforced syntactically by the use of the indicative present tense with a jussive function (the doctor describes the patient in the act of performing the requested action), and morphologically by the ethical dative (mi, ‘for me’), which signals personal involvement. 18)
D. tenga sempre comunque del Buscopan in casa. qualcosa così. (PC, TR3, A10) D. keep always in any case some Buscopan available at home. something like that.
In example 18), only the attenuation of the directive affects the reference act; here, the phrase qualcosa così (‘something like that’) plays the role of an approximator or hedge in Lakoff’s (1972) terms. After initially reinforcing his order by means of the expression sempre comunque (lit. ‘always in any case’), the doctor adds the words qualcosa così to the proposition, making the latter more vague while at the same time mitigating the imposition. This allows the patient to decide to use a different drug than the one named by the doctor, if she prefers, to meet the request. The mitigating effect is achieved here by means of the semantic vagueness of the proposition. Such vagueness consists in suggesting possible variations in the prescription, thereby, in fact, reducing the patient’s obligation. 19)
D. […] dovrà fare o della fisioterapia o vedere un po’ […] (PC, TR1, A11)
original emphasis). According to Bernini, the attenuating value of ‘non è che + C’ makes this construction different from the one with ‘mica’ (ibid.: 205).
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D. […] you will have to do some physical therapy or something along those lines […] In example 19), the doctor’s prescription is at first made categorical by the deontic modal dovere in the future tense (‘will have to’), and then weakened – in an almost contradictory way – through the addition of a generic option that ultimately gives the patient freedom to make her own choice. The examples discussed here are somewhat analogous to the cases of disqualification (cf. Haley, 1959) and equivocation (cf. Beavin Bavelas et al., 1990) discussed in Chapter 4. They affect the ‘am saying something’ component of the doctors’ interaction with their patients (cf. 4.7.1.). From the point of view of deontic logic, these cases can be seen as similar to structural pragmatic inconsistencies (cf. Azzoni, 1998). Example 20) consists of an assertive-verdictive act followed by an exercitive-directive act. Here, lenitive mitigation, which operates on the latter, is a secondary effect deriving from the semantics of the proposition. 20)
D. nel seno va bene. l’unica cosa che mi fa per la prossima volta è un’ecografia al fegato. (Rt, TR16, A38) D. in the breast it’s fine. the only thing I’d like you to do for me ((lit. you do for me)) on your next visit is to have an ultrasound of your liver.
The action prescribed in example 20) is indeed l’unica cosa, ‘the only thing’ the patient has to do. Such a designation reduces the weight of imposition. Moreover, the directive (‘have an ultrasound of your liver’) is mitigated by the doctor’s diagnostic assessment (‘the breast is fine’), which serves both as the premise for the request and as a justification for prescribing only a single test. In the next section, I will deal more extensively with tempering mitigation achieved by limitating phrases like ‘in the breast’. What I would like to point out here is the ethical dative mi (‘for me’), which signals involvement. 21)
D. io non so se qua ho il numero di telefono del: P. sì. delle volte: (PC, TR1, A14) D. I don’t know if I have the number of that: P. yes. one never knows: ((lit. some times))
Finally, in example 21), the doctor suggests the name of a specialist to his patient and then wonders aloud if he also has the specialist’s telephone number for the patient. Having interpreted the speech act as an offer to help him, the patient encourages the doctor to look for
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the number. In fact, what the doctor has literally formulated is the difficulty he might have in giving this information. The patient’s answer operates retroactively to select the possible illocutionary force of an offer to further cooperate. The patient says ‘yes’, implying ‘yes, look for it’, and then adds the downgrader delle volte (lit. ‘some times’). This is a colloquial brachylogy similar to the phrase per caso (‘by any chance’), which corresponds to the protasis of if-clauses like se a volte (l’avesse) (‘if you happen to have it’) and se per caso (‘if by any chance (you had it)’). The implied apodosis (something like ‘you would do me a favor’) can easily be inferred from the context and co-text. The phrase triggers an eventualizing modalization of the elliptical request and thus produces a secondary mitigating effect. In other words, the patient implicitly makes a desired state of affairs possible that depends, however, on the interlocutor’s good will. f) 22)
secondary metacommunicative means (see A18, A43) D. lei non faccia più nulla: +faccio tutto io* ((tono divertito)) P. +non xxx* D. lei ormai subisce. ((tono divertito)) P. io subisco. ((tono divertito)) (SpV, TR7, A18) D. don’t do anything else +I’ll do all the work* ((amused tone)) P. +not xxx* D. you put up with me. ((amused tone)) P. I put up with you. ((amused tone))
Example 22) is a case of transition between mitigationN and mitigationN-N. The former is the natural mitigation of the therapeutic act that the doctor is about to perform on the patient (he is playing down the unpleasantness of the examination to make the patient relax). The latter is the lenitive mitigation of the secondary exercitive linguistic action ‘prohibition’ (‘don’t do anything else’) necessitated by the therapeutic act. Similarly to what happened in example 3, mitigation is achieved here through the sequential format of the exchange, particularly the paired repetitions of the same utterances by the two partners. Also contributing to the mitigating effect, however, is the use of the same metacommunicative key in the encounter: the light tone chosen by the doctor and adopted by the patient. With his humorous tone and the joking faccio tutto io (‘I’ll do all the work’), the doctor constructs a micro-parody of the situation. 12 This strategy is similar to ‘fictionalization’
12
For a discussion of pragmatic aspects of parody cf. Rossen-Knill and Henry (1997). On pragmatic aspects of humor, cf. Raskin (1985), Attardo (1994), Attardo, ed. (2003).
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in daily discourse (cf. Bange, 1986). The doctor is being ironic about own his active role in the examination and the complementary passive role of his patient. By dealing with the real state of affairs as if it were farcical, he (at least at the dialogical level) shows sympathy for the patient and tries to make her feel at ease. Example 22) can also be described as an attunement sequence (cf. 4.1.1.) in which the partners tune into the same communicative wavelength (in this case, the amused tone). The corpus contains many similar examples. Especially at the beginnings of doctor-patient encounters, doctors often use jokes or ironic utterances to metacommunicatively reframe the situation. This technique is a type of positive face-work for both doctor and patient. Example 23) below is taken from a post-operative examination of a patient who had undergone radiotherapy for cancer. The initial round of ritual politeness (the phatic opening, greetings, deferent allocution) is used by the doctor as an occasion for face-work. The doctor’s casual tone contributes to loosening the tension associated with the visit. 23)
P. permesso - buon giorno dottore D. buon giorno signora. come sta? P. bene grazie. D. nonostante le nostre cure continua a stare bene, (Rt, TR13, A43) P. may I - good morning doctor D. good morning madam. how are you? P. I’m well thank you. D. despite our treatment you’re still well,
There is a certain lack of control of politeness routines on the part of the patient in this sequence. Judging by her answer in the third turn, she seems to interpret the doctor’s question ‘how are you’ as a simple phatic preamble to something further, although the enquiry clearly has other implications (cf. Coupland et al., 1994). 6.6.1.1. Lenitive mitigation and deference. Example 24) illustrates a peculiar case of lenitive mitigation where what is modulated (the doctor’s social-institutional role) is a variable that is normally independent in doctor-patient interaction. 24)
D. volevo però avere anche un suo parere. […] adesso la cosa mi sembra molto più tranquilla - lei l’ha vista a dicembre e aveva già questi dolo:ri un pochino di edema eccetera e l’aveva tranquillizzata. ehm:: sarei più tranquillo se la vedesse anche lei però: sotto in chemioterapia. se adesso non ha tempo io sono sotto la signora aspetta, quando: quando ha tempo di passare di lì un attimo. (Rt, TR17, A19)
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D. I’d like your opinion. […] things now seem to have improved - you saw her in December when she was already experiencing some pain: and was slightly edematous and you told her there was nothing to be concerned about erm:: I would be more at ease if you saw her in oncology. if you can’t now I am here with her downstairs she’s waiting, when: when you have time to swing by a moment. This a request made by a doctor to his higher-status superior. It is motivated by an unexpected problem arising during an examination that leads the doctor to feel a need for a second opinion. He therefore calls his supervisor, the head physician. Given the unequal relation between the doctor and his superior, the exchange is characterized by a particular kind of asymmetry. Following Brown and Levinson’s (1987) theory of FTAs, we may say that such a request involves high values on the parameters of rank and weight of imposition. The act is mitigated by ritual politeness (e.g. the use of the imperfect of politeness ‘volevo’ and the addition of ‘when you have time’). However, it requires further mitigation, as it could conceivably trigger two unwelcome perlocutions: apprehension on the part of the patient, and inconvenience for the head physician who is being interrupted. These two possible perlocutions are not only unwelcome, but they also conflict: the patient is listening while the doctor talks to his superior. On the one hand, the doctor’s request could sound insufficiently motivated (wasting the superior’s time) if he were to mitigate it enough to avoid concern on the the patient’s part. On the other hand, the request could sound threatening to the patient if it were modulated emphatically enough to fully justify the doctor’s interruption of his superior. Moreover, the doctor could risk losing face if his superior discovered later that the patient’s symptoms did not justify the alarm. The doctor’s strategy is a successful compromise in the face of these two conflicting needs. The act has a ratified addressee, i.e. the superior, and an overhearer, i.e. the patient (cf. Goffman, 1979). The doctor takes both hearers into consideration and produces an interesting example of mitigation affecting both the illocution (the request, whose intensity and urgency are reduced in different ways) and the perlocution (the warning effect on the patient, for whom the request, besides obviously being unwelcome, could have tragic consequences). The request is the head act. There are, however, other subordinate illocutionary acts providing pieces of information that are relevant from a clinical point of view alone, but which are also – within the doctor’s argumentative strategy – motivations and grounders for/of the request. This example is also interesting from the point of view of the connections between mitigation, deference, and face-work. The doctor justifies his disruption of his superior’s activities by minimizing the urgency of his request while at the same time maximizing consideration for his superior’s negative face (cf. Leech, 1983; 2.1.4.2.). Moreover, he constructs his own positive face by acting as a conscientious, careful doctor who empathizes
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with his patients and wishes to promote solidarity. He says sarei più tranquillo (‘I would be more at ease’) and reiterates the idea of being at ease (tranquilla, tranquillizzata, tranquillo) throughout his turn, thus leaking that he is not actually that calm. The state of being at ease must be shown more than declared. The polite imperfect is followed by a minimization of the severity of the patient’s present state as compared to her state in the past (‘things now seem to have improved’). This minimization, however, is followed by a piece of information that is in itself not very reassuring (‘you saw her in December when she was already experiencing some pain’). The doctor then gives his superior an opportunity not to comply with the request and even provides a possible reason for refusal (‘if you can’t now’). This is another means of reducing the urgency of the request. 6.6.1.2. Summary of linguistic means of lenitive mitigation. The partial typology sketched out so far gives us an initial idea of the broad range of linguistic devices that can be involved in lenitive mitigation.
Primary means of lenitive mitigation: un attimo, magari, un po’, un pochino, pure; suspensive intonation; diminutives, ethical dative, conditional, polite imperfect; indirect acts, preliminary questions (‘pre’, query preparatory procedure, cf. House and Kasper, 1981; Blum-Kulka et al., 1989), conventional indirectness, if-clauses (e.g. se vuoi), eventualization constructions (elliptical clauses, e.g. delle volte), negative forms (with interrogative function as non è che in 16); and, textual (either preceding or following the act): justifications, grounders, supportive moves (cf. Blum-Kulka et al., 1989), pre-moves. lexical: prosodic: morphological: syntactic:
Secondary means of lenitive mitigation: Vagueness of prescription:
Reduction of obligation:
This is achieved semantically by offering a number of options for the fulfillment of the requested act. This strategy is similar to the strategy of exemplification of equipollent possibilities in the case of assertives; e.g. ‘the only thing I’d like you to do’ (see example 20);
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and, This is achieved by means of elliptical constructions that are similar to the protasis in an if-sentence. Such constructions do not take the fulfillment of the requested act for granted. Rather, they shift this fulfillment to the possible world of eventualities hoped for by the speaker (e.g. the phrase delle volte in example 21).
On the whole, in answer to question a1) at the beginning of Section 6.1., we can say that the linguistic means of lenitive mitigation are heterogeneous both from a grammatical point of view (they belong to different categories) and from a semantic-pragmatic point of view (they focus on different aspects of the speech act). As to question a3), I have drawn a distinction between primary and secondary attenuating devices based on their respective degrees of conventionality. In fact, we may speak of a continuum from primary, direct, passe-partout mitigating devices like un attimo, un secondo, un po’, un pochino (which can also be used with non-directives) to secondary mitigating devices that are either conventionally (e.g. ‘can/could you?’) or non-conventionally (e.g. so-called ‘hints’; cf. Blum-Kulka et al., 1989) indirect. As I have already noted, the highly conventionalized marker un attimo can affect different interactional parameters in different speech act types and contexts. In connection with directives in medical examinations, it is certainly true that un attimo works as a mitigating device reducing possible face-threats. However, in this institutional activity type, there are also situations in which this marker is, so to say, ‘resemantized’ and regains its original full meaning as may specifically happen in utterances about the expected length of the doctor’s examination, which is literally intrusive, conducted as it is on the body of the interlocutor.
