Persuasion Across Genres: A Linguistic Approach (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

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Author: Helena Halmari | Tuija Virtanen

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Persuasion Across Genres

Pragmatics & Beyond New Series Editor Andreas H. Jucker University of Zurich, English Department Plattenstrasse 47, CH-8032 Zurich, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected]

Associate Editors Jacob L. Mey University of Southern Denmark

Herman Parret Belgian National Science Foundation, Universities of Louvain and Antwerp

Jef Verschueren Belgian National Science Foundation, University of Antwerp

Editorial Board Shoshana Blum-Kulka Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni University of Lyon 2

Jean Caron Université de Poitiers

Claudia de Lemos University of Campinas, Brazil

Robyn Carston University College London

Marina Sbisà University of Trieste

Bruce Fraser Boston University

Emanuel Schegloff University of California at Los Angeles

Thorstein Fretheim University of Trondheim

Deborah Schiffrin Georgetown University

John Heritage University of California at Los Angeles

Paul O. Takahara Kansai Gaidai University

Susan Herring University of Texas at Arlington

Sandra Thompson University of California at Santa Barbara

Masako K. Hiraga St.Paul’s (Rikkyo) University

Teun A. Van Dijk Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona

David Holdcroft University of Leeds

Richard J. Watts University of Berne

Sachiko Ide Japan Women’s University

Volume 130 Persuasion Across Genres: A linguistic approach Edited by Helena Halmari and Tuija Virtanen

Persuasion Across Genres A linguistic approach

Edited by

Helena Halmari Sam Houston State University

Tuija Virtanen Åbo Akademi University

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam/Philadelphia

8

TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Persuasion Across Genres : A linguistic approach / edited by Helena Halmari and Tuija Virtanen. p. cm. (Pragmatics & Beyond, New Series, issn 0922-842X ; v. 130) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. 1. Discourse analysis--Psychological aspects. 2. Persuasion (Psychology). 3. Literary form. 4. Intertextuality. I. Halmari, Helena. II. Virtanen, Tuija. III. Series. P302.8.P468 2005 401’.41-dc22 isbn 90 272 5373 0 (Eur.) / 1 58811 588 7 (US) (Hb; alk. paper)

2005057456

© 2005 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa

Table of contents

Acknowledgements

vii

1. Introduction

Chapter 1 Persuasion across genres: Emerging perspectives Tuija Virtanen and Helena Halmari

3

2. Focusing on private and semipublic discourse

Chapter 2 Persuasion in business negotiations Anne Marie Bülow-Møller Chapter 3 Persuasion in judicial argumentation: The Opinions of the Advocates General at the European Court of Justice Tarja Salmi-Tolonen

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59

3. Focusing on public discourse

Chapter 4 In search of “successful” political persuasion: A comparison of the styles of Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan Helena Halmari

105

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Table of contents

Chapter 5 In a nutshell: Persuasion in the spatially constrained language of advertising Paul Bruthiaux Chapter 6 “Polls and surveys show”: Public opinion as a persuasive device in editorial discourse Tuija Virtanen

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153

4. Theoretical considerations

Chapter 7 Persuasion as implicit anchoring: The case of collocations Jan-Ola Östman

183

Chapter 8 Generic patterns in promotional discourse Vijay K. Bhatia

213

5. Concluding remarks

Chapter 9 Towards understanding modern persuasion Helena Halmari and Tuija Virtanen

229

Author index

245

Subject index

249

Acknowledgements

The point of departure for the present volume was a well-received three-hour colloquium at the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) annual meeting in April 1999, which brought together six very interesting papers and thus encouraged us to go on with the project to expand it into an edited volume. Several of the participants to the AAAL conference have contributed with revised and expanded versions of their papers. Other contributors were invited to join in on the basis of their research interests, to complement areas that were deemed central to the book. Our first and foremost thanks thus go to our contributors, who made the project meaningful and possible, and who have shown great efficiency and enthusiasm in writing and revising their chapters. We are also grateful to all those who came to our AAAL colloquium and let us benefit from their wisdom by asking disturbing questions and suggesting constructive twists that the study of persuasion could take. It has been a pleasure to work with John Benjamins Publishing Company. We want to thank Andreas Jucker, the series editor for the Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, and Isja Conen for their help during the process. We also thank the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful suggestions. And we thank Robert Adams for reading a number of chapters and commenting on both their language and content. We naturally take responsibility for the remaining faults and imperfections. We wish to thank Sam Houston State University, Texas, and Växjö University, Sweden, for funding our participation in the AAAL conference. We are also grateful to Växjö University for financing travel for Tuija Virtanen, which allowed us to finalize the present volume, and to Sam Houston State University for financial support from the Research Enhancement Funds and for the reassigned time for research given to Helena Halmari. We also want to acknowledge University of Florida and Åbo Akademi University, Finland, for institutional support during the final parts of the project. We acknowledge Elsevier Science for the permission to reprint Chapter 5, “In a nutshell: Persuasion in the spatially constrained language of advertising”

 Acknowledgements

by Paul Bruthiaux. The chapter is reprinted from Language and Communication, Vol. 20 (4), 2000, pp. 297–310. Finally, warm thanks go to those close to our hearts for giving us the support we needed to work happily and productively, in alphabetical order: Fredrik, Iiris, Irene, Jaakko, and Rob – as well as the cats Maisa, Pieni, and Sanna for occasionally swinging their tails in front of the computer screen and performing persuasive strategies of their own. Tuija wishes to extend special thanks to Helena’s family for providing her with a Finnish-American nest in which the hatching of this volume was so much nicer. December 2003 Huntsville, Texas & Åbo, Finland Helena Halmari & Tuija Virtanen

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Introduction

Chapter 1

Persuasion across genres Emerging perspectives Tuija Virtanen and Helena Halmari

Persuasion has intrigued researchers since antiquity; yet, it is a topic which continues to have immense relevance in all human interaction. To quote Robin Tolmach Lakoff (2000: 7), the question is: “Why do we late-twentieth-century sophisticates, after a century’s barrage of advertising, still find ourselves bedazzled by the language of persuasion, economic and political?” The present volume is dedicated to investigations of the interactive process of persuasion at the dawn of the new millenium. Choosing to focus on the linguistic manifestations of this process, we highlight its several different dimensions, which interact with one another in intriguing ways. Further, we investigate aggregates of the linguistic exponents of persuasion across a number of different genres. These have been selected to represent the use of language which people generally associate with persuasion in the public sphere, such as advertising, the language of politics, and media discourse. But our concern is also with modern sites for persuasion within and across professional discourse communities as manifested in business negotiations and legal documents. While other genres could profitably be added to the repertoire we are offering (see, e.g., Mulholland 1994: xiii), the genres in focus in this volume originate in very different areas of public life, thus permitting us to detect similarities and differences across them. All language use can in a sense be regarded as persuasive (cf., e.g., Miller 1980). However, in this context we limit the definition of persuasion to all linguistic behavior that attempts to either change the thinking or behavior of an audience, or to strengthen its beliefs, should the audience already agree. Yet, the audiences – visible and invisible, actual and implied, interlocutors and onlookers – also contribute to the process of persuasion. We are committed to the view that the persuasive process is affected by the situational and socio-cultural

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Tuija Virtanen and Helena Halmari

context in which it takes place, and at the same time it helps construct that very context in important ways. Even though genres will always be tied to time and culture – i.e. they emerge, persist, change, and disappear through time and in given sociocultural settings (Swales 1990: 34–37) – persuasion is such an integral part of human interaction that learning to understand it better will always be meaningful. Learning more about persuasion, we believe, is learning more about human nature. In the present volume we undertake this task by defining and discussing its concrete linguistic realizations in data that come from the last two decades of the twentieth century. In doing so we also raise the issue of what is typical of modern-day persuasion as compared to persuasion at earlier times. The purpose of the present volume is to address and answer the following questions: What are the common denominators of persuasive language that can be found across genres which are inherently persuasive? What different linguistic forms does persuasion find in these genres? Can the features of “successful” persuasion be described? What type of restrictions does the genre impose on the features of persuasive language; in other words, how do the linguistic features of persuasion differ from genre to genre? How do inherently persuasive words indicating beliefs and attitudes behave in texts? How does implicit persuasion differ from explicit persuasion? To what extent and in what way do genres hybridize for persuasive purposes? Can persuasion be taught? The discussion is essentially built on an intertextual and interdiscursive model of persuasion across genres (see, e.g., Todorov 1976; Fowler 1982; Swales 1990). All through the book we give due attention to the implicitness inherent in the process. This volume also touches upon fundamental methodological issues in the study of modern-day persuasion. In addition to qualitative analyses central to the study of persuasion, the development of modern technology and constantly improving computer software allow linguists to pursue quantitative analyses expected to offer new insights as concerns the concrete linguistic realizations of persuasion. Many chapters of this book reflect the availability of new technology: they provide convincing data of relevant lexico-grammatical patterns which help us understand persuasive language and the forms it takes within and across genres. At the same time there is room for qualitative analyses of new kinds, in line with the current concern in linguistics with the dynamism of the interface between texts and contexts. As the individual chapters approach the process of persuasion from the different but concomitant perspectives of text and discourse linguistics, pragmatics, and rhetoric, they serve to highlight different dimensions of the texts under scrutiny; yet, they all contribute to an-

Persuasion across genres

swering the same essential question of how persuasion is realized linguistically across these modern-day genres. Finally, it needs to be pointed out that for maximal coherence, our concern throughout the book is with English. Before proceeding to the presentation of the individual chapters in Section 3.1 below, a brief discussion of the very notion of persuasion is in order (Section 1). We also need consider, in some detail, the concept of genre as used in this volume (Section 2). Section 3 approaches persuasion across the genres represented in the individual chapters, thus bringing together the two key notions.

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Persuasion

Critical for this volume is the definition of persuasion. As pointed out above, we acknowledge that all language use, in a general sense, is persuasive; however, for the purpose of this volume, persuasion is defined as those linguistic choices that aim at changing or affecting the behavior of others or strengthening the existing beliefs and behaviors of those who already agree, the beliefs and behaviors of persuaders included (cf. Kinneavy 1971: 211; Jucker 1997: 122). Perelman sees persuasion as part of the more general notion of argumentation and writes: “[. . .] argumentation [. . .] covers the whole range of discourse that aims at persuasion and conviction, whatever the audience addressed and whatever the subject matter” (1982: 5). . Ethos, pathos, and logos across genres In this volume, Perelman’s notion of the varying subject matters (1982: 5) is reflected in the different genres investigated by our contributors. The chapters that follow also illustrate all the three classic Aristotelian types of appeal to the audience, even though many of the chapters do not make explicit reference to Aristotelian appeals. Ethos, the ethical appeal – the voice of the persuader, the linguistically mediated message of her or his believability, reliability, and competence – is evidenced in all the chapters of this book, perhaps most clearly in the chapter on judicial writing (Chapter 3). Pathos, the emotional appeal to the audience, is not expected to be foregrounded in the so-called professional genres; hence it is hardly found in the studies included in this book. However, its covert presence becomes “revealed” in the connotational analysis of, for instance, media discourse in Chapters 6 and 7. Emotional appeals are also found, as expected, in the language of advertising (Chapters 5 and 8), combined with

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ethos (linguistically mediated implications of the “good character” of the persuader) and logos (the appeal to the rationality of the audience). The appeal to logos is overtly foregrounded in the genre of newspaper editorials (Chapter 6). Editorials attempt to appeal to the rational thinking processes of the readers by providing “hard data,” for instance, in the form of poll and survey results; yet, a detailed investigation of the lexical collocations in these editorials reveals that an appeal to the readers’ emotions (pathos) is made covertly. Judicial arguments (Chapter 3) combine logos and ethos, whereas pathetic appeals are not usually expected to surface. While in all chapters many classic examples of ethos, pathos, and logos become evident and the classic ways of persuasion are present more or less transparently, the chapter on political speeches (Chapter 4) illustrates a strong combination of all three: In the State of the Union addresses, Reagan and Clinton appeal to the logic of the audience by providing verifiable, hard data in terms of for instance numbers to justify their policies; they appeal to ethos by aiming at convincing the audience that the Union is in competent hands; and, they appeal to pathos, by frequently using such words as children and families, which are likely to appeal to the emotions of the audience. While some genres are more open to foregrounding logos, pathos, or ethos, a skillful combination of these different types of appeal, done with the knowledge of which type should be emphasized in each genre, seems to provide a convincing, persuasive argument. . Audience and the interactive nature of persuasion In addition to the different persuasive genres and their respective subject matters that this volume investigates, it also covers the different audience types listed in Perelman (1982: 5): “a crowd in a public square or a gathering of specialists, a single being or all humanity.” While a specific “audience” in the chapters of this book can often be identified – e.g., the readers of newspapers or advertising catalogs (Chapters 5 and 6), parties in business negotiations (Chapter 2), readers of judicial documents (Chapter 3), or the American electorate (Chapter 4) – we want to underscore the interactive nature of persuasion. This is not a new approach. In fact, the Classical Rhetoric notions of ethos, pathos, and logos imply a living, thinking audience, whose reactions the speaker needs to constantly consider. According to Lunsford and Ede (1984: 37–38), the relationship between the speaker and the audience in Classical Rhetoric has been oversimplified as “manipulative, antagonistic, one-way or unidirectional communication.” Yet, already in Rhetoric, Aristotle implied that persuasion is a


dynamic, interactive process – a view later made explicit in Modern Rhetoric (see, e.g., Lunsford & Ede 1984: 38–40; also, Johannesen 1971; Scott 1976; Steward 1978; Mulholland 1994: xvi–xvii). Aristotle wrote: “[. . .] persuasion may come through the hearers, when the speech stirs their emotions. Our judgments when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile” (Aristotle [1984]: 25). Therefore, even though it is rather Modern Rhetoric than Classical Rhetoric that looks at the “rhetor-audience relationship” as “dialogic” (Lunsford & Ede 1984: 38), the importance of the audience for persuasive communication has always been acknowledged. This interactive, dialogic, or dialectic dimension of persuasion, the sense of an ever-present audience or multiple audiences – albeit sometimes invisible and abstract rather than tangible and easily identifiable – may complicate the assignment of a text as persuasive. Jucker (1997: 121–124) addresses this issue aptly. If texts are identified as persuasive depending on their effects on the audience, persuasion becomes “an elusive language function,” an unresearchable target, unless, of course audience reactions are simultaneously subjected to explicit and, preferably, quantifiable scrutiny. This is, however, rarely possible, and even though Jucker points out that, for instance, election results may be seen as a measure of the success or non-success of a particular text, there is no guarantee that the text in question was the “cause” of these results. According to Jucker (1997: 122–123), persuasion in speech act theory is a “perlocutionary effect”; sentences such as *I hereby persuade you to elect me president would be infelicitous unless the interlocutor, indeed, becomes persuaded. The definition of persuasion thus necessitates the existence of an audience. Yet, audience reactions (since often unknown) cannot be used as a defining factor of a text being persuasive or not. Jucker, therefore, suggests – and we agree – that a text should be identified as persuasive if its “persuasive intention can be taken for granted” (1997: 123). This intention to persuade has, indeed, been the guiding force in the selection of all the texts representing various genres in the present volume. Still, the choice of any particular linguistic strategies to “make a text persuade” is more or less tangibly affected by the interactive, dynamic nature of persuasion. The persuader, with the intention to cause an effect, will monitor and gauge her or his linguistic choices based on the sometimes immediately obvious and sometimes estimated and inferred reactions of the audience or multiple audiences. In this volume, the interactive nature of persuasion is especially underscored in Chapter 2, in business negotiations, where the persuasive language patterns of both parties mold and are also molded by the other party’s contributions in a dynamic way. As opposed to these types of interactive exchanges between individuals where the aim is to negotiate a

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mutually acceptable solution, other chapters deal with persuasion where the interactive nature of the exchange is not quite as obvious as in face-to-face business negotiations. However, in written judicial documents – the concern of Chapter 3 – the anticipated reactions of the target audiences guide the way in which the argument is constructed to reflect a coherent thought process. And while audience design in these genres is primarily geared towards a welldefined professional community, the more general scope of the genres in focus in Chapters 4, 5, and 6 (on political speeches, advertising, and newspaper editorials, respectively) does not make the estimated and inferred reactions of the multiple audiences less relevant to the construction of the argument. In all the written genres investigated in this volume there is a primary audience and one or more secondary audiences, within the given discourse or speech community. And even in written discourse there is a layer of “onlookers” whose motivations for coming into contact with the genre and text can be widely different from one another. Still, all these multiple audiences contribute to varying degrees and ways to the interactive process of persuasion taking place through the genres in focus here, and the nature of persuasion can thus differ accordingly. In the same way as we see persuasion as intentional and interactive, we also want to emphasize these same notions in the definition of genre. In his “working definition of genre,” Swales (1990: 45–58) sees genres as dynamic, intentional, and audience-oriented; they are “classes of communicative events” with “sets of communicative purposes.” These communicative events, i.e. concrete instances of genres, are more or less prototypical. It is true that the interactive nature of some genres is not obvious. Similarly, their degree of audience-orientedness will vary. For instance, in classified ads the reader’s reply to an ad will not be immediate; however, the classified ad is clearly directed to the reader, with an obvious persuasive intention. We return to the notion of genre in a section of its own below. While there have been attempts to define genre in terms of its structure, form, function, and meaning (see Briggs & Bauman 1992 for a discussion), a persuasive text will also vary along these dimensions. One of the questions this volume sets out to answer is what the best kind of persuasion is like. Since we do not adopt a static view of persuasive texts, we believe that, while it is possible to describe various texts whose intention is to persuade in terms of their structures, forms, functions, and meanings, it is not possible to give a static formula for a persuasive text (cf. the implied approach of e.g. Mulholland 1994, who gives a taxonomy of persuasive tactics). The dynamism of persuasion needs to be taken into consideration. This dynamism is, to a great extent, dictated by the audience, or indeed, multiple audiences. It is the audience that will deter-


mine what kind of persuasion will work and, therefore, what kind of form a maximally persuasive text in any given situation should take. If the goal of a persuasive text is to strengthen the beliefs of those audience members who already believe in the goals of the speaker/author, the most effective linguistic forms for that goal will be different from the most effective linguistic forms if the goal is to persuade a fiercely opposing audience. And in many cases, the persuaders face multiple audiences – those who already share their views and those who do not. An illustration comes from the United States November 2002 midterm elections. The tragic death of the Minnesota Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone on October 25, just days before the elections, inspired a wealth of favorable responses in the media about his work and character, even from some of the dedicated opponents of the Democratic Party. His funeral service, immediately preceding the elections, was televised and hence provided a powerful forum for Wellstone’s party members to influence the election results in their favor. To an extent, this turned out to be a missed opportunity; with the entire audience in mind, some of the forms of persuasion ended up being ill-chosen. Some funeral speakers chose to rally overtly for Democratic causes, which led to a negative reaction among many of those voters who after Wellstone’s death might have been sympathetic to his agenda (Kristof 2002: 2). Clearly, the speakers at the funeral faced a problem created by their multiple audiences. Should they have been able to address Democrats only, the speeches would have been effective. In order to be persuaded, the Republican audience required a selection of less explicit forms of persuasion. Senator Wellstone’s funeral incident also exemplifies the two important, yet distinct, notions of audience and discourse community. In Perelman’s sense of audience (see above), the funeral audience consisted of all those listening to the speeches – those present in person, those viewing the funeral on TV, and those reading about, or hearing reports of, the funeral after it took place. However, a discourse community, in this case, formed just a section of the audience – the Democrats. According to Swales (1990: 24–27) a discourse community has shared public goals, it uses some specific lexis, and its membership is explicitly defined. Had the audience at Wellstone’s funeral consisted only of members of the discourse community “dedicated Democrats,” the funeral speeches would have been samples of more successful persuasion. (For a discussion, see, e.g., Casselman 2002, online; Kristof 2002, online; NewsMax Wires 2002: 2, online.) Each of the chapters that follow will more or less explicitly address the question of effective persuasion. We will also return to discuss this question again in Chapter 9, where it will be noted that the continued need for “fresh”

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persuasion has led to diachronic changes in persuasive genres and the emergence of generic hybrids.