Combinations of means in lenitive mitigation: With respect to question a2) at the beginning of Section 6.1., we have noticed frequent combinations of formally heterogeneous means of lenitive mitigation throughout the preceding pages (see examples 7, 10, 12, 13, 14, 18). Certain lexical and syntactic devices have been shown to have mitigating effects independently of other features of the utterance. Other devices, however, like suspensive intonation, typically appear only together with devices of other types. Ultimately, in fact, apart from examples 5)-7) and 9) (where mitigation is a product exclusively of lexical, syntactic, or prosodic choices), the examples discussed thus far show that mitigation is most often a result of combinations of heterogeneous devices: lexical, prosodic, syntactic, morphological, textual, and so forth. In the following section I will try to illustrate how combinations of different types of mitigating devices in a single speech act can
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affect different pragmatic and interactional dimensions. As we have seen, example 24) was complicated by a number of communicative and extracommunicative factors, including the presence of two hearers, the higher status of the ratified hearer, the overhearer’s fear of bad news, etc. Here, the doctor’s mitigation was a complexly articulated strategy involving additional sub-strategies like giving his superior an excuse in advance for refusing, and so forth. In example 16) we also saw a similar clustering of mitigating strategies in a request made by a lower-status speaker (in this case, a patient). 6.6.1.3. Strategies of lenitive mitigation. On the basis of the discussion thus far, I would like to draw some first general conclusions about mitigating devices in lenitive mitigation, i.e. mitigation on directive-exercitive illocutions. This type of mitigation furthers the attainment of perlocutionary objectives, acting on different parameters of co-textually and contextually situated speech acts. The main lenitive mitigating strategies described so far can be summed up as follows: o Strategy a) reduces the weight of imposition. This type of internal mitigation corresponds to bushes (cf. Chapter 3) affecting either predication or reference, as in examples 5), 6), 7), and 8). reduces the intensity of the IFID, thus making a request less imperative. o Strategy b) This strategy corresponds to what I have called hedges, which are realized by different means: for example, by the replacement of the indicative mood by the conditional, as in ‘I’d propose’ in example 15). reduces the coerciveness of a requested act and increases speaker-hearer o Strategy c) emotional involvement by signaling empathy and solidarity, as in example 11) (cf., among others, Blum-Kulka, 1990; Blum-Kulka, 1992; Scollon and Scollon, 1995). Strategies a), b), and c) are all realized primarily by devices related to what Blum-Kulka et al. (1989) call internal mitigation. motivates a requested act by giving preliminary justifications or o Strategy d) grounders for it, as in ‘you seem a bit pale to me’ in example 25). In providing justification for a directive, the speaker appeals to the hearer as a rational being who acts only after understanding the reasons for her/his actions (cf. Blum-Kulka, 1992). This is by far the most widely used strategy of conventional indirectness (see examples 12, 13, 19 and 21), and it is found in requests in many languages. (cf., for instance, House and Kasper, 1981; Blum-Kulka et al., 1989; Færch and Kasper, 1989). The operations realizing strategy d) are all mainly related to what Blum-Kulka et al. (1989) call external mitigation. combines the above strategies of internal and external mitigation and is o Strategy e) the most frequent strategy found in the corpus (see examples 9, 12, 18 and 19). Combinatory strategies frequently occur together with other strategies that reduce the illocutionary intensity of a request such as the ‘non assumption of compliance’ (cf. Blum-Kulka and House, 1989:
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138) and the ‘advance provision of an excuse’ for a possible refusal to comply with the requested act (see example 24). uses the techniques of secondary mitigation. Here, mitigation is not o Strategy f) obtained by linguistic additions or substitutions to the utterance. Rather, it results from an implicature rooted in the semantics of the speech act or from metacommunicative operations performed by the speaker on the speech act. This strategy includes: giving alternatives (see example 18), eventualization (see example 21), fictionalization (see example 22), and so forth. The mitigating operations involved in lenitive strategies above are closely connected to strategies of positive and negative politeness. This, however, does not explain all of their functions in, or effects on, different dimensions of interaction in doctor-patient encounters. Clearly, utterers’ and interlocutors’ projected images change under the coloring influences of different types of mitigation. The interlocutor may be discursively constructed as a rational being who needs to be persuaded, or as a person with pressing obligations who should not be bothered, or as an emotional person who needs to be ‘seduced’ into becoming involved with the speaker, and so forth. We may presume that when speakers use different strategies simultaneously (as in strategy e) above), these will create synergetic reinforcements of mitigation. The effects of mitigating strategies add up, strengthening their ultimate combined influences and triggering additional mitigating effects at the metacommunicative level that define relationships and are instrumental in shaping images of the speaker and the listener. The cumulative use of downgraders, for example, iconically reflects both the quantity and quality of considerateness shown by the speaker for the listener (cf. Leech, 1983). Moreover, in choosing different mitigating strategies, the speaker also gives the hearer different paradigms of options for responding and redefining the relationship. In fact, combinatory lenitive mitigation may be regarded as a metacommunicative version of Robin Lakoff’s (1973) maxim ‘give alternatives’. Finally, in view of the pervasive rhetorical and stylistic ambivalence of communication, we must note the frequent oscillations between reinforcement and mitigation in single turns of spoken language. In example 25): 25)
D. domani digiuna per esami di routine. stia digiuna domattina le facciamo i controlli perché la vedo un po’ pallidina: quindi è meglio che stia, (WR, TR11, A13) D. tomorrow on an empty stomach for blood sampling. go on an empty stomach tomorrow morning we’re going to check you as you seem a bit pale+DIM: to me so it’s better you go on,
we have a reinforcement of the initial directive by way of an elliptical repetition stylistically reminiscent of baby-talk. In addition, the directive is externally mitigated by the grounder
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‘we’re going to check you’. The hearer-excluding first-person plural pronoun is followed by another grounder that is mitigated by ‘a bit’ and the diminutive. The end of the turn seems to contradict the unequal definition of the relation implicit so far. The grounder ‘so it’s better’, mitigates the directive ‘be on an empty stomach’ by appealing to the recipient as a rational being (cf. Blum-Kulka, 1992). This grounder is also a reformulation of what already was stated. Its argumentative effect is to strengthen the preceding grounder ‘as you seem a bit pale+DIM to me’. So far, we have looked at some examples of lenitive mitigation of directives and exercitives in medical examinations. We will now move on to consider some examples of tempering mitigation in assertives and verdictives. 6.6.2. Linguistic means of tempering mitigation Tempering mitigation mainly affects statements (assertives) and verdicts (verdictives) about present, accomplished states of affairs. In Searle’s (1969) terms, the direction of fit here is from words to the world. There is a long tradition of philosophical discussions of the close connection between assertions and judgments which I am not going to dwell on here. Rather, I wish to highlight the operative value of statements uttered by doctors in reporting their diagnoses to patients. In this situation, in fact, assertions often tend to blur into verdicts, and what look like simple remarks about states of affairs can often imply delicate clinical assessments with severe consequences – not just at the discourse level. Doctors’ statements and judgments under such circumstances are often results of shifts from the mode of truth to the mode of causation and manipulation (cf. Givón, 1989: 130). On the whole, tempering mitigation either reduces the speaker’s epistemic commitment to the truth of a proposition or lessens the categoricalness of a verdict. In the medical context, this reduces both the doctor’s obligation to claim to believe something and her/his obligation to persuade the patient to believe the same thing. By these means, tempering mitigation also helps reduce potential face-threats. a) 26)
lexical means (see A22, A23, A24, A25, A27, A32) D. probabilmente è:, - dove c’è l’attaccapanni - probabilmente è una:: conseguenza di un problema intestinale: che è cominciato con l’influenza eh? (Rt, TR14, A22) D. probably it is - where the clothes-stand is - it is probably a consequence of an intestinal problem that began with the flu huh?
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In example 26) probabilmente (‘probably’), a content disjunct expressing doubt (cf. Quirk et al., 1985: 620), occurs twice. The attenuating modulation reduces the doctor’s epistemic commitment to the truth of the propositional content. There is a reduction of the speaker’s commitment to the phrastic element. The scope of the mitigating operation here is restricted to the speaker’s commitment to the assertive illocution. Probabilmente weakens the doctor’s implied certainty. The overall effect of this is to downgrade the doctor’s assertive-verdictive diagnosis to a hypothesis or a mere attempt to retrace a temporal causal sequence of events. Epistemic commitment can also be reduced by means of parenthetical verbs (cf. Urmson, 1952; Venier, 1991; Schneider, forthcoming), as is the case of mi sembra (‘it seems to me’) in example 27): 27)
D. non c’è ancora niente mi sembra come inizio di travaglio. (WR, TR9, A23) D. it seems to me there’re still no signs of labor. (WR, TR9)
Lexical tempering mitigation can operate either on the relation between utterer and proposition (the neustic element of the utterance) or directly on the proposition itself (the utterance’s phrastic element) (cf. Hare, 1970). 28)
D. di caffè ne fa uso? P. sì. diciamo:, tre quattro al giorno. (SpV, TR7, A24) D. do you drink any coffee? P. yes. let’s say:, three or four a day.
In example 28), the doctor is collecting preliminary information before starting an examination. The patient, in her answer, reduces the precision of the information she provides by inserting an approximating bush, the marker diciamo (‘let’s say’), which she utters with a suspensive intonation. This device weakens her commitment to the propositional content (‘three or four’) by reformulating the simple affirmative answer at the beginning of the turn (cf. Hölker, 2003). The patient seems somewhat hyper-cooperative. Finally, diciamo also functions as a filler for a pause while the patient mentally calculates how much coffee she drinks every day. A restrictive modification of the validity of an entire assertive act (as opposed only to the proposition) can be achieved through adverbs expressing points of view. 13 13
Adverbs like ‘clinically’ can also be described as content disjuncts. These “present a comment on the truth value of what is said, expressing the extent to which, and the conditions under which, the speaker believes that what he is saying is true” (Quirk et al., 1985: 620). This class of adverbs is part of Fraser’s
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Hp. è ancora molto arrossata oppure no? D. no. infatti così clinicamente mi sembra molto più: tranquilla. (Rt. TR17, A27) Hp. is it still very red or not? D. no. in fact so to say clinically it seems to me things are much better. ((lit. seems to me much more: calm))
In example 29), for instance, in answering the head physician’s yes-no question, the doctor mitigates the strength of his own expressed opinion. This is achieved by means of the adverb clinicamente (‘clinically’), which limits the validity of the statement, as well as by the marker così (‘so to say’) and the impersonal construction mi sembra (‘seems to me’). 30)
D. be’ --- ((controlla i referti)) ma, direi che va abbastanza bene eh? (PC, TR5, A32) D. well --- ((checking medical reports)) well, I would say you’re doing quite well huh?
In example 30), the marker be’ (‘well’) implies that the utterance is a result of an assessment, and the lexicalized morphological device direi (‘I would say’, the conditional of the verbum dicendi ‘dire’, ‘say’) is used as a verbal predicate governing the sentential object. Both devices reduce the categoricalness of the verdictive. The turn ends with the lexical interjection eh?, uttered with rising intonation, which can be regarded as an agreement-seeking marker. b)
morphological means (see A25)
The epistemic future, i.e. the future tense used with a modal epistemic function, together with modal adverbs and parenthetical verbs, is a morphological device employed to reduce the certainty of a proposition. In 31): 31)
P. +ecco* e niente m’ha detto che: sarà stato quella digestione che avevo fatto. (PsV, TR18, A25)
(1980) list of mitigating devices, which Fraser considers to be similar to Lakoff’s (1972) hedges (cf. 2.1.3.1.). His example is the following: “Technically, your home is a multiple family dwelling” (Fraser, 1980: 349). Here the adverb ‘technically’ is a mitigating device, as its function, according to Fraser, is to “move your displeasure from me, the conveyor of the information, to those who drew up the technical criteria” (ibid.).
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P. +well* you know ((lit. nothing)) he said that: there was probably ((lit. it will have been)) something wrong with digestion. ((lit. that digestion I had made)) the epistemic (compound) future downgrades the diagnosis reported by the patient to a hypothesis. c) 32)
syntactic means (see A28, A34) P. il braccio:, è un pochino:, è normale che sia un pochino gonfio, […] D. non è una cosa:: che non vada. (Rt, TR13, A28) P. the arm is a bit:, it’s normal for it to be a bit swollen, […] D. there’s nothing wrong with it. ((lit. it’s not a thing:: that not go+SUBJ))
In example 32), tempering mitigation is achieved through the double negative, nearly a litotes, with a restrictive relative clause structuring the syntagmatic component of the verdictive (una cosa che non vada, ‘a thing that not go+SUBJ’). The attenuating effect is enhanced by the subjunctive mood, which is used by the doctor to remove possible reasons for concern on the patient’s part. The double negative rules out the possibility of a serious warning. At the same time, by using it, the doctor avoids pronouncing a clearly positive assessment. Example 33) illustrates the difference between mitigation as a metalinguistic category (MitNN) and the everyday meaning of the term (MitN). 33)
D. abbiamo ricevuto l’esame istologico ieri. - come le avevo detto la biopsia è negativa. non ci sono tumori, ovviamente non ci sono:= P. =non c’è niente. D. non è che non c’è niente - non ci sono cose brutte nel senso che non c’è tumore polipi cose strane. (SpV, TR8, A34) D. we received the histology report yesterday. - like I had said the biopsy is negative. there are no tumors, there are definitely none:= P. =there’s nothing. D. it’s not that there’s nothing - there are no bad things in the sense that there are no tumors polyps strange things.
Here, the patient’s mitigating expression non c’è niente (‘there’s nothing’) is used by the doctor to reintroduce a possible reason for concern. The split negation construction non è che
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(‘it’s not that’) enables the doctor to correct the patient’s hasty and perhaps over-optimistic conclusion by repeating it verbatim. According to Bernini (1992), the major [contrastive] function of the split negation construction allows its use as an attenuating device, as evidenced in the use of the subjunctive mood. Attenuation results from the foregrounding of negation, which has as its scope the whole base sentence from which it is extracted. The base sentence is backgrounded. This focalization strategy implies the validity of a different utterance from the one denied, although the former is left unexpressed. (Bernini, 1992: 204; my translation, C.C.)
The utterance contrasting the one denied in example 33) is actually made explicit. This is the doctor’s verdict non ci sono cose brutte (‘there are no bad things’), which, after the selfcorrecting reformulating marker nel senso che (‘in the sense that’), is further specified by a list of possible pathologies both specific (‘tumors polyps’) and generic (‘strange things’) that have been excluded. Despite its attenuating function, the verdictive’s cleft negative structure leaves room for a subsequent reference (not in this excerpt) to the fact that, after all, there was ‘something’, although not a ‘bad thing’. d) 34)
lexical and morphological means (see A26) D. ho capito. allora. quindi ehm qualche volta la dottoressa verrà a chiedere delle cose a suo marito penso. (SpV, TR7, A26) D. I see. so. then erm from time to time the doctor+FEM will come to ask your husband some questions I think.
Example 34) contains an expositive meta-discoursive illocution used to check understanding. The parenthetical verb penso (‘I think’) in turn-final position reinforces the attenuating mitigating effect of the preceding epistemic future. The result is a ‘weighed supposition’, which is anticipated by the understanding marker ho capito (‘I see’) and the starter allora (‘so’) at the beginning of the utterance. e)
lexical and intonational means (see A37)
Example 35) is another instance where MitN is combined with MitNN. Here, the mitigation of the the patient’s (extralinguistic) concern goes hand in hand with the metalinguistic mitigation of the doctor’s (linguistic) verdictive act. The exchange occurs at the end of an examination of a patient who has undergone an operation for breast cancer and has therefore reasons to be
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worried. The doctor, after inviting her to undergo further exams, says: 35)
D. eh:::: cosa vuole. sono addensamenti mammari ((tono di rassicurazione )) (VS, TR7, A37) D. eh:::: you know ((lit. what do you want)). it’s thicker breast tissue ((reassuring tone))
Here, the initial interjection eh is followed by a consultative device cosa vuole (literally ‘what do you want’, which can be translated by the English marker ‘you know’), an expression frequently used in informal spoken language. Both devices urge the patient to accept the reassuring assessment in the head act that follows, sono addensamenti mammari (‘it’s thicker breast tissue’), while at the same time intonationally suggesting that there is nothing to worry about. This exchange is complex from the point of view of both its content and the relation between the interlocutors. The information transmitted is twofold: on the one hand, we have a diagnosis; on the other, we have an assurance that there is nothing particularly serious. The reassuring effect of the utterance is achieved mainly through a specific prosodic contour. More precisely, the exclamation ‘eh’ at the beginning is uttered with a long drawl, at a higher pitch, and in a louder voice than the rest of the sequence, and with a falling intonation. f) 36)
lexical and syntactic means (see A30, A31, A33) D. be’ troppi dolori non è che sian troppo normali. (Rt, TR16, A30) D. well that much pain is not usually that normal.
Example 36) starts with the turn-taking marker be’ (‘well’) and a dislocation of the thematic element troppi dolori (‘that much pain’). The verdictive is mitigated syntactically by the focalizing construction non è che (cf. above) and lexically by the adjective troppi (‘that much’), which is then reiterated to weaken the categoricalness of the doctor’s assessment. 37)
D. può anche darsi che ci sia un piccolo problema di ritorno venoso. cioè magari più la vena che l’arteria che fa fatica a portare il sangue indietro. (PC, TR2, A31) D. it may be a small problem of lack of venous return. in other words maybe it’s more likely to be the vein than the artery that’s making it difficult for the blood to circulate.
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In example 37), mitigation is realized by syntactical and lexical means. As to the former, può anche darsi (‘it may be’) + subjunctive mood is an impersonal construction expressing possibility. This construction is reinforced by the word anche (‘even’), which implies that the diagnosis is one possible option among a wide range of hypotheses. The result is a type of epistemic attenuating modulation of the utterance’s propositional content. The adverb magari (‘maybe’) also indicates possibility (cf. Manzotti, 1995: 107 ff.) and precedes the reformulation already introduced by cioè (‘in other words’). Moreover, the adjective piccolo (‘small’) affects the propositional content by reducing the severity of the problem. 38)
D. magari è un periodo così - va a sapere - qualcosa del genere. (PC, TR3, A33) D. maybe it’s a sort of bad moment - who knows - something like that.
In 38), both magari (‘maybe’) and the idiomatic phrase va a sapere (‘who knows’) lexically mitigate the neustic component of the illocution (the doctor’s commitment to the truth of the proposition). È un periodo così (‘it’s a sort of bad moment’) and qualcosa del genere (‘something like that’) are approximating bushes that make the proposition fuzzy, thus turning the illocution from a verdictive into a behabitive, or a mere description of an internal state (cf. Chapter 3). g) 39)
morphological and syntactic means (see A29) D. ma quello è un problemino. - non è mica un problema grosso. (MB, TR2, A29) D. but that’s a problem+DIM. - it’s not a big problem.
In example 39), the mitigating effect is achieved by a combination of morphological and syntactic devices. The main morphological mitigating device is the diminutive suffix. The pronoun quello (‘that’) can be seen here as an example of empathic deixis characterized by the trait [-PROXIMITY] (cf. Conte, 1999: 75), making it paradigmatically opposed to questo (‘this’). Questo would be the expected choice in this context, since the problem referred to has just been mentioned by the patient in the preceding turn. Coming unexpectedly, quello conveys non-immediacy (cf. Wiener and Mehrabian, 1968; 4.5.). In the second part of the turn the doctor employs the syntactic device litotes to reformulate the propositional content of the first part of the turn by means of a negative opposite (negatio contrarii). In this uttterance, mitigating devices thus minimize the severity of the problem.
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cumulative forms of tempering mitigation (see A35, A36, A39)
As we have already seen, the corpus includes many instances of cumulative uses of lenitive mitigating devices. The cumulative use of downgrading devices occurs in connection with tempering mitigation as well, although to a lesser extent. 40)
D. a me dava l’impressione che l’altra volta fosse più rossa. sbaglio oh:? - sempre stata così? P. dottore abbia pazienza ma non ci credo. io vedo che è scuro che è molto caldo è dolente. (Rt, TR17, A35) D. it seemed to me that the last time it was redder. am I wrong or:? - has it always been like that? P. doctor I’m sorry ((lit. be patient)) but I don’t believe that. what I see is that it’s dark that it’s very warm and it hurts.
Example 40) contains lexical, phrasal, syntactic, and intonational attenuating devices. The diagnosis is downgraded to a subjective opinion by the predicate dare l’impressione (‘seem’). The consultative marker sbaglio oh:? (‘am I wrong or:?’) at the end of the turn, with its interrogative structure and suspensive intonation, makes it easier for the patient to correct the doctor’s statement. The function of the question sempre stata così? (‘has it always been like that?’) is to check the persistence of a symptom; at the same time, it increases the negotiability of the doctor’s assertion. In fact, it starts a conflictual sequence (non ci credo, ‘I don’t believe that’) introduced by the deferential address term dottore (‘doctor’) and the disarmer abbia pazienza (‘be patient’) (cf. Edmondson, 1981: 127 ff.). Here, the patient’s categorical io vedo (‘what I see’) is clearly opposed to the doctor’s cautious observation a me dava l’impressione (‘it seemed to me’). 41)
D. niente mh sì - allora se ho capito bene - il suo problema è che ogni tanto le capita di svenire. P. °sì°. (PsV, TR18, A36) D. well ((lit. nothing)) erm yeah - now if I’ve understood correctly - your problem is that you sometimes happen to faint. ((lit. it happens to you to faint)) P. °yeah°.
In example 41), lexical devices of different kinds (markers, adverbs, predicates, etc.) cluster into a combined form of internal and external mitigation. The turn opens with four starters
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indicating hesitation (niente mh sì allora, ‘well erm yeah now’), followed by the parenthetical clause se ho capito bene (‘if I’ve understood correctly’). 14 This hedge is given emphasis by the two pauses immediately before and after it, which further contribute to reducing the utterance’s claim to truth. The adverb of time ogni tanto (‘sometimes’) is a bush that reduces the frequency of the symptom, thus also reducing the severity of the patient’s problem. Finally, through the choice of the predicate le capita (‘you happen’), the doctor implies that the symptom is beyond the patient’s control. 42)
M. poi oltre a tutto lui lavora al xxx [nome di ospedale] di xxx [nome di luogo] ci fosse da fare non so paradossalmente da operare, […] non non è +non è* esclusa la cosa. (PC, TR1, A39) D. what’s more he works at xxx [name of hospital] in xxx [place name] if they had I don’t know paradoxically to operate, […] not it’s not +it’s not to be* excluded.
Excerpt 42) is an example (which has been already discussed in 3.3.4.) of the cumulative use of lexical and syntactic mitigating devices. Here, the doctor’s prognosis that the patient may need an operation is downgraded to a mere hypothesis. The marker non so (‘I don’t know’) functions as an exemplification marker (‘to operate’), while the adverb paradossalmente (‘paradoxically’) functions as a metacommunicative comment signaling an assessment. Oltre a tutto (‘what’s more’) introduces the subject assigning it a low degree of topical relevance: this is an example of a textual shield of lateralization (cf. 3.4.), i.e. a textual mechanism by which a topic is made a side-topic. In the same connective another mitigating device is embedded, namely the if-sentence in the subjunctive mood without apodosis. These last examples permit a tentative generalization: in doctor-patient interaction in Italian, cumulative downgrading occurs much more often in connection with lenitive mitigation (on directives) than in connection with tempering mitigation (on assertions). The fact that the cumulative use of mitigators seems to be dispreferred for the latter may be explained by the risk, inherent in this use, of resulting in what Haley (1959) calls ‘disqualification’, and Beavin Bavelas et al. (1990) call ‘equivocation’ (cf. 4.6.). This risk of producing, if not an open rebuttal or protest, at least disorientation and uneasiness, is particularly high in a context where what the patient-hearer needs is some kind of (possibly reassuring) certainty. Clearly, this hypothesis remains to be validated by further evidence. However, it seems reasonable to assume that in clinical contexts speakers try to avoid conflicts and to prevent their hearers from becoming confused by too complicated answers they are not looking for. In
14
This is a hedge in my model. Fraser (1980) would call it a ‘disclaimer’; Thomas (1989) calls it a ‘gist’.
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this respect, we might recall the example from Måseide (1981: 152) quoted earlier where a patient, after a complicated and obscure answer by the doctor, replies: “If you think I have a cancer, you should let me know”. According to Berger and Bradac (1982), communication is governed by the basic need to avoid vagueness and uncertainty. Adelswärd and Linell (1994), on the other hand, show various ways in which vagueness can in fact be used an interactional resource (cf. also Chapter 2, footnote 7). In the context of a medical examination, however, the patient has a right to know exactly what s/he is suffering from and what to do to treat it. As to the latter point, the doctor’s use of different forms of mitigation in telling the patient ‘what to do’ tends to increase the effectiveness of her/his directives. Also, the cumulative use of downgrading devices in lenitive mitigation can help shape different relational co-identities and allow the patient to choose among different definitions of the doctor-patient relation. On the other hand, as shown by earlier examples, if the doctor’s explanations of ‘what the patient is suffering from’ are too convoluted by cumulative uses of mitigating devices, this excess of tempering mitigation can result in a level of uncertainty that the patient is understandably not willing to tolerate. In the delicate institutional interaction between doctor and patient it is extremely difficult to distinguish clearly between cautious self- and other-protection on the one hand, and effects generated by overuse of mitigation on the other (e.g. self-invalidation, the impression of reticence, etc.). 6.6.2.1. Prepositional phrases in tempering mitigation. An assertive-verdictive act can be mitigated by reducing the scope of the predication’s validity. This can be done by means of a modifying expression, e.g. the adjunct nel seno (lit.‘in the breast’, meaning ‘as far as the breast is concerned’) in example 43: 43)
M. nel seno va bene. l’unica cosa che mi fa per la prossima volta è un’ecografia al fegato. (Rt, TR16, A38) D. in the breast it’s fine. the only thing I’d like you to do for me ((lit. you do for me)) on your next visit is to have an ultrasound of your liver.
This example is particularly interesting in that it consists of a statement-verdict and a directive. The former can be said to be an external mitigator (grounder) of the latter. Both illocutions are marked by a similar mitigating strategy reducing the validity of the act. In the assertive, the prepositional phrase nel seno (‘in the breast’) reduces the validity of the positive verdict, while in the directive, the construction l’unica cosa che mi fa (‘the only thing I’d like you to do for me’) weakens the obligation imposed on the patient by the doctor. The addition of a prepositional phrase can also attenuate the truth claims of assertives and
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verdictives. For instance, parenthetical phrases with limiting functions like secondo me, a mio parere, a mio giudizio, etc. (‘in my opinion’) function as cautious premises making the statements that follow them subjective and thus undermining their authority (cf. Bazzanella et al., 1991: 68). 15 In a systemic-functional grammar, phrases of this kind are defined as ‘circumstantial angles’ (cf. Thibault, 1999: 577-578). They are used so widely in many types of Italian interaction that they become annoyingly redundant (cf. Carli, 1999). These restrictive structures are relevant to the issue I am dealing with in this work: let us dwell a bit on the reasons of this relevance. The addition of restrictive prepositional or adverbial phrases of this kind in tempering mitigation confirms once again the paradoxical nature of mitigation: on the one hand, it enables a speaker to reduce truth claims to personal opinions thereby deleting the potential extension of the truth claim and its absolutization. On the other hand, this reduction is achieved by foregrounding the speaker’s responsibility for what s/he is saying. Paradoxically, phrases like a mio parere (‘in my opinion’), while reducing the validity of a statement or verdict, also underscore the speaker’s endorsement of her/his utterance. While the validity of the assertion is circumscribed, the role of the speaker as a ratified utterer is highlighted, often contrastively, with respect to others’ opinions. For instance, in 40) the speaker claims responsibility for her/his utterance by using the dative a me (‘to me’) contrastively, again meaning ‘in my opinion’, as opposed to a real or hypothetical ‘in someone else’s opinion’ or ‘according to x’. Clearly, the pragmatic effect of the use of such phrases must be considered in conjunction with the specific propositional content, co-text, and context of the utterance in which it occurs. The general point I would like to make here, however, is that such restrictive prepositional phrases are characterized by an underlying ambivalence: they tend simultaneously to both mitigate and reinforce. This feature can be exploited in unequal encounters like doctor-patient interaction to achieve different interactional goals. As an introduction to a medical opinion, a phrase like a me or secondo me has more than a phatic function. Indeed, in using such a phrase, the doctor both represents her/himself as a qualified expert and represents her/his opinion as one of the possible options available. In this way, s/he leaves room for negotiation in an institutional routine where the assessment is the first step of the decision-making process regardless of the patient’s reaction. From both an instrumental point of view (the restriction of the utterance’s validity) and a relational point of view (the implicit reduction of the doctor’s self-attributed power), such restrictive phrases are not just ambiguous, but also potentially antiphrastic. Relationally, they can be interpreted as indices of a subtle renegotiation of power – as if the doctor, whose knowledge and power are unquestioned in a clinical context, wishes to mitigate her/his image
15
Secondo me is an example of prepositional phrase starting with a polysyllabic preposition which controls the noun phrase directly (cf. Rizzi, 1988: 507-531).
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as an all-knowing expert in this situation. Thus, restrictive prepositional phrases can be part of strategies in which negotiation is simulated. In particular, they can meet specific selfpresentation needs that can ease the decision-making process by preventing the patient from feeling overwhelmed by the doctor’s over-assertiveness. Despite this, restrictive prepositional phrases may also be exactly what they appear to be: i.e. simple relativizations of judgments implying that the doctor may want to appeal to other experts (colleagues, specialists, etc.), or even to the recipient, before making a final decision. Example 44) below is taken from the crucial part of a clinical examination where the doctor presents his diagnosis and gives his reasons for recommending surgery. In 44): 44)
D. a mio giudizio: merita operarla perché i rischi operatori i rischi anestesiologici son minori dei benefici che avrebbe dall’intervento stesso - quindi: - +decida lei* P. +niente da fare* D. niente da fare? ma sta così - (SpV, TR9, A40) D. in my opinion: it is worth operating because the risks involved in the surgery and the anesthesia are minor compared to the benefits you would get from the operation itself so: +it’s on you to decide* ((lit. you decide)) P. +there’s no way* D. there’s no way? but you are like that -
the opening a mio giudizio (‘in my opinion’) modulates the main illocution, the head act, in a subjective direction. On the other hand, the head act itself, merita operarla (‘it is worth operating’), is a suggestion (i.e. an exercitive) presented as an objective assessment (i.e. a verdictive), and is followed by a number of grounders. From a Searlean perspective, we could say that the doctor performs an exercitive act (the suggestion) indirectly, by stating that the preparatory condition for the suggested action holds. The fulfillment of this preparatory condition is expressed by the doctor’s statement that surgery will be beneficial to the patient. Here, the phrase a mio giudizio can be considered as having either mitigating or reinforcing functions depending on the scope we assign to it. If we assume that the phrase focuses on the verdictive, the modulation obtained is one of mitigation: i.e. the phrase implies that the doctor’s opinion is subjective. On the other hand, If we assume that the phrase focuses on the non-literal exercitive act, the modulation obtained is one of reinforcement: i.e. the phrase implies that this is a suggestion of an expert who knows what is best for his patient. At the end of the turn, the doctor – whether in good or bad faith – ascribes the final responsibility for making the decision to the patient, uttering decida lei (‘you decide’). Unexpectedly, the latter seizes this opportunity, overlapping with the doctor’s turn, to
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retroactively respond to the non-literal exercitive force of the suggestion rather than to its the literal verdictive force. In a word, she attempts to resist the doctor’s suggestion, thereby causing the latter’s astonishment. After an exclamation of disbelief, 16 the doctor reaffirms the need for the operation in a somewhat polemical tone and without further attenuation. The disagreement (cf. Pomerantz, 1984) in this case, we could say, is a product of misunderstanding. The patient has interpreted the doctor’s utterance as an exercitive act (suggestion) that she is free not to follow, while the doctor has understood it as a verdictive act (assessment) that she cannot confute. In terms of Kamio’s (1994; 1995) theory of the territory of information, the verdict is in the doctor’s territory, while the suggestion is in the patient’s. Hence, ironically, in this situation, the interlocutors are only exercising what they regard as their respective ‘territorial interpretive rights’. This example shows that mitigation can be a loaded weapon. The problem here is that the doctor has only simulated a negotiable situation by representing the objective necessity of the operation as a personal opinion and leaving it to the patient to make a final decision. This strategy fails in the exchange discussed here. The patient takes the opportunity offered by the doctor’s strategic attenuation of his suggestion to renegotiate their mutual knowledge, powers, and the respective duties at stake. The doctor’s pre-emptive, non-deferential answer reveals that he has failed to reach his intended purpose (to ‘sugar the pill’ and make the patient agree to the operation while showing respect for her and complying with the norms of informed consent). Moreover, his ill-chosen mitigation strategy even causes antagonism. In Strawson’s (1964) terms, we could say that the patient’s ‘acknowledgement’ of the doctor’s intention to mitigate his suggestion/verdict does not contribute to the attainment of the complex primary response intended by the doctor. On the contrary, it seems to hamper its attainment. 6.6.2.2. Summary of linguistic means of tempering mitigation. The linguistic means of tempering mitigation discussed so far can be summed up as follows: primary means of tempering mitigation: lexical: parenthetical verbs affecting the neustic component of the utterance; approximating devices affecting the phrastic component of the utterance (e.g. diciamo, magari); devices indicating vagueness or uncertainty (i.e. tempering particles); content disjuncts (e.g. clinicamente); interjections and intonation (e.g. eh:::: see ex. 35);
16
Exclamations indicating disbelief are addressed in Manzotti and Rigamonti (1991: 291).
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syntactic: negative; negative opposite (negatio contrarii), litotes, 17 può darsi + subjunctive mood (see ex. 37); intonational: ‘reassuring’ tone (see ex. 35); morphological: diminutives (see ex. 39); epistemic future (see ex. 31); conditional mood (see ex. 30); limiting adjuncts realized by prepositional phrases (e.g. nel seno, see ex. 43; a mio giudizio, see ex. 44); phrasal: consultative devices (cf. Blum-Kulka et al., 1989) or disarmers (cf. Edmondson, 1981) (e.g. se ho capito bene, see ex. 41; sbaglio oh:?, see ex. 40); idiomatic clauses (e.g. va a sapere, see ex. 38; cosa vuole, see ex. 35); textual: clarification introduced by reformulating expressions (e.g. nel senso che, see ex. 33); topical lateralization introduced by textual shields (e.g. oltre a tutto, see ex. 42); secondary (semantic) means of tempering mitigation: reduction of predication’s categoricalness by means of a verbum putandi that weakens the assertion (e.g. dare l’impressione, see ex. 40); semantics of proposition: e.g. un piccolo problema (see ex. 37), ogni tanto (see ex. 41); reference vagueness: e.g. qualcosa del genere (see ex. 38).
6.7. MITIGATION AND FELICITY CONDITIONS (CONSTITUTIVE RULES) In this section I will focus on possible connections between mitigation and felicity conditions. This idea was originally advanced by Robin Lakoff (1980), although within a different theoretical framework and with a different purpose in mind than mine here. I would like to suggest that the formal classification of mitigating devices may be profitably reconsidered from the point of view of the felicity conditions (Austin) or constitutive rules (Searle) affected by the mitigating operation. This makes it possible to build new typologies while at the same time providing answers to the questions formulated at the outset in Section 6.1. Ultimately, two objectives have to be reached. One consists in proving the usefulness and validity of the theoretical model proposed here for the systematization of empirical data. The other consists in clarifying the functional analogy between lenitive and tempering mitigation and pointing out their common connections to the fulfillment conditions of speech acts. As we 17
As put forward in Caffi (1990), different instances of litotes can be placed along a scale of growing figural identity ranging from: 1) negative periphrasis (e.g. non è a buon mercato, ‘it’s not cheap’), through 2) negation of a hyperbole (e.g. non costa due soldi, lit. ‘it doesn’t cost two pence’) to 3) double negative (negatio contrarii) (e.g. non ha un prezzo indifferente, lit. ‘it doesn’t have an insignificant price’).