. Genre Now that we have established what we mean by the notion of persuasion, let us proceed to explore the second key concept in the title of the book, i.e. genre. In this volume we approach the dynamism of genres from an intertextual and interdiscursive perspective, hence focusing on matchings of texts with other texts and genres with other genres. To start with, we see the process of genre formation as a heuristic which people use to facilitate discourse processing and to monitor communication (cf. de Beaugrande & Dressler 1981: 183). Adopting a Bakhtinian perspective we note that the emergence, maintenance, alteration, and disappearance of genres is made possible by the existence of intertextuality – the multiple voices that are to be found in their textual realizations: Consciously or subconsciously we continuously compare texts we encounter with other texts and detect similarities and differences between them. Genres thus reflect the dynamism of linguistic categorization, and they are flexible enough to allow interlocutors to profit from them in particular communication situations, in view of their communicative goals. This suggests that genres can, without losing their identity, vary from context to context, thus helping interlocutors construct those very contexts. Similarly, genres vary through time and across cultures. It is, however, difficult to account for genres in linguistic analysis once we accept their versatile and dynamic nature. What we can do is to try to come to grips with genres in terms of prototypes, keeping in mind the dynamism connected with them. While it is of course possible to find authentic examples of near-prototype texts, it is by far easier to find realizations of a given genre which deviate from the core of the category and yet exhibit a sufficient number of the characteristics of the category for people to recognize and use them as texts belonging to that genre. Instead of such unitype – or should we say, unigenre – texts, however, most texts are, in fact, multitype – or multigenre – in character (cf. Virtanen 1992). In other words, they are blends of several different genres, whose prototypical characteristics can combine and co-occur in various ways in actual texts. Multigenre texts illustrate what Bhatia in Chapter 8 calls genre-mixing and embedding of genres (cf. also Hymes’s 1975 notion of metaphrasis). As Fairclough (1992) observes, we can view this state of things in the light of interdiscursivity,


which we in this context see as the process of matching genres with other genres. A number of virtual genres may be actualized in one and the same text (for the dialectic between virtual and actual systems, see de Beaugrande 1997: 294– 295). When this process is repeated along similar lines within a culture, the outcome may eventually be a declaration of independence of a new hybrid genre (for hybridization, see Fairclough 1992). In Chapter 8 Bhatia refers to such instances as appropriation of genres – as distinct from genre-mixing and embedding. Recontextualization always causes texts to be somewhat different from their intertextual sources: It is a process which creates intertextual gaps. Hence, even culture-specific template texts such as tax declaration forms or telephone directories, which tend to conform maximally to the genre at hand can show variation through time. As Briggs and Bauman (1992: 149) put it, “all genres leak.” In view of persuasion, it will therefore be interesting to study how and why the intertextual gap is minimized or maximized in actual texts (for an illuminating discussion of these processes, see Briggs & Bauman 1992). The different chapters of this volume testify to goal-oriented manipulations of this gap, and we will return to the issue in more specific terms in Chapter 9. The intersection of persuasion and genre, the two key notions of this volume, is their communicative purpose. Genres can be more or less persuasive; persuasion, a communicative purpose, finds its realization through various genres. And, as we will show in Chapter 9, persuasion may even lead to generic change. Bhatia points out in Chapter 8 that what is fundamental in the definition of a genre is the recognition of its communicative purposes. Following Swales (1990: 45–58; cf. also the discussion in Section 1 above), we can thus view the notion of genre as a class of communicative events with a common set of communicative goals shared by members of a given discourse community. Swales also maintains that genres have typically acquired a label and some vocabulary of their own which the given discourse community makes use of; the discourse community thus has some expertise in the area to which the genre belongs. This community also has a shared idea of the intended audience of a given genre. Further, the communicative goals motivating the existence of a genre influence the discourse strategies typically adopted in texts that realize them and hence the kinds of content and form that they can have. It is evident that genres emerge in situational and socio-cultural contexts; yet, their realizations will at the same time help create those very contexts and the discourse communities associated with them. Genre analysts devise taxonomies of genres and subgenres. Indeed, in the actual analysis of texts we often need to take a stance on whether we are dealing

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with genres or subgenres. Many genres exhibit variation that can be captured in terms of a set of subgenres which are similar enough to represent the same genre and yet different enough to warrant distinguishing them for the purposes of a given study. When, however, the subgenres develop their own identities, we must assign them the label of a separate genre instead of having recourse to a taxonomy within the “parent” genre. Bhatia (1993) discusses the case of the sales promotion letter and that of the job application letter, which are very similar in terms of their communicative goals and generic structure, even if their realizations appear in very different contexts. He thus classifies them as subgenres of one and the same genre, termed promotional genre (see also the discussion in Chapter 8). In contrast, research paper abstracts and introductions, at first sight very much part of the same genre of the academic article, are claimed to constitute two different genres because their communicative purposes are quite different from one another. As language users we have expectations of unfolding texts which we base on our culture-specific knowledge of genres; this helps us process texts, negotiate for meaning, and adapt to new situations. These expectations also make us appreciate the deviation so fundamental in aesthetic and advertising texts, which seek to foreground through unexpectedness. But the process of persuasion is in itself different from this kind of salience: As Östman points out in Chapter 7, persuasion is inherently implicit. Hence, whether our genre-oriented expectations are met or not has significant implications: Decisions concerning the relative minimizing or maximizing of the intertextual gap can have an ideological rationale. For instance, the prototypical structure of research articles or abstracts, or of grant proposals, in a given culture can be made very explicit and even taught to novices (cf. e.g. Swales 1990; Connor & Mauranen 1999); yet, the minimized gap in the recontextualized texts does not alone guarantee the desired outcome – not every well-formulated proposal or conference abstract gets accepted even if chances are better that way. What is interesting from our point of view is that the persuasion taking place in the genre can still be highly implicit and hence something that we cannot so readily teach to others, as convincingly shown by Östman in Chapter 7. Conversely, we can maximize the intertextual gap to produce texts that explicitly differ from the expected prototype. These can include an implicit resemblance to another genre, hence in turn minimizing the interdiscursive gap between genres. We will discuss such instances in Chapter 9 in terms of the notion of intergenre, which we wish to launch along the lines of the concept of interlanguage in applied linguistics – the main difference being that the cognition referred to here will be distributed, rather than individual. Minimizing


interdiscursive gaps can serve to blur the maximized intertextual gap and thus fool interlocutors to take, for instance, advertising for information – an issue we return to in Chapter 9. If the notion of persuasion is intimately intertwined with the existence of an audience (Section 1.2 above), so is the notion of genre. Both Swales (1990) and Bhatia (1993; Chapter 8 in this volume), as well as several of the contributors to this volume, are concerned with professional discourse, whether public, semipublic, or semiprivate in the sense of occluded genres (Swales 1996); hence the discourse communities they consider differ from those found in connection with everyday use of language by people at large. We can thus make a difference between speech communities referring to groups of people who were simply born into the community (cf. Saville-Troike 1982) and the professionally-oriented discourse communities. However, in the present context it seems expedient to extend the latter term to also cover everyday social communities whose members manifest shared interests, language and (sub)culture; after all, we all belong to at least one speech community and within it, to several different discourse communities, professional or not. In this light, classified ads in the local paper – discussed by Bruthiaux in Chapter 5 – presume a target audience which together with the ad writers may be likened to a virtual discourse community, even if the members of the actual community vary largely from time to time and perhaps only participate very temporarily. And newspaper editorials and political speeches – the foci of Chapters 6 and 4, respectively – manifest “mediated discourse” par excellence (cf. Scollon 1998; all genres in focus in the present volume are in some sense mediated), thus involving both “speech communities” and “discourse communities.” These genres are simultaneously directed to several different audiences. Yet, it is possible to pinpoint one of their audiences as primary, such as the collective of the American people old enough to vote for president, rather than just anybody in the speech community or the world. In the discussion of genre, it is necessary to separate two levels of analysis: genres as abstractions and genres as concrete realizations of those abstractions. Their relationship needs, however, to be seen as a two-way one, in line with the relation of genres to their contexts. In other words, the actual texts realizing the virtual genres manifest aggregates of concrete linguistic features which we can study (see, e.g., Mulholland 1994). These features however also help us discern prototypical genres owned by particular discourse communities and cultures, which motivates analyses of genres as abstractions and as manifestations of distributed cognition. To take an example, this volume features two chapters which discuss advertising as a genre. Chapter 5 narrows discussion

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to concrete ads of small size, distinguishing subgenres which reflect the variation in this area of print advertising. Here the analysis is of concrete linguistic features exhibited in the data. Chapter 8, again, discusses advertisements at a much more abstract level, focusing on their prototypical content and comparing the degree of persuasion manifest in them and their abstract subgenres to other genres which have traditionally not been considered “advertisementlike,” or promotional, but which have recently approached these in terms of the discourse strategies that they tend to adopt today.

. Persuasion across genres: Presenting the chapters The individual chapters of the present volume highlight several dimensions of persuasion and account for some of the most important and interesting ways in which it cuts across genres. We will, for instance, see how the strength and visibility of the promotional elements vary across and within genres, at different points of time, and in different cultures. Furthermore, while the explicit, publicly recognized communicative goals of a given genre very much dictate its identity and form and can include promotion, it is important to note that both the discourse community and the individual language user can still opt for persuasive strategies that remain implicit. In what follows, we will briefly introduce each chapter in light of the rationale behind our division of the volume into five different parts (Section 3.1). In Section 3.2, below, we will present the chapters in more detail. . From private to public: Overall structure of the book This volume features a continuum of private/semiprivate/semipublic/public genres. The genres in Part 2 (“Focusing on private and semipublic discourse”) fall into the private and semiprivate end of this continuum. These genres are, in a very concrete sense, accessible, not to a general public, but to a more or less limited discourse community (e.g. confidential documents, business negotiations taking place behind closed doors or on the phone), or they are generally available but not necessarily accessible to people at large (e.g. legal documents). The professional discourse communities (e.g. business negotiators, lawyers, and administrators) that own the genres in focus in Part 2 are not open to everyone, even if anyone can for instance get hold of some judicial documents from a specialized library or the Internet. The members of the discourse community are expected to have a certain level of expertise. Furthermore, the size


of these communities varies; likewise, the number of participants in the communication situation varies, as well as the size of the target audience: Business negotiations constitute mediated discourse which only involves a few people at a time, while legislative writing can be related to a much larger community of experts and novices mediating these genres. The topic of Chapter 2, which deals with business negotiations, exemplifies the most private of the genres in focus. The concern of Chapter 3, on judicial discourse, is with a genre that can be characterized as semiprivate or semipublic, depending on the ideologies prevailing in the given society. Such documents may be available to the general public in some societies or under certain circumstances, but they need not be highly accessible. The more towards the private end of the continuum the genre finds itself, the more confined and limited it is. To an extent these genres need to be learnt: The specific persuasive strategies that have proven to be successful are part of the insider knowledge of those engaged in the discourse community that owns these genres. The uninitiated public will thus find them somehow difficult even when they are made physically accessible. At the other end of the continuum we find public persuasive genres, which are available and informationally accessible to the general public without any special conditions or training. Thus in Part 3 (“Focusing on public discourse”), the discourse community at hand is expanded from the (semi)private or limited discourse communities of Part 2 to cover persuasion by politicians, advertisers, and the media. Being public, the genres in focus here are essentially accessible through mass media or the Internet. Chapters 4 and 5 deal with genres which are considered inherently and prototypically persuasive, i.e. political speeches, and classified advertisements and advertising catalogs. Chapter 6, in contrast, is concerned with editorials in a major newspaper, and hence with texts that are not expected to be persuasive the way advertisements or political speeches are. Editorial writing is, however, generally related to the notion of argumentation. All of the genres discussed in Part 3 come from American contexts. The genres in focus in Part 3 differ from one another in terms of the audiences to which they are directed. Political discourse and editorial writing in a major newspaper assume a global audience in society while classified ads are in the first place directed to a locally defined target readership. Advertising catalogs can be global or local, standardized or adapted to particular markets. At the same time, however, even the genres which are directed to the general public, in the wide sense, involve audiences that do not include everyone in the given society. Further, they are simultaneously part of the discourse of several

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different discourse communities, who are using them for different purposes. Hence, political speeches, while in principle open to everyone, will be received quite differently, depending on whether the discourse community that is part of the audience is “on the side” of the speakers or against them (see Section 1.2 above). Also, the public nature of the genre political speeches is in reality restricted to those inherently interested in finding out what is going on in politics, and, sadly, to those who have access to the media, which is not the case for everyone in the United States, let alone the whole world. The public nature of all the genres that we have chosen to include in Part 3 is a relative concept, and we have here defined as public such genres that do not require membership in any formally defined discourse community. In other words, these are genres public to anyone who can buy and read a newspaper, watch television, or access the Internet. Part 4 deals with theoretical considerations. The two chapters, Chapters 7 and 8, discuss the two key concepts of this volume – persuasion and genre – in more abstract terms than has been the case in the preceding chapters. Chapters 7 and 8, thus, provide us with models for analysis and wider perspectives cutting across the individual genres in focus in Parts 2 and 3. In our discussion of the key concepts, we have used central notions developed in these two chapters. Finally, in Part 5 we outline a model for modern persuasion based on the goal-oriented monitoring of intertextual and interdiscursive gaps and the notion of intergenre, to which we have briefly referred in this introductory chapter. We also discuss general tendencies in present-day persuasion and the changes that have taken place in the language of persuasion through time. In doing so, we focus on the differences between various persuasive genres, the generic linguistic strategies portrayed by them, and on the shared characteristics of persuasion across genres. Two major tendencies emerge from the individual chapters of this volume: (1) the importance of implicitness in the process of persuasion, as opposed to explicit persuasion; (2) the blurring of the generic boundaries, which has led to a number of intergenres. These two tendencies appear to have been dictated by the heavy exposure of present-day audiences to immense amounts of persuasion from a rich variety of simultaneous sources. This exposure has led to innovation in the techniques, linguistic techniques included, adopted by interlocutors to persuade one another, in professional as well as social contexts. The chapters in this volume reflect these tendencies in compelling ways.


. Presenting the chapters Chapter 2, by Anne Marie Bülow-Møller, focuses on persuasion in spoken discourse, in the context of business negotiations, with a goal to explain how a deadlock develops. To exemplify this, she looks at two different types of negotiation situations: (1) a simulated face-to-face negotiation in a training session for middle managers and (2) an authentic telephone negotiation between leaseholders and a representative of an insurance company. Bülow-Møller’s main claim is that overt, explicit persuasion is a signal of a deadlock in a negotiation; for maximal success, persuasion needs to be subtle and implicit. However, the generalization of implicit persuasion always being successful is impossible. This is poignantly illustrated in the first negotiation: Even though the parties share a common general goal, i.e. that of renewing a deal, and they are negotiating on the exact terms of the deal in a friendly atmosphere, using expected discourse strategies, the negotiation ends in a deadlock. This deadlock is the result of another factor: The gradually growing suspicions of the buyers lead them to interpret the information provided by the seller as a sign of insincerity. In the second negotiation the parties have opposite goals: One party wants the money and the other party does not want to give it. The overall atmosphere of the negotiation is extremely hostile. This is reflected in the language of the aggrieved party (leaseholders), who resort to overt markers of aggression such as swearing, threatening questions, and so forth, in an attempt to wear down the resistance of the insurance company. While the discourse strategies adopted by the active persuaders are thus largely explicit, Bülow-Møller shows that those of the “passive,” resisting party are no less passive. Analyzing these two very different types of business negotiations, BülowMøller is able to pinpoint the central strategies of the two parties, to illustrate the reasons for deadlock, and underscore the fact that persuasion per se rarely leads to the desired result by the active persuader. This chapter convincingly shows the complexity of persuasion and highlights the importance of implicitness inherent in the process. Within legal discourse the genres that people readily associate with persuasion are those found in the courtroom: Prosecutors and defence attorneys work hard to persuade the jury and the judge. Legislative discourse is, in contrast, thought to be one of the least persuasive kinds of discourse – it attempts at maximal decontextualization and is associated with the ideal of complete nonaffectedness. However, even legislation reflects and creates the socio-cultural context in which it is constructed, and it is therefore liable to persuasion of the most subtle kind. In fact, the linguistic strategies employed in legal discourse

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vary a great deal from genre to genre, in line with their different communicative purposes. In Chapter 3, Tarja Salmi-Tolonen focuses on a new area of research on legal language: She investigates persuasive strategies in the written Judicial Opinions of the Advocates General at the European Court of Justice. In terms of her threefold distinction between law-making, law-applying, and law-describing, the genre of written Opinions is primarily concerned with lawapplying while also contributing to law-making as the data are part of the documents constituting case law. The chapter discloses genre-specific lexico-grammatical and discoursepragmatic patterns in how the Advocates General express their professional view of a particular case. They are expected to make their opinion clear in these written documents; yet, it is not enough for them to simply state what their judgment of a given case is. The persuasive strategy of the Opinion text relies on modality and evidentiality. These professional writers who are judicial experts turn highly visible at the end of the Opinion, where they analyze precedents and European case law and then conclude by indicating their opinion and proposition for the appropriate action. This is where we find verbs indicating cognitive processes, affect, and sensory evidence (with epistemic reading), in the first person singular, and also expressions including speech-act verbs or verbs of reporting. The prototypical modal in these parts of the text is would. Elsewhere in the Opinion the writer is implicitly present, in interesting ways, while the institutional authority evoked by the genre is predominantly explicit in the sections summarizing the legal and factual background, indicating the given legislative and factual context, describing the existing written observations of the parties, and analyzing the precedents and European case law. In the conclusion this dimension of authority turns implicit. In contrast to the functions of hedges in everyday discourse, the illocutionary force carried by expressions such as I think in this judicial genre is very different. In these texts, they serve to establish the writer’s expertise, institutional power, and thorough work with the particular case. Differences such as these emphasize the importance of the interplay between genre and the persuasive strategies generally adopted in texts constructing that genre. The most pressing implications of Salmi-Tolonen’s study are to be found in the areas of translator training, environments for professional translators, and the development of legal informatics. Chapter 4, by Helena Halmari, looks at one of the most prototypical persuasive discourses, the language of politics. Halmari acknowledges that there are many different kinds of political speeches, and the persuasive strategies to be found in the numerous subgenres of political speeches will vary depending


on the goals of the speaker, the audience, and the topic. The focus of Chapter 4 is on the subgenre of the State of the Union addresses by two American presidents, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton – two publicly acknowledged effective persuaders. To illustrate the importance of subgenres within the more general genre of political speeches, Halmari departs with a discussion of the language of the presidents during their question-and-answer sessions with the representatives of the press. In this subgenre of political rhetoric, it is the media who decide the topics. This often leads to situations where the presidents need to discuss issues that they would not necessarily have voluntarily chosen to discuss. A case in point for Reagan was the Iran-Contra controversy; for Clinton, his sexual scandals. The fact that the presidents are obliged to address topics they would rather not have raised leads to the employment of various evasive strategies, which Halmari illustrates with a number of examples from both presidents’ question-and-answer sessions with the press. Similar ways of associative engineering – evasion, belittling, distancing – are used by both presidents, despite their varying public relations problems. In stark contrast to the evasive strategies triggered by adversarial encounters with the press, the topics chosen for State of the Union addresses allow presidents to select more apparently candid strategies. In the bulk of her discussion, Halmari points out that the strategies used by Reagan and Clinton in their State of the Union addresses were essentially the same, reflecting the structure and conventions of this subgenre, State of the Union addresses, and also the ancient conventions of political persuasion in general. A quantitative analysis of the presidents’ language reveals that their lexicons, to a large extent, are shared; they use the same words as part of their favored vocabulary, as well as similar lexical collocations. A qualitative analysis shows a strong tendency by both presidents to use traditional persuasive strategies. Rhetorical questions are used to engage the audience, reference to political and philosophical authorities is used to appeal to ethos, and logical presentation of the arguments, as well as backing up these arguments with numerical data, is used to appeal to logos. Alliteration and other poetic devices appeal to ethos and pathos. Vocatives, used by both presidents to directly address the listeners, are additional audience-engaging strategies, together with the use of humor. While the topics of the two State of the Union addresses naturally vary, the great number of shared words, similar collocations, and the same discourseorganizational patterns indicate, on the one hand, that State of the Union addresses form a clearly defined subgenre of political speeches, where the form

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and even to an extent the content of the speech is fairly rigid. On the other hand, the fact that Reagan and Clinton share persuasive strategies can also be an indication of not only the constrained subgenre but also of the fact that good persuaders resort to certain lexico-grammatical and discourse-organizational strategies that work. While the overt goal of the speeches was to give an address about the state of the Union, the covert goal of both these speeches was to appeal strongly to the pathos, logos, and ethos of the audience. Halmari concludes that part of the rhetorical success of these two presidents lies in their skillful use of these ways of appeal – their successful persuasive strategies. However, the delivery of a political speech is a crucial part of its persuasive impact (delivery being a central component of classical rhetoric), and no matter how closely the State of the Union address “formula” is followed, the success is ultimately dependent on the performance and personal characteristics projected by the speaker. Chapter 5 focuses on print advertisements of small size. Paul Bruthiaux discusses the subgenres of classified advertisements and advertising catalogues. He is interested in explaining why, despite the heavy spatial limitations, some advertisements choose to use a more elaborated language while others are contented with a naked style, consisting mostly of content words and abbreviations. Bruthiaux finds the elaboration versus non-elaboration to be associated with the continuum of glamor versus utilitarianism, elaborated texts being related with the former. Marketing a utilitarian product such as tomatoes constitutes a different persuasive process from marketing products associated with images of glamor – or indeed, from marketing yourself as a potential mate. What is fascinating here is the fact that glamorous products are marketed using implicit persuasion in a way the utilitarian tend not to be – here the biggest sales argument to be made explicit is the price. The most obvious marker of implicit persuasion in the glamorous ads is linguistic elaboration, despite the spatial constraints. Thus, the degree of linguistic sophistication in these texts correlates less with the content being advertised than with the location of the content along a glamor-utilitarianism continuum. Bruthiaux argues that the need for writers to manipulate representations of status overrides the competing need to present content explicitly. The result is hence often a largely artificial sense of exclusiveness among status-conscious readers of the advertisements in the glamor-end of the continuum. Chapter 6, by Tuija Virtanen, deals with the ways in which the discourse of polls and surveys is recontextualized in newspaper editorials. Editorials constitute a persuasive genre par excellence, and they are an important link in the interdiscursive chain through which poll discourse is constructed and medi-


ated across the public sphere. Combining methods from corpus studies and discourse analysis, the chapter sets out to investigate references to polls and surveys in the data, with the aim of determining whether, to what extent, and how such references are used for persuasive purposes in those contexts. What emerges from the corpus study is a “poll sentence” manifesting a pattern of vagueness and assertiveness, which reflects the syntax of the poll discourse mediated in the text. Extending the analysis to cover textual functions in entire texts reveals the importance of linearization in the poll sentence. Furthermore, findings show that poll sentences are primarily used in the data to support the main claim made in the text, and they are usually placed right after the sentence voicing that claim. The chapter argues that information generated through polls and surveys is proposed as an institutionalized basis for conclusions drawn or implied in the editorial data. The intertextuality and interdiscursivity of the media reinforce the impact of public opinion polls and surveys on that very opinion, which has important implications for the construction of public opinion in society. After the series of studies focusing on concrete linguistic features and actual arrangements of content in texts realizing given genres, we also need a model to come to grips with persuasion. This is what is provided in Chapter 7 by Jan-Ola Östman. This model is entitled “Persuasion as Implicit Anchoring.” It is based on the idea of persuasion as implicitness, and it consists of three parameters: Coherence, Politeness, and Involvement. Coherence refers not only to what we traditionally understand by the concept but also more widely to the kinds of mappings that go on between a text and the socio-cultural context in which it emerges and which it helps construct. Politeness is in a sense a more limited notion, referring to the situational context of a text. Involvement has to do with affect and the interlocutors’ expressions of emotions. These pragmatic parameters form an analytic “toolkit” applicable for the systematic study of implicit communication. Östman illustrates the use of his model by examining three notions with negative or even taboo associations and their collocations in newspaper language: propaganda, manipulation, and persuasion. Based on their collocations, these words seem to fall on a continuum, propaganda being the most negative and persuasion being the least negative. The collocates of propaganda are quite explicit (e.g., Nazi/communist/war propaganda) and underscore its strong negative connotations. For persuasive purposes this word is fairly explicit. According to Östman, only implicit persuasion can be successful. While the linguistic manifestation of explicit persuasion (such as imperatives) are easy to detect, markers of implicit persuasion are, by definition, less transparent. Öst-

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man claims that certain linguistic elements are “specifically geared towards the task of implicit anchoring – so much so that they do not have any propositional content” and can, therefore, not be used for the function of “explicit anchoring.” Implicit collocations (like the collocations of the words manipulate and persuade) form one way of implicit anchoring. Implicit anchoring can be a form of implicit persuasion; therefore, all the forms of implicit anchoring, implicit collocations included, are worthy foci of pragmatic investigations. Corpus studies of collocations may reveal the implicit persuasive goals of texts. Östman’s study strongly promotes the use of corpus linguistics, not as a means per se, but as a tool for pragmatic analyses. Taking a bird’s eye view on persuasion, Vijay Bhatia (Chapter 8) presents a model of the colonization of academic, professional, and institutionalized genres, which highlights the gradual promotionalization of discourse that we are witnessing today. Hence, promotional genres include not only advertisements and related texts that we have traditionally associated with inherently persuasive language. They also include genres such as job applications and grant proposals which have appropriated promotional elements interdiscursively from the prototypically promotional genres. Finally, promotional discourse includes genres which exhibit clear genre-mixing and embedding of promotional elements even though these have not as yet been appropriated (e.g. reports and brochures in business contexts, or prefaces to academic books). This continuum reflects the gradual colonization of a growing number of genres by promotional discourse. For instance, western job applications today are not what they were a generation ago. Job applicants are in a sense marketing themselves and not simply providing the potential employer with information about their qualifications. What is interesting in this model is also the extent to which it accounts for persuasion. The more appropriated the genre, the more subtle and implicit the persuasion. In genres which manifest explicit mixing or embedding of moves from prototypically promotional genres, the persuasive traces may still be conspicuous. In Chapter 9 we will discuss the extent to which the prototypical promotional genres have turned to implicit persuasion for best effect at the outset of the new millenium, and we will also propose a model for persuasion, which is based on the idea of persuasion as a dialogue between the persuader and the audience. We suggest that persuasion involves a carefully kept balance. Along the lines of Östman, we emphasize that persuasion needs to be kept implicit enough to have the desired effect; on the other hand, the vehicle for this persuasive message, the given genre, needs to be recognizable enough as a representative of that genre. Part of the implicitness of persuasion will often


lead to the blurring of genre boundaries. Two genres may, for instance, start to merge, in order to keep the persuasive message implicit enough to succeed in convincing the audience. To sum up, what we are to witness on the pages that follow is the multifaceted nature of persuasion. We will be observing variation in persuasive styles and strategies that can be considered genre-specific, and we will be observing variation that cuts across genres. More particularly, we will be focusing on the demands of a number of inherently persuasive genres on the form that the texts realizing them exhibit, and the way these genres are affected by the current discourse practices. As the individual chapters of this book focus on particular lexico-grammatical patterns conspicuous in the data, they also add to our knowledge of the similarities and differences in the persuasive styles of people whose positions require and/or allow a great deal of public persuasion. What emerges from the chapters is, on the one hand, an understanding of the sensitivity of the linguistic form to the genre in question; on the other hand, what also emerges is the – in many ways surprising – similarity in the linguistic realization that persuasion may take across a range of very different genres. As long as the goal of the language user is to influence, change, and manipulate, persuasion will find its discourse-pragmatic and lexico-grammatical realizations, no matter what genre is used as the outlet.

References Aristotle ([1984]). “Rhetoric”. Trans. by W. R. Roberts. In The Rhetoric and the Poetics of Aristotle (pp. 1–218). New York: The Modern Library. de Beaugrande, Robert (1997). New Foundations for a Science of Text and Discourse: Cognition, Communication, and the Freedom of Access to Knowledge and Society. [Advances in Discourse Processes, Vol. LXI.] Norwood, NJ: Ablex. de Beaugrande, Robert & Dressler, Wolfgang (1981). Introduction to Text Linguistics. London and New York: Longman. Bhatia, Vijay K. (1993). Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings. London and New York: Longman. Briggs, Charles L. & Bauman, Richard (1992). “Genre, intertextuality, and social power”. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 2 (2), 131–172. Casselman, Barry (2002). “Minnesota’s political vagaries”. The Washington Times. 4 November, 2002, 1–3. Online. Internet. http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/2002110490464475.htm (12 November, 2002). Connor, Ulla & Mauranen, Anna (1999). “Linguistic analysis of grant proposals: European Union research grants”. English for Specific Purposes, 18 (1), 47–62. Fairclough, Norman (1992). Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press. Fowler, Alastair (1982). Kinds of Literature: An introduction to the theory of genres and modes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Hymes, Dell H. (1975). “Breakthrough into performance”. In D. Ben-Amos & K. S. Goldstein (Eds.), Folklore: Performance and Communication (pp. 11–74). The Hague: Mouton. Johannesen, Richard L. (1971). “The emerging concept of communication as dialogue”. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 57, 373–382. Jucker, Andreas H. (1997). “Persuasion by inference: Analysis of a party political broadcast”. In J. Blommaert & C. Bulcaen Political Linguistics (pp. 121–137). [Belgian Journal of Linguistics 11.] Kinneavy, James L. (1971). A Theory of Discourse: The Aims of Discourse. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Kristof, Nicholas D. (2002). “It sounds just like Limbaugh, but from left”. 13 November, 2002, 1–3. Online. http://www.startribune.com/stories/562/3411776.html (13 November, 2002). Lakoff, Robin Tolmach (2000). The Language War. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. Lunsford, Andrea A. & Ede, Lisa S. (1984). “On distinctions between classical and modern rhetoric”. In R. J. Connors, L. S. Ede, & A. A. Lunsford (Eds.), Essays on Classical Rhetoric and Modern Discourse (pp. 37–49). Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. Miller, Gerald R. (1980). “On being persuaded: Some basic distinctions”. In M. E. Roloff & G. R. Miller (Eds.), Persuasion: New Directions in Theory and Research (pp. 11–28). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Mulholland, Joan (1994). Handbook of Persuasive Tactics: A Practical Language Guide. London and New York: Routledge. NewsMax Wires (2002). “Minnesota senate race too close to call”. 3 November, 2002, 1–3. Online. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/11/3/104642.shtml (13 November, 2002). Perelman, Chaïm (1982). The Realm of Rhetoric. Trans. by W. Kluback. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Saville-Troike, Muriel (1982). The Ethnography of Communication: An Introduction. [Language in Society 3.] Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Scollon, Ron (1998). Mediated Discourse as Social Interaction: A Study of News Discourse. London and New York: Longman. Scott, Robert L. (1976). “Dialogue and rhetoric”. In J. Blankenship & H. G. Stelzner (Eds.), Rhetoric and Communication: Studies in the University of Illinois Tradition (pp. 99–109). Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Steward, John (1978). “Foundations of dialogic communication”. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 64, 183–201. Swales, John M. (1990). Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Swales, John M. (1996). “Occluded genres in the academy: The case of the submission letter”. In E. Ventola & A. Mauranen (Eds.), Academic Writing: Intercultural and Textual Issues (pp. 45–58). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Todorov, Tzvetan (1976). “The origin of genres”. New Literary History, 8, 159–170. Virtanen, Tuija (1992). “Issues of text typology: Narrative – a ‘basic’ type of text?” Text, 12 (2), 293–310.

P 2

Focusing on private and semipublic discourse

Chapter 2

Persuasion in business negotiations Anne Marie Bülow-Møller

Contrary to many people’s belief, in business negotiations persuasion is sometimes an indicator of deadlock. It would be natural to assume that the best negotiators were also the people best able to persuade the opponent; however, there is something special about the genre of face-to-face business negotiation that sets it apart from mere persuasive talk: it has two parties, each trying to persuade the other. Thus in negotiations, persuasion is interactive. Most companies find that their highly trusted negotiators are not necessarily smooth talkers; they are, however, invariably accomplished listeners. To understand why the presence of persuasion can count as a danger signal for the negotiation, consider this experimental study by Roloff, Tutzauer, and Dailey (1989): The more bargaining dyads engaged in persuasive argumentation, the more likely they deadlocked. In fact, persuasive argumentation was the strongest predictor of deadlocking of any communication variable measured in this study. Second, the degree of persuasive argumentation was negatively related to attaining integrative outcomes. Importantly, this relationship dissipated when controlling for deadlocks. Thus, increasing levels of persuasive argumentation were positively associated with deadlocking which in turn resulted in less integrative agreements. Among dyads not deadlocking, there was no relationship between persuasive argumentation and reaching an integrative agreement [. . .]. (1989: 117)

If it is true that persuasion is negatively related to integrative outcomes (i.e. situations where both parties are satisfied), then these results merit some attention from discourse analysts. It will be argued below that in this prototype situation where the interlocutors expect each other to try to gain an advantage over an unwary partner, the normal rules of “efficient rhetoric” do not apply, precisely because such ploys are expected (cf. Östman this volume; also Chapter 9). The normal rules of conversation, however, do apply, or all communication

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would break down. It is through the use of interaction that persuasion works, if it works. To illustrate this intricate double-take interaction process, I shall look first at the nature of persuasion in negotiations (Section 1) and then at two extracts of negotiation discourse (Section 2). I shall argue that the discourse component in persuasion in business negotiation serves two separate but related goals: –

–

One goal relates to the creation of common ground, as a process of accumulating shared territory, and as invitations to share models or visions of possible common solutions. The other goal relates to the creation of a negotiator persona, where the pursuit of alignment as well as disalignment can be seen as the attempt to shape a particular mask (“per-sona” means a theatrical mask with a mouth for the sound to come through). This persona is pieced together of linguistic signals denoting power, commitment, fairness, and social attractiveness.

It will be shown that particular discourse moves, which work through the normal interactional structures of language, are used by participants either to persuade or to resist persuasion, according to the circumstances.

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What is persuasion and why are they saying such terrible things about it?

To discuss why Roloff and his colleagues found that persuasive argumentation signals deadlock, three points need attention: First, there is the definition of “persuasive argument” – what counts as persuasion? Secondly, the tactical element, the context and positioning of the persuasive elements, may have something to do with the result – where are they to be found? Thirdly, the process of persuasion in negotiation is distinctive because it is interactive and hence different from the rhetoric of monologue; how is it accomplished? . What counts as persuasion? In speech act terms, persuasion is a perlocutionary end result, a process that has already taken place and is attested by the fact that the target has taken the desired action or admitted to a change of attitude. Attempts at persuasion are not the same thing, but for most discourse it is the on-line process that is our analysis material. Any speaker-based definition of a perlocutionary concept begs the question of effectiveness: even if phrases with obvious rhetorical

Persuasion in business negotiations

intent can be isolated, they may be counterproductive. Thus professional negotiators are completely unlikely to be attracted by stereotypical market sales-talk; smug self-evaluations like “This is a very fair offer” are on the list of “irritators” isolated by Rackham and Carlisle (1978) and “high-risk elements” (Hiltrop & Udall 1995). If negotiators suspect they are being persuaded, they will concentrate on thinking up counter-arguments (Lewicki et al. 2003). Nevertheless, since such utterances are made in the hope of presenting an offer in a good light, we shall have to treat them as persuasive. The term persuasion is broadly used about utterances that seek to elicit compliance (for recent overviews, see Hargie & Dickson 2004; Wilson 2002). In dealing with negotiations a restriction is helpful: persuasion is found in utterances where it can be reasonably assumed that one partner (let us call her A) seeks to show the other side (let us call him B) his interest in a suggestion that will ultimately (also) benefit A. In some cases, the interest is easy to see; thus B will presumably recognize an offer that builds on a need that he has and proceeds by rational argument, e.g. “So you want to own your own home? You’ll save up for the down payment more quickly with a high-interest account. We can give you a better interest if you move all your accounts to us.” However, because of the personal relationship involved, A may also have to persuade B, through various affective inducements, to take her perspective (e.g. “I know the warranty has lapsed, but I’d be grateful if you could help me out, since we have done business together for so long”). In this case, the “offer” is that of status, since B is being asked to take on the role of a generous high-status partner. Negotiation is characterized by the need to accommodate both sides, in order to attain a result that is preferable to both starting positions; if either party had the power to dictate, it would no longer be a negotiation. It is therefore perfectly arguable that all negotiation discourse is persuasive in the broad sense: “The task of a bargaining party is to convince its opponent that it controls resources, that the opponent needs the resources, and that it is willing to use power” (Bacharach & Lawler 1981: 51). It is this broad sense that is used when the negotiation literature discusses leverage: Persuasive power factors include a reputation for implementing threats, the authority to take decisions, and options, i.e. that the negotiator has viable alternatives to agreement. Such factors are apparently independent of the communicative process; but on the other hand, power must be perceived to be effective: it needs to be expressed. The analysis of persuasion proper takes place at the level of expression, with a distinction between “a helpful offer” and “a helpful presentation of an offer.”

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Further, the analysis must cater for several levels of persuasive intent. A useful distinction is drawn in Wilson and Putnam (1990), based on negotiators’ goals: Bargainers’ interaction goals are organized within a scheme that varies in two respects: type (instrumental, relational, and identity) and level of abstraction (global, regional, local). (1990: 374)

Juggling these goals means that a negotiator may try to be “globally” persuasive (to get a better deal) by being “locally” thoroughly unhelpful (e.g. by blocking options and presenting a powerful front). The most important variable is that of frame (Bazerman & Neale 1992; Putnam & Holmer 1992; Thompson 2005). It is psychologically important how a particular option is conceived of, typically either in terms of loss or gain. For example, in a salary negotiation each of the following steps may represent the changing perspective from gain to loss or vice versa: – – – –

Your current salary ($30,000) Your potential employer’s initial offer ($35,000) (gain) The least amount you are willing to accept ($38,000) (loss) Your estimate of the most the company is willing to offer ($40,000) (gain) (quoted from Lewicki et al. 2003: 156).

Just as the frame changes for the person negotiating his or her salary, so frames may differ between opponents according to their viewpoints. Thus a party may conceive of a particular option in terms of loss (too expensive), but persuasive representation may shift the frame so that the option can be seen as a potential gain (e.g., a joint success). Reframing is a dynamic process that can be managed in the course of a conversation; the linguistic means will be discussed below. The distinction of “relational” and “identity” goals actually reflects a sophistication of the traditional advice to “separate the people from the problem.” Thus the immensely influential work of Fisher and Ury claimed that for all kinds of long-term clients or partners the “ongoing relationship is far more important than the outcome of any particular negotiation” ([1983]/1981: 20). To keep relations friendly, the negotiator needs to be seen to be not only friendly but also fair and reliable. But while relational goals may be important, the same negotiator’s identity goals may be in direct competition: nobody works for a poor relationship, but the need to create a powerful negotiation persona may override the wish to be likable. Thus, some effective negotiators are consistently dominant and aggressive, while many more are aggressive in some phases of the process.


In discourse terms, the area has frequently been dealt with in terms of face, developed from Goffman’s original notion by, i.a., Brown and Levinson ([1987]/1978), Ting-Toomey (1988), Lim and Bowers (1991), and Wilson (1992). Since “face” is created by the dignity and/or admiration that the speaker is treated with, it is not something one can claim unilaterally; “face” represents a tacit contract of rights and obligations, and must therefore be recognized or granted by the interlocutor. However, the concentration in discourse studies on face-threatening acts has led to a neglect of the original notion, where “face” was something the speaker worked hard to shape and uphold (Cheng 2001). For negotiation discourse, the most important distinction is between the speaker’s competence face, which the hearer recognizes by a show of respect, and solidarity face, which is recognized by the hearer’s display of trust and liking. This is the framework that will be used in the following, and well-worn notions of politeness will therefore have to be re-defined as self-serving attempts to build up one’s own face. Thus a tentative request is not to be treated merely as concern for the hearer’s face (“you are a person who should be treated with deference”), but rather as concern for the speaker’s own solidarity face (“I am a polite and attractive person”). Speakers typically defend their competence face with the use of exact figures, precise terms, logical reasoning, and committed formulations; this correlates with social psychological research into impression formation, where speakers are generally rated as more intelligent, confident and competent if they speak fluently and with high diversity or precision (Gibbons et al. 1992; Ng & Bradac 1993; for overview, see Burgoon et al. 2002). Complementarily, speakers defend their solidarity face with deference, tentativeness and responsiveness to pleasantries; in negotiation discourse, they typically give frequent nods and seek alignment before qualifying (“Yes, I see your point, but could one also. . .”); they hedge demands, shaping them as requests for information, and give justifying accounts when asking delicate questions. Trustworthiness is built by speakers who evidently listen, the cheapest courtesy of all (Pruitt & Smith 1981; Unt 1999). It should be noted at once that these features are mostly at work in negotiations with one or two people on either side; larger groups behave in all respects more like sides, i.e. further from conversational norms (cf. Stephenson 1981; and, for power-image formality, Diez 1986). Both kinds of face-work, then, feed directly into the opponent’s impression formation; successful negotiators can not only find material solutions, they can also persuade the other side that they are competent and/or considerate and hence trustworthy partners. With such diverse possibilities for serving both

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instrumental, relational and identity goals, it is no longer possible to count instances of persuasion in the manner of the study by Roloff et al. which was quoted above (see also Östman this volume). This is not a real disadvantage, however, as statistics that do not take the context into consideration are always suspect for discourse purposes. . Where are the persuasive elements to be found? Persuasion is found in the face of opposition; as a sort of preparatory speech act condition, the speaker can be said to persuade only with regard to something that the hearer was not going to do anyway. In this light, the result from Roloff et al. (that persuasion was an indication of deadlock) is not too surprising, if it is considered that extensive persuasive argumentation may be symptomatic of a negotiator with a bad case: the party will argue harder if the other side is not particularly interested. In the described experiment the conditions were fixed in a way that made the parties interdependent, so that both had an incentive to generate a range of inventive alternative options and to explore each other’s positions to secure a pay-off; this is what the successful dyads did instead of arguing for their chosen model. Protracted attempts at persuasion thus reflect failure to think along with the opponent. It links up with the factor known as Perspective Taking Ability (Neale & Bazerman 1983): negotiators who can take the other’s perspective tend to obtain integrative results. The recognition of the other party’s needs is also the single most quoted success factor in textbooks for sales personnel (Aubuchon 1997; Storey 1997). Even when it is sought, however, the shared perspective is something that is only gradually established. The nature of the negotiation process tends to concentrate the persuasive elements according to a characteristic phase structure. Studies subdivide the phases differently according to the type of negotiations they use as reference material (for overview, see Chatman, Putnam, & Sondak 1991), but for business talks the general pattern is a sequence of – – – – – – –

chat staking claim seeking information bidding bargaining ratification or deadlock round-off.


These phases may overlap as new material is brought into play, but the rhetorical posturing is typically found at the beginning, where the parties behave most as sides defending a position, whereas at the end, after a search for options, more of a problem-solution atmosphere is prevalent (Morley & Stephenson 1977; Gulliver 1979; Pruitt 1981; Bednar & Curington 1983). If no agreement is reached, phases may recur. Another illuminative way to view the phase structure is through the sequence of arguments. Putnam, Wilson, and Turner (1990) studied a grievance negotiation (i.e. one where the initiating side wants to rectify what they see as an injustice, typically through asking for a pay-raise, while the other party wants to keep to the status quo). The sequence showed that the initiator had to make a case for a “harm” being done (e.g. unfair treatment) and argue for the feasibility of their suggestions (e.g. willingness to have more time off in lieu of extra payment), while the opponent protested the untoward consequences that such suggestions would have (e.g. cuts that would have to be made elsewhere to meet the demand). Eventually in the Putnam et al. case both argument types were heard in the opposite camp, as both sides had to persuade themselves that they had been right to make concessions to the other party. Thus the study shows that the same evaluative argument can be used both for defence and attack, and also for persuasion of both parties: the context and sequence are crucial. Similarly, it has been shown (Morley & Stephenson 1977; Gulliver 1979; Bazerman & Neale 1992) that an offer or argument that is put forward too early in the sequence may sink without a trace, because the dynamics of the negotiation process will program negotiators to listen for overstated claims and dismissible arguments in the earlier phases. Thus a perfectly good offer that comes too early may be heard as a first bid, meant to be modified; if this is not the case, the offer will be retracted. With persuasion, ripeness is all. . How is persuasion achieved? Settlements are founded on an exchange of information; it allows each side to judge if they can offer something that the other side values enough for them to accept a mutually beneficial trade-off. The presentation of claims, offers, and bids may therefore be crucial, as it contains information about the importance that the parties attach to each element. Textbooks about negotiation are often aware of the linguistic element at the speech act level, i.e. advice about generally helpful ways of speaking rather than specifically about persuasion. This includes advice about the question type; in sales talk, the slogan is “Don’t ask if, ask which” (Larson 1995), the idea being

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that “Do you prefer the red one or the green one?” is more likely to close a sale than “Do you like these?” However, in negotiations the general advice is to ask open questions (“What options can we think of for this issue?” rather than “Which of my options do you prefer?”), because this extracts more information (Reardon 1991). There is also awareness of the value of paraphrasing (“Let me see if I understood you properly: You said you want. . .”); summarizing (“OK, so what we have so far. . .”); or signalling through implication (“We cannot accept Section 52 in its present form,”) (e.g. Kennedy 1998). Some influential authors pay attention to the interactive element; for example, when in 1969 Fisher coined the term ‘a yesable proposition’ he included advice to make the offer attractive, and legitimate, and credible. To be attractive, the proposition must be seen to meet some important need or goal. Fisher’s advice is to let the opponent (or to Fisher, the partner) draft as much as possible, to avoid any sense of dictation, i.e. to protect the partner’s face and leave the choice of frame open. There is evidence that if an outcome can be framed as a gain, the other side will show more risk-aversity, they will tend to prefer cooperation and better joint profits, and forgo a chance of higher potential individual profit (Neale & Bazerman 1983; Carroll & Payne 1991; Putnam & Holmer 1992; for overview, see Levin et al. 1998). Hence it is no wonder that general textbook advice is to use words that reflect the other’s perspective: for example, to prefer the euphemistic “initial investment” to the more direct “down payment” (Mulholland 1991). Legitimacy is achieved by appeals to common ground. Arguments in this category build on some shared norm of fairness like equity, equality, or precedent (e.g. same pay-raise for all groups in a given category, or same benefit distribution as last year), or they build on a culturally valued concept that is very difficult to object to (e.g. peace, health, or safety.) When such a norm functions as a principle for decisions, it is very widely found that it legitimizes the outcome for both parties (Walton & McKersie 1965; Bacharach & Lawler 1981; Pruitt 1981; Fisher & Ury [1983]/1981; Lax & Sebenius 1986; Putnam & Holmer 1992; Lewicki et al. 2003). The observation is strikingly similar to Toulmin’s concept of warrant, the natural law, logical deduction or Aristotelian topos that is used to validate a claim in argumentation theory (Toulmin 1958). The problem, of course, is that two mutually exclusive topoi may both be sanctioned in a given culture, like the desire for “less pollution” and “more prosperity.” If a commonly agreed norm underlies an argument, it can be found to be of major importance when the negotiators have to present their results to their constituency, i.e. to the stakeholders whose interests they represent, and who


hold the final decision. In this act of self-persuasion, it is not uncommon to hear negotiators ask for help from the other party (“Give me something I can show the Board”). Lastly, credibility is achieved by detailed plans and visible contingency planning, and its major linguistic expression is competence-face building exactitude and reasoning – in other words, through the conscious creation of a strong negotiator persona. Thus Benson, Kennedy, and McMillan (1987) advise negotiators to avoid weak language like we hope, or we prefer and substitute firm language like we need, we must have, we require; Walton and McKersie (1965) recommend “a degree of finality and specificity” like the 12.5 percent package, and a clear demonstration of consequences. Putnam and Wilson (1989) note that hedges, qualifiers, and vague categories signal flexible commitment. This is a disadvantage, for strong commitment is a psychological reality for speakers: it has been found that negotiators who use high commitment language tend to yield less to their opponents and thus attain higher pay-offs (Bacharach & Lawler 1981). Once the words are spoken, they are part of a shared reality, and going back on one’s words would mean losing face. Making a position public is therefore indirectly persuasive and the reason why some negotiators are willing to talk to the press (Lax & Sebenius 1986). It is noteworthy that Fisher framed the “yesability” as a property of the proposition itself. Other studies have noted that credibility can be earned by setting out consequences, e.g. as threats of a (plausible) strike or promises of concessions in the event of compliance. Marketing people have long used the “AIDA” principle: create Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action; persuasion only works if an easy Action has been planned for the target, like the filling-in of a coupon. Yet another branch notes the tactical effect of letting the target do his or her own persuasion. This is the sequence known as “locking,” i.e. the process by which a series of questions shapes the opponents’ own information so that they themselves draw the necessary (desirable) conclusion. Kennedy (1998) draws on Rackham’s so-called “SPIN” sequence (Rackham 1987) in presenting it thus: – – –

ask about the Situation (“How’s business – is it affected by this take-over offer?”) get target to elaborate on his/her Problems (“If the lease is terminated, will you have to close the shop?” ) ask about Implications, if problems are not solved (“How will you manage without a regular income?”), and

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–

get target to specify Needs and put a value on unsolved problems, or, by implication, the value of letting the actor solve them by a sale, new terms of contract etc.