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will see in the following sections, both lenitive and tempering mitigation can attenuate compliance with the felicity conditions/constitutive rules of speech acts. 6.7.1. Attenuation of compliance with essential rules According to Searle (1969: 66), the essential rule for directives is that the act “counts as an attempt to get H [the hearer] to do A [the action]”. The constitutive rule for assertives is that the act “counts as an undertaking to the effect that p represents an actual state of affairs” (ibid.). In both of these macro-classes of illocutionary acts mitigation – whether internal or external – affects the fulfillment of essential conditions. In the case of directives, mitigation reduces the forcefulness of the attempt to make the recipient do something. In the case of verdictives and assertives, it reduces the categoricalness of the statements and can be seen as a reduction of the forcefulness of the attempt to make the recipient believe what has been said. In other words, modulations of the essential conditions of an act attenuate either the attempt to make someone to perform something or the attempt to make someone believe something. Against this background, the analogy between deontic modulation and epistemic modulation becomes particularly clear. The illocution may be made contradictory and the proposition may be disqualified or be made unclear or vague by operations affecting its essential conditions. This is true regardless of the ontological status of the proposition, which changes according to speech act type. Now, if this happens, the result is that the modified directive or assertiveverdictive act can generate both: a) logical forms of pragmatic inconsistency (cf. Azzoni, 1998), and b) psychological forms of either disqualification (cf. Haley, 1959) or equivocation (cf. Beavin Bavelas et al., 1990), sometimes even leading to cases of micro double-bind. 6.7.2. Attenuation of compliance with preparatory rules According to Searle (1969: 66), the preparatory rule (Austin’s ‘A condition’) for directives is that “H is able to do A”. In instances of external mitigation, the attenuation of compliance with this rule is realized by either affirmative hypothetical constructions (‘if you like’, ‘if you can’) or negative ones (‘if it doesn’t take you too long’). However, the prototypical form of conventional indirectness is the question about the validity of the preparatory condition necessary to perform the act (e.g. ‘could you?’, etc., with or without additional mitigating devices like ‘maybe’, ‘by any chance’, etc.). Through frequent use, this mitigating strategy has generated fixed formulas that Searle calls ‘indirect’ speech acts. As necessary preparatory conditions for making statements and expressing verdicts, speakers must possess knowledge of the states of affairs to which they refer. Mitigation affects these preparatory conditions by signaling that they are only partially fulfilled. Speakers mitigate self-attributions of competence
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through disclaimers like ‘if I’m not wrong’, ‘if I remember correctly’, ‘I might be wrong, but’, ‘if I’ve understood correctly’ (see ex. 41), etc. 6.7.3. Attenuation of compliance with the propositional content rule The propositional content rule was formulated by Searle and has no equivalent in Austin’s theory. It is affected by mitigation of the reference act by approximating devices such as Lakoff’s hedges or by the devices introducing fuzziness or vagueness that I have called bushes. In connection with requests, compliance with the propositional content rule is attenuated by mitigating devices reducing the scope and weight of imposition. The requested action is minimized, as in example 43) (‘the only thing I’d like you to do for me’). Vagueness of propositional content can also mitigate the recipient’s obligations. For instance, in the doctor’s directive in example 18), the phrase qualcosa così (‘something like that’) implicitly gives the patient a choice in deciding which medication she wishes to buy. The propositional content condition also comes into play in exercitive-directive acts in instances of mitigation where the predication of the recipient’s future action is relocated into an indefinite future. This happens with expressions like ‘when you can’ or ‘sooner or later’, or with expressions that qualify the requested/described action (e.g. con calma, ‘at your convenience’, lit. ‘with calm’ in example 17). The kinds of modulations described so far involve semantic operations. In assertiveverdictive acts, mitigation of the propositional content rule consists in reducing the precision of the propositional content by means of: a) specific vagueness introducers like Lakoff’s (1972) hedges and bushes such as praticamente, diciamo, quasi which reduce commitment to the propositional content; b) eventualization introducers like magari and direi; or c) vague reference and predication acts including expressions like ‘something like that’. 18 This latter kind of mitigation, both lenitive and tempering, is similar to some instances of disqualification (cf. Haley, 1959) of the ‘am saying something’ component of the message (cf. 4.7.1.). 6.7.4. Mitigation as a side-effect of the reinforcement of the sincerity rule As pointed out in 4.2., the sincerity condition is the only condition that cannot be mitigated: it can only be reinforced. As can be easily gathered from our ordinary experience as speakers, the sincerity condition is only unidirectionally scalar, since it can be emphasized either explicitly by means of expressions like ‘really’, ‘I mean it’, etc., or implicitly (also nonverbally) through indices of immediacy (cf. Wiener and Mehrabian, 1968; 4.5.) but it cannot be de-emphasized or attenuated by expressions like ‘sort of’, ‘a little’, etc. 18
A similar strategy is adopted in promises, in which temporal and modal vagueness, e.g. eventualization, is achieved through subordination of the promise within an if-clause. This results in a general reduction of the commitment to the performance of the act.
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What is more, particular mitigating effects are produced by reinforcing modulations of the sincerity condition itself. These are related to immediacy and are realized by means of address terms expressing deference, distance, or affect. The use of deferential address terms, which is part of classical rhetoric’s captatio, has traditionally been seen in pragmatics as a strategy employed to mitigate requests (cf. Ervin-Tripp, 1976; Blum-Kulka, 1990). This is a legacy of Brown and Levinson’s model of politeness, which regards this strategy as an appeal to the recipient’s positive face. In fact, this view is untenable in other models, as the use of address terms clearly reinforces speakers’ attempts to make their hearers do and/or believe things. In connection with exercitive-directive acts (where these mechanisms operate in a simpler, more homogeneous way), the use of address terms does not have an attenuating effect on the definition of the relation (cf. 4.7.1.). Rather, it has a modalizing – in Greimas and Courtés’ (1979) terms, a ‘timic’ – effect on the obligation imposed through the exercitive-directive. The obligation is actually reinforced, but it is presented as affectively motivated. The act is thus requested, ordered, or prescribed etc., to an emotionally connotated recipient, or, as in the case of the ethical dative (see ex. 20), is issued by an emotionally connotated utterer. This emotional involvement legitimizes, and therefore strengthens, the directive or the other act. In such cases, the mitigating effect is indirect: a complex outcome of the definition of the relation thus obtained. The request typically takes a form like: ‘I am asking you not on behalf of any power or authority, but in the name of our emotional relationship’. Ultimately, we can only refer to such examples as instances of mitigation if we include within mitigating operations indirect attenuating strategies aimed at easing the attainment of given perlocutionary effects. Differently from mitigating operations aimed at attenuating aspects of the illocution (i.e. operations focused on prâxis), indirect mitigation of the kind described above, centered on perlocutions, affects poìesis. Returning to the question of the structural analogy between lenitive and tempering mitigation, it can be claimed that the use of emotionally connotative address terms has a strengthening effect in both requests and statements. Such terms are described as ‘apostrophes’ and ‘effects of presence’ by rhetoricians and as ‘indicators of immediacy’ by some social psychologists. These emotionally loaded terms clearly show the complex interplay, functioning through multiple implicatures, of instrumental and relational aspects of communication which has been stressed from the outset of this book. On the whole, in answer to question c1) at the beginning of Section 6.1., we may conclude that both lenitive and tempering mitigation are realized by devices that at least in part are related to evaluations of what speech act analysis has described in terms of felicity conditions. Speech act theory thus enables us to make generalizations that help tentatively explain certain basic similarities between these two main forms of mitigation.
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6.8. CONCLUSIONS: TOWARD A PRAGMATIC TYPOLOGY OF MITIGATORS In the present chapter I have discussed a number of examples taken from doctor-patient encounters. These include instances of mitigation in the narrow sense, and instances of mitigation affecting two main types of illocutionary acts: exercitive-directive acts and assertive-verdictive acts. Exercitive-directive acts are attenuated by lenitive mitigating devices that reduce the addressee’s obligation to do what the speaker suggests or commands, whereas assertive-verdictive acts are attenuated by tempering mitigating devices that reduce the speaker’s responsibility for her or his own statements or judgments. In lenitive mitigation the speaker’s relation with the recipient is foregrounded. In tempering mitigation what is foregrounded is the speaker’s relation to the truth of the propositional content. Lenitive mitigation is rooted in politeness. In the institutional context of the doctor-patient encounters discussed in this chapter, politeness is often a form of professional face-work in which the doctor constructs a professional image of her/himself while simultaneously signaling a particular relationship to the patient. Tempering mitigation, on the other hand, is rooted in cautiousness. Caution as a basic motivational dimension is inherent in institutional communication in general and in therapeutic interaction in particular. There is a clear connection between these two types of mitigation. For instance, in many communicative situations, opinions that are expressed too categorically or intemperately can be considered impolite. 19 Some ways of thinking of this connection have been discussed in 6.5.2. As we have seen, Leech’s (1983) modesty maxim can be reinterpreted as implicitly referring to interplay between epistemic phenomena (e.g. modalizations of statements implying various degrees of commitment) and interactional politeness and face-work. According to Givón (1989), communication is a continuum ranging from modes of truth to modes of manipulation; the epistemic modality itself is crypto-pragmatic. In my view, connections between epistemic and interactional phenomena are not just symptomatic of the simultaneous presence of different heterogeneous dimensions, at different analyzable levels, of a given utterance, whether mitigated or not. Indeed, the study of pragmatic and stylistic modulations of utterances gives us the opportunity to understand how the various elements contribute to the interactive construction of meaning. In investigating indexically anchored communicative choices, the integrated pragmatic analysis of formal elements of utterances allows us to fathom the intertwined interactional 19
On the other hand, there are (behabitive) speech acts in which the opposite may be true, as in expressions of congratulation or of a judgment as a second move in an adjacency pair. Congratulations require sufficient emphasis (in particular, the interlocutor’s achievement must be maximized). Similarly, positive judgments in response to a first positive judgment must be reinforced in order to be considered a ‘preferential move’ in polite conversation (cf. Pomerantz, 1984). Incidentally, this point can be seen as confirming Strawson’s (1964) view I have stressed in 2.2.2., namely, that intensity is part and parcel of (the understanding of) illocutions.
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dimensions simultaneously at work: in this chapter, I have tried precisely to disentangle the contribution of every single choice to this complex machinery. As we have seen, both speech acts’ practical and instrumental purposes (the attainment of the act’s perlocution) and their relational purposes (the construction of the image of the self and the other, and of the image of the self with respect to the other) are shaped by formal devices. In this chapter, I have tried to give a few answers to the questions asked at the beginning of Section 6.1. These tend to confirm an important point that cross-linguistic studies of mitigation have already proved but that has not yet been accorded the relevance it deserves: apart from a limited number of specialized mitigating devices that operate on given types of illocutions, attenuating strategies are essentially the same regardless of the type of illocution they modify. The examples discussed here show that, from a formal perspective, mitigating devices can be divided into two main groups: ‘primary mitigating devices’ and ‘secondary mitigating devices’ (cf. Hölker, 1988). The primary devices can be further subdivided into ‘substitutive’ devices and ‘additive’ devices (cf. Kerbrat-Orecchioni, 1990-1994, Vol. 2, 1992: 199-200). For this latter distinction I have drawn on the basic rhetorical processes of substitution and addition (cf. Lausberg, 1967). In many languages, the preferred form of lenitive mitigation is substitution. This is typically realized by so-called indirect speech acts (cf. Searle, 1975). In indirect requests, for instance, where a preparatory condition for the fulfillment of the act is formulated (e.g. ‘can you give him a ring?’), mitigation is similar to the rhetorical figure of percontatio in rhetorical questions. Shields are also substitutive devices, in the sense that they act as substitutive elements in Bühler’s (1934) deictic triad, ‘I-here-now’ (cf. 1.3.2.; 3.3.4.). Tempering mitigation, on the other hand, tends to be additive. The main additive means of internal mitigation (cf. Blum-Kulka et al., 1989), whether lenitive or tempering, are: x
morphological devices, e.g. diminutive suffixes, modal uses of tenses, vocatives, address terms (rhetorical apostrophes);
x
syntactic devices, e.g. hypothetical constructions; and,
x
lexical devices, e.g. markers like ‘a bit’, ‘a second’, etc.
The main additive means of external mitigation for both illocutionary macro-classes are: x
if-clauses;
x
pre-sequences;
x
explanations;
x
grounders of the head act.
In the light of what has been said thus far, there seem to be no sharp illocutionary distributional constraints on the occurrence of mitigating devices (as hypothesized in 6.1.). Rather, the examples discussed here prove the existence of two basic groups of mitigators:
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those specialized for specific types of illocution on the one hand, and those that can be used to modify different features of various kinds of illocutionary acts on the other hand. Within the specialized group, an entire class of devices is made up of epistemic mitigators specialized for assertives. These are the so-called evidentials, which include disjuncts and parenthetical verbs that simultaneously signal mitigation and illocution. To take just an example, as a number of studies on disjuncts have shown, an adverb like probabilmente (‘probably’) has a twofold function. On the one hand, it mitigates the illocutionary force of a speech act by reducing epistemic commitment to the utterance. On the other, it presupposes the assertive force of the act. Similarly, within the large group of mitigators specialized for requests, per favore (‘please’) mitigates the directive illocutionary force of the act while at the same time signaling the very fact that the utterance is a directive. We may thus hypothesize that between these two groups of mitigators an inclusive relationship holds: the macro-category ‘mitigating devices’ includes a sub-category of specialized markers that are also illocutionary force indicating devices (IFIDs). Such specialization may be explained diachronically in terms of the conventionalization of linguistic devices. In many cases, the process in question can be described in terms of grammaticalization (cf., among others, Traugott Closs and Dasher, 2002). What is important for my present purposes is, however, that these devices come to have different degrees of transparency as they undergo the process of ‘bleaching’ or desemantization, and through this process some of them become frozen mitigators (cf. Labov and Fanshel, 1977: 83). From a theoretical point of view, it seems reasonable to assume that the specialization (or grammaticalization) of some mitigating devices such as IFIDs depends on the fact that these markers are directly linked to the essential conditions of the speech act. On the other hand, mitigators like un attimo, un po’, per caso, magari, etc. (‘a second’, ‘a bit’, by any chance’, ‘maybe’, etc.) are based on general temporal or logical semantic operations such as eventualization. The latter can be introduced by expressions like per caso and magari, or by sub-standard variants such as delle volte, as in example 21). In conclusion, the analysis of formal devices of tempering mitigation in assertive-verdictive acts and of lenitive mitigation in exercitive-directive acts has confirmed, from a microstructural and grammatical point of view, a connection between the two that had already emerged functionally. Further, the punctual reference to felicity conditions has allowed us to make this connection explicit. Despite the limited number of examples discussed in this chapter, the formal analogy envisaged between epistemic/tempering mitigation and deontic/lenitive mitigation enables us to draw the following general conclusion (which naturally requires corroboration by further evidence): there is a structural analogy between modulated acts with claims to truth and modulated acts with claims to validity. This analogy can at least partially be accounted for by the fact that both epistemic and deontic mitigation make reference to felicity conditions (cf. 6.7.). This first general result sheds some light on the
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blurred boundary between truth and validity. Both appear to be intertwined evaluation dimensions of communicative behavior which aims first and foremost at constructing intersubjectively understanding, agreement and unity.
CONCLUSIONS 1st Gent. 2d Gent.
Such men as this are feathers, chips, and straws, Carry no weight, no force. But levity Is causal too, and makes the sum of weight; For power finds its place in lack of power; Advance is cession, and the driven ship May run aground because the helmsman’s thought Lacked force to balance opposites. George Eliot, Middlemarch, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998 [1871], p. 303.
The discussion carried out in the preceding chapters has led to a number of conclusions on the issues raised in the book. These conclusions, together with observations on issues that are still being debated, have already been advanced in the final section of each chapter. Here, it will be enough to sum up the following features that, taken together, characterize mitigating operations. As a result of an integrated analysis that takes into account contextual, sequential and stylistic factors, it can be argued that mitigated choices are:
functional – with respect to both self- and other-protection – to the accomplishment of interactional tasks within specific activity types aimed at the attainment of specific goals; multi-dimensional and operative within a number of heterogeneous parameters, which co-vary in either a co-oriented or a non co-oriented way; inherently ambivalent, in that they belong to analogic (hence defeasible) communication; operating on various inferential levels within the decoding process; crucial for the adjustment of inferrable emotive distances within the metapragmatic monitoring of the interaction; and correlates of the felicity conditions of speech acts.