Persuasion in the obvious sense is totally lacking in this sequence – what has happened is that by asking apparently disinterested questions about the opponent’s perspective and concerns, our party has managed to get behind the façade of strength that would have been in place if the target had thought he or she was negotiating. Facts are here presented in a frame of need and relief that other negotiators have to work hard at; the persuasive value of What you really need is. . . and What I really need is. . . is obviously vastly different. The speaker’s apparent lack of any axe to grind helps to build a persona of competence and trustworthiness. . Conclusion From this general overview it can be concluded that the negotiation literature finds it difficult to recommend rhetorical gambits that seem to be an effective tool for persuasion; there are, however, a large number of considerations that can be taken into account in attempts to gather information, generate options, and making bids. Some of the important items concern the ability to take the other party’s perspective, which facilitates the creation of common ground; from this base suggestions can be framed in an attractive manner. Another important area is the relationship that the communication both presupposes and continuously creates. A more detailed study of negotiators’ discourse is now called for to reveal more about their persuasive strategies, both for the creation of common ground and the creation of a suitable persona.

. Two cases for analysis The contribution of this section will be mainly to supplement the more obvious explicitly persuasive elements by pointing to some subtle mechanisms found in the principles that govern the discourse itself. These elements are not normally noticed by the negotiators, but they do constitute recognizable discourse patterns that negotiators resort to when they attempt to persuade. Although the two cases have different backgrounds, the patterns can be broadly character-


ized as falling into the categories of creating common ground and creating a suitable persona. . Rockley The data in the first case stem from a training session with British middle managers pursuing an MBA, videotaped in the late 1980s in London. The participants are all involved in negotiations as part of their daily work. As the negotiation is simulated on the basis of case material, the speakers’ futures are not actually at stake; however, the talk is still unscripted and representative of the cornered Seller who needs a sale badly. According to the notes that the negotiators worked from, Rockley (the Seller) produces raw glass chips; the market has decreased, and it has been found that the major buyer, Conwell, can be served from only one of Rockley’s two plants. One plant has now been renovated, the other one has been put on stand-by. The glass factory Conwell (the Buyer) makes the chips into jars, bottles etc., and they require a particular quality, which they have got from Rockley for the last five years. Rockley has submitted the annual tender in writing; the team has no idea how well or badly it was received, but since there have been difficulties with quality control last year, Rockley expects to have to defend the normal, substantial, price increase. The Conwell team, for their part, are worried about the effect of the recent take-over of Rockley by the group International Mining. Conwell also has several other offers to consider which might be better than Rockley’s. There are four people present: the Conwell host is Buyer 1, “Burt,” assisted by Buyer 2, “Brenda.” Rockley’s team consists of Seller 1, “Simon,” who is a manager with Rockley’s new owners, International Mining, and Seller 2, “Steve,” who has handled the Conwell account for years. After an ultra-brief chat phase the Sellers try to survey the points that will be the focus of the negotiation, and they ask the Buyers to open. Buyer 1: Well, I mean, obviously, just from reading the local papers, you’ve had a really major new structure, with the closure of one of the facilities and with the loss of a significant number of jobs and I would presume a loss of productive capacity as well, which is obviously a concern of ours Seller 1: Sure, I don’t think that eh- there are certain things going on there – ah I think that I can say that none of them actually affect the negotiation which is going to go on today so eh

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B1: B2: S1: B2: S1:

S2: B1:

S2:

S2:

B1: S2: B1:

Not anything we need to worry about Just out of interest – what is your capacity now that you’ve closed down the plant? ah–I mean you know, we might be thinking of expanding Okay, I mean you have a concern over capacity. From International Mining’s point of view I think one of the things that we bring as a strength I would hope to Rockley, is financial stature, so if there’s a particular level of capacity you’re looking for, I’m sure- notwithstanding particular decisions that have been made – we can we can resolve that problem here [. . .] What other issues ahm do we need to talk about this afternoon Well obviously again, with the relationship that we’ve had over this period of time, you know the kind of support that we’ve also required, particularly on technical back-up and delivery and service and ah reliability – I mean last year was an exception eh in some cases in that respect, the drivers’ strike was obviously not your responsibility, and it was a just a widespread ah problem, but for the first time ever for us to run into quality problems from the production side, which had huge implications for Brenda’s business obviously and for ourselvesOf course. These are issues that we take very seriously indeed and ah I think that we can certainly talk about those and go into some detail [. . .] Let me summarize all that. If we can give you assurances on capacity ahm – capacity to produce through the future, if we can get agreements on the technical back-up, that we should be the supplier to you, and reliability of product, then can I take it that we can form some agreement this afternoon? Definitely Well, are there any other issues that we need to talk about There are obviously other issues. I mean again the common element if you like if we go back to all this, is that something prompted for the first time ever four other major suppliers to approach us for our [?award] this year. The factors that we’ve discussed already are of course of importance to us, the quality, technical back-up, the service that we have had in the past except for the one blip if you like last year – that you have supplied us with for the past five years and – but something has actually driven these four suppliers to actually quote at least, and in fact the (S2: Right) other four suppliers have actually all quoted significantly less than than your quotation. I mean, it will come as no surprise to you, I’m sure, that


S1:

B1: S1: S2: B1:

S1: B1:

the figure that you quoted, which was something like thirty thirty percent higher than last year’s figure, was a bit of a shock erh to us. We had been expecting something in the range of about thirteen pence per kilogram, thirteen point two really on the upside, and then to suddenly get ah as I say this thirty odd percent increase in price did come as a surprise to us, and obviously when we get the other quotations for the first time ever, at prices which are considerably below that and in fact, Simon, to put you in the picture, one particular company quoting a price lower than yours but with the same quality control standards that we are used to, and some technical support so that that they’re obviously – that’s another major issue that we would obviously want to get resolved – but if all that can be resolved at this meeting, then sure, we can we can – we have the the willing and the power to to make the agreement for the whole year I’d like to make a general comment on price. -ahm – I think we’re in a quality business. We’re also in a long-term business. We’ve supplied you for five years and I think we ought to carry on supplying you at the right price, the right quality, and I know, Steve, what your feeling is, I know ehm mine is quite strongly that we have to look at the issues that make you comfortable over all. Here’s a package – yes – and you may find you’d be able to go and buy this year something cheaper somewhere else. What about next year. -ahm I think we have a certain degree of stability to offer and I think that stability is actually reinforced by ahm International Mining taking over Rockley. I don’t think that it’s something that’s been weakened, I think I hope, you know, that concern, if you like, that in- (B2: Well tell us sort of a bit more about that) -some way Rockley has perhaps been weakened by the take-over, with concerns over capacity and so on, I really think we cannot emphasize too strongly that is just a concern that should not be there I think the thing is that you understand what our main concerns are Yes. [. . .] Is it so that you you are happy or not I’m still well I’m still not really sure about the I mean you’re all talking about looking looking to continue the relationship in the long term but I’m not really quite sure how ahm you can I mean – you’ve cut your capacity by half as far as we know so again I I just want to know what is coming up in the longer term, that is, are you going to compensate for that Are you – right – are you looking looking for a long-term relationship Well we have had a long-term relationship and it’s ( )-

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S1:

B1:

S1:

We’ve had a number of one-year deals. I mean there are two types of to me of long-term relationship. There’s one that says we have a number of one-year deals, right, and we happen to have done it for five years. I mean, are you actually saying that you’re looking for a much longer term relationship as written down I think I think to pick up one of your points Simon, we we we would have been happier or even happy to talk about contracts for protracted service longer (S1: Yes) than a year, but last year was an exceptional year for both the companies in the sense of us having for the first time in in its five-year delivery history problems with both quality and with delivery service. . .what we don’t want obviously, is to see that maybe in two or three years when our capacity expands again to say twelve hundred in two years’ time, that you say sorry, we can’t provide you with the extra two hundred, our ceiling is a thousand kilograms Okay, do you see, Burt, in there a kind of quid pro quo? I mean if we shut capacity that’s because we say well, look, have we got an order for tomorrow to fill in that plant (B1: Sure) yes – or the day after. I mean, the stronger you can say to us ‘we believe this is the sort of number we are going to want at some point in the future,’ the more evenly paced can be our own investment decisions and capacity planning, which will then reflect through to you in terms of the overall package you get, in terms of price, quality and the rest of it – yes?

The extract is from the explorative phase. With Rockley’s bid already received in writing the Conwell buyers can be expected to object to the price and leave Rockley with the job of persuasion. It transpired from the interview afterwards that Conwell’s two negotiators, Burt and Brenda, were afraid that dealing with Rockley would leave them stranded with too little raw glass. They suspected that a cartel was under formation, and that the new owner was closing down Rockley piecemeal in order to feed its business to a competitor who was already part of their group (hence the similar quality control in one of their tenders). Ironically, International Mining was trying to avoid just that, having put one of Rockley’s plants on stand-by and invested in another. However, Rockley needed to earn its keep in the group, and the company was going to be closed down if this major order did not produce a reasonable profit margin. Rockwell’s annual tender reflected both raw material price increase, the investment that would secure quality and dependability, and the profit margin. Rockley’s two representatives, Simon and Steve, were therefore completely baffled by the repeated return of the question of ca-


pacity, which eventually ended up as a block to an agreement. The negotiators’ language reflects this effort to contain damage. .. Efforts to create common ground It is often assumed that areas of common ground are somehow already there, just waiting to be discovered by the negotiators. However, discourse studies show that a significant amount of the work is linguistic, notably with respect to framing. Semantically speaking, framing is the exercise of shifting one’s own preferred term into common-ground territory while intensifying one’s own strong points and downplaying the weaker ones. Framing moves come in several varieties, five of which are isolated in the following. The take-over of Rockley and its effects are described by Conwell, mostly by Burt, in terms of closure, loss of jobs, loss of capacity. This gives rise to concern and worry. Later when the talk is of quality control and supply it is a problem and a difficulty, and Burt describes the price quoted as a bit of a shock and quite a surprise. Conwell’s model of the situation is clearly one of past failure and impending collapse or atrophy. Simon therefore has two discourse jobs: to deny the basis for the failure model, and to substitute it with a success model. The linguistic means are negation of the “wrong” description, plus recategorization and reframing.

(1) Negation Simon: I think that I can say that none of [these things, i.e. closure, loss of jobs] actually affect the negotiation, Simon: I really think we cannot emphasize too strongly that is a concern [about capacity] that should not be there.

Negation is a reaction against a misconception. The loss, closure, and capacity reduction refer to events in Rockley’s territory; Simon can therefore dismiss the descriptions authoritatively (the loss is temporary, just until more demand requires them to re-open the plant). His judgement is a so-called “A-event,” i.e. known to A only, subjective and not open to query, on a par with “I have a headache” (Labov & Fanshel 1977). Conwell’s worry and concern, however, are Conwell’s subjective territory (and hence from A’s point of view a “B-event”: a statement like “You, B, have a headache” will never be authoritative). Dismissing a B-event can only be done by assurance, i.e. by repeating that there is plenty of capacity for Conwell’s demand. Dealing with B-events is easier if there is a thing or entity to deny; Simon therefore chooses the impersonal nominalization construction, a concern

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that should not be there, rather than the verb “you should not be concerned.” The reduction of the verbal process in nominalizations sanitizes emotionally charged contents, as shown by work in Critical Linguistics (cf. Fowler et al. 1979; Fairclough 1995), and packs more information into a clause, thereby toning down the verb content (Bülow-Møller 1996). A “concern” is (more like) a thing, but “you are concerned” is a feeling.

(2) Recategorization Simon: Are you looking for a long term relationship? Burt: Well we’ve HAD a long-term relationship and it’sSimon: We’ve had a number of one-year deals [. . .] there are two types of longterm relationships

This operation is noteworthy because it sabotages an appeal to common ground territory. It is customary for parties to tell shared stories or mention shared past history in pursuit of solidarity-face goals. However, Simon here introduces the positively loaded term long-term relationship and immediately blocks off the other side’s cosy definition. He recategorizes the term to cover only the future; his local goal, to get the others to accept a new, stricter definition of the term, reflects his global goal of securing commitment. Since the two companies’ five-year history is very much part of the background knowledge, Burt has already accepted the term (We’ve HAD a longterm relationship). Simon’s shift therefore has surprise value and rhetorical effect. Persuasion scholars find that the wish to appear consistent is one of the strongest factors when targets are influenced, just as “original commitment” is a force to be reckoned with in sales, where customers who come for a cheap offer and find it sold out proceed to look at a more expensive item (Rhoads & Cialdini 2002). The same principle works for discourse: if a speaker has already claimed a positive term and is corrected, he can be expected to want to re-appropriate the term on the new conditions, thus extending the common ground. This should make Burt accept the new definition; Simon is thus drawing on discourse principles for his persuasive effect.

(3) Reframing Simon: I’d like to make a general comment on price ahm – I think we’re in a quality business. We’re also in a long-term business. We’ve supplied you for five years and I think we ought to carry on supplying you at the right price, the right quality, and I know, Steve, what your feeling is, I know ehm mine is quite strongly that we have to look at the issues that make you


comfortable over all. Here’s a package – yes – and you may find you’d be able to go and buy this year something cheaper somewhere else. What about next year. -ahm I think we have a certain degree of stability to offer and I think that stability is actually reinforced by ahm International Mining taking over Rockley.

When Simon announces that his protracted turn will be about price, he is less than accurate. It requires an inferential leap to link price with quality business and long-term business. By assuming obvious relevance, he has in fact asked the hearers to share his leap and establish the relation that high quality and long-term stability outweigh the surface issue of price. In reframing moves, the speaker addresses the hearer’s underlying situation model, in this case something like “Rockley is too expensive compared with the alternative tenders.” The speaker seeks to substitute a model that must be seen to contain a gain, here “right price plus right quality plus stability is a good option compared with newcomers.” Simon supplements his situation model with a counter-model, picking up on the Conwell-model word cheaper. The counter-model combines this year and cheaper, while what about next year leaves the inference hanging, i.e. “more expensive.” Outside the competition for terms to describe the tender we find a related set of terms used to refer to the negotiation process itself. It is well-known in the literature of communication in institutions that it is a position of power to control the agenda (cf. Pendergast 1990), and to get to summarize, i.e. to put a frame or label on the accumulating common ground. This is the function that Steve fulfills in this meeting:

(4) Shepherding Steve: Let me summarize all that. If we can give you assurances on capacity ahm – capacity to produce through the future, if we can get agreements on the technical back-up that we should be the supplier to you and reliability of product then can I take it that we can form some agreement this afternoon?

Meta-communication moves that refer to the speech act level and direct the discourse I shall call “shepherding moves.” The type includes tokens like if we can just return to that briefly and it seems to me we are down to two options (not quoted in extract). Although normally hedged (can I take it that. . .?, it seems to me that. . .) they function as agenda setters and often serve a bridge function;

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thus let me summarize all that leaves no room for doubt that “all that” is duly considered and compressed into a common ground version of the past. Steve uses a conditional format for his summary (If we can. . . then). In fact, what has preceded his summary is Burt’s statement of a number of serious problems and doubts over the tender; each has been met with dismissals or assurances, but in the interaction there has been no sign that the assurances were accepted. Steve therefore chooses an A-event version, if we can give you assurances, rather than a B-event like “if you can accept our assurances.” It is a tactical leap of interpretation when he sums up in a way that could be glossed as “You have presented a number of doubts about our tender. These I take to count as objections. If we can dismiss the doubts, then you will accept the tender (in some form). Yes?” Steve has thereby set an agenda: it specifies that the relevant interaction is for Rockley to take the floor and demonstrate their new-found reliability, and for Conwell to admit that their queries have been answered, and sign the contract. The persuasive element in shepherding is, then, that the move actually assigns to common ground something that was not quite established.

(5) Containing Simon: Of course, these are issues [last year’s supply failure] that we take very seriously indeed. . .we have to look at the issues that make you comfortable.

Credibility and competence demand that responsibility be faced. To ask explicitly for concerns, and then be seen to deal with them, is one of the strongest competence moves available, because it takes place in the opponent’s territory. In containing moves, the speaker characteristically uses B-event negative terms (your concerns) but not the other party’s evaluative terms of his own situation (hence these issues rather than “our problems, our difficulties”). The issues are contained in the sense that they are now not only shared, they form part of the Seller’s agenda. As it will have transpired, the notion of common ground in negotiation discourse is rather wider than the normal linguistic sense, where the term tends to mean “mutually available to speakers,” in the sense that e.g. presuppositions are assumed to be grounded in context: Did you see the stop sign? assumes the existence of a sign whether the answer is “yes” or “no.” However, in discourse the use of syntactic common ground is always a balancing act between explicit explanations and pragmatic assumptions that it is unnecessary to explain something uncontroversial (Wilkes-Gibbs 1995); it is simply more efficient to make use of the hearer’s natural inference processes. When the aim is to use bits


of shared beliefs and agreed facts to build up a model and present it as shared, discourse principles are the framework that makes it possible. .. The double-faced persona Neither competence face nor solidarity face can be exclusively associated with particular linguistic structures, although some relations are frequently found: polite, modalized tentativeness and questions may constitute solidarity, while high-diversity precision and statements may be used to establish competence face. The interesting aspect here is the relation between facework and the creation of common ground, either through the presupposition that something is (already) shared, or through invitations to share a vision or train of thought. The delicate balance of persona-creating elements is illustrated below with four characteristic types of move.

(1) Accounts Brenda: just out of interest, what is your capacity now? -I mean, you know, we might be thinking of expanding

An account is a justification offered for a move such as disagreement with an opinion, or imposition on someone’s time, generosity etc. (for overview, see Buttny 1993). Accounts have been noticed also in the negotiation literature because of their facilitating properties (Keough 1992); but actually, accounts do two types of facework, both in the competence and solidarity field. On the one hand, the speaker safeguards the hearer’s face, e.g. by turning down a request by saying, I’m sorry, it is not in my power rather than No, I won’t. In the Rockley case, the many repetitions of the story of the alternative tenders, and the repeatedly mentioned thirty percent increase are offered in a regretful tone of voice as accounts for the refusal. In the example above, Brenda uses the account to buffer a question that she knows to be delicate and hence an imposition. On the other hand, as well as being a polite consideration for the hearer’s face, the account is also a symptom of a powerful position, flagging the demand it accompanies, and simultaneously refusing the opponent the option of not answering, since the imposition is now legitimized. As in this case, accounts are very often hedged with you know, with an appeal to common ground acceptability.

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(2) Assumed agreement Burt: it will come as no surprise to you I’m sure that [the price came as] a bit of a shock Burt: the drivers’ strike was obviously not your responsibility . . . but

One variation of the speaker’s use of common ground is to treat judgements as shared through common sense. It will come as no surprise to you [that it was] a bit of a shock is an example of such a claim of shared, negative, judgement. It pronounces on a B-event, which is really outside speaker A’s range; logically, it lays the foundation for a reasoning process glossed as “You know that this is an exorbitant price – therefore, you can give us a better offer.” Obviously and of course are frequently used, both when the speaker introduces his own judgement, as in obviously, we’ll want assurances about that, and in instances when the claim of common ground is made exclusively for the hearer’s face benefit, as in the concession the drivers’ strike was obviously not your responsibility, it was just a widespread problem, but [. . .]. Claimed common sense agreement, then, cuts both ways: it is simultaneously a politeness move, used to safeguard the hearer’s face, and a power move to install the speaker’s own judgement as the accepted norm.

(3) Conditionals Simon: You have a concern over capacity. From International Mining’s point of view I think one of the things that we bring as a strength I would hope to Rockley, is financial stature, so if there’s a particular level of capacity you’re looking for, I’m sure. . .we can we can resolve that problem here. Steve: If we can give you assurances on capacity ahm – capacity to produce through the future, if we can get agreements on the technical back-up,. . . then can I take it that we can form some agreement this afternoon? Burt: If all that can be resolved at this meeting, then sure, we can. . .make the agreement for the whole year.

Conditional offers are frequently described as part of the negotiator’s tactical arsenal (e.g. Kennedy 1998). The typical case is the bargaining phase where concessions are traded (“If you pay before May 17th, I can find you a cash rebate of x percent”). This is the standard contingency relation, where a rebate is possible if and only if the condition is fulfilled, the idea being to get something in return for every concession offered. However, a more fundamental use of conditionals can be seen in their cognitive provenance: what they do is to hold up a model of a situation and treat it as temporarily shared, with a gloss like “let us imagine a situation in which you


pay before May 17th” (cf. Fillmore 1986; Ford 1997). Since the negotiation process is largely a matter of bridging the gap between individual situation models and common ground, conditionals are extremely useful in discourse. The difference between Steve’s floated suggestion of a shared model and Burt’s later repetition, quoted above, is in the emphasis. Steve’s can be glossed as tentatively shared, “Let us look at the situation model in which we give you assurances; I infer that this is enough to lead to agreement – is that right?” In contrast Burt, in his version, has a slight contrast stress on if ; for him the weight is on the contingent relation (“If and only if we get assurances can we consider agreement”). Nevertheless, the construction affords him the opportunity to show solidarity by explicitly taking up the invitation to join the vision (Yes, sure). Simon’s conditional above is another typical shared-vision move. This if is not contingent; rather, it marks a tentatively shared deduction. The gloss here is “You have a worry about capacity. That must mean you are looking for a particular level. I offer this deduction tentatively, but if we treat it as common ground, then I can tell you that we can solve that problem.” These so-called epistemic conditionals (Sweetser 1990) have the particular property that they can feed both solidarity face (being tentative and in need of confirmation) and competence face (offering reasoning, as below).

(4) Joint reasoning Simon: if we shut capacity that’s because we say well, look, have we got an order for tomorrow to fill in that plant (B1: Sure) yes – or the day after. I mean, the stronger you can say to us ‘we believe this is the sort of number we are going to want at some point in the future,’ the more evenly paced can be our own investment decisions and capacity planning, which will then reflect through to you in terms of the overall package you get, in terms of price, quality and the rest of it – yes?

Argumentation in negotiation often takes the shape of a reasoning process; each step is then claimed as accumulating common ground. Simon here demonstrates the sound reasoning behind a decision that the Buyers see as problematic, collects assent, and draws a logical conclusion in the shape of a so-called comparative conditional, the stronger. . . the more even, ending up with a “logical” statement of the success model, a secured package in terms of price and quality. This kind of reasoning is often flagged with conjunctions (so, therefore, because, even consequently) as extra markers of competence face. The reasoning shifts from Rockley’s territory to Conwell’s interest, and thereby ac-

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complishes a clear shift of responsibility: the ball is now in the Buyers’ court. Unless the reasoning can be shown to be faulty, the conclusion is now common ground, and it will take an equal amount of reasoning to dismiss the offer. All the moves described in this section may be said to be persuasive. It is no coincidence that most of the double-faced power markers, like accounting, were found in the Buyers’ speech, and most of the tactical reasoning moves in the Sellers’. However, the Sellers did not get the message through, and the negotiation deadlocked, despite a built-in incentive in the case to come to an agreement. Since none of these persuasive moves described above was the blatant, obvious sort that can be expected to generate mistrust, the reason for the deadlock would seem to lie in the very nature of negotiation discourse: The Conwell team was convinced that there was a hidden agenda (that Rockley was in fact going to be closed down eventually); that was the reason why they apparently suspended the Gricean cooperation principle, under which one assumes that interlocutors tailor their contributions to each other’s needs by being as relevant, truthful, and precise as the message requires. They heard Rockley’s assurances, but they discounted the information, expecting that if their suspicion was well-founded, this was precisely the sort of thing that Rockley would say. It follows that the mechanism we have seen at work is that the discourse principles functioned perfectly, so that for example conditional moves were heard precisely for what they were; however, the effect of the discourse principles was suspended, overriden by the fear of bluff. This double-bind rendered all Rockley’s information, reasoning, and persuasive efforts suspect, and eventually void. . The bridge The following data are extracts from a series of telephone calls in and out of a large British insurance company, taped by the company for possible use in an impending court case and made available to the author as an example of resisted persuasion. Although the interaction here, on the surface, looks like an active persuader and a passive target, it can in fact be demonstrated that at the discourse level, resisting also involves active choices. After a brief review of the persuasive strategies used by the aggrieved party, I shall list some of the characteristic moves performed by the resisting target. The case concerns a number of small industrial leaseholders on an island; the bridge they have been using has been deemed unsafe for heavy traffic, and the manufacturers are therefore now marooned. They have sought com-


pensation from their local authority, here called “Eaton Council,” which will not admit liability; the companies, represented by “Mr. Jones,” have sued the council, and they have a very long series of telephone conversations with the council’s insurance company, trying to negotiate a settlement out of court. The calls are made primarily by Mr. Jones and his colleague “Mr. Smith,” who had a related claim paid out some years earlier, although not by the present claims manager, whom I shall call “Mr. Black,” because he stated in interview that his job entailed always wearing the black hat. Jones: Mr. [name 1] told me Mr. [name 2] had agreed that the Council were going to do that bridge.. . . He is saying that they are negligent under the Highways Act. Black: Well he is wrong, categorically wrong, because the bridge is not subject to the requirements of the Highways Act. It is notJones: Well who is going to put it right if it falls down then? Black: If anyone had to put it right it would be British Waterways Board, but I don’t know what their position is in law, it maybe that if it fell down they wouldn’t have to replace it, I just don’t know. Jones: So those houses then would be isolated then. Black: I don’t know, I’m sorry, British Waterways Board we don’t insure, I can’t claim to be a specialist in the law relating to canals and bridges over them. [. . .] Black: [the Council] were under no obligation to make good the bridge, and their failure to do so therefore cannot create a liability. Jones: Of course it creates a liability. That puts people out of business because they haven’t done it [. . .] I mean, you don’t just, when planning permission is given, you don’t just change over a blasted road to make it do heavy engineering if you like overnight, and then after 20 or 30 years they come and put a weight limit on it and put you out of business. In fact, Eaton Council if you like had the power to do that bridge and then to ask for a contribution afterwards. Black: Yes, that is absolutely true, as I understand it, but having the power to do it doesn’t mean they have an obligation to do it. Jones: They got no obligation, no obligation to the families down there now in those houses, with the bridge deteriorating every day? Black: No, as I understand it, Eaton Council has no obligation in respect of that bridge whatsoever. [. . .]

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Smith: Surely you say to yourself, whether the solicitors say to you, right, you’ve got a case of defense or you ain’t got a case, it is up to the insurance people whether they pay up. Black: Absolutely. Smith: I mean, if you say things like that I can relay messages on, like, and they’ve got hope. Right now they’ve got no hope, fuck all, right, because you keep saying you’ve got a good defense. [. . . ] I mean, the world is going to hear about this, don’t you think it’s going to do your insurance company any goodBlack: WellSmith: I’m going to bring all the kids down with fucking holes in their shoes and their loss of houses [. . .] can you really think it is going to do your company any good? Black: Well, if we are asked for a statement by the press we’ll simply say that there is a High Court action pending and we’ll be bound by the outcome. [. . .] Smith: They’d rather not put it into the High Court – they’d rather do some kind of deal with you. Black: Well, it’s going to have to go to the High Court for them to succeed; we certainly won’t be compromising the way we did with your claim. Smith: You see the tenant was paid out, which was me, and yet the owners of the land, who have lost everything [inaudible] pay up. I think there is something wrong [inaudible] in your mind – there is something wrong in your mind. Black: Yes, absolutely, I think it begs the question of why the tenant was paid, but that is past and gone.

.. Goals and interaction Attempts to create common ground in these extracts are only made by Smith and Jones; throughout, Black distances himself. Goals and linguistic means are differently distributed from the Rockley case above, which represented a normal deal with possibilities of gain for both parties. In this case, one party has a grievance, and the rational argumentation in each call is supplemented with highly charged emotion to form a peculiar phase structure: Argumentation in each telephone call starts from a technical point at issue (e.g., evidence from a council employee relating to the council’s intentions). Argumentation here serves to establish a fact with truth value, e.g. He says they are negligent under the Highways Act). To get some sort of agreement to this would be common ground that would serve as a base.


Then follows what Putnam et al. (1990) term a harm argument: both businesses and families are suffering. This stage is developed in some calls (bankruptcies, marriages breaking down, people put out of their houses on the eve of Christmas). Although technically facts and events that could be checked, the argumentative value here is that of a subjective A-event: the common ground that is sought is through the norm of common human fellow feeling, suffering that could be relieved. Then follows an appeal, including a remedy argument, which is relevant only if the common norm is accepted: Surely you say to yourself,. . . it is up to the insurance people whether they pay up. The common ground here is represented by certainty about a B-event in Black’s mind: surely. The appeal proper is a conditional move: if you say things like that [it’s up to the insurance people to pay up] then I can relay it as a hope. The whole sequence represents what is known as the “door in the face strategy”: when the target has refused a large request (here, to admit liability), he or she is more likely to agree to a small request (Dillard, Hunter, & Burgoon 1984). In other words, all they ask for at this stage is hope, and the relevance of hope is to establish as common ground that a settlement has not been ruled out. With the preferred remedy blocked, a threat is launched to harm the insurance company through publicity (and through bodily harm, which is why these calls were taped). The natural phase structure is aborted here: Black refers to the pending case instead of negotiating for a compromise. This leaves the caller no option but to recycle the phases (outside the extract) in a way that dispenses with the normal conversational principle that once a demand has been turned down, it cannot be made again, unless there is a new reason (it is this commitment to interest rather than discourse rules that makes children such tough negotiators). The recurrent phases in the Bridge talks are treated in Bülow-Møller (1992). Smith and Jones have a problem in piecing together their negotiator persona: while they cannot afford to alienate Black completely, they must also make their threats credible. This is reflected in their language intensity (Bradac et al. 1980; Hamilton & Hunter 1998): in the conversations (not quoted in this extract) they call the claims manager Mr. Black or lad, according to phase, they use highly emotional qualifiers about the situation on the island (we’ve paid bloody rates for years, you have bloody starved people, fucking holes in their shoes), and they use a large amount of direct address, i.e. requests (can you put that in writing), tags (right?), and questions (you agree with that, do you, Mr. Black?). Language intensity reflects a wish to impress upon the opponent the strength of one’s feeling (Donohue & Ramesh 1992). The questions are often shaped so

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that, in common decency, they should be impossible to answer affirmatively (they got no obligations to the families down there?). The emotional charge feeds directly into the material side of their bargaining, for their anger is a reflection of their need, which is a recognized legitimate interest in bargaining (“Your money or my life,” cf. Pruitt & Rubin 1986). In terms of competence face, three strategies are commonly used: contradiction of Black’s judgement, as in of course it creates a liability (note the common sense marker of course); flagged reasoning (so those houses would be isolated then), and the creation of instant rules, i.e. commonly applicable principles, as in you don’t just, when planning permission is given,. . . change over a blasted road to make it do heavy engineering if you like overnight, and then after 20 or 30 years they come and put a weight limit on it and put you out of business. .. The art of ducking Black’s reaction throughout is to resist all attempts to share anything at all. He uses three consistent strategies:

(1) Resisting frameshift Jones: . . .In fact, Eaton Council if you like had the power to do that bridge and then to ask for a contribution afterwards. Black: Yes, that is absolutely true, as I understand it, but having the power to do it doesn’t mean they have an obligation to do it. Jones: They got no obligation, no obligation to the families down there now in those houses, with the bridge deteriorating every day? Black: No, as I understand it, Eaton Council has no obligation in respect of that bridge whatsoever.

Black here demonstrates his ability to hear and discard an implication of common ground. In the first exchange he blocks the relevance of the topic with his yes but construction, never moving outside his own frame of legal liability. In the second exchange, he dispenses with the common focus structure of English, under which the scope of polarity of a question is only the focus, normally the last part of the clause. The scope of Jones’s question is the late addition that qualifies the obligation with the bridge deteriorating every day. Black sweeps up all past and future qualifications with no obligation whatsoever, a term borrowed from the legal frame, thus avoiding the humanitarian common ground.


(2) Recategorizing Smith: I’m going to bring all the kids down with fucking holes in their shoes and their loss of houses [. . .] can you really think it is going to do your company any good? Black: Well, if we are asked for a statement by the press we’ll simply say that there is a High Court action pending and we’ll be bound by the outcome.

Closely related to the refusal to be shifted out of his frame is Black’s ability to shift the opponent’s contribution back one step and into a different category. The threat to bring the marooned factory workers to London is logically dependent on the interest of the press, so that the event can be covered and give the insurance company a bad name; Black disregards the point of the question, moves one inferential step back and addresses himself to the convenient part of the envisioned situation, i.e. professional press interest (if we are asked by the press). Since this is logically part of the common ground, it is difficult to regard it conversationally as an unhelpful or irrelevant answer.

(3) Creating distance Jones: Well who is going to put it right if it falls down then? Black: If anyone had to put it right it would be British Waterways Board, but I don’t know what their position is in law, it maybe that if it fell down they wouldn’t have to replace it, I just don’t know.

Jones’s conditional contains the standard invitation to a shared inspection of a situation (who is going to. . . if it falls down); Black’s reply refuses commitment to the (common ground) presupposition behind the question that “somebody is going to put it right,” and shifts the situation into a hypothetical space: If anyone had to. . . if it fell down. In terms of facework, Black meets the intensity with frequent acknowledgement (I understand what you are trying to say); this is a prototypical solidarityface move, which counterbalances his persistent refusal to share or accept (it is normally followed by but). However, the same apparently helpful agreement is seen when he agrees with a (surface) truth value component of the utterance: (Jones:) – Surely you have said to yourself. . . it’s up to the insurance people whether they pay up. (Black:) – Absolutely. As with the disregarded focus above, this agreement is only with the object clause, something that produces alignment at an irrelevant micro-level (Jones is right, it really is up to Black), while it produces disalignment at the speech act as a whole: Black refuses to hear it as an appeal. The most clearly ironic pseudo-agreement is found where an invited inference is turned back against the speaker: (Smith, who had his claim

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paid out:) – There is something wrong in your mind. – (Black:) Yes, absolutely, I think it begs the question of why the tenant was paid. In the Bridge case, the deadlock is only partially a result of failed persuasion strategies on one side and successful resistance on the other. Because the calls are part of a series containing a great deal of repetition, both parties are negotiating in the knowledge that the marooned leaseholders have as their global goal to wear down the claims manager’s resistance rather than to convince him rationally or touch him emotionally. As with Rockley, the target has a sense of a double agenda, and this creates the situation where ordinary discourse principles obtain locally, but not for the communication as a whole. Deadlock is therefore to be expected.

. Conclusion It can be concluded that over and above the tactical manoeuvring of material offers and argumentation, negotiators use the interactive discourse system to further their own purposes. In particular, we have seen negotiators use language resources to guide the opponent’s impression formation when their choices reflected a strong, precise, rational persona, or a sociable, faceconscious, trustworthy persona. Secondly, we have seen negotiators make choices that create common ground because the language assumes that the concepts are already shared, which might or might not be true at the time. The discourse means include – – –

reference to a concept with a variety of tactically chosen terms (such as our plant on stand-by vs. your loss of capacity), syntactic downgrading, so that focal information appears in a minor clause (it will come as no surprise to you that it was a bit of a shock to us), and conditionals for inviting a shared situation model (what if the bridge falls down?).

It can also be concluded that even such implicit persuasive moves do not work if the negotiators do not have enough material incentive to accept the reasoning. It seems, then, that negotiation discourse is an exceptionally difficult case of persuasion because two parties are trying to persuade each other in opposite directions. At one and the same time, they need to exchange information, and distrust what they hear; they use every linguistic means to claim common ground, but they do it with a view to individual gain; and they use the sys-


tem of conversational co-operation to keep up the exchange structure, but they subvert it when necessary. The fact that integrative and reasonable solutions are quite frequently arrived at must serve to remind us that, fortunately, persuasion is only a minor part of the information processing that takes place in negotiation. Overwhelmingly, parties come together because they believe they can talk into existence a shared situation model that addresses the major interests of both; if they cannot, deadlock is a healthy outcome for parties that have better alternatives. If it is true, as has been argued above, that overt persuasion is a symptom of a negotiator with a bad case, it is no wonder if such moves are found in negotiations that deadlock; success is more likely where both parties are rationally convinced that the result is due to legitimate argumentation. But is this conviction perhaps in itself a case of more subtle persuasion? Under the present definition, if a party has succeeded in getting an opponent to see enough advantage to accept a deal – and vice versa – it is only reasonable to call this mutual persuasion. It is solely because of the unhelpful denotations of devious compliance-seeking that no negotiator ever admits to being influenced by persuasion; but if we accept that rational arguments are also part of the persuasive package, perhaps the concept of persuasion can now be admitted back into polite society as part of the study of decision making. Much the same is happening with the blossoming interest in rhetoric – a concept that is now back where it denotes “effective language,” and much needed in the information age.

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Brown, Penelope & Levinson, Stephen C. ([1987]/1978). Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. First publ. as part of Esther Goody, Questions and Politeness. Bülow-Møller, Anne Marie (1992). “Coherence structures in negotiations: The strategy of repetition”. In A. Grindsted & J. Wagner (Eds.), Communication for Specific Purposes/Fachsprachliche Kommunikation (pp. 193–210). Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Bülow-Møller, Anne Marie (1996). “Control from the background: A study of information structure in native and non-native discourse”. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 6 (1), 21–42. Burgoon, Judee K., Dunbar, Norah E., & Segrin, Chris (2002). “Nonverbal influence”. In J. P. Dillard & M. Pfau (Eds.), The Persuasion Handbook: Developments in Theory and Practice (pp. 445–473). Thousand Oaks: Sage. Buttny, Richard (1993). Social Accountability in Communication. London: Sage. Carroll, John S. & Payne, John W. (1991). “An information processing approach to twoparty negotiations”. In Research on Negotiation in Organizations, Vol. 3: Handbook of Negotiation Research (pp. 3–34). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Chatman, Jennifer A., Putnam, Linda L., & Sondak, Harris (1991). “Integrating communication and negotiation research”. Research on Negotiation in Organizations, Vol. 3: Handbook of Negotiation Research (pp. 139–164). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Cheng, Rong (2001). “Self-politeness: A proposal”. Journal of Pragmatics, 33, 87–106. Diez, Mary E. (1986). “Negotiation competence: A conceptualization of the rules of negotiation interaction”. In D. G. Ellis & W. A. Donohue (Eds.), Contemporary Issues in Language and Discourse Processes (pp. 223–237). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Dillard, James P., Hunter, John E., & Burgoon, Michael (1984). “Sequential-request persuasive strategies: Meta-analysis of foot-in-the-door and door-in-the-face”. Human Communication Research, 10, 461–488. Donohue, William A. & Ramesh, C. (1992). “Negotiator-opponent relationships”. In L. L. Putnam & M. E. Roloff (Eds.), Communication and Negotiation (pp. 209–232). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Fairclough, Norman (1995). Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Longman. Fillmore, Charles J. (1986). “Varieties of conditional sentences”. Eastern States Conference on Linguistics, 6, 163–182. Fisher, Roger (1969). Basic Negotiating Strategy. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin. Fisher, Roger & Ury, William ([1983]/1981). Getting to Yes. London: Hutchinson. Ford, Cecilia (1997). “Speaking conditionally: Some contexts for If-clauses in conversation”. In A. Athanasiadou & R. Dirven (Eds.), On Conditionals Again (pp. 387–413). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Fowler, Roger, Hodge, Bob, Kress, Gunther, & Trew, Tony (1979). Language and Control. London: Routledge. Gibbons, Pamela, Bradac, James J., & Busch, Jon D. (1992). “The role of language in negotiations: Threats and promises”. In L. L. Putnam & M. E. Roloff (Eds.), Communication and Negotiation (pp. 156–175). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Gulliver, P. H. (1979). Disputes and Negotiations. A Cross-cultural Perspective [Studies on Law and Social Control]. New York: Academic Press.


Hamilton, Mark A. & Hunter, John E. (1998). “The effect of language intensity on receiver evaluations of message, source and topic”. In M. Allen & R. W. Preiss (Eds.), Persuasion: Advances through Meta-Analysis (pp. 99–138). Creskill, NJ: Hampton. Hargie, Owen & Dickson, David (2004). Skilled Interpersonal Communication: Research, Theory and Practice. London: Routledge. Hiltrop, Jean M. & Udall, Sheila (1995). The Essence of Negotiation. London: Prentice Hall. Kennedy, Gavin (1998). The New Negotiating Edge: The Behavioral Approach for Results and Relationships. London: Brealey. Keough, Colleen M. (1992). “Bargaining arguments and argumentative bargainers”. In L. L. Putnam & M. E. Roloff (Eds.), Communication and Negotiation (pp. 109–127). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Labov, William & Fanshel, David (1977). Therapeutic Discourse: Psychotherapy as Conversation. New York: Academic Press. Larson, Charles U. (1995). Persuasion: Reception and Responsibility (7th ed.). Belmont: Wadsworth. Lax, David A. & Sebenius, James K. (1986). The Manager as Negotiator: Bargaining for Cooperation and Competitive Gain. New York: Free Press. Levin, Irwin P., Schneider, Sandra L., & Gaeth, Gary J. (1998). “All frames are not created equal: A typology and critical analysis of framing effects”. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 76 (2), 149–188. Lewicki, Roy J., Barry, Bruce, Saunders, David M., & Minton, John W. (2003). Negotiation (4th ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill. Lim, Tae-Seop & Bowers, John W. (1991). “Face work: Solidarity, approbation and tact”. Human Communication Research, 7 (3), 415–450. Morley, Ian E. & Stephenson, Geoffrey M. (1977). The Social Psychology of Bargaining. London: Allen and Unwin. Mulholland, Joan (1991). The Language of Negotiation: A Handbook of Practical Strategies for Improving Communication. London: Routledge. Neale, Margaret A. & Bazerman, Max H. (1983). “The role of perspective-taking ability in negotiation under different forms of arbitration”. Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 36 (3), 378–388. Ng, Sik Hung & Bradac, James J. (1993). Power in Language: Verbal Communication and Social Influence. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Pendergast, William R. (1990). “Managing the negotiation agenda”. Negotiation Journal, April 1990, 135–145. Pruitt, Dean G. (1981). Negotiation Behavior. New York: Academic Press. Pruitt, Dean G. & Rubin, Jeffrey Z. (1986). Social Conflict: Escalation, Stalemate, and Settlement. New York: Random House. Pruitt, Dean G. & Smith, D. L. (1981). “Impression management in bargaining: Images of firmness and trustworthiness”. In J. T. Tedeschi (Ed.), Impression Management Theory and Social Psychological Research (pp. 247–267). New York: Academic Press. Putnam, Linda L. & Holmer, Majia (1992). “Framing, reframing and issue development”. In L. L. Putnam & M. E. Roloff (Eds.), Communication and Negotiation (pp. 128–155). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

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Putnam, Linda L. & Wilson, Steve R. (1989). “Argumentation and bargaining strategies as discriminators of integrative outcomes”. In M. A. Rahim (Ed.), Managing Conflict: An Interdisciplinary Approach (pp. 121–141). New York: Praeger. Putnam, Linda L., Wilson, Steven R., & Turner, Dudley B. (1990). “The evolution of policy arguments in teachers’ negotiations”. Argumentation, 4, 129–152. Rackham, Neil (1987). Making Major Sales. Aldershot: Gower. Rackham, Neil & Carlisle, J. (1978). “The effective negotiator – part 1: The behaviour of successful negotiators”. Journal of European Industrial Training, 2 (6), 6–11. Reardon, Kathleen Kelley (1991). Persuasion in Practice. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Rhoads, Kelton V. L. & Cialdini, Robert B. (2002). “The business of influence: Principles that lead to success in commercial settings”. In J. P. Dillard & M. Pfau (Eds.), The Persuasion Handbook: Developments in Theory and Practice (pp. 513–542). Thousand Oaks: Sage. Roloff, Michael E., Tutzauer, Frank E., & Dailey, William O. (1989). “The role of argumentation in distributive and integrative bargaining contexts: Seeking relative advantage but at what cost?” In M. A. Rahim (Ed.), Managing Conflict: An Interdisciplinary Approach (pp. 109–119). New York: Praeger. Stephenson, Geoffrey M. (1981). “Intergroup bargaining and negotiation”. In J. C. Turner & H. Giles (Eds.), Intergroup Behaviour (pp. 168–198). Oxford: Blackwell. Storey, Richard (1997). The Art of Persuasive Communication. Aldershot: Gower. Sweetser, Eve E. (1990). From Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphorical and Cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thompson, Leigh L. (2005). The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education. Ting-Toomey, Stella (1988). “Intercultural conflict styles: A face-negotiation theory”. In Y. K. Young & W. B. Gudykunst (Eds.), Theories in Intercultural Communication (pp. 213– 235). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Toulmin, Stephen (1958). The Uses of Argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Unt, Iwar (1999). Negotiations without a Loser. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School Press. Walton, Richard E. & McKersie, Robert B. (1965). A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations. New York: McGraw-Hill. Wilkes-Gibbs, Deanna (1995). “Coherence in collaboration: Some examples from conversation”. In M. A. Gernsbacher & T. Givón (Eds.), Coherence in Spontaneous Text (pp. 239–267). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Wilson, Steven R. (1992). “Face and facework in negotiation”. In L. L. Putnam & M. E. Roloff (Eds.), Communication and Negotiation (pp. 176–205). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Wilson, Steven R. (2002). Seeking and Resisting Compliance: Why People Say What They Do When Trying to Influence Others. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Wilson, Steven R. & Putnam, Linda L. (1990). “Interaction goals in negotiation”. Communication Yearbook, 13, 374–406. London: Sage.