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Moreover, the analysis of a number of examples taken from a corpus of doctor-patient and psychotherapist-client interviews has enabled me to pinpoint:
both structural and functional analogies between mitigation of assertive illocutionary acts and mitigation of directive illocutionary acts; both instrumental and relational functions; and the crucial role of mitigation in the relational adjustment and the emotive attunement.
What I am going to suggest here is a concluding, although by no means definitive, typology of the various mitigating devices registered in the conversations analyzed. This is a tentative general typology of mitigators in the activity types ‘doctor-patient interview’ and ‘psychotherapeutic session’. The main classification criterion that has been adopted is the type of abstract scope of the mitigating operation (cf. Chapter 2). The following list must be integrated with the categorizations introduced in Chapter 6 with respect to primary and secondary means for both lenitive mitigation (in exercitive-directive acts) and tempering mitigation (in assertive-verdictive acts). As I have more than once pointed out in the present book, a comprehensive classification of mitigating devices is not only outside the scope of this book, but is also a self-defeating task, given the inherently multifunctional, indexical and ambivalent nature of the object of analysis. What follows aims only at listing specific occurrences within specific activity types. As has been noted in the previous chapters, many mitigating devices may belong to more than one class, and classes may easily overlap. I have maintained the abbreviations used in Chapter 6: they indicate the type of therapeutic encounter from which the examples are taken (cf. Appendix B). The latter are either quotations from specific exchanges or recurrent occurrences throughout the corpus. I have ‘expanded’ the examples whenever I thought some kind of micro-contextualization was called for. Certainly, a lot of work remains to be done, in terms of both empirical research and theoretical developments, in order to analyze attenuating mechanisms in greater detail, trace the process of their specialization from a diachronic perspective, 1 shed further light on the links between the various kinds of mitigation, the carrying out of different activities and the ensuing relational effects (specifically, emotive distances). In short, I have tried to tighten the mesh of the conceptual net I have worked out so far which is still too loose. Deficient as it may be, however, this net appears to be able to capture significant pragmatic phenomena of spoken Italian, a language that for too long has ‘escaped’ this kind of investigation.
1
For interesting proposals on the directionalities of semantic change, see Traugott Closs and Dasher (2002).
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Towards a typology of mitigating devices in therapeutic settings I) Ia) Ia 1)
Propositional mitigating devices: PMD (bushes) Scope of mitigation: proposition (phrastic) reference additive means: approximating devices (vagueness introducers, bushes, devices indicating a reduced denotative specificity) un po’ (‘a bit’) xxx + cose del genere (‘xxx + things like that’, e.g. facevo fatica a dichiarare l’interesse cose del genere, ‘I had difficulty in expressing my interest in things like that’, PsS) una cosa di questo genere (‘something like that’, ‘something of that kind’, PsS) un certo (‘a certain’, e.g. un certo tipo di dialogo, ‘a certain type of dialogue’, PsS; un certo tipo di comunicazione, ‘a certain type of communication’, PsS) una specie di (‘a kind of’, e.g. una specie di ginnastica, ‘a kind of physical exercise’, Rt) una certa idea (‘a certain idea’, PsS) xxx + o che (‘xxx + or something’, e.g. un’emorragia o che, ‘a hemorrhage or something’, PsS) una ventina (‘about twenty’, SpV) adjacent reformulation (e.g. settantacinque settantasei, ‘seventy-five seventy-six’, SpV) omission signals eccetera (‘etcetera’, e.g. ansie batticuori paure eccetera, ‘anxiety palpitations fears etcetera’, PsS) eccetera eccetera (‘etcetera etcetera’, PsV) e via dicendo (‘and so on and so forth’, PsV) e così via (‘and so on’, PsV)
Ia 2)
substitutive means: designation attenuating devices: euphemism, periphrasis (in the NP) questa cosa, questa persona (‘this thing’, this person’, PsS) quelle cose ossessive (‘those obsessive things’, Rt) problemi di tipo - di pressione alta (‘problems like - high blood pressure’, PC) diminutives: una puntina (‘a spot+DIM’, PC), un nodino (‘a lump+DIM’, SpV), un grassetto (‘a growth+DIM’, Rt)
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un po’ di + xxx + diminutive (‘a bit of + xxx + diminutive’, e.g. un po’ di bruciorini un po’ di nauseetta (‘slight burning+DIM slight nausea+DIM’, WR) una cosa e l’altra (‘one thing and the other’, Rt) Ib) Ib 1)
predication additive means praticamente, in pratica (‘practically’, ‘just’, PC, Rt, SpV, PsS) circa (‘about’, WR, PsS) diciamo (‘ let’s say’, e.g. diciamo tre o quattro al giorno, ‘let’s say three or four a day’ SpV) un po’ (‘a bit’, meaning ‘basically’, e.g. quello che un po’ lei chiede, ‘what you’re basically asking’, PsS) più o meno (‘more or less’, PsS), la situazione è più o meno (‘the situation is more or less’, PsS) può essere che (‘it may be that’, PsS) un po’ così (‘a bit like that’, PsS) può darsi che (‘it may be that’, PsS) su per giù ( ‘roughly speaking’, SpV)
Ib 2) Ib 2.1.)
substitutive means negation (litotes, understatement)
non è la sua una vera e propria ernia (‘yours isn’t a real ((lit. real and true (FIG))) slipped disc.’ PC, TR1, ll. 361-362) non è che (‘it’s not that’, e.g. non è che io non abbia momenti di felicità, ‘it’s not that I don’t have moments of happiness’, PsS) non è esclusa la cosa (‘this can't can’t be excluded ((lit. is not excluded this thing))’, PC, TR1, ll. 354-355) Ib 2.2.)
(attenuated) lexical choices
gioco un po’ su queste due piste (‘I’m kind of working on these two tracks’, PsS; T. describing his psychotherapeutic technique) II)
IIa) IIa 1)
Illocutionary mitigating devices: IMD (hedges) Scope of mitigation: neustic (statements) or illocutionary force (felicity conditions). additive means metapragmatic (metapragmatic awareness indicating devices): hesitation indicating devices (fillers, etc.), consultative devices, dialogic style
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non so (‘I don’t know’) mah (‘well’) no? (‘huh?’) figurati (‘imagine’, ‘believe it or not’) (‘you must be joking, catch on’) IIa 1.1.)
mitigating devices that implicitly refer to a speech act preparatory rule, i.e. Austin’s (1962) A condition concerning the right to invoke a given procedure, authority or competence
Cautionary pre-moves, disclaimers: mi sembra di capire (‘it seems to me that’, SpV, PsS) beh mi sembra di capire (‘well it seems to me that’, PsS) così come la vedo io (‘as far as I can see’, PsS) se non sbaglio (‘if I’m not mistaken’, Rt) da quello che ne so io che non ne so molto (‘as far as I know and I don’t know much’, PsS) ma io sa parlando così proverò col dottore se posso farlo (‘but I you know thought you know I’ll check with the doctor if I can do it’, PC) IIa 1.2.)
mitigating devices that implicitly refer to Austin’s (1962) B condition concerning the correctness and the completeness of the procedure. They signal approximation in the formulation of a given speech act
per così dire (‘so to speak’) nel senso che (‘in the sense that’) vabbe’ (‘ok’, PsS) tutto sommato direi (‘all in all I’d say’, PsS) direi in linea di massima (‘generally speaking I’d say’, PsS) come dire (‘how can I put it’, PsS) voglio dire (‘I mean’, PsV) diciamo così (‘let’s put it this way’, PsS) insomma X (‘well X’, ‘I mean X’) IIa 2)
mitigating devices that implicitly refer to the essential rule (cf. Searle, 1969), particularly attenuating devices affecting the obligation for either the hearer or the speaker to do something or to believe something (requests, proposals, statements) Passe-partout mitigating devices (e.g. un po’, ‘a bit’, un attimo, ‘a second’, un attimino, ‘a second+DIM’, magari, ‘even’, ‘perhaps’, ‘maybe’) tolga un attimino così vediamo (‘move a second so we can see’, Rt)
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faccia un po’ vedere un attimo (‘let me see a second’, Rt) magari gli dai un’occhiata (‘maybe you can have a look at that’, PsS) magari fermiamoci un attimo qui (‘maybe we can stop here for a moment’, PsS) pure (‘as well’, e.g. ascolto pure il sogno, ‘I listen to the dream as well’, PsS) explanations, grounders così evita di (‘this way you avoid’, PC) che devo fare una manovra che se no: (‘I need to do something otherwise’, PC) equivocation, disqualification dovrà fare della fisioterapia o vedere un po’ (‘you will have to do some physical therapy or something’, PC) IIa 3)
epistemic commitment modulating devices with reference to the essential rule for assertive acts, i.e. “the proposition presents a state of things” forse (‘maybe’) magari (‘maybe’, PsS) probabilmente (‘probably’) parenthetical verbs, immagino (‘I suppose’, ‘I think’, PsS) tutto sommato, direi (‘all in all’, ‘I’d say’, PsS)
IIa 4)
subjectivizers/epistemic certainty restricting devices (that make the proposition a subjective opinion) secondo me (‘in my opinion’, PC) a mio parere (‘in my opinion’, SpV)
IIb) IIb 1)
substitutive means partial substitution: IFID attenuating devices, e.g. conditional mood (instead of indicative mood) with or without other means (frequent combination of means direi di fare dei colloqui (‘I’d say to do some sessions’, PsS) io proporrei (‘I’d suggest’, PsS) io le proporrei (‘I’d suggest to you’, PsV) questa depressione potrebbe anche essere (‘this depression could also be’, PsS) mi sembra che (‘it seems to me that’, PsS) direi che in prima approssimazione (‘I’d hazard a guess’, PsS) conditional + hypothetical premise (e.g. io le proporrei se vuole, ‘I’d suggest to you…if you want’, PsV)
IIb 2)
overall substitution (indirect speech acts, hypothetical constructions, rhetorical questions)
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269
ha voglia di scoprirsi un attimo? (‘would you mind to undress a bit?’, PC) magari fermiamoci un attimo qui (‘maybe we can stop here for a moment’, PsS) se lei riuscisse a andare là con l’esame già fatto sarebbe meglio (‘if you could go there with your test done it would be better’, PC) non è perché deve ancora imparare… (‘it’s not because you still have to learn…’, PsS) III) IIIa)
Enunciative mitigating devices: EMD (shields). Scope of mitigation: instance d’énonciation, deictic origin, actantial deictic shields: ‘not-I’, ‘not-You’ (change of footing, generic person, quotational shields). dice guarda (‘she says look’, PC) another speaker’s direct speech objectivization: 3rd person singular quando uno diventa nervoso fa così (‘when one get nervous one acts like that’, PsV, gnomic present) fra virgolette (‘in inverted commas’, ‘quote unquote’, PsS, similar to the metapragmatic use of per così dire, ‘so to speak’)
IIIb)
spatial-temporal shields: ‘not-here, ‘not-now’ ‘not here’, modal imperfect, narrativization inclusive enallage + dramatization (direct speech with interjections) quando piangiamo diciamo mamma che tristezza (‘when we cry we say God (lit. mum) how sad’, PsS)
IV)
Other means Paralinguistic and prosodic means (e.g. suspensive intonation, justification tone) mimic and proxemic means (e.g. smile, laughter) metacommunicative means (e.g. qualification of the overall communicative modality, as in evaluative adverbs like paradossalmente, ‘paradoxically’, PC, TR1, l. 353) jokes (PsS).
Mitigation as a side-effect Local (coextensive with a sentence) mitigating strategies (micro-strategies) and conversational/textual mitigating strategies (macro-strategies)
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A)
Semantic strategies
The mitigating effect is produced by presenting the proposition as either hypothetical or set within a paradigm of possibilities, thus introducing an unreal modality or another possible world. This effect is obtained by using hypothetical constructions, by adding a conditional premise (e.g. se riesce, ‘if you can manage’, se ha tempo, ‘if you have time’), or an eventualization marker (e.g. per caso, ‘by any chance’, magari, ‘maybe’): A1)
eventualization
ci fosse…da operare (‘if they had to operate’, PC, TR1, ll. 353-354) magari (‘maybe’, e.g. a volte magari gli oggetti del sogno, ‘sometimes maybe the objects of the dream’, PsS) delle volte (‘some time’ cotextually meaning ‘(if you could) it would be great’, PC) B)
Metacommunicative strategies B1)
fictionalization. Opening of a possible world, for instance by producing a parody of the current situation:
come se (‘as if’) mettiamo il caso (‘let’s suppose’) ad esempio + fiction (‘for example’) lei non faccia più nulla faccio tutto io […] lei ormai subisce ((tono divertito)) (‘don’t do anything else I’ll do all the work […] you’re just going to have to put up with me’ ((amused tone)), SpV) C)
Sequential strategies C1)
on conditional relevance and the selection of the current topic:
Echoic repetition transactional disqualification lateralization shields (strategic) topic shift (strategic) topic change digression (evasion) C2)
on the display of disagreement: weakened agreement rather than explicit disagreement (“downgraded agreements regularly engender disagreement sequences”, Pomerantz, 1984: 69).
C3)
on the turn-taking system: side sequences, like chat or asides (employed to make the patient feel more at ease), supportive completion of the current speaker’s turn.
Conclusions
D)
271
Textual strategies operating on textual construction and argumentation: D1)
dilution
T. =ma perché cosa fa una volta al me: se:: una volta la settimana C. no. ((tossisce)) anche due tre volte la settimana T. eh quindi. è abbastanza:: C. sì. è recente T. è anche abbastan:za: consistente il problema. C. sì sì. T. due tre volte la settimana si ubriaca. C. sì. (PsS, TR 19, ll.189-197) T. =but because what he does once a mo:nth:: once a week C. no. ((coughs)) even two three times a week T. huh so. it’s quite:: C. yes. it’s recent T. the problem is it’s also qui:te: considerable. C. yeah yeah. T. two three times a week he gets drunk. C. yeah. D2)
lateralization without hierarchization (close to digression)
fra l’altro, anche (‘what’s more’, ‘also’) potrebbe anche voler dire (‘this could also mean’, PsS) è anche comprensibile che lei a luglio si sia un po’ lasciata andare (‘it’s also understandable that in July you let yourself go a little’, PsS). D3)
argumentative re-hierarchization
D3 a)
with an implicit reassessment of the current hierarchy of topics and focalization of the topic thereby introduced:
oltre a tutto (‘on top of that’, PC) a parte il fatto che (‘besides the fact that’, PsS) D3 b)
with an explicit reassessment of the argumentative hierarchization:
ma più che altro (‘but more than that’, PC, SpV) D4)
argumentative focalization: the proposition (which can be qualified with evaluative stances) is assigned the role of conclusion within an argumentative
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process that signals the cognitive and attitudinal monitoring of the line or reasoning, the careful consideration of pros and cons, etc.: in fondo (‘after all’, PsS) tutto sommato (‘all in all’, PsS) per la peggiore delle ipotesi (lit.‘in the worst of the hypotheses’, ‘if the worst comes to the worst’, ‘in worst case scenario’, PC) D5)
exemplification as reticence: the mitigating effect is obtained by introducing a crucial fact within a paradigm of equally significant facts, thus making it just one among the others:
per esempio (‘for instance’, e.g. per esempio c’è mio papà che ogni tanto beve, ‘for instance there is my father who sometimes drinks’, PsS) E)
Macrostylistic strategies informal register shifts in the degree of intimacy baby-talk.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Abercrombie, David (1967). Elements of general phonetics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Adamzik, Kirsten (1984). Sprachliches Handeln und sozialer Kontakt. Tübingen: Narr. Adelswärd, Viveka and Per Linell (1994). “Vagueness as an interactional resource: The genre of threatening phone calls”, in W. M. Sprondel (ed.), Die Objektivität der Ordnungen und ihre kommunikative Konstruktion. Für Thomas Luckmann. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 261-288. Aijmer, Karin (1984). “‘Sort of’ and ‘kind of’ in English conversation”. Studia Linguistica 38: 118-128. Ammaniti, Massimo and Daniel N. Stern (eds.) (1996 [1992]). Attaccamento e psicoanalisi. Bari: Laterza. Anolli, Luigi and Rita Ciceri (1992). La voce delle emozioni. Verso una semiosi della comunicazione vocale non verbale delle emozioni. Milano: Angeli. Antos, Gerd (1982). Grundlagen einer Theorie des Formulierens. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Aristotle (1956). The Nicomachean ethics. Translated by Harris Rackham. London: Heinemann/Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press. Aristotle (1975). The art of rhetoric. Translated by John Henry Freese. London: Heinemann/Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press. Arndt, Horst and Richard W. Janney (1987). InterGrammar, toward an integrative model of verbal, prosodic and kinesic choices in speech. Berlin, New York, Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter. Arndt, Horst and Richard W. Janney (1991). “Verbal, prosodic, and kinesic emotive contrasts in speech”. Journal of Pragmatics 15 (6): 521-549. Aronsson, Karin (1998). “Identity-in-interaction and social choreography”. Research on Language and Social Interaction 31 (1): 75-89. Aronsson, Karin and Ullabeth Sätterlund-Larsson (1987). “Politeness strategies and doctorpatient communication. On the social choreography of collaborative thinking”. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 6 (1): 1-27.