Chapter 3

Persuasion in judicial argumentation The Opinions of the Advocates General at the European Court of Justice Tarja Salmi-Tolonen

This chapter explores strategies of persuasive argumentation as represented by the written Opinions of Advocates General at the European Court of Justice.1 Research on legal language has so far been mainly focused on legislative language and case law. Judicial Opinions2 are a relatively new genre of research especially in the European context. Rhetoric – which can broadly be understood as persuasive talk – is particularly crucial in litigation. Legal proceedings are always conflict initiated. After establishing the fact that the conflict in question falls under the law and is admissible, the sole purpose of the court is to solve the conflict. Those involved in court proceedings present their views to the best of their ability. The court then has to make choices between the conflicting opinions and a number of competing possible legal bases. In the process towards this goal, one important actor is the Advocate General. In an institutional setting, argumentation takes preferred styles and communicative strategies. Language use is understood here as social practice and persuasive language use as an interactive process. Who determines what the procedures through which communicative strategies become preferred are, is however outside the scope of this study. The view assumed in this chapter owes much to Bourdieu (1971 and 19773 ) in that the decisive factor is the prestige and value of symbolic capital, the symbolic market. It should, however, be stressed that in the view adopted here it is not accepted that language could merely be reduced to a situationally determined list of expressions and forms as sometimes seems to be the case for instance in information and communication studies. Although the old Aristotelian observation that form and content are inseparable is still valid, it does not follow that choosing the correct form

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for a given situation would automatically produce the desired communicative result. The view accepted here is that language also constitutes the reality and that every event of language use is an interactive process. Furthermore, it must be pointed out that there is no value-free use of language, but ideologies and values of the community in question are inherent in this process (cf. Thompson 1984, 1990). Although legal language out of necessity is basically argumentative and persuasive, it is obvious that the linguistic means chosen might differ from that which is usually understood as persuasive communication. It has been established that the regulating processes do not function merely through imperatives and sanctions (see e.g. Salmi-Tolonen 2001). Styles of thinking, making decisions, and exercising power vary periodically and between legal cultures. The realizations of these styles can be assessed by linguistic analysis. In law, if by law we understand statutory law, however, persuasion as a communicative strategy is seldom marked, and persuasive elements are blended with prescriptive expressions. Law does not command directly but imposes duties and confers powers by defining conditions, constituting processes, and uttering purposes. One might say that manifestations of power and discursive practices have changed, if we take Foucault’s view (1972) on the relativism of power. I understand Foucault’s concept of power as follows: those who have power do not exercise power by ordering their subjects directly using imperatives. Rather, power is interaction, and it structures both parties in the power relationship, whose identity in this interrelationship changes accordingly. In the present investigation I will look at the power invested by the institution and expert knowledge, not individual power as such. In this study, I have set out to investigate markers of persuasion in one legal genre, namely written Judicial Opinions. What could be called the legalistic fallacy involves the common conception that a conflict solved according to law would always yield the same result. If this conception were true, then irrespective of the court, in any given case, identical sentence would be passed. However, we know that this is not even feasible in reality; otherwise appellant courts would be excessive and redundant. The same set of evidence can be interpreted in various different ways and there is room for interpretation and deliberation; therefore, the manner in which these different ways are presented will necessarily play an important role. At first sight, the Advocate General’s Opinions differ considerably from other legal genres in that the writer is overtly visible in using first person singular pronouns. I have therefore chosen to focus on such expressions and their potential persuasive function in the texts studied. As text type, these texts dif-

Persuasion in judicial argumentation

fer from statutory texts in their chosen text strategy. They do not prescribe, dictate, or give instructions but present arguments or counter-arguments for and against claims put forth by the litigants in the previous stages of the process. They may also interpret statutory or case law, thus further reflecting and justifying their arguments against this background. The present chapter proceeds as follows: First, a short survey is given in order to put the genre in question into its context within the legal register, then the material and its communicative purpose is described, and after this the method and the preliminary stages of investigation are explained. The purpose here is not to explore all possible persuasive markers but to concentrate on overtly marked writer’s comments. An inventory of the expressions directly involving the author is collected to map out expressions considered to contribute towards the persuasive communicative strategy. It is understood here that it is not only the most frequently used or frequently occurring expressions that are genre specific; hence it is also important to study expressions which are scarce or totally absent in the given data (Salmi-Tolonen 1987: 42). This is important particularly if we wish to study the interactive processes in a given communicative situation. Fairclough (1995) also stresses the necessity of scrutinizing those elements that stay absent or are scarce in texts.

Persuasion and legal discourse Since antiquity the legal register has represented a paradigm case of persuasive communication. Persuasion is understood here as Halmari and Virtanen, the editors of the present volume, have done – all linguistic behavior that attempts either to change the thinking or behavior of an audience, or to strengthen its beliefs, should the audience already agree. In ordinary communicative situations, persuasion is not easily identified because, as Östman (1987: 93 and this volume) points out, effective persuasion does not always take place in an explicit manner. Östman further concludes that persuasion as a communicative strategy is seldom marked overtly, and that although markers can be found, they are realized implicitly. According to Östman (1987: 93), one distinction of primary importance for pragmatics is the distinction between the explicit and implicit elements in language. In the genre to be discussed here, persuasion is found implicitly in the manifestations of legal expertise and efficient methods of deduction.4 It is found explicitly in epistemically modalized expressions, of which one type is the focus of this study. Since the primary audience5 is formed by the members of the court who are legal professionals, I would deduce that the main purpose of this kind of linguistic behavior is manifestly strengthen-

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ing of the thinking of the audience. As for changing beliefs or thinking, it is in my opinion relevant especially concerning the secondary audience, namely the non-professional parties. O’Keefe (1990) points out that the purpose of human communication in general is to influence others by modifying their beliefs, values, or attitudes. Broadly speaking then all verbal communication could be said to be persuasive. There are, however, two criteria, which O’Keefe (1990: 15) finds crucial in his definition concerning persuasive communication in social scientific theory; these criteria are intention and success. He demonstrates these by taking examples from impromptu speech where one can more or less intuitively conclude whether an utterance can be considered acceptable or unacceptable as a persuasive utterance. If we consider legal genres from this perspective, it is the communicative infrastructure (cf. Austin 1962) which tells us that the communicative purpose of persuasion is intended. O’Keefe’s second criterion is that the communicative utterance must be successful to be persuasive. He tests this by viewing the following utterances: “I persuaded him but I failed.” The utterance makes no sense. However, to say “I tried to persuade him but failed” makes perfect sense. His conclusion is thus that “I persuaded him” implies a successful attempt to influence (O’Keefe 1990). It seems to me, however, that intention is the necessary and even perhaps the sufficient requirement here in the sense that intention usually has an explicit goal. To my mind this is proven by the second example – one can try but fail. One can of course manage in persuading someone unintentionally, but then we are not talking about a persuasive communicative strategy. This option is therefore immaterial. The fact that the element of success is in some form present in persuasion presupposes the presence of a goal. As was pointed out above, legal proceedings always have a goal, whose immediate effect is to solve the conflict. At a more abstract level, to put it in Aristotelian terms, the goal is to find out what is right and what is wrong according to law, in this case. The Opinion of an Advocate General, although working towards this perhaps higher or ethical level of an objective, has in addition an extralinguistic goal – the actual ruling/declaration/decision of the Court following the lines he or she has argued. Borrowing Austinian speech act terminology, Adam and Bonhomme (1997: 25) have described the three dimensions of the discursive act. They illustrate these dimensions graphically as presented below in Figure 1, adapted from Adam and Bonhomme. While their interest was in the persuasive strategies of

Persuasion in judicial argumentation Linguistic activity

Producing a

with

Purpose

Speech act

message

persuasive force

Extralinguistic activity

Pragmatic

Locutionary

dimension

act

Illocutionary

Perlocutionary

force

effect

Constative

make someone

(explicit)

believe something

Directive

make someone do

(implicit)

something

Figure 1. The dimensions of the discursive act

advertising, their diagram seems useful also for the purpose of illustrating the persuasive strategy in the genre at hand, judicial argumentation. The figure contains two dimensions which focus on linguistic activity: the first one is the actual utterance or the text, and the second one is the illocutionary force, which in the case of the Opinions of the Advocates General differ somewhat from that of Parliamentary Acts. Although the institutional context provides for the felicity conditions, the status of the Opinion and the relationships between the sender and the recipient are different. The focus is on the constative force which concerns facts and information rather than the directive force which concerns authority. The Court is under obligation to rule, but whether it will do so along the lines argued or recommended by the Advocate General depends at least partly on how successful his or her persuasive strategy is. What I am discussing here is exactly how to realize the move from constative to directive or from believing in something to actually doing something. At the illocutionary level the Opinions are at the same time informative and argumentative. At the perlocutionary level, as Adam and Bonhomme (1997) point out, the ultimate objective is to make someone do something, make someone act in a manner the sender intends. Between making someone believe the value of the information given and consequently acting on it, lies the persuasive strategy: how to make this happen. This of course is the crucial question in this investigation. Bearing in mind the legal register, I would argue that there are communicative situations, institutional settings being a case in point, which we know to invoke persuasive language use inherently. Furthermore, this kind of situation as such invites us not to expect overt or explicit linguistic markers of persuasion. If my arguments are accurate, then these situations perhaps set de-

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mands of a higher level of institutional literacy to those who are not initiated, for instance parties in a court case. Legal communication can be particularly deceptive for an ordinary citizen. In statutory writing we find explicit persuasion basically by way of recourse to authority. As for the written Opinions, explicit persuasion seems to be more apparent, even though referring to authority also occurs in the form of quoting rules and regulations, as well as the case law, court decisions, and precedents. These matters will be discussed further below.

Judicial Opinions To determine the genre to which the written Opinions of the Advocate General belong, I will first consider the legal register from a communicative point of view. Legal discourse consists of so many different kinds of texts that one can discern subvarieties which can be included in legal discourse in general. These subvarieties or subgenres seem to be markedly different in terms of their overall communicative function, which have also been studied contrastively (e.g. Hiltunen 1984). I have suggested (Salmi-Tolonen 1994), following the lines of Bhatia (1983) and Dascal and Wróblewski (1991), three categories of linguistic activity which yield legal discourse and account for their communicative functions and actual forms. These categories are law-making, law-applying, and law-describing. The categorization is first of all based on text-external criteria but also on functional and pragmatic criteria. Our present interest naturally belongs to the category ‘law-applying’ but can also be considered from the point of view of the category ‘law-making’ since the data are part of the documents constituting case law. The primary purpose of the ‘law-applying’ genre is to record the proceedings of the court (cf. the discussion below on different audiences). To some extent this writing may count as ‘law-making,’ whose primary function is to confer rights and impose duties. In common law countries the ‘law-applying’ genre may include discussions of a piece of legislation which could be applicable to similar cases in the future. The data are drawn from European case law. One of the reasons for research so far focusing principally on legislative language in the European context is that in continental legal traditions case law has not carried the same weight as it does in the common law countries, where it has the status of the source of law. The role of the European Court of Justice is, however, becoming more and more important, not only within the member states, but also globally for instance in the domain of competition law.6 The judicial practice in the member states cannot overlook the Court’s decisions. Therefore research


focused on all documents produced in the different stages of the proceedings not only from a judicial point of view but also linguistically is motivated. In addition, all documents are translated into the official Union languages and translators would benefit from research-based knowledge of communicative strategies in these documents. Furthermore, the fact that case law is increasingly available in an electronically readable form allows the development of new methods and software in jurimetrics to facilitate judicial decisions.7 The basis of such methods is on search processes which rely on language and linguistic means. From the point of view of communicative strategies, the Opinions of the Advocates General are perhaps more interesting to study than would be the declarations, decisions, or judgments of the Court. The reason for this is that an Advocate General draws up the Opinion independently although presumably following the conventions of his/her domestic legal culture and training. Like any other writing, legal writing is culturally conditioned, and writers’ notions about what convincing prose or persuasive writing is like are inescapably rooted in each individual’s experiences of learning his or her professional skills. In law, perhaps more than in any other professional field, conventions and traditions play a dominating role. This makes it all the more important to study the argumentative strategies of different origins in order to facilitate understanding and translating in a multicultural organization. Although this paper is not linguistically or culturally contrastive, the contrastive approach might well be the next step.

.

Material and methods

My corpus consists of the written Opinions of the British Advocates General holding this position at the European Court of Justice during the period of time from 1997 to 2001 from which the Opinions were collected. For this study I have chosen to examine only those Opinions which have originally been written in English by native speakers of English. Out of the nine Advocates General at the European Court of Justice at the time only two were British. According to the language policy applied at the Court of Justice, the Advocates General write their Opinions in their first language.8 The number of authors writing in English being as small as two, the possibility of idiolectal usage, or variation in preference of expressions, is not entirely eliminated. Variation possibly introduced in the translation process is also outside the scope of this study although such an approach would merit some investigation at some point. Intuitively,

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and based on my studies on epistemic modality, I consider it possible that persuasion is one of those rhetorical elements which changes or even loses its force when transferred to another language (Salmi-Tolonen 1993), in other words, when someone other than the original writer mediates it to another language. In what follows, I will first focus on the communicative purpose of the Judicial Opinions of the Advocates General, then consider the audience of these Opinions, and, finally, describe the corpus used for the present study. . Description of the communicative purpose Each case brought before the European Court is appointed an Advocate General, who follows the case closely throughout the process. The Advocate General delivers her or his Opinion in open court to members of the Court and the litigants.9 The communicative strategy of the written Opinion of the Advocate General is, as I see it, basically persuasive and primarily twofold: (1) to persuade the Court that the solution proposed is well founded from a legal point of view and the court’s rulings should be based on it, and (2), to persuade the litigants that the rulings of the Court which follow are based on a thoroughly and justly argued legal Opinion, and therefore, are the right decisions. We might also discuss a third strategy or a third audience which also includes a larger audience, the general public. This strategy is to convince10 any third party, for instance a researcher or a legal practitioner, whom we could call an onlooker,11 that the legal basis is correct and legal reasoning acceptable and on a sound basis. Therefore, the judgment drafted by the Judge-Rapporteur (who has also followed the case from the very beginning) and the Court’s rulings concluding the process are on an equally sound basis. In the section below, I shall discuss the audience or the receivers of the semantic and pragmatic message. . The audience An argumentative text is always dialogic in a very explicit sense and not only in the Bakhtinian implicit sense. The text is clearly addressed to someone and engages in discussion with several other texts and their writers. The audience of the Opinions can also be described in terms suggested by Fleck (1981) as exoteric (outsiders), a group constituted by the parties of the case who are not legal professionals and who are represented by the esoteric group (insiders) who are legal professionals. In addition, there are the members of the Court, who naturally belong to the insiders. Furthermore, as in all legal communication, there


is the legislator, abstract and impersonal – a party who does not necessarily ever actually receive the message but nevertheless is one of the receptors.12 The function of the text varies depending on the audience. To those directly involved, whether esoteric or exoteric, a written Judicial Opinion is informative, expository, and directive. However, to those who are not directly involved, this written Judicial Opinion is first expository and informative and only secondarily, in case they should in some future occasion or case be acting in a different role, directive. Kerbrat-Orecchioni (1980: 24) has pointed out that most written texts are addressed to a non-present and non-speaking audience in her system where presence/non-presence and speaking/non-speaking are the variables. The written Opinions of the Advocates General nevertheless have an audience that might fall into all these four categories defined by the audience’s presence or non-presence and the audience being speaking or non-speaking. These Opinions have what we might call a primary audience consisting of the members of the court and the litigants who can be present and who can reply. On the other hand, there is the secondary audience to whom the text is addressed, namely the legislator, the Commission, and the politicians of the European Parliament. The latter both appear explicitly in the text since the Advocate General needs to interpret directives and statutes and take a stand to the opinions and discussions of the Parliament. These are not present of course unless the Commission is a party in the process, which is the case if it concerns a Member State’s failure to implement directives. Thirdly, there is the audience which I have called onlookers: legal scientists, lawyers, the general public, and politicians, who for various reasons are interested in the proceedings and who form the audience Kerbrat-Orecchioni holds typical to written texts in general (see also Amossy 2000: 34ff.). . Description of the corpus In legal genres, as well as in many professional genres, the intertextual element is heavily present. All texts produced in the course of legal proceedings, together with a body of law referred to, form a network of texts which constitute the judicial genre in question. At the textual level, establishing what we might call legal facts is actualized by a close-knit web of references to other texts in an intricate network either by referring to them by their title or by some other referential means. Every text is a member of this generic variety and on its part helps to define the genre. The written Opinions of the Advocate General can be said to be largely texts about other texts, or as DeVitt (1991: 342) puts it, texts

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have texts as subjects even if the cases themselves are real world facts. When the Advocates General write about the documents submitted to the Court by the litigants, they describe the case based on those documents and all the relevant statutory texts and judicial precedents. As was pointed out in the introductory paragraph, there is no value-free use of language, but the writers bring their subjective interpretations into the text either explicitly or implicitly. In the description part it might be the lexical choices and in the legislation part it is the choice of legislative basis. The corpus collected for the purposes of this study is relatively small: 10 texts from both writers consisting of about 161,084 words (WordSmith count) altogether. The shortest text contains 667 words (3 pages) and the longest 37,353 words (65 pages). The average texts contain 7,000–8,000 words. The period of time from which the texts are drawn extends from 1997 to 2001. Most of the cases are still pending, and this is one of the reasons why the Opinions have not been compared with the decisions. In addition, all the documents presented by both parties should ideally also have been available to enable one to see how successful the Advocate General’s arguments have been. This has not, however, been the case at this stage. All the texts are from recent years and as many as possible were collected from the domain of social politics. The data in fact contain all cases on equality and equal opportunities and other cases which fall under social security followed by the two British Advocates General. The choice of domain of distributive law was motivated by the fact that social security issues are of greater interest to a larger number of individual European Union citizens than for instance competition restrictions. The corpus was complemented by some cases from other domains such as approximation of laws, competition laws, and tax laws, to make it more representative. No selection was made between the types of cases brought before the European Court, and therefore the corpus contains direct actions and preliminary rulings. In the first case (direct actions), the application is submitted directly; in the case of preliminary rulings, the national court submits questions concerning the interpretation or validity of a provision of Community law, generally in the form of judicial decision, in accordance with national procedural rules. The corpus is relatively small for the purpose of drawing exhaustive conclusions but sufficiently large to indicate tendencies. The first impression one gets reading the Opinions is that although the style is extremely formal, especially at the lexical level, the writer is present much more visibly than in most other written official genres. At the pilot stage I tested the frequency of some other potential markers which might gain pragmatic reading, for exam-


ple markers of stance in the sense of Biber and Finegan (1989).13 I collected all occurrences of stance markers such as actually and in fact, but a closer study revealed that in all the cases the adverbials had kept their original or linguistic reading;14 in other words, they expressed manner rather than the writer’s attitude. There are 35 occurrences of actually and 30 of in fact in the data, and it seems that these adverbials are not used to promote the writer’s subjective persuasive strategy. Adverbials – especially their lack of pragmatic reading – certainly merit further study in the genre at hand; however, this investigation is outside the scope of the present study. The following examples illustrate the use of actually and in fact in the corpus. (1) However, it points out that the question whether access to the market is actually prevented is disputed between the parties. (C-214/99, Fennelly) (2) The same effect would be had by comparing, not the basic monthly salary, but the pay per hour actually worked. (C-236/98, Jacobs) (3) Secondly, the Court has no basis in fact (there being no evidence presented by the national court) as it has no function in law to draw any such distinction. (C-158/98, Fennelly) (4) Although Article 13(1)(b) would be applicable even to a name chosen at random with no intent to evoke, if that name in fact evoked a registered name, nevertheless the intention of the owner of the mark in choosing that mark may be relevant. (C-87/97, Jacobs)

The use of these adverbials was cross-checked between the writers, but no significant difference was found in their frequencies of occurrence. In fact, for the adverbials checked, the distribution is surprisingly similar in both writers’ texts. The findings of the pilot study show that there is a surprising homogeneity of the markers used, and therefore collecting data from earlier years was considered superfluous.

. Persuasive argumentation and Judicial Opinions Persuasive argumentation is seen as the superseding communicative function in Judicial Opinions, and the discourse and pragmatic functions work at the linguistic level for this communicative goal. Östman (1986) defines persuasion as a technique of argumentation and points out further that persuasion is not a grammatical category but the markers of persuasion are realized pragmatically.

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In my view persuasion is not a framework or a model where different variables can be placed and the result would produce a description of a persuasive strategy. Furthermore I see persuasion or even rhetoric more like a point of view or aspect of study rather than a research method or framework. As was mentioned above, I will focus on the expressions where the writer is overtly present. The linguistic means and expressions found in the Opinions of the Advocates General which I consider to contribute to the overall communicative goal of providing a persuasive argument were first collected and divided into categories on the basis of their meaning rather than their grammar. In other words, expressions related to cognitive processes were grouped together irrespective of whether they contain verb phrases or noun phrases. . The author’s comment Epistemic modality is concerned with language as a conveyor of information as well as with various attitudes towards knowledge. Writers express their attitudes towards the sources of information and the information communicated. In this case, this information means legal knowledge and knowledge of legal reasoning. The Advocate General’s task is to find the correct legal basis, or the rules and principles in Community legislation and case law, relevant to each case. If the case is an application for reviewing the rulings of the Court of First Instance or a request from a National Court for preliminary rulings, also these proceedings and national law of the member state in question need to be reviewed and their relevance weighed in each case. For this purpose the Advocates General first of all need to recognize the value of the legal rules, relevant in each particular case.15 They then need to weigh the arguments presented by the parties involved against legislation and case law. Judicial deduction must always be rule-governed. Consequently they need to convince the audience already described above that the contents of these rules are principles that should be applied to the case in question and that the institutional setting – or ‘context’ in the Austinian sense – supports this process. This process can be presented in the form of the following flowchart. Figure 2 depicts the moves and steps towards the goals of legal argumentation at a general level. The arrows indicate the direction and dynamics of the deductive reasoning, which in this simplified model proceeds from one arrow to the next yet leaving room for interaction with process-external elements without making the figure into a hermeneutic circle. Process-external elements refer to the various aspects that constitute legal knowledge. The moves also illustrate their linguistic manifestations in the Opinion texts. Seen from a text-

Persuasion in judicial argumentation Recognizing the rule – dimension of authority – validity

Institutional support

Interpreting the contents – dimension of weight according to circumstances

Persuasive argumentation

Court Rulings/Decisions/Declarations

Figure 2. The argumentation process in Judicial Opinions

external point of view, these represent the moves in the cognitive process and, from a text-internal point of view, functional or role units of the written Opinion. Functional units here are considered to refer to a higher level abstraction than a semantic unit. The linguistic manifestations will be returned to in the section below, where the visibility of the author is discussed and illustrated in Table 2 (p. 91). As was pointed out above, judicial argumentation is always rule-governed; yet, it is not governed only by rules but also by more general principles and objectives: open norms and principles; dimensions and authority/ies; dimension of values/freedom of contracts/legality; limited contents/no normative authority/legal practice/judicial literature. In this study it is understood that the communicative persuasive strategy is manifested in the corpus through means of epistemic modality. Epistemic expressions indicate the speaker’s attitude and degree of commitment towards the proposition (Lyons 1977: 797) in a scale of certainty (cf. Holmes 1982) or intensity (Leech 1971). At one end of this scale, there is the maximal certainty that the proposition is true and at the other the minimal certainty of the truthfulness of the proposition. Biber and Finegan (1989) have, with reference to speech styles of English, discussed this feature in English as stance. By stance they mean “the lexical and grammatical expression of attitudes, feelings, judgments, or commitment concerning the propositional content of a message” (1989: 93). Biber and Finegan used a sophisticated statistical device to characterize stance markers and ran a program to find which features fell into clusters – that is, which