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Searle, John R. (1969). Speech acts. An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Searle, John R. (1975). “A Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts”, in K. Gunderson (ed.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Vol. VII. Language, Mind and Knowledge. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 344-369. Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.) (1960). Style in language. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press. Seganti, Andrea (1995). La memoria sensoriale delle relazioni. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri. Segre, Cesare (1979 [1974]). Structures and time. Narration, poetry, models. Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press. Segre, Cesare (1988 [1981]). “Style”, in C. Segre, Introduction to the analysis of the literary text. Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 258-276. Selting, Margret (1994). “Emphatic speech style – with special focus on the prosodic signalling of heightened emotive involvement in conversation”, in C. Caffi and R. W. Janney (eds.), 375-408. Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Fifth Edition (2002). Edited by William Trumble, Lesley Brown. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sifianou, Maria (1992a). “The use of diminutives in expressing politeness: Modern Greek versus English”. Journal of Pragmatics 17: 155-173. Sifianou, Maria (1992b). Politeness phenomena in England and Greece. A cross-cultural perspective. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Silverman, David (1987). Communication and medical practice. Social relations in the clinic. London: Sage. Simmel, Georg (1983 [1906]). “Psychologie der Diskretion”, in G. Simmel, Schriften zur Soziologie. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Skytte, Gunver, Giampaolo Salvi and M. Rita Manzini (1991). “Frasi subordinate all’infinito”, in L. Renzi and G. Salvi (eds.), 536-537. Slugoski, Ben R. and William Turnbull (1988). “Cruel to be kind and kind to be cruel: sarcasm, banter and social relations”. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 7 (2): 101-121. Sluzki, Carlos E., Janet Beavin, Alejandro Tarnopolsky and Eliseo Veron (1967). “Transactional Disqualification. Research on the double bind”. Archives of General Psychiatry 16: 494-504. Spitzer, Leo (1922). Italienische Umgangssprache. Bonn, Leipzig: Kurt Schröder Verlag. Spitzer, Leo (1928). “Zur sprachlichen Interpretation von Wortkunstwerken”. Neue Jahrbücher für Wissenschaft und Jugendbildung VI: 632-651. Reprinted in: L. Spitzer (1931). Romanische Stil- und Literaturstudien. Vol. I. Marburg an der Lahn: Elwert, 4-31. Stame, Stefania (1994). “Su alcuni usi di no come marcatore pragmatico”, in F. Orletti (ed.), 205-216.
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APPENDICES TRANSCRIPTION CONVENTIONS . ? , ! -: ƑƑxx xxx XXX °xxx° h = +xxx* (…?) ((xx)) […] >xxx< <xxx> xxx
falling intonation (statements) rising intonation (questions) suspensive intonation exclamations pause up to 2 seconds pause between 2 and 5 seconds lengthened sound truncated word unclear word word pronounced in a louder voice word pronounced in a lower voice audible breath latching overlapping (+ indicates where overlapping starts and * where it ends) reasonable guess at an unclear word/segment comments by the transcriber omission faster pace slower pace emphasis
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS D P Hp T C PC SpV PsV WR Rt PsS TR
doctor patient head physician therapist client visit at a primary care physician’s visit at a specialist’s psychiatric visit ward round radiation therapy psychotherapy session transcript
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APPENDIX A TR1 - VISITA PRESSO IL MEDICO DI BASE
1 5 10 15 20 25 30 -
M. buona sera. – s’accomodi P. siamo nuo:vi di qui. ah xxx sta sta gamba mi fa tribulare.
M. cosa succede P. ma è: - forse un anno e più mi prende sempre di qua. il dottore mi fece fare delle:=
M. = radiografie. P. radiografie: M. le ha portate con sé? ((tono paternalistico))
P. sì. questa è l'ultima che ho fatto. x avevo fatto la tac
M. ha fatto anche una tac? P. sì sulla colonna: sì poi volevo dirle ci ho ci ho anche un’altra cartella che mi ha dato la mamma: M. ah! P. del signor xxx me l'ha dato da portare xxx la signora
M. ecco quindi lei ha avuto una rottura muscolare di quel muscolo. dell'ileo-psoas. P. qui prox mi fa male proprio:=
Appendix A
301
APPENDIX A TR1 - VISIT AT A PRIMARY CARE PHYSICIAN’S
1 5 10 15 20 25 30 -
D. good evening. - have a seat ((lit. accomodate yourself)) P. we’re new: around here ((lit. of here)). ah xxx this this leg is really hurting me ((lit. is making me suffer)) D. what’s the matter? ((lit. what happens)) P. well ((lit. but)) it's: - maybe a year or more ((lit. and more)) that it always hurts me here ((lit. it takes me always of here)). the doctor got me to do ((lit. made me to do)) some:= M. =X-rays. P. X-rays: D. have you brought them with you? ((lit. them you have brought with yourself?)) ((patronizing tone)) P. yes. this is the last one I had taken. ((lit. this is the last that I did)) x I had a CATscan done ((lit. I had done the CATscan)) D. you also had a CATscan done? ((lit. you did also a CATscan?)) P. yes, on the spinal column: ((lit. on the column:)) yes and I also ((lit. yes and then I )) wanted to tell you that I have I have another clinical file ((lit. file)) too that mom: gave me D. ah! P. of Mr. xxx’s. she gave it to me to bring xxx the lady ((lit. to me it has given to bring xxx the lady)) D. OK ((lit. well)) so you have had a muscular tear of that muscle. of the iliopsoas. P. here it realxxx it really: hurts me ((lit. here realxxx to me makes sore really:)) =
302
35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 -
Mitigation
M. = ma. come ha fatto a farsi questa cosa.=
P. = ma non lo so guardi. io faccio il calzola:io ((tono di giustificazione))
M. mh P. sarà sempre il movimento uguale non so eh: - e mi ha preso qui adesso è da un anno, prima di Natale ho fatto delle punture un po' di: oro oroxx oro li xxx come si chiama
M. sì. P. poi ho preso di dell'efeld - sì però mi hanno calmato però non mi hanno fatto niente. poi sono andato dal massaggiato:re: - sì si calmava un po' in quel momento però poi: - poi. parlando con una mia paesana dice guarda io ho fatto questa puntura mi son trovata bene. - non so se:--
M. mah. P. perché nel xxx M. queste addirittura le hanno tolte dal commercio eh perché:: ma più che altro bisogna vedere. se il dolore dipende da:=
P. = è proprio qui: mi prende proprio di qua M. ma da dietro?= P. = e poi mi passa qui mi passa da qui=
M. = ma parte anche dall'alto dietro? P. di qua. di qua. -- da questa parte qui. così. - così
M. si mette un attimo allungato sul lettino.
P. sì. M. che volevo vedere una cosa P. ssì.
Appendix A
35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 -
303
D. = but. how did you manage to do this thing to yourself. ((lit. but. how did you do to do to yourself this thing)) = P. = well I don’t know you see ((lit. but I don't know look)). I’m a co:bbler ((lit. I do the cobbler)) ((tone of justification)) D. mmm P. it must be because I always do the same movement ((lit. it will be always the same movement)) I don't know eh: - and it's a year now since I've had it here, ((lit. and it has taken me here now it is since a year, )) before Christmas I had ((lit. I did)) some injections some ((lit. a little of)) oro oroxx oro li xxx what’s its name ((lit. how is it called)) D. yes. P. then I took some some efeld - yes but they soothed the pain ((lit. they have soothed)) but they didn’t do anything ((lit. they didn't do anything to me)). then I went to a ((lit. the)) ma:sseur:’s - and it soothed the pain a bit there and then but then: ((lit. yes it soothed itself a bit in that moment but then:)) - then. speaking to a woman from my village and she said listen I had this injection and I was happy with it. ((lit. speaking with a fellow-villager (+ FEM suffix) she says look I did this injection and I found myself well.)) I don’t know if:-D. hum. P. because in the xxx D. they've even taken these off the market ((lit. these even they have taken off the market)) eh because: but more than anything we have to see. ((lit. but more than other it needs to see.)) if the pain depends on:= P. = it's right here: it hurts me right here, ((lit. it takes me exactly of here)) D. what ((lit. but)) from behind?= P. = and then it passes here, it passes from here, ((lit. = and then it passes me here it passes me of here)) = D. = but does it start high up behind too? ((lit. but does it start off also from the high behind?)) P. here. here. -- on this side here. that's it. - that's it ((lit. of here. of here -- from this side here. like this.- like this)) D. lie down on the examination table for a moment ((lit. you lie down a moment on the bed + DIM)). P. okay. ((lit. yes.)) D. because there’s something I want to have a look at ((lit. because I wanted to see a thing)) P. ye-es.
304
85 90 95 100 105 110 115 120 125 130 135
Mitigation
M. ((pausa di 28 sec. durante la quale il medico procede nella visita)) eh. però,: il problema non è un problema muscolare è un problema che: no ecco deve tenere su i pantaloni +perché*
P. +ah. sì. sì* M. ho bisogno di fare una manovra che se no:, P. sì. M. ecco tenga la gamba molle eh? - fa male qua dietro se faccio +così:?*
P. sì-- +xxx* M. il problema probabilmente parte dalla colonna vertebra:le. - questo glielo avrà spiegato xxx [nome di persona] P. sì. io ho fatto anche le lastre.= M. = infatti nella cartella: >volevo solo fare questodio è passato neanche un mese< perciò non è:: però: (Rt, TR6) P. I went to my primary care physician who prescribed strong Bactrin. then after a week of Bactrin the paxx pain:
323
324
Mitigation
D. yes. ((lit. no)) but I had told you to come in if it didn’t improve didn’t I? P. yes. - right. but thxx the doctor had told me to try with strong Bactrin for a week: I thought in any case on the twenty-second: xxx I was busy ‘cause I have an elderly person with me at home= D. =I had told you to come in didn’t I? if the situation didn’t: didn’t: improve. >well ((lit. God)) it’s been not even a month< so it’s not:: but: 43)
P. permesso - buon giorno dottore D. buon giorno signora. come sta? P. bene grazie. D. nonostante le nostre cure continua a stare bene, (Rt, TR13) P. may I - good morning doctor D. good morning madam. how are you? P. I’m well thank you. D. despite our treatment you’re still well,
NAME INDEX
A
B
Abercrombie, David, 35 Adamzik, Kirsten, 39, 42n Adelswärd, Viveka, 57n, 89, 251 Aijmer, Karin, 57n Ammaniti, Massimo, 128 Anolli, Luigi, 201n Anscombre, Jean-Claude, 29n Antisthenes, 14n Antos, Gerd, 88 Argyle, Michael, 165 Aristotle, 34, 44n, 84-5, 217 Arndt, Horst, 53n, 98, 104, 139, 160, 162, 199 Aronsson, Karin, 228, 230 Attardo, Salvatore, 13n, 235n Atwood, George E., 19 Auer, Peter, 38n, 39, 195, 209 Austin, John Langshaw, 10, 14n, 22, 30, 44, 45, 49, 59, 62, 67-8, 70, 73-4, 76-7, 85n, 89, 98, 99, 100, 103, 105, 115, 125, 134, 135, 150, 172, 186, 210, 211, 217, 220, 221, 225, 226, 230, 255, 256, 257, 267 Ayer, Alfred Julius, 30 Azzalino, Walther, 54n Azzoni, Giampaolo M., 84n, 158, 234, 256
Bakhtin, Mikhail, 44n Ballmer, Thomas T., 57n, 98n Bally, Charles, 2n, 15, 16, 22, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34-5, 49, 74-6, 124, 132, 133, 134-5, 137, 193, 197, 208 Bange, Pierre, 20n, 68, 236 Bar-Hillel, Yehoshua, 30 Bateson, Gregory, 27, 38n, 39, 49n, 86, 149, 150, 156, 157 Bazzanella, Carla, 32, 51, 59, 78n, 98, 100,115, 190, 208, 232, 252 Beavin Bavelas, Janet, 118, 120, 129, 131, 149-50, 152, 154, 158, 159, 234, 250, 256 Benincà, Paola, 222 Benveniste, Emile, 5, 13n, 24, 30, 106, 113, 118, 123, 208 Berger, Charles, 251 Bergmann, Jörg R., 199 Bernini, Giuliano, 232n, 246 Bertalanffy, Ludwig von, 15 Bertinetto, Pier Marco, 230 Birdwhistell, Ray, 49n, 165 Bliesener, Thomas, 194 Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, 48, 51, 52, 86, 95, 100, 103, 130, 170, 189, 204, 228, 229, 230, 231, 238, 239, 240, 242, 255, 258, 260
326
Mitigation
Bolinger, Dwight, 57n Bosk, Charles, 69-70 Botteri, Inge, 212 Bouacha, Ali, 110-11 Bourdieu, Pierre, 60-1 Bowlby, John, 126, 128 Bradac, James J., 251 Brandom, Robert B., 14n Brissette, Ian, 127 Brown, Gillian, 172 Brown, Julie R., 28-9 Brown, Penelope, 20n, 41, 48, 50, 52, 53-6, 60, 65, 66, 72, 80, 100, 106, 110, 111, 115n, 116, 150, 209, 213, 220, 222, 237, 258 Brown, Roger, 38n, 205 Bublitz, Wolfram, 115, 166, 174, 193 Buck, Ross, 130 Bühler, Karl, 5, 25-6, 29, 30, 41, 95, 106, 132, 133, 139, 143-4, 194, 208, 260
C Caffi, Claudia, 2n, 4, 15, 18-20, 22, 25, 26, 28, 32, 33, 34, 39, 40, 41, 49, 54n, 59, 62, 65, 73-4, 75, 79, 83, 87, 89, 104, 115, 118, 120, 121n, 122, 125n, 126n, 127, 129, 132, 135, 136-44, 146, 147, 152, 153, 157, 162, 169, 171, 192, 194, 231, 255n Calvino, Italo, 21 Canepari, Luciano, 98, 165 Carli, Augusto, 252 Castiglione, Baldesar, 212 Chafe, Wallace L., 137, 142 Channell, Joanna, 57n, 99, 105
Ciceri, Rita, 201n Cicero, 34, 40 Cicourel, Aaron, 213, 215n Clark, Andy, 28 Clark, Margaret S., 127 Clemen, Gudrun, 54n, 98n Collier, Gary, 148 Conte, Maria-Elisabeth, 16n, 25, 84n, 85, 142, 143, 144, 174, 248 Cordella, Marisa, 4 Cornificius, 40 Coupland, Justine, 168n, 223 Coupland, Nikolas, 27, 101, 196 Courtés, Joseph, 66, 106, 258 Cranach, Mario von, 23, 68, 124
D Daneš, František, 132 Dascal, Marcelo, 14n, 136, 137 Dasher, Richard B., 261, 264n De Boer, Fijgje, 192, 193, 194 De Ferrari, Manuela, 54n De Swaan, Abram, 4 Dijk, Teun van, 34, 87-88 Di Luzio, Aldo, 38n Dressler, Wolfgang, 99, 100, 141, 229 Drew, Paul, 4n, 169 Ducrot, Oswald, 17, 29n Duranti, Alessandro, 20 D’Urso, Valentina, 130n
Name index
327
E
G
Eco, Umberto, 162, 163 Edmondson, Willis, 48n, 51-2, 199, 249, 255 Eelen, Gino, 17, 53n Ehlich, Konrad, 4 Ekman, Paul, 130, 165 Elias, Norbert, 61 Eliot, George, 91, 263 Erickson, Frederick, 20 Ervin-Tripp, Susan, 221, 228, 258
Gaik, Frank, 107 Garfinkel, Harold, 79n Giles, Howard, 36-8, 41, 42, 43, 86, 94, 101, 121, 195n, 196, 199 Gilman, Albert, 38n, 205 Giora, Rachel, 2n-3n Givón, Talmy, 21, 33, 59, 75, 78, 104, 2245, 233, 242, 259 Goffman, Erving, 17-18, 19, 20, 22, 38n, 41, 42n, 53, 79, 91, 93, 107, 204, 237 Goodwin, Charles, 165n Gorgias, 14n, 207 Graffi, Giorgio, 139n Greimas, Algirdas J., 66, 106, 258 Grice, Paul H., 25n, 30, 55, 58, 59, 60, 63, 81, 115, 135, 137, 150, 155, 172, 189, 213, 215, 216, 221, 222 Grosjean, Michèle, 216 Guidano, Vittorio F., 32 Gumperz, John J., 20, 38-39, 83, 88, 108, 112, 124, 204, 208, 230 Gunnarsson, Britt-Louise , 4n
F Fachinelli, Elvio, 158 Færch, Claus, 240 Fairclough, Norman, 18n, 41, 134 Fanshel, David, 51, 98, 113, 164, 261 Fele, Giolo, 219 Fiehler, Reinhard, 133 Fisher, Sue, 4 Foppa, Klaus, 4 Frader, Joel, 69-70 Fraser, Bruce, 17, 50-1, 53n, 61-3, 64-5, 668, 73, 84, 99, 105, 122, 199, 213, 243n, 250n French, Peter, 221 Freud, Sigmund, 3-4, 87, 123, 158-159 Friesen, Wallace V., 165 Frijda, Niko H., 21, 26, 143 Fromm Reichman, Frieda, 140n
H Haberland, Hartmut, 4 Habermas, Jürgen, 25n, 30, 50n, 95-7 Hagège, Claude, 112n, 168 Hak, Tony, 192, 193, 194 Haley, Jay, 7, 50n, 79, 92, 118, 120, 149, 150-2, 153, 154, 157, 158, 159-60, 169, 194, 234, 250, 256, 257 Hall, Christopher, 168-169
328
Mitigation
Halliday, Michael A. K., 16n, 41, 133 Hanks, William F., 25n Hare, Richard Mervyn, 44, 45, 64, 70, 95, 96, 222, 243 Harré, Rom, 20n Have, Paul ten, 4, 185 Haverkate, Henk, 106, 107, 112 Heath, Christian, 189 Held, Gudrun, 17 Henry, Richard, 235n Henzl, Vera M., 205 Heringer, James, 134n Heritage, John, 4n, 168-169 Hickey, Leo, 32 Higgins, E. Tory, 42, 76 Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, 21 Hölker, Klaus, 95, 115, 208, 209-10, 226, 243, 260 Holly, Werner, 39, 42n, 68 Holmes, Janet, 32, 50, 61, 64-5 Holtgraves, Thomas, 25 Homer, 14 Horn, Larry, 2n, 66 House, Juliane, 41, 48n, 51, 52, 220, 238, 240 Hübler, Axel, 2n, 45, 64, 96, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 153, 222-3 Hugdahl, Kenneth, 16n Hymes, Dell H., 188n
I Ide, Sachiko, 86
J Jackson, Don, 149 Jakobson, Roman, 29, 30, 41, 133, 139 Janney, Richard W., 19-20, 25, 26, 32, 34, 35, 53n, 75, 83, 98, 104, 118, 121n, 122, 132, 135, 136, 138-43, 146, 147, 157, 160, 162, 169, 171, 194, 199 Jarvella, Robert J., 25n Jayez, Jacques, 57n Jefferson, Gail, 142 Jespersen, Otto, 30, 86, 106-7, 111-12, 212 Jones, Elizabeth, 195n Jucker, Andreas H., 57n, 105
K Kamio, Akio, 185, 187, 194, 223, 254 Kant, Immanuel, 83, 177 Kasper, Gabriele, 41, 220, 238, 240 Katriel, Tamar, 14n, 136, 137 Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine, 54n, 66, 68, 222, 260 Kiefer, Ferenc, 137 Kinget, Marian, 28 Kintsch, Walter, 34 Klein, Melanie, 126 Klein, Wolfgang, 25n Kohut, Heinz, 27n, 122 Kolde, Gottfried, 54n, 56, 60, 98n Kuiken, Don, 148
Name index
L Labov, William, 16, 51, 61, 98, 113, 164, 261 Lacoste, Michèle, 185, 216, 223 Lakoff, George, 49, 54, 56-60, 61, 69, 98, 142, 233, 243n, 257 Lakoff, Robin, 23, 58n, 60, 86, 144n, 241, 255 Langner, Michael, 50, 70-3, 80 Lausberg, Heinrich, 79, 106, 115-16, 118, 120, 138, 260 Laver, John, 35 Lazarus, Richard, 30, 133n Lazzeroni, Romano, 223, 224 Leary, Mark R., 127, 129, 139, 162 Lee, Benny, 213 Leech, Geoffrey, 50, 61, 63-4, 82, 84-5, 94, 217, 222, 223, 224, 237, 241, 259 Le Moigne, Jean-Louis, 15 Lepschy, Giulio, 1n Levinson, Stephen, 20n, 22, 23, 34n, 41, 48, 50, 52, 53-6, 60, 65, 66, 68, 72, 80, 89, 100, 102, 106, 107, 110, 111, 115n, 116, 150, 209, 213, 220, 222, 237, 258 Lewin, Kurt, 118 Linell, Per, 4n, 57n, 89, 251 Locke, John, 25n Lutz, Catherine, 142 Lyons, John, 16n, 29, 35-6, 57-8, 142, 144n
Mann, Thomas, 33n Manstead, A.S.R., 162 Manzotti, Emilio, 247, 253n Markkanen, Raija, 54n, 98n Marková, Ivana, 4 Marty, Anton, 30, 133, 138-9, 176 Måseide, Per, 217, 251 Mathesius, Vilém, 143 Maynard, Douglas W., 95, 115n, 216 Mehrabian, Albert, 31, 67, 89, 100, 104, 113, 118, 120, 145-8, 173, 248, 257 Meltzer, Donald, 16n Merlini Barbaresi, Lavinia, 99, 100, 141, 229 Mey, Jacob L., 4, 45 Meyer-Hermann, Reinhard, 40, 70-2, 93 Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm, 232 Miller, Victor C., 201n Mitchell, Stephen A., 19 Mitchum, Patricia A., 98 Morpurgo-Tagliabue, Guido, 73n Mounin, Georges, 16n
N Neustein, Amy, 192, 193 Nordberg, Bengt, 4n Norrick, Neal R., 125 Nunberg, Geoffrey, 86n
M
O
McCann, C. Douglas, 42, 76 Magnani, Lorenzo, 185 Mallory, Edward A., 201n
Ochs, Elinor, 188n Ogden, Charles Kay, 132n
329
330
Mitigation
Olbrechts-Tyteca, Lucie, 110, 112, 120 Orletti, Franca, 219 Osgood, Charles E., 30, 31, 141 Ossola, Carlo, 212
P Parret, Herman, 29n Parsons, Talcott, 61 Pasta, Giuseppe, 212 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 29, 30, 35 Peregrini, Matteo, 85, 94-5, 216 Perelman, Chaïm, 110, 112, 120 Perry, John, 20, 25n, 30 Peyrot, Mark, 199 Piaget, Jean, 5, 26-7, 45-6, 122, 206 Pinkal, Manfred, 57n, 98n Piro, Sergio, 124n Pythagoras, 14-5 Pomerantz, Anita, 115n, 229, 254, 259n, 270 Porphyry, 14n Prince, Ellen F., 69-70 Putnam, Hilary, 30
Q Quintilian, 40
R Raffler-Engel, Walburga von, 4 Ramoni, Marco, 185 Raskin, Victor, 235n
Rathmayr, Renate, 86 Ravazzoli, Flavia, 32 Reichenbach, Hans, 30 Reilly, Judy, 43 Richards, Ivor A., 132n Rigamonti, Alessandra, 254n Rizzi, Luigi, 252n Roberts, Celia, 4n Robinson, W. Peter, 43 Rogers, Carl R., 28-9, 144 Rommetveit, Ragnar, 26, 27 Rosch, Eleanor, 57n Ross, John R., 62 Rossen-Knill, Deborah F., 235n Rostagni, Augusto, 14, 15 Roulet, Eddy, 54n Ruesch, Jurgen, 149
S Sacks, Harvey, 100 Sacks, Oliver, 165 Sadock, Jerrold M., 57n, 62 Salvaneschi, Enrica, 227 Sandig, Barbara, 89 Sapir, Edward, 34, 140 Sarangi, Srikant, 4n, 168-169 Sätterlund-Larsson, Ullabeth, 230 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 13, 31, 43, 133 Sbisà, Marina, 28, 78, 83, 85n, 186, 202, 210n, 211 Scheflen, Albert E., 165 Schieffelin, Bambi, 188n Schneider, Stefan, 4, 243 Schröder, Hartmut, 54n, 98n Scollon, Ron, 240
Name index
Scollon Wong, Suzanne, 240 Searle, John R., 14n, 19, 22, 30, 58, 62, 63, 76, 77, 85, 134, 136, 150, 190, 210n, 216, 220, 221, 225, 228, 230, 242, 253, 255, 256, 257, 260, 267 Seganti, Andrea, 128, 162 Segre, Cesare, 29, 163n Seibert, Laura, 43 Selting, Margret, 32, 33 Shultz, Jeffrey, 20 Siegrist, Johannes, 194 Sifianou, Maria, 64n, 100 Silverman, David, 215n Simmel, Georg, 68 Skytte, Gunver, 230 Slembrouck, Stefan, 168-169 Slugoski, Ben R., 172 Sluzki, Carlos E., 79, 115n, 120, 149, 153, 154-8, 160, 193, 194 Spitzer, Leo, 2n, 29, 31, 41, 54n, 86, 99, 100n, 111, 125, 207, 210n, 232 Stame, Stefania, 218 Stankiewicz, Edward, 132, 139, 143 Stein, Nancy, 43 Stern, Daniel N., 7, 15n, 125-9 Stirling, Lesley, 171 Stolorow, Robert D., 19 Stormark, Kjell Morten, 16n Strawson, Peter F., 6, 48-9, 74, 76-79, 130, 205, 254, 259n Suls, Jerry, 162
331
Tedeschi, T. James, 20, 139, 162 Terkourafi, Marina, 100 Terracini, Benvenuto, 13, 31, 34n, 35, 41, 75n Tetlock, Philip E., 162 Thakerar, Jitentra, 195n Thibault, Paul J., 252 Thomas, Jenny, 105, 192, 250n Thorell, Mia, 228 Todd, Dundas Alexandra, 4 Tomashevsky, Boris V., 163, 167 Traugott Closs, Elizabeth, 261, 264n Trentin, Rosanna, 130n Trudgill, Peter, 35 Turnbull, William, 172
U Urmson, James Opie, 44, 65, 69n, 243
V Venier, Federica, 44-5, 243 Veron, Eliseo, 154 Verschueren, Jef, 15 Volek, Bronislava, 141
W T Tannen, Deborah, 136, 137, 142 Tarnopolsky, Alejandro, 154
Watts, Richard J., 17 Watzlawick, Paul, 16, 39, 87, 129, 149, 170, 201 Weakland, John H., 149
332
Mitigation
Weber, Max, 15, 30, 79n Weingarten, Rüdiger, 40, 70-2, 93, 109 Weinrich, Harald, 22 Wiener, Morton, 31, 67, 89, 100, 104, 113, 118, 120, 145-9, 173, 248, 257 Wierzbicka, Anna, 63, 86, 228 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 22, 30, 79n Wodak, Ruth, 4 Wunderlich, Dieter, 40, 67, 166, 220-1
Y Yule, George, 172
Z Zajonc, Robert, 133n
SUBJECT INDEX
A
apostrophe, 118, 120, 258, 260 approach-withdrawal, 26, 89
abduction, 185 Abschwächung, 40, 54n, 70-3, 80, 88 accommodation sequence, 180, 187, 196 theory, 101, 169, 195n, 196 activity type, 3, 22, 33, 34n, 53, 73, 89, 130, 171, 172, 173, 192, 209, 211, 216, 226, 239, 263, 264 adaptation, 5, 14-15, 128, 148n address terms, 30, 55, 66, 142, 214, 215, 249, 258, 260 adjacency pairs, 164, 186, 259n adjustment, 8, 13, 15, 18, 22-23, 27, 40, 42, 51-2, 61, 88, 93, 121, 128-9, 161, 164, 219, 263, 264 affect key, 188n, 197 allocution, 30, 185, 189, 191, 192, 236 ambivalence, 2, 65, 92, 103, 111, 125, 129, 131, 153, 206, 231, 241, 252 anaphora, 94, 171 anaphora vs. cataphora, 94
appropriateness, 57, 58, 59, 60, 79, 89, 152, 192 (see also decorum, pršpon) approximators, 58n, 69-70, 99 assertiveness (as a linguistic category), 222 assertiveness (as a psychological category), 104, 145, 179, 180, 181, 222n over-assertiveness, 253 self-assertiveness, 143, asymmetry, 92, 106, 156, 166, 168, 170, 186, 193, 203, 206, 237 attunement, 7, 19, 101, 125-9, 144, 145, 159, 162, 164, 168, 192-7, 200, 204, 205, 236, 264 aversio, 106, 120 aversio ab auditoribus, 118, 120 (see also apostrophe) aversio a materia, 115-6, 118, 120, 178 (see also digression) aversio ab oratore, 118, 120 (see also ethopeia, sermocinatio)
anaphoric reference, 142, 203
avoidance (of responsibility), 7, 129, 152, 159, 164
antiphrastic nature of mitigation, 87
avoidance strategies, 118
antiphrastic tension, 131, 252
axionym, 54, 140
anaphoric encapsulator, 142
334
Mitigation
64, 65, 67, 69-70, 71, 82, 84, 89, 93, 95, 96, 103, 104, 105, 108, 118, 124, 128, 130, 137, 142, 147, 153, 161, 164, 182, 222, 242-3, 248, 257, 259, 261, 268
B baby-talk, 100, 230, 241, 272 behabitive (illocutionary act), 10, 104, 172, 181, 186, 187, 188, 189, 218, 248, 259n Bescheidenheitsimperfektum, 232 (see also imperfect of politeness)
complex intention, 77, 78, 79, 81, 204-5 consultative device, 103, 229, 231, 232, 247, 255, 266
bush, 3, 6-7, 46, 48, 49, 50, 54, 56, 59-60, 64, 69-70, 91-119, 120, 153, 161, 173, 176, 178, 179, 180, 181, 184, 185, 196, 204, 240, 243, 248, 250, 256-7, 265
context, 22-3, 33, 34, 45, 53, 57-9, 65, 82, 88, 97, 111-3, 116- 118, 134-5, 145-6, 149, 151-2, 208-9, 214-5, 228, 239 institutional, 4, 159-60, 168, 209, 215-16, 223, 250, 259 macro-context, 53, 215n micro-context, 53, 215n,
C
context vs. co-text, 32, 34, 39, 76, 88, 91, 117, 118, 136, 140,152, 163, 176, 199, 215n, 235, 240, 252
bleaching, 227, 261 boundary condition, 145, 146, 153
contextualization cues, 38-39, 88, 124 calibration, 19, 49, 168, 206 (see also recalibration)
cooperative principle, 155, 189
caractères affectifs (affective features), 35 cataphora vs. anaphora, 94
D
caution, 3, 18, 46, 88, 186, 199, 259 cautionary markers, 55, 115, 178, 267 client centered therapy, 28 closeness, 45, 104, 127, 136, 143-44, 160, 200, 202, 203 Codice di deontologia medica (Italian Doctors’ Code of Conduct), 207n coherence, 16n, 154n commissive (illocutionary act), 10, 181, 183, 187 commitment, 8, 13-14, 26, 44-5, 48, 55, 58,
débrayage, 66, 106 débrayage vs. embrayage, 66 decorum, 14 (see also appropriateness, pršpon) deictic origin (see origo) deictic triad, 25, 114, 260 deixis, 25, 26, 107, 178, 182, 194 empathic, 102, 143-4, 173, 248 phantasmatic, 25, 143 denotative specificity, 120, 146, 181, 265
Subject index