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features were found together with more than random frequency. They first divided the stance markers into twelve categories and computed their frequency in 500 texts. They identified six stance styles: Emphatic Expression of Affect, Expository Expression of Doubt, Faceless Stance, Interactional Evidentiality, Predictive Persuasion, and Oral Controversial Persuasion. Biber and Finegan (1989) found that an unmarked, or faceless, style was the most common stance style in their corpus. Official letters were among the texts that belong to this style group. Therefore, even though my analysis at this point focuses only on a restricted number of features, I was interested in seeing how my data – the European Communities Judicial Opinions – would compare with Biber and Finegan’s findings. Evidentiality, as suggested by Chafe (1986), is a term related both to epistemic modality and stance. In a narrow sense, evidentiality either indicates the source of knowledge or gives the evidence for what is stated (Palmer 1990: 12). The concept can also be understood to cover a broader area. According to the broad definition, evidentiality includes any linguistic expression of attitude towards the mediated knowledge (Chafe 1986: 271; see also Lyons 1977). The broad definition of evidentiality seems to indicate that evidentiality is a higher concept than modality. Chafe (1985, 1986) distinguishes three aspects of the marking of evidentiality: (1) the reliability of the knowledge itself, (2) the mode of knowing, and (3) the source of knowledge. The source of knowledge, especially legal knowledge, is something that legal writing is ultimately related to. It cannot be separated from the mode of knowing and thought styles or institutional conventions at a given time or in a given legal culture. Modality in any legal text is related to the changing ideological foundations, the institutional as well as the communicative functions of the genres within the legal register. . Analysis Lyons (1977: 799) makes an important distinction between objective and subjective epistemic modality. By subjective epistemic modality he refers to the writer’s subjective or personal commitment to the epistemological content, whereas objective epistemic modality refers to a generally accepted or proven truth. In the present investigation I focus on the subjective type. It will be shown that unlike for instance in academic prose (see e.g. Hunston 1993: 122) the writer’s presentation of self in a Judicial Opinion cannot be described as non-committal or non-judgmental. On the contrary the act of persuasion is rendered explicitly and in no way denying the intervention of the personal. Of course one must bear in mind here the distinctions of power made by Weber


(1972) and presented above that personal and subjective are related to the role, whereas the power that Advocates General exercise is institutional and legal argumentation rule-governed. In some cases where the author clearly appeals to the audience by pointing out a universal experience or a commonly accepted truth, this is also mentioned. I confine my analysis to overtly marked, direct and explicit expressions of the writer’s attitude and instances where the author’s comment is emphasized by the use of a first person singular pronoun. Of the repertoire of linguistic features used as devices conveying various attitudes towards knowledge, I shall concentrate on utterances that indicate a high degree of the author’s commitment. It is my conviction that these expressions contribute most clearly towards the overall persuasive strategy. I exclude from this discussion all other lexical means of expressing modality such as adverbs and adverbials. These will sometimes be commented on, however, since modal markers often occur in clusters. I concentrate on personal pronouns and private verbs of cognitive processes, explicit statements declaring the author’s position, and reporting as well as nouns in these same categories. This distinction was first made by the literal meaning, or the semantic meaning, of the expressions; secondly, the pragmatic functions were considered. I call this group “expressions declaring position.” By expressions declaring position I refer to explicit expressions of agreeing and disagreeing such as I agree, I accept, I endorse (for a complete list of expressions see Appendix 1) which explicitly and emphatically state the author’s stand in relation to arguments or statements presented at some stage of the process in question or elsewhere in European case law. The following examples demonstrate verbs of cognitive processes (my emphasis). A complete list of expressions is given in Appendix 1. (5) If that assumption is incorrect, as I think it is, it is unnecessary to consider whether the principle was, in fact, respected. (C-220/98) (6) However, I believe that the concept of a decision must receive a uniform community interpretation. (C-55/99) (7) I do not understand how, as the Netherlands submits, traditional products and processes originating in developing countries may be patented in accordance with the Directive even though they are discoveries not inventions. (C-377/98)

In addition to verbs, also any noun referring to cognitive processes, position, sensory evidence, or speech act verbs, and reporting which is accompanied by a first person pronoun was taken into account where relevant. An example of

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an expression including a noun in the category of cognitive processes would be to my knowledge. Biber and Finegan (1989) have not included nouns in their analysis of stance markers. My motivation for including nouns can be illustrated by for instance example (8) where the phrase not to my knowledge is clearly epistemically modifying and could be replaced by a phrase containing the respective verb i.e. not as far as I know. The other expressions such as in (9) could easily be tested in similar manner: in my view contra as I see it or it appears to me. Expressions containing either a verb or a noun are included in the same respective category since the choice within a category seems to be stylistic rather than semantic, or communicative. (8) Similarly the Court is formulating the principle that only those provisions of directives, which are clear and unambiguous, may have direct effect has not to my knowledge suggested that all provisions not so precise and unconditional are thereby invalid. (C-377/98)

Example (9) represents the category of sensory evidence with an expression containing a noun, whereas (10) is an example of one type of expression in the same category where sensory evidence is expressed by a verb. (9) In my view the general rule must be that the number of hours worked by two employees whose pay is being compared. (C-186/98) (10) The notion of a patent on life furthermore appears to me to be unhelpful and unclear. (C-377/98)

In example (11) we find a phrase to my satisfaction containing a first person possessive pronoun with a noun in the expressions declaring position category. (11) However, the Commission has not shown to my satisfaction that the French regime does in fact and in law require the production of documents which are unnecessary. (C-55/99)

Furthermore, expressions containing plural first person personal pronouns were studied, and I will comment on them below. In (12) the writer invites the audience to scrutinize together with him certain figures essential to his mind. (12) The figure we must look at is that of the number of applicants allocated a training place in accordance with the rule in issue – that is to say, on the ground of completion of compulsory national service. (C-79/99)

Constructions such as I agree with. . . and I believe. . ., as well as in my view. . ., it seems to me. . ., to my satisfaction. . . are included in the count. Expressions which are clearly metatextual, referring to parts of the text or to other previ-


Table 1. Distribution of the categories of expressions Category of expressions 1. Cognitive processes 2. Position 3. Sensory evidence 4. Speech act verbs and reporting Total

N

%

128 53 124 51 356

36.0 14.9 34.8 14.3 100.0

ous texts, were excluded from the study (such as for instance in I would recall once more my conclusions, stated above, that. . . (C-376/98)). A complete list of expressions studied is presented in Appendix 1. The method was first to run concordances with WordSmith tools and then scrutinize each occurrence separately. Both negative and positive expressions were first collected separately and when it turned out (as was expected) that affirmative was mostly utilized, the two were merged in every category. The expressions were first collected and grouped on the basis of their semantic reading (Table 1) as explained in the two previous paragraphs and explicated in examples (5) to (12) above. Altogether 356 occurrences are considered to belong into these groups. I will discuss the groups and individual expressions, taking also into account their pragmatic meaning. Modals such as must and would are considered in connection with epistemic modality and particularly where the degree of intensity or certainty is studied. This is not the case here and modals appear together with the expressions studied, as can be seen in example (12) above e.g. we must look at, or I would take the view. They are therefore excluded from the figures presented in Table 1. The modals were, however, also calculated separately and will be discussed briefly. Appendix 1 shows the individual frequencies of the modals must and would. The figures indicated in Table 1 are the outcome of both semantic and pragmatic analyses. Categories 1 and 3, Cognitive Processes and Sensory Evidence, constitute 70.8% of the total number of the collected expressions. The other two, Position and Speech Act Verbs and Reporting then are left with about 29.2% collectively. These figures support the observations presented above that the legal deduction processes inevitably involve legal knowledge, and consequently legal argumentation is based on these cognitive processes. Cognitive processes are represented by 128 or 36.0% cases and therefore make the largest group. All the way starting from the recognition of valid rules as presented in the flowchart in Figure 1, legal knowledge is the necessary prerequisite for the whole process because legal deduction and decision making is

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always rule-governed. Group 3, Sensory Evidence, represents 124 occurrences or 34.8% of all expressions collected. Since these figures are the outcome of both the semantic and pragmatic analyses, they on their part strengthen the figures rendered by the analysis of the expressions of cognitive processes. The relatively small number of Speech Act Verbs and Reporting is in my view notably genre specific within the legal register. It can be understood in the light of the function of this particular subgenre. Its function is not first and foremost directive but argumentative. In the following paragraphs I will discuss the expressions in each category and the outcome of the analysis in detail. .. Expressions denoting cognitive processes This group consists of expressions which in the semantic reading refer to the writer’s cognitive processes. The author uses these expressions referring to his/her deductive reasoning for persuasive purposes. The expressions denoting cognitive processes will be discussed in the order of occurrence in the data when collected instead of the order of frequency. Most of the individual frequencies are so small that the frequency bears no consequence, and this is also the reason why the expressions were grouped together rather than discussed individually. In the following paragraphs the expressions will be described and discussed in the following order: I think (11), I do not think (10); I believe (5), I do not believe (1); I am convinced (1), I am not convinced (3); in my Opinion (27); to my mind (23); to my knowledge (2); I find (1); I consider (27), I do not consider (15); I understand (1), I do not understand (1). The figures in parentheses indicate the frequency of each individual expression in the affirmative and in the negative.

I think/I do not think. The data comprise 21 epistemic occurrences of expressions combining a personal pronoun and the verb think. Only one of the two Advocates General uses these expressions in his writing. It is therefore possible that this is an indicator of personal style. There are, however, too many variables, such as different types of cases and litigants to say whether this observation holds true with any certainty or not. Also the data come from only two authors. In their article, Biber and Finegan (1989) put think in the category of Doubt Verbs. The examples below show that in the present data think appears in various companies, and to my mind its pragmatic purpose is to emphasize rather than hedge. In example (13) below, it is associated with the adjective possible, which itself indicates uncertainty; however, the writer presents a counter-


argument to a previously suggested possibility. He does so contradicting this argument with a negative emphatic I do not think. The writer then proceeds to justify his view by referring to case law and analogical cases. Towards the end of the passage we find I do not think it is appropriate (my emphasis), again a very disapproving statement. (13) Although the Commission criticises the absence of alleviation of the charge in circumstances of force majeure I do not think it is possible to reach any conclusions on this element in the present case. The case-law shows that the Court assesses the issue of force majeure in the context of the particular regulatory framework of the individual case. As it stated in its judgment in First City Trading, it is settled case-law that, since the concept of force majeure does not have the same scope in various spheres of application of Community law, its meaning must be determined by reference to the legal context in which it is to operate. Article 53 of the Customs Code only permits the authorities to take measures, which are necessary to regularize the situation of goods. In the present case we are concerned with a Member State implementing Community law in its national order. It is established that Member States are bound to respect fundamental rights and proportionality, as these principles are interpreted by the Court, when they implement Community law. It seems to follow, at least in the presence of circumstances amounting to force majeure, that a compulsory sale of the importer’s goods, since it is a direct interference with a property right, is unlikely to be a proportionate measure. But the applicant has failed to provide any evidence of circumstances claimed to amount to force majeure which may have affected his own failure to clear the goods in time. In fact, the goods were cleared, though late, and the normal customs duties were then paid. Where the issue is limited to the recovery of a financial penalty, as in the present case, I do not think it is appropriate to engage in speculation by attempting to outline the scope of the application of the concept of force majeure in the absence of any evidence to justify it. (C-42/99)

Example (14) below demonstrates the necessity of the author’s comment in deciding whether an assumption is correct or incorrect. Written Opinion by definition requires this: (14) If that assumption is incorrect, as I think it is, it is unnecessary to consider whether the principle was, in fact, respected. (C-220/98)

Here the writer has to take a side clearly where at the outset two opinions clash. The complementing adjectives appropriate (example (13)), incorrect and unnecessary (example (14)) emphasize the writer’s firm opinion even further. A

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general observation is that in the instances where the writer is overtly present, it is more often than not a question of contradicting strongly either a claim made by one of the parties or a previous interpretation, as is the case in the examples above.

I believe/I do not believe. Another verb denoting cognitive processes is believe/not believe: (15) However, I believe that the concept of a decision must receive a uniform Community interpretation. (C-220/98) (16) Since I do not believe that any decision was taken in the present case, the authorities were not under an obligation to notify the applicant or to mention the possibility of an appeal under Article 243 of the Custom Code. (C- 213/99)

Even though in examples (15) and (16) I believe and I do not believe at first sight seem to be situated at the less certain end of the scale of certainty, the use of the modal must in example (15) moves the expression towards conviction rather than belief. In example (16) again, the simple declarative form directs the reader towards a reading that this is the writer’s conviction, which is based on careful attention to the matter and all documents relevant to it. Furthermore in example (16) the writer expresses his belief in a sentence initial clause or, seen from an information structural point of view, where known or old information is usually placed.16 This indicates first of all that the writer thus evokes information which has already been mentioned in the preceding text and therefore repeats his opinion and bases the rest of the sentence on the assumption that the reader already knows what he is talking about. His argument on the whole is based on whether decision was taken according to the definition of what constitutes a decision that the Customs Code provides. There are 128 instances of expressions of Cognitive Processes. They constitute 36.0% of all the cases and therefore make the largest group in the data. All the way starting from the recognition of valid rules as presented in the flowchart in Figure 1, legal knowledge is the necessary prerequisite for the whole process because legal reasoning in legal contexts decision making is always rule-governed and therefore also knowledge-based. It is therefore reassuring that this characteristic is also clearly apparent in the results of the linguistic analysis.


.. Expressions declaring position This group contains all expressions which explicitly refer to agreeing or disagreeing, or rather – or as it often turned out to be – not agreeing (see examples below). I call this group expressions declaring position, and it is based on the semantic meaning of the expressions, which seem to indicate towards more emotional processes than the previous category, cognitive processes. It should be noted, however, that the name is chosen simply for enabling a differentiation between the groups. The choice does not imply that the writer’s personal feelings are involved any more than they would be in the other groups. What are here called expressions declaring position in fact refer to similarly deductive cognitive processes as those in group 1 and denote thesis and antithesis. Within this category of expressions declaring position, which constituted of 53 instances altogether, the expressions I agree and I do not agree were the most common with 16 occurrences. (17) I start by commenting on the character of harmonisation of national rules. I agree with the argument, put with some force by the Parliament at the oral hearing, that the Member States simply cannot harmonise each other’s laws, regulations or administrative action in fields, which come within the scope of application of the Treaty. (C-220/98) (18) It has been suggested, especially by the Commission, that this essentially raises the question whether a measure is appropriate, or opportune, which is a question of proportionality rather than of competence. The Court should not, therefore, intervene at this stage. I do not agree. (C-220/98)

Interestingly, the verb disagree does not occur in the data. It would require a more thorough study to find an explanation for this, but I would venture here to say that I do not agree is more polite, matter of fact and more formal and less loaded with subjective or moral stance than I disagree is. Almost as often used singular expression is I accept or its negative form I do not accept with fifteen occurrences. By using these expressions the writer clearly chooses a stand and points out the specific argument he or she finds correct and acceptable. The expression is sometimes strengthened and emphasized by other expressions such as in example (20) below by the prepositional phrase in any event: (19) In that respect I accept Bacardi’s argument that certificates of authenticity for Bourbon whiskey have similar features to certificates of origin form A: both record that certain goods were produced in a specific country in

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accordance with certain criteria and both give rise to a certain form of favourable customs treatment in the Community. (C-253/99) (20) I cannot in any event accept the defendants’ argument that the alleged fact that the suffix zola is a common suffix in Italian place names could in itself prevent its being an evocation in the context in which it is used: the fact that it might be common in some parts of Italy cannot prevent it from being an evocation elsewhere, where names ending in – zola are rare. (C-87/97)

I reject, which is also a negative counterpart to I accept, occurs five times. (21) I accordingly reject the arguments that the Directive and the Convention on Biological Diversity are incompatible, without therefore needing to consider what the implications of any such incompatibility would be. (C-377/98)

I share occurs twice. In example (22) the writer passes a moral judgment, which already another Advocate General has at a previous state of the proceedings expressed. As far as I understand, this is not an argument that could carry much weight either way since the gravamen of the case is not about dealing illegal drugs but where drug dealers are renting a table in a cafeteria for their business and whether they should pay VAT (value added tax) on the rent or not. Nevertheless, underlying there is the moral dilemma of whether taxing an activity is to condone it. Therefore, I would say that quoting a colleague further strengthens the persuasive force of the opinion as a whole. (22) I would share the unhappiness expressed by Advocate General Léger in Goodwin and Unstead, when noting “the flippant disregard of the principle Nemo auditur turpitudinem propriam allegans exhibited by the appellants in that case in seeking to rely on the unhealthy, and even dangerous nature from an economic point of view, of their activities, in order to prove that they were not liable to pay VAT.” (C-158/98)

In example (23), the writer disagrees with the national court in its interpretation of Community regulations; this he does, at least in my opinion, in a very soft and tactful manner. However, again, the question is not a crucial one from the point of view of the case. (23) At the outset I would mention that I do not share the referring court’s concerns as regards the relationship between on the one hand Article 239(1) of the Code in conjunction with Article 905(1) of the implementing regulation and on the other hand Article 236(1) of the Code. (C-253/99)


.. Expressions denoting sensory evidence Basically 4 different types of expressions were included in this group including verbs appear, regard, and seem and the noun view. Although the verbs could denote perception as well, they have here a modal reading and express the writer’s opinion and commitment towards the propositional content. Example (24) below, although omitting the pronoun (as in the phrase It seems to me), is to be understood as the writer’s view similarly as in example (25).

It seems. Examples (24) through to (34), although using verbs of sensory evidence (seems, appears), merit epistemic and pragmatic reading. The verbs express the writer’s opinion and attitude towards the meaning of the proposition. Rather than the verbs themselves the company of adjectives and adverbs they keep denote the writer’s strong opinions. These expressions should be considered to express certainty rather than doubt: (24) In any event, it seems clear that the national court is misguided in its suggestion that Article 2(4) applies only to measures in favour of women. (C-386/98) (25) Given that both names are used to describe a creamy blue cheese (which is not to minimise the differences between the two cheeses which will be apparent to connoisseurs) it seems to me that Cambozola is unquestionably, as a matter of ordinary use of language, an evocation of Gorgonzola for the purposes of Article 13(1)(b). (C-87/97) (26) . . .criterion rather than direct effect which seems appropriate in this context. (C-377/98) (27) It seems manifest in the present case that Germany has taken no steps to give priority to the regeneration of waste oils. (C-102/97) (28) It seems to me at least doubtful whether that can really be said of the current situation in the Netherlands, where an official distinction has been drawn between hard and soft drugs. (C-158/98) (29) . . .the question referred in Johnston seems to me to be entirely relevant today. . . (C-376/98) (30) If the Community trade-mark system is to function effectively, and if applications are not to be swamped by opposition proceeding, it seems essential that marks should be registrable in the absence of a genuine and properly substantiated role of confusion. (C-425/98)

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(31) The concept of bonnes moeurs seems not to feature significantly in Community law apart from the measures of Community intellectual property legislation mentioned above. (C-377/98)

It appears to me, serves the same pragmatic purpose as it seems to me, but is less often opted for by the writers. There are only four instances (three of them below) in the data, and nothing other than stylistic variation explains the difference in the use of these expressions. It is not possible to deduce any shift on the scale of certainty or intensity. (32) The notion of a patent on life furthermore appears to me to be unhelpful and unclear. (C-377/98) (33) It appears to me, however, as indicated by the Parliament, that that exception falls within the exclusion from patentability of processes for modifying the germ line genetic identity of human beings in Article 6(2)(b). (C-377/98) (34) The requirement, that the file be updated when products are altered also appears to me to be legitimate, once one accepts the legitimacy of the French system of reacto-vigilance based on continuous assessment. (C-55/99)

There are 18 occurrences of the evidential verb seem in the data. In academic prose the use of the verb seem would more often than not, at least in the so-called soft sciences, be considered hedging or modifying the writer’s responsibility concerning the information. If we look at the company in which the verb seem occurs, we find emphatic and strong adjectives or intensifiers (such as clear in example (24)) as complements to stress the writer’s views. In the case of the expressions which can semantically be interpreted as evidentials or expressions of sensory evidence such as seem or appear, the reading can be both semantic and pragmatic. Especially when the complement is an adjective, the epistemic reading is more plausible, if the characteristic described by the adjective cannot be perceived directly but depends on reasoning. In the written Opinions, the writer’s perception as well as the reader’s is focused on the written evidence. The reasoning is then based on the evidence perceived in the text and it represents the writer’s attitude towards that evidence through reasoning. In the present data the expressions including seem represent authority rather than hedging and might simply be replaced by “In my opinion” or “I think that.” In sum, all the existential constructions can be read it seems to me. As was pointed out above, expressions of epistemic modality relate to evidentials if we accept the narrow definition of them. This definition implies


that the terms evidential and evidentiality refer to expressions indicating the source of knowledge, while epistemic modality is concerned with the degrees of knowledge. In his broader definition Chafe (1986: 271) put it as follows: “any linguistic expression of attitudes toward knowledge.” Despite this distinction between modality and evidentiality at the conceptual level, an expression may refer to both of them. Keeping this in mind I call the following verbs and expressions evidential since at the semantic level they refer to sensory or visual evidence: it seems to me, it appears to me, in my view, I regard. At the pragmatic level they are used to express the degree of knowledge. I have taken into account only expressions that are directly linked to the author by a personal or possessive pronoun. In many of the cases the reading can be sensory at the semantic level but, in my opinion, at the pragmatic level, rather than referring to the source of knowledge, such expressions are used as means of indicating the degree of knowledge.

In my view. Of the sensory evidence group the phrase in my view is by far the most frequently used single phrase of 87 cases (see Appendix 1, 3). This expression, broadly speaking, serves the same purpose as the previous ones. It is possible that for stylistic reasons and to avoid repetition one is chosen over the other. Examples (35) through to (38) show that in my view is used especially when the Advocate General takes a stand to the nature of the case by choosing the correct provisions to apply to the case in question. (35) This antithesis highlights the essential problem raised by the case, which, in my view, is to adopt the appropriate standard for protection of consumers against being misled or confused by false claims. (C-220/98) (36) In my view, the essence of the case-law is that narcotic drugs, because dealing in them is absolutely prohibited in all the Member States and can result only in criminal proceedings, do not play any role in the normal economy. (C-158/98) (37) In my view however cases such as Garland are not to the point. (C-236/98) (38) It is important, in my view, to identify clearly the precise nature and scope of Article 2(1) of the VBZA. (C-37/99)

In example (39), the writer undermines the deductive reasoning of one of the parties and, showing a gap in it, appeals to the reader’s good sense, thus persuading the reader of the correctness of the writer’s own reasoning.