deresponsibilization, 58, 65, 67, 88, 91, 107, 123, 152, 159, 160 diagnosis, 59n, 80, 95, 100, 101, 103-4, 108, 167, 169,174, 178-80, 182, 184-6, 187, 196-8, 199-200, 202, 203, 211, 217, 225-6, 243, 245, 247, 248, 249, 253 digression, 56n, 65, 115n, 163, 174, 182, 183, 270 (see also aversio a materia, evasion) dilution, 271 diminutive suffix, 10, 75, 79, 99, 100, 101, 102, 141, 161, 184, 196, 199, 229, 230, 232, 248, 260, 265, 266 direction of fit, 19, 85, 216, 220, 242 disarmer, 48n, 52, 249, 255 disclaimer, 67, 105, 225, 226, 250n, 257, 267 discours vs. histoire, 113 disjunct, 103, 243, 254, 261 dispraxia, 18, 158 disqualification, 7, 50n, 79, 92, 115n, 118, 123, 130, 149, 150-3, 154, 156, 157, 158, 159, 161, 169, 176, 177, 180, 182, 193, 194, 234, 250, 256, 257, 268 transactional, 120, 153-7, 177, 181, 193, 198, 206, 270 double-bind, 27, 86, 149, 150, 154, 157 256 double negative, 2n, 65, 245, 255n (see also negatio contrarii)
335
E egocentric orientation, 25, 147 egocentrism, 26-8 emotional factors, 74, 79 layers, 160, 162 needs, 37, 42, 127 (see also emotive vs. emotional dimensions) emotive attunement, see attunement avoidance, see avoidance capacity, 20, 26, 53, 83, 122, 127, 129, 139, 162 closeness/distance, 18, 21, 41, 45, 92, 94, 104, 125, 128, 129, 136, 143-4, 145, 146, 153, 160, 161-2, 170, 174, 176, 177-185, 193, 194, 200-3, 206, 263, 264 commitment, 89 communication, 7, 25, 26, 74, 93, 122-3, 124n, 132, 137, 138-60, 162, 168, 200 contrast, 135, 139-40, 146, 157, 159, 169, 171, 176-7 identification, 104, 135, 136 indicator, 131, 146, 147, 148, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185 involvement, 2, 17, 32, 45, 48, 53-4, 88, 161, 199 level, 19, 162 marker, see emotive indicator meaning, 37, 132, 135 emotive meaning vs. referential meaning, 124n, 132
336
Mitigation
monitoring, 42, 126, 131 subscription, 58n temperature, 45 tone, 165 emotive vs. emotional dimensions, 5-6, 127, 129, 131, 138-9, 160, 162, 176 empathy, 83, 92, 122, 126, 153, 177, 202, 240 enallage, 106, 112, 118, 120, 170, 177, 184, 201, 269 encapsulator, 142 (see also anaphoric encapsulator) epistemic certainty, 96, 104, 160, 182, 199, 202, 203, 223, 224, 268 commitment, 45, 104, 118, 222, 242, 243, 261, 268 future, 171, 178, 185, 244, 246, 255 mitigation, 8, 211 modal, 55 modality, 223, 224, 259 modalization, 182, 223, 225, 235, 259 equivocation, 118, 123, 129, 149-50, 158, 159, 178, 234, 250, 256, 268 ethical dative, 233, 234, 238, 252, 258 ethopeia, 118 (see also aversio ab oratore, sermocinatio)
evasion, 120, 155, 177, 181, 182, 193, 270 (see also aversio a materia, digression) eventualization, 57n, 107, 112, 184, 229, 238, 239, 241, 257, 261, 270 marker, 270 evoked effects (effets par evocation), 35, 124 exemplification, 238 as reticence, 272 marker, 198, 250 exercitive (illocutionary act), 8, 10,77, 85, 93, 173, 186-7, 190, 210-11, 216, 220, 234-5, 240, 242, 253-4, 257, 258, 259, 261, 264 expositive (illocutionary act), 10, 187, 246
F fabula, 165-70 fabula vs. plot, 163-4, 171-6 face, 17, 19-20, 41, 42n, 43, 53, 55, 72, 91, 92, 116, 157, 189, 213, 223, 236, 237, 258, 259 face-threatening act, 10, 42, 48, 53, 68, 80, 83, 86, 92, 209, 214, 217, 220
euphemism, 60, 118, 120, 124, 230, 265
face-threaths, 85, 115n, 216, 220, 239, 242
evaluation, 26, 51, 113, 171, 172, 187, 198, 262
face-work, 42, 48, 72, 237, 259
evaluation (as a dimension of emotive communication), 30, 141, 178, 179, 181, 198, 258, 261
felicity conditions, 8, 32, 55, 83n, 99, 103-4, 125, 134, 186, 187, 210, 211, 220, 225, 226, 255-8, 261, 263, 266
false self, 20
Subject index
fictionalization, 57n, 107, 120, 235, 241, 270
H
figures de la presence et de la communion, 110
Heckenausdrücke, 54n, 73
filler, 60, 243, 266 fishing, 229 footing, 79, 107, 269 force 187, 192, 193, 194-6, 267 (see also illocutionary force) formulas, 120, 167, 189, 212-3, 225, 256
337
hedge, 2n, 3, 6, 46, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53-62, 64, 67, 69-70, 73, 91-119, 120, 125n, 142, 153, 176, 178, 179, 180, 182, 183, 184, 185, 204, 233, 240, 243n, 250, 257, 266 hedged performative, 62, 73, 99, 103 hidden agenda, 130, 189, 215 histoire vs. discours, 113
formulas vs. free expressions, 86 formulation, 32, 78, 88, 130, 167, 169, 177, 180, 184, 187, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 267
I
fuzzification, 57 if-clause, 55, 201, 235, 238, 257n, 260
G galateo, 212 generalizing utterance (énoncé généralisant), 110, 111 generic person, 106, 109-10, 269 gist, 105, 166, 250n gnomic, 110, 269 greaser, 92 grounder, 52, 81, 95, 103, 178, 182, 183, 185, 189, 190, 215, 231, 237, 238, 240, 241-2, 251, 253, 260, 268
illocution, 6, 39, 49, 50, 56, 60, 64, 67-8, 70, 72, 73n, 76, 78-9, 82, 83, 84-5, 92, 94, 98, 102, 103, 104, 105, 118, 153, 173, 186, 187, 200, 208, 210, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 227, 231, 237, 240, 243, 246, 248, 251, 253, 256, 258, 259n, 260 illocutionary (see also illocution), act, 10, 30, 48, 49, 51, 54n, 63, 66, 67-8, 73, 76-8, 82, 83, 84, 103-4, 125, 164, 186-8, 210, 211, 218, 221, 225, 227, 237, 256, 259, 261, 264 force, 2, 3, 6, 30, 32, 41, 47, 49, 50, 51, 54-5, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 73-4, 76, 77, 78, 79, 82, 96, 100, 130, 153, 171, 172, 173, 192, 217, 218-9, 232, 235, 261, 266
338
Mitigation
force indicating device (IFID) 10, 30, 44, 61-2, 95, 102, 232, 240, 261, 268 immediacy, 7, 45, 67, 86, 92, 100, 102, 104, 110, 118, 120, 123, 124, 125, 130, 144, 145-9, 159, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181, 182, 183, 184, 224, 248, 257, 258
K kairÒj, 14-15
L
imperfect of politeness (Italian ‘imperfetto of politeness’), 177, 190, 232, 237, 238 (see also Bescheidenheitsimperfektum)
lateralization, 116, 120, 184, 198, 250, 255, 270, 271 (see also shield)
impersonalization mechanism, 66, 106
literalization, 155-6
implicature, 32, 42, 58n, 59, 83, 117, 124n, 172, 199, 203, 209-10, 226, 227, 229, 233, 241, 258
litotes, 2, 102, 104, 118, 120, 124, 148, 173, 175, 180, 184, 196, 199, 201, 245, 248, 255, 266
impression management, 42, 139, 162 indexical field (Zeigfeld), 25, 144 indicator emotive indicator, 131, 184 indicator of immediacy, 67, 100, 104, 146, 258
M markedness, 34, 69, 135, 139-40, 146, 159, 169, 176
inference, 22-3, 30, 37, 104, 124, 130, 131, 136, 144?, 145?, 148, 150, 152, 213, 224
maxims (Grice), 55, 58n, 213 of Manner, 55 of Quality, 55, 58, 135, 222 of Quantity, 55, 58 of Relevance, 55, 60, 115n, 155, 215
informed consent, 254
maxims (Leech), 63-4
in-group markers, 100
means of mitigation, 40-1, 209-11 (see also mitigation) primary, 209-10, 226-33, 238, 239, 254-5, 260, 264 secondary, 57n, 209-10, 226, 233-6, 238-9, 241, 255, 260, 264
indirectness, 6, 84, 122 conventional, 238, 240, 256
instance d’énonciation, 24, 106, 269 institutional communication, 259 intensity, 2, 6, 13, 16, 30, 32, 34, 40, 48-9, 73-80, 82, 89, 126, 130, 138, 140, 145, 201, 219, 228, 237, 240, 259n
metacommunication, 39, 150
Subject index
339
metacommunicative gloss, 113, 199, level, 95, 241, means, 235, 241, 269, 270
modality, 72, 74n, 135, 137, 188n, 203, 223, 270 deontic, 85, 169, 223, 224, 227 epistemic, 85, 216, 223, 224, 259
metapragmatic awareness, 15, 34, 36, 49, 79, 83, 85n, 89, 94, 168, 266
mode pur (intellectual mode), 2n, 75, 135, 137
metapragmatic competence, 60, 73, 79, 81, 124, 128-9, 139, 189, 191, 211, 212, 215
modesty maxim, 64, 222-3, 224, 259
metapragmatics, 83
modification, 8, 55, 100, 104, 120, 147, 209, 210, 222, 243
miscommunication, 39, 204 misunderstanding, 38, 254 mitigating devices, 2, 6, 10, 23, 47, 49-51, 54n, 55, 56, 58, 66, 71, 80, 81-2, 86, 92, 95-7, 102-3, 112, 117-8, 135, 161, 164, 197, 208, 209-10, 211, 212, 213, 226, 230, 231, 232, 239-40, 243n, 248, 249, 250, 251, 255, 256, 257, 259, 260-1, 264, 265-9 mitigation, external, 52, 95, 103, 170, 183, 189, 230, 240, 249, 256, 260 illocutionary, 83-5, 190, 201, 217, 218 internal, 48, 52, 103, 240, 249, 260 lenitive, 8, 85, 93, 209, 216-7, 220-2, 225, 226-42, 250, 251, 255-6, 257, 258, 259-61, 264 natural, 68, 81-3, 216, 217-20, 235 non-natural, 68, 81-3, 84, 85, 216, 217-226 praxeological, 84, 85, 217 tempering, 8, 85, 93, 209, 216-17, 221, 222-6, 234, 242-58, 259-61, 264
mode vécu (affective mode), 2n, 75, 135, 183, 197
modulation, 2, 6, 13, 16, 18, 32, 33n, 38, 40, 57n, 65, 73-4, 76, 77, 78-9, 88, 110n, 124, 128-9, 131, 136, 162, 169, 179, 188, 197, 198, 203, 209, 210, 219, 226, 243, 248, 253, 256, 257, 258, 259 modus vs. dictum, 74n, 135, 223 monitoring, 37, 41, 42, 88, 89, 93, 94, 124, 126, 131, 161, 200-2, 263, 271-2 (see also emotive)
N negatio contrarii, 102, 120, 248, 255 (see also double negatives) neustic, 64, 70, 95, 96, 105, 179, 222, 243, 248, 254, 266
O
modal adverb, 44, 67, 72, 104, 179, 244 objective orientation vs. egocentric orientation, 147
340
Mitigation
objectivization, 107, 109, 110,
130, 185-6, 205, 206, 211, 212, 213, 215, 221-2, 236, 237, 241, 258, 259 institutional, 189-92, 200, 212-16
objectivization shields, 109, 114, 182, 198, 269 origo (deictic origin), 3, 6, 25-6, 49-50, 54, 55-6, 66, 70, 92, 95, 96, 106, 107, 108, 113, 118, 143, 144, 153, 208, 232, 269
polytropy, 14, 207 potency, 30, 141 pragmeme, 45 prâxis (actio, practice) vs. poíesis (factio, production), 83-5, 94, 217, 258
P
pršpon, 14, 79, 94, 130 (see also appropriateness, decorum)
parenthetical expressions, 65, 67 verbs, 44, 55, 69n, 243, 244, 246, 254, 261, 268 parody, 235, 270 paternal we, 111 percontatio, 260 performative utterance, 30, 62, 63, 73 verb, 61-2
prepositional phrase, 251-4, 255 proposition, 6, 44, 45, 49, 50, 54, 55, 56, 58, 60, 61-2, 64, 65, 67, 69, 70, 72, 73, 82, 84, 85, 93, 95, 96, 97, 103, 104, 105, 118, 142, 153, 188n, 208, 217, 222, 232, 233, 234, 242, 243, 244, 248, 255, 256, 265, 268, 270, 271-2
performativity, 45, 62, 84n
proximity, 26, 102, 118, 141, 142, 143, 144, 146, 160, 169, 173, 248
periphrasis, 118, 120, 124, 255n, 265
psychotherapy session, 5, 9
phatic communication, 60 phrastic, 64, 96, 222, 243, 254, 265 plot, 176-85 plot vs. fabula, 163-4, 171-6
Q
plurale sociativus, 111 polite imperfect (Italian ‘imperfetto of politeness’), 232, 238 (see also Bescheidenheitsimperfektum, imperfect of politeness) politeness, 3, 17, 41, 43, 48, 52, 53-6, 58n, 60, 63-4, 80, 86, 87, 89, 94, 103, 110, 111, 115n, 116, 120, 122, 125,
quantity, 58, 141, 143, 184 (see also maxim of Quantity) quantity hedges, 55
Subject index
of eventualization, 107, 112 of fictionalization, 107, 120 of lateralization, 120, 184, 198, 250, 255, 270 of narrativization, 113, 120 of objectivization, 109, 114, 198, 269 quotational, 6, 92, 114-17, 118-19, 120, 269 topical, 6, 56n, 113, 114-17, 118-19, 120, 161, 184, 198, 255
R recalibration, 180 (see also calibration) reformulation, 34n, 101, 105, 177, 181, 242, 248, 265 rehierarchization, 173 reinforcement, 2, 16, 32, 40-1, 57n, 65, 73-4, 109, 157, 174, 180, 181, 188, 202, 231, 241, 253, 257-8 resistance, 113, 118, 215
341
sincerity condition, 45, 105, 125, 134, 135-6, 228, 257-8
reticence, 87, 117, 118, 122, 124, 138, 181, 251, 272
sleight-of-hand, 155
rhetoric, 6, 14, 22, 32, 33, 40, 45, 63, 67, 79, 85, 94, 112, 115, 119, 129, 130, 207, 216, 258
specificity, 118, 120, 141, 142, 146, 179, 181, 265
rounders, 69
style, 1-2, 3, 7, 14, 16n, 29, 32-3, 35, 38, 39, 60, 61, 66, 76, 77, 78, 79, 86, 88, 89, 100, 101-2, 113, 123-32,136, 137-8, 148, 151, 157-8, 168, 169, 170, 189, 190-1, 192, 194, 195, 196-7, 206, 208, 211, 213, 214, 215, 266
S schizophrenic communication, 27, 123, 152, 157, 159-60
specification, 155-6
speech marker, 15, 36-38, 198
style shift, 35, 178
selective emphasis, 120, 146
stylistic marker, 30, 35, 58, 125
self-disclosure, 25, 133, 144
suiting action to words, 99, 230
sermocinatio, 118, 120 (see also aversio ab oratore, ethopeia) shield, 3, 6, 46, 48, 49, 50, 54, 56, 66, 69-70, 91-119, 120, 153, 170, 176, 177, 179, 180, 182, 184, 198, 204, 232, 255, 260, 269 actantial, 107, 120, 269 deictic, 92, 114, 118, 153, 179, 202, 204, 269
T tangentialization, 149 temperature, 31, 45, 88, 125, 205
342
Mitigation
tempering (see also mitigation) particle 85n, 95, 231, 254
Versetzung, 25, 143, 144 volitionality, 118, 141, 142-3, 147, 179, 180, 183, 228
territory of information (theory of the), 194, 223, 254 tertium comparationis, 32, 33 ‘thermostat’, 19 transactional disqualification, 115n, 120, 149, 153, 154-8, 177, 181, 193,198, 206, 270 (see also disqualification) truncation, 183, 192, 193, 215
U understatement, 40, 64, 100-1, 118, 120, 124, 138, 223, 266 understater, 228 Ungeschehenmachen, 123, 158-9 uptake, 77, 115n, 157, 181, 193
V vagueness, 3, 6, 50, 54, 56-61, 84, 89, 99, 100-1, 233, 238, 250, 254, 255, 257, 265 verdictive (illocutionary act), 8, 10, 85, 93, 94, 100, 103, 104-5, 180, 181, 184, 187, 197, 210, 211, 216, 217, 218, 222, 225-6, 234, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 251-2, 253-4, 256, 257, 259, 261, 264
Z Zeigfeld, 25, 143-4 (see also indexical field)