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(39) In any event, the mere fact – if it be the case – that the product is not soluble in water cannot in my view mean that it cannot be cheese since most cheese is also not soluble in water. (C-42/99)

In examples (40), (41), and (42), the question is of interpreting either words, definitions, or provisions: (40) It is, in my view, only obligatory provisions concerning the use of a product and which are such as to affect trade in that product or in related products which are covered by the word use in the present context. (C-37/99) (41) In my view, that provision applies only to marks which are sufficiently specific to deceive a consumer as to, for example, the real nature, quality or geographical origin of the goods. (C-87/97) (42) In my view, a vaccination requirement indisputably lays down characteristics required of a product, i.e. in the case of a pig, that it be vaccinated. (C-37/99)

.. Speech act verbs and reporting The use of modals with speech act verbs indicates rhetorical emphasis. There are 56 occurrences of the modal would together with the first person singular pronoun and 30 of these together with a speech act verb. I would note is the most commonly used expression in this group with nine occurrences. (43) I would note as a preliminary point that the US authorities have apparently been issuing the certificates confirming that Jack Daniels Whiskey is a Bourbon whiskey only since 1996. (C-253/99) (44) Finally I would note a difference of emphasis between various language versions of the Directive. (C-425/98) (45) I would note at the outset that the concepts of ordre public and morality have a long and distinguished history as criteria for the lawfulness of the grant or exercise of intellectual property rights. (C-377/98) (46) I would note first that the supplement is clearly pay within the meaning of Article 119, and hence there would be discrimination if, for example, a group of predominantly male employees doing work of equal value to that of the midwives were denied the supplement if they worked inconvenient hours. (C-236/98) (47) I would note, in passing, that this issue is quite unrelated to that of recognition of tests conducted in other countries. (C-55/99)


Examples (43) to (47) show that I would note serves to emphasize some important point of argumentation or a point of departure and at the same time to organize the forthcoming chain of reasoning. Example (48) functions in a similar manner; the writer criticizes the defense for what he considers to be a serious gap in the defense’s argumentation. In (49) the writer criticizes strongly the conduct of one of the parties and emphasizes his own view by this expression. (48) The defendant, I should here note, has not addressed at any stage the question of the failure to take account of unpaid marriage or family allowance for the purposes of pension calculation. (C-187/98) (49) I would note that it is not helpful to the Court or to the party concerned for a party so to contradict or deny its own assertions. (C-42/99)

I conclude, with 21 occurrences, is the most common expression in the category “speech act verbs and reporting.” It is of course only natural that there should be a conclusion but what is notable is that the authors bring themselves into the text despite the fact that there would be a number of alternate ways to express the same content. Examples (50) and (51) illustrate this: (50) I accordingly conclude that Gorgonzola should be protected by virtue of Article 13(1)(b) of the Regulation against evocation by Cambozola. (C-87/97) (51) I would conclude, therefore, that the Community legislator was manifestly in error, or manifestly exceeded its discretion, regarding its assessment of the benefits likely to accrue in fact to undertakings active in the affected field and to the establishment and functioning of the internal market. (C-376/98)

The following examples (52) through (55) display a variety of speech act verbs basically reminding the reader of the writer’s previous arguments and statements thus emphasizing them further. (52) I would recall once more my conclusions, stated above, that Community competence under Article 100A of the Treaty . . . (C-376/98) (53) My initial doubts in this regard were resolved by the responses of the council and the Parliament at the oral hearing. (C-376/98) (54) I have already taken some pains to demonstrate that these objectives are not mutually conclusive but, rather, of a different order and not in competition. (C-376/98)

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(55) I would, nonetheless, rely upon my discussion of that issue to demonstrate, in the alternative, that the Directive is disproportional in the wider sense of that term, in that it fails to satisfy the first of the three requirements of proportionality. (C-376/98)

In (56) and (57), the writer again wishes to highlight some deficiency he has detected in the process and documentation of the case: (56) I should stress here that it is unthinkable that the Community legislature, in choosing the word organise in Article 7(2) of the Directive, meant to indicate some activity falling short of actually effecting the inspections of controls in question. (C-336/97) (57) The defendant makes a preliminary point that I should dispose of at once. (C-187/98)

In my opinion. As one would expect, Advocate General’s Opinion contains expressions referring to her or his opinion explicitly. It is also very logical that “my opinion” is mostly used in the conclusions part of the text where the writers summarize their views and give their recommendations. In example (58) the writer has chosen to emphasize his view also by placing the phrase in my opinion between the auxiliary must and the main verb fail. This placement of in my opinion interrupts the reading process and thus makes the reader stop to consider the importance of the comment. (58) It follows, for the reasons I have given, that this action must, in my opinion, fail. (C-377/98) (59) However, in my opinion, it does not follow that particular agreements containing specific clauses having clearly different economic effects should, for the purpose of applying the Delimitis test, necessarily be regarded as similar. (C-214/99) (60) In my opinion, the word use in the definition of a technical regulation refers to use in a market related context or, perhaps, in part of a market. (C-37/99)

In example (61) I find serves for the same purpose as in my opinion in examples (58)–(60), although it particularly emphasizes the writer’s personal distaste for the very idea of the appellant winning the case. The use of the strong but rather formal adjective repugnant gives further emphasis to this effect.


(61) More generally, I find the notion that criminal activity, and particularly drug dealing, should, by the very fact of its criminality, receive specially favourable tax treatment, repugnant. (C-158/98)

.. Collective and generic ‘we’ Of the generic expressions used, first person plural is worth mentioning as an argumentative device. It is sometimes used to refer to general knowledge; for instance, in the following example (62 below) the writer goes as far as the ancient times, quotes Homer’s Odyssey and tells us about the Cyclops Polyphemus “who sat down to milk his ewes and bleating goats, which he did methodically, putting her young to each mother as he finished. He then curdled half the white milk, gathered it all up, and stored it in wicker baskets. . .” in his cave where Ulysses and his men found it. (62) We do not know what coagulating agent Polyphemus used; the use of rennet in Roman times is however recorded by Columella in Rei Rusticae (On Rustic Matters). (C-42/99)

The first person plural pronoun clearly refers to the writer’s conviction that no one in fact knows what substance it was that the Romans used because to his knowledge such records have not survived. In the following again the writer once more draws attention to certain facts and invites the audience along with him to scrutinize one figure – rather than some other figure – that he finds necessary in order to justify the conclusions of his deduction chain. (63) The figure we must look at is that of the number of applicants allocated a training place in accordance with the rule in issue – that is to say, on the ground of completion of compulsory national service. (C-79/99)

. Authority When dealing with linguistic phenomena within an institutional setting one unavoidably deals with questions of power and authority already briefly referred to in the introductory section above. Wilson (1996: 1) defines authority as “a form of legitimation which comes to be worked out on an interactional, social and cultural level.” The most obvious example according to Wilson (1996) is the law itself. This seems to be in accordance with Weber (1972) when he distinguishes two kinds of authority or power. The power we are dealing

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with here is institutional power Herrschaft rather than individual power Macht. This kind of authority is granted by the institution within which the authority is manifested, which in a classic speech act sense would constitute the appropriate conditions for recognition of a voice of authority (Austin 1962; Searle 1969; see also Salmi-Tolonen 2001). Today a simple reference to authority is not sufficient in legal argumentation. Judicial Opinions just as well as court decisions need to be justified and explained in a comprehensive manner. Today no authority would get away with simple statements without presenting the deductive reasoning process through which the conclusions have been reached (see e.g. Saarenpää 1995: 31 and passim). In the case of Judicial Opinions this is particularly crucial first of all because the written Opinion is only one link in the proceedings towards the final decision. In addition, the element of conflict is always present in Judicial Opinions. Also, interaction and dialogue between the parties are an ongoing communicative process during which legal reasoning and justification of the issues on the part of all parties is required. .. Citing statutory law and case law In the overall structure of Judicial Opinions we can discern the structure of judicial syllogism: first the legal rule, then the facts of the case, and finally the result. The superstructure (see van Dijk 1980) of the written Opinion is indicated by the section titles. Self-evidently, the text of the Opinion commences with an Introduction, which briefly outlines the case. This Introduction is submitted after the case has been identified to belong to a certain category of cases, such as for example “the infringement action regarding the proportionality of the restriction imposed on the free movement of goods.” Section II contains the legal or legislative context of the case and also sometimes the legislative antecedents. Here the Advocates General quote the legislation and case law that they consider relevant in each case. In my view, in these sections the writers are mainly to be seen implicitly. It is their competence that decides which pieces of legislation are necessary to be quoted and how far back the legislative antecedents should reach to constitute effective argumentation. To give an example, in one case concerning tobacco advertising, the proceedings at the Court of Justice of the E.C. were extended as far back in time as 1984, the year when the Commission of the European Communities first raised the possibility of regulating tobacco advertising. Section III usually recites the factual context although in some cases legal and factual contexts are presented in the same section. Factual context recites the previous phases of the proceedings. It is usually


presented in chronological order, which is marked by a temporal text strategy, for example: (64) A year after the adoption of this amendment, on 19 January 1995, . . . In a telex of 23 January 1995, the Commission . . . In a letter of 6 April 1995 . . . On 15 April 1977, the Commission . . . (C-55/99)

Another strategy is spatial. In this strategy, the relevant legislation is cited: (65) Article L-761-14-1, first indent, of the French Public Health Code, . . . Articles 6 and 4 of the impugned Decree provide for . . . Article 5 of the impugned Decree requires . . . Article 3 of the Directive provides . . . (C-55/99)

The factual context may also be presented together with a description of the national proceedings, in cases where a court of a member state requests for preliminary ruling.17 Analysis or Observations and Analysis follow after the legal and procedural facts have been described and explained. As can be expected, the writer is more explicitly present in the Analysis section and it may even begin with the first person singular pronoun e.g. “I am not persuaded . . .”. Then finally come the conclusions, where the writer is also explicitly present often with “I conclude . . .,” “I recommend . . .,” or “In my opinion . . .”. The final section is the Conclusion, which summarizes and presents the results of the chain of reasoning brought up in the analysis section. The Conclusion is written in a more formal or conventional style containing less variation and epistemically modified expressions. Apart from the first person singular and verbs, other epistemically modified expressions were studied and one might say that the Conclusion section is almost lacking in those expressions. This can be explained by the title of the text segment, the Conclusion, which provides a hypertheme for the section, and in addition the writing conventions. The reader’s expectations have already been evoked by these means and no explicit expressions are therefore needed. .. The visibility of the author It is seen here that reference to the professional status of the Advocate General is manifested in such expressions as “I think” and “In my opinion,” which Brown and Levinson (1978) (see also Biber & Finegan 1988: 2) discussed under the rubric of quality hedges.18 In other genres, for instance in academic writing, this type of personal reference and the use of first person singular are perhaps more often than not considered to serve the pragmatic function of saving face

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or hedging responsibility of the message. In the present data I believe that its one purpose at least is to stress the authority and expertise and thorough work of the writer. It emphasizes the higher or stronger commitment of the author in a situation where she or he needs to take a stand for or against conflicting arguments or evidence presented by one of the parties. One genre-specific feature in legal writing generally speaking is an extensive use of passive voice or a collective noun as subject (for instance, “the Court has decided”19 ). The reason for this is understood to mark the anonymity and authority of the court or the legislator, and it is rather unusual to find opinions expressed in first person and active voice. The use of first person and its communicative function here is interpreted to be to emphasize the professional integrity and expertise of an Advocate General. It is here understood that authority is also legitimated as personal or cultural knowledge acquired through education and training. Overuse of hedges would lead to what O’Barr (1982; see also O’Barr & Atkins 1980) calls powerless speech in his study of language use in the courtroom, where individual epistemological responsibility is also significant. In Table 2 I summarize and illustrate the cognitive process and the superstructure of a prototypical Judicial Opinion presented by the Advocates General at the Court of Justice of the European Communities. The table also indicates the type of the author’s visibility and the dimension of authority. In Table 2 the far left hand side column refers back to Figure 2 and repeats the functions and moves of the argumentation process, which represents a more abstract cognitive level of the process. The dimension of authority is extracted from Figure 2; it can be found explicitly at the text level in direct references to legislation or case law. The dimension of authority is stated in the column on the far right hand side indicating whether authority is mainly implicit or explicit in the text. Text segments are presented in the column second from the left, and they actually constitute the superstructure of the type of Judicial Opinion in question. Next, the propositional content, i.e. the semantic level of each section is explained. The visibility of the author is indicated in the next column. It indicates whether the writer is present in the text explicitly (overtly) or implicitly (covertly). As has been explained above, this study focuses on persuasive markers such as the overtly modalized expressions where the writer is explicitly present. It was also pointed out in the introductory section that it is equally important to study the absence of these markers or sections where the writer is only covertly or implicitly present.


Table 2. The superstructure of a prototypical Advocate General’s Opinion Role in the Text segment Propositional argumentation content process

Visibility Dimension of of the author authority

Recognizing the rule

Implicit

Introduction Object and type of case

Interpreting the contents Institutional support

Section II

Section III

Definition of the legal domain (Reference to precedents (Explicit) and metatext describing the contents of the Opinion) Summary of legal and fac- Implicit tual background – legislation and case law – legislative antecedents

Legislative context Principles underlying the relevant legislation and case law Recital Factual context previous phases of the process Observations Description of the possible written observations of the parties Persuasive Analysis Reference to precedents and argumentation European case-law Conclusion Opinion and proposed action

Implicit

Explicit

Implicit

Explicit

Implicit

Explicit

Implicit

Explicit

Explicit

Explicit

Explicit

Implicit

Next, I will elucidate the table by discussing one example case, namely case C-158/98, Staatssecretaris van Financiën v V.O.F. Coffeeshop Siberië. This case is a request for preliminary rulings from the supreme court in the Netherlands. In the text segment marked Introduction20 in Table 2, the type of the case is explained. In this example case the first sentence makes it explicit that this is a request for preliminary ruling: “The Hoge Raad der Nederlanden asks whether VAT is payable on the rent of coffee-shop tables for the sale of cannabis in the Netherlands.” The writer is not explicitly present here, but his ideology or values are seen in his comments on the moral dilemma underlying this case. To give one example of his stand: “Most legal systems have long resolved the issue by preferring not to allow moral scruple by a paradox to reward criminality

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by exempting it from taxation.” His stand is made clear both by the propositional content and the choice of words and modalized expressions such as to reward criminality. The writer then becomes visible or explicit in the metatext referring to the rest of his Opinion: “I shall first summarise the Dutch legal background and the order of reference.” “Secondly, I shall examine. . .the principles underlying the relevant case-law.” “Finally, I shall explore whether it is possible to treat the hire of a table as a transaction, innocent in itself, and distinct from the illegal drug supply which it is designed to facilitate, or whether, by reason of the clear criminal content of the transaction, but in spite of the officially approved policy of the Netherlands Government, it should be regarded as inseparable from that drug supply and thus governed by the reasoning of the Court in Happy Family.” This kind of metatextual structuring is not always found in these texts (hence the parentheses around “Explicit” in Table 2), but when it is used, it seems to comply with the text strategy found in other professional texts written by English writers. In the next section the legal and factual background is summarized. More often than not, it is necessary to explain national and cultural peculiarities before the case can be understood. In this example case, the defendant runs a coffeeshop in Amsterdam and it is necessary to explain that in the Netherlands coffee shops are establishments which, while not serving alcohol, serve coffee and other refreshments, but where also soft drugs are sold and consumed. The narcotics are sold by an accredited house dealer who pays rent to the owner, who in this case is the defendant. The text then recites and explains the proceedings in national courts, court of first instance or regional court, and court of appeals, and comments on relevant national legislation. This part of the Opinion can be described as expository and narrative in style even if the overriding function is argumentative and persuasive. The argumentativeness and persuasiveness arise from the choices the writer has made while compiling this part of the text. His choices are, as has been mentioned, rule-governed and highly dependent on the writer’s expert legal knowledge but nevertheless expert opinions. In this section the writer’s presence is implicit. The section is summarized in the final and essential question: “Must Article 2 of the Sixth Directive therefore be interpreted as meaning that no liability to turnover tax arises in respect of a person who, for consideration, offers another person the opportunity to deal in cannabis products?” The parties in the conflict are given a chance to submit their observations. In this case the defendant, the Netherlands, and the Commission submitted their observations. The paradoxical nature of the case culminates here since


the gravamen of the defendant’s submission was to emphasize its own illegal behavior. This argument rose from the underlying moral scruple that to tax an activity would mean condoning it. The Advocate General has already pointed out in the introductory section that most legal systems have solved this problem and do not allow exemption from taxation in case of illegal activity, and that Community law is generally of the same view but has made an exception of the supply of narcotic drugs. In this section the writer is implicitly present by pointing out the paradoxical argument. In the Analysis part again the Advocate General is explicitly present by means of the overtly modalized expressions which are the focus of this study such as “It would be entirely inappropriate for this Court to pronounce on any such proposition” or “I find the notion that criminal activity, and particularly drug dealing, should, by the very fact of its criminality, receive specially favourable tax treatment, repugnant.” Combined with these explicit statements there are of course a number of expressions making the writer’s stance clear, e.g. “Wrongdoers should not reap benefits in proportion to their wrongdoing.” The propositional content of the Analysis section is dedicated to precedents and case law. Through reference to these, institutional authority is expressed explicitly. In the example case, the Conclusion part is reasonably short. The propositional content is the Advocate General’s recommendation for the Court’s answer to supreme court in the Netherlands. The writer is explicitly present, using a speech act verb “I recommend . . .,” and the authority is present in the reference to the provision of the Sixth Council Directive on the harmonization of the Laws of the Member States relating to turnover taxes. In sum, Table 2 shows that the indicators chosen in this study of the Advocate General’s presence are found explicitly in the introductory section though not always – hence the parentheses. Furthermore, the writer’s comments are explicit in the analysis and the conclusion sections. It is interesting that the columns ‘dimension of authority’ and ‘visibility of the author’ are not mutually exclusive with regard to explicitness; both can be explicit at the same time. In the text segment describing the written responses or observations of the parties of the litigation, the visibility of the author is marked implicit and the dimension of authority explicit in the example case. In this section the Advocate General is reporting what he thinks are the main points of the observations and he, therefore, stays implicit. The presence of authority is explicit because the parties submitting observations refer to legislation and its interpretation as authority, and also the Advocate General comments on legislation or case law. Institutional support, which is indicated in the leftmost column, is present throughout this section.

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. Summing up I have argued above that the persuasive strategies in Judicial Opinions, especially the written Opinions of the Advocates General at the European Court of Justice, are at least partly related to modality and evidentiality. The focus of the study was on expressions where the author, the Advocate General, is explicitly present in the form of a first person singular pronoun. The reason for this was that the legal register is diverse and comprises subgenres whose genre-typical features do not comply with features considered universal to legal register or genre. Legal register is commonly known to be superfluous in the use of the passive voice and collective subjects such as the court, the legislator, the Parliament, the government 21 etc. This choice of a collective subject has been considered to serve the purpose of non-commitment and enhancing objectivity while strengthening institutional authority. One conspicuous feature deviant from the general observations of the legal genre in the data at hand, the written Judicial Opinions, is the overt use of first person singular as subject. I consider this to be a genre-specific feature and therefore meriting investigation. I also claim that this feature strongly contributes towards the persuasive strategy of the Opinion text. This study shows that the expressions where first person singular is connected with cognitive processes, and where the writers commit themselves strongly to the facts or arguments presented by using first person either overtly (I, my) or implicitly (as in some existential constructions), were the most frequently used expressions collected from the data. This result is in line with the necessity of the Advocates General to base their persuasive argumentation on expert judicial reasoning. Their ability to do this, again, depends on their professional and legal knowledge and the cognitive processes based on it. The second frequently occurring category was the sensory evidence, which, had the criteria been different, could have been merged with the category of cognitive processes. The categorization was based on the linguistic meaning of the expressions and only secondly on the epistemic reading, and, hence, these groups were treated separately. This was necessary since the purpose was to find out which linguistic expressions were used for achieving the persuasive effect. Expressions in this category were basically referring to sense of vision: in my view or it appears to me. Their enhanced meaning was understood as referring to the writers’ opinions, which were again based on their legal knowledge and judicial reasoning. The two categories, cognitive processes and sensory evidence, constitute about 72% of all the cases collected. This result confirms that the assumption of


legal argumentation being based on cognitive deductive processes is manifested at the linguistic level by using both expressions that can be interpreted literally but also expressions that need to be inferred. It would require further study to establish how these results connect to the conceptual and cognitive level. It was also beyond this study to see how the degrees of doubt and certainty can be discerned between the two categories. This point would merit further investigation. In this brief survey of linguistic devices contributing towards the persuasive strategy of argumentation, I have shown that the legal register in this respect contains clearly distinguishable subgenres. Although the legal register displays several linguistic features peculiar to the register throughout, these subgenres employ linguistic means perhaps more often associated with other types of texts. A case in point is Judicial Opinions. The genre-specific text-internal feature in the studied texts is the expressions where the writer is overtly present. The persuasive strategy is based on the force of these expressions that in other types of texts could be considered subjective rather than objective. While argumentative strategies and acceptability of various linguistic means are genre-dependent, generically the Judicial Opinions can be considered persuasive rather than directive. In directive genres non-commitment indicated by modal expressions is strategic and increases the reliability of the text. The persuasive strategy of the Opinion texts thus works quite differently – a strong explicit commitment from the writer’s part increases the persuasive force by emphasizing the reliability of professional expertise. One should note, however, that the examined expressions are used sparingly and strategically in appropriate text segments and not all through the Opinion texts as Table 2 illustrated. The results confirm the intuitive expectations of the need for explicit marking of the author’s reasoning in written Judicial Opinions. The Opinions of the Advocates General at the European Court of Justice display a large number of expressions where the writer is explicitly present. The largest categories were found to be those explicitly denoting cognitive processes and those denoting sensory evidence whose epistemic reading however indicates the writer’s opinion. This investigation was partly motivated by the hope that studies focusing on documents which accrue daily at the European Court of Justice might have some useful practical implications for the translators working for their translation services. The bulk of the translation work is enormous and not all the work can be done by in-house translators but is often commissioned to free lance translators in the member states. Research on the communicative strate-

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gies can therefore also be of service to translators. It is a well known fact that the pragmatic meanings are hard to recognize and learn in a foreign language, and the means for expressing modalities are vastly different in different languages. Another more practical implication for linguistic studies on legal documents is the development and prospective applications within legal informatics. Case law will be increasingly available in digital form in the future and uncertainty regarding the outcome of certain types of cases will diminish if in addition to the databases we have intelligent retrieval and search systems at our disposal. As far as I can see, as was mentioned above, linguistic investigation plays an important role in the prospective methods, be they based on conceptual retrieval or key word systems or any other means. The decisive factors will always be language related. In Judicial Opinions, be they spoken or written, persuasive strategies and persuasive abilities play an important role. The present chapter has discussed one aspect of this complicated communicative situation basically from the writer’s, the Advocate General’s, point of view although discussing theoretically the role of the audience and of being cognizant of the fact that persuasion is an interactive phenomenon. If genre is defined by text-external means, then within the legal register written Judicial Opinions constitute a genre of its own. This chapter has shown that not only text-external criteria but also textinternal criteria render results pointing towards the same direction: persuasive strategies are genre-specific and thus confirm Judicial Opinions as constituting a distinct genre.

Notes . The full name of this court today is the Court of Justice of the European Communities. It is one of the main institutions of the European Community (Article 4(1) of the EC Treaty). The Court of Justice ensures that the law is upheld in the interpretation and application of the EC and EU Treaties. . Opinion will be capitalized wherever it refers to the genre or the text as a whole in the sense of containing the Advocate General’s professional view and suggestion how the case should be decided, as opposed to opinion in a pragmatic sense used for emphasis in the text and one of the persuasive devices used in this genre. . See also Bourdieu (1979, 1982). . See Figure 2, p. 71. . The different audiences will be discussed in detail below. . For more on precedents and case law see MacCormick and Summers (1997).

Persuasion in judicial argumentation . Personal communication: Professor Richard DeMulder, Erasmus University, Rotterdam. . The language policy of the European Court of Justice differs from the EU general language policy in that the working language of the Judges is French, the decisions are deliberated in French etc. The Opinions make an exception to this rule. . For more information see http://www.europa.eu.int/en/instit/ . Although Perelman (1980) makes a difference between persuading and convincing, I am not making such a distinction here. . Cf. Goffman (1981), who wanted to include everyone in hearing range, in his terms also bystanders and eavesdroppers. . See also Trosborg’s (1997) discussion of participants and contracts. . See also Oh (2000) on potential differences and interchangeability of actually and in fact and Taglicht (2001) on the use of actually as a propositional modifier. . For more on linguistic vs. enhanced meaning see Ariel (2002) and Giora (2002). . I am cognizant of the fact that legal knowledge cannot be reduced to mere knowledge of legal rules. The nature of legal knowledge is a complex and lengthy issue, which merits a study of its own. . I owe this observation to Tuija Virtanen. . For different type of cases brought before the court see introduction to this chapter. . The other category is quantity hedges e.g. approximately, roughly etc. . Consider also the enacting formula: “Be it enacted by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, . . .”, which emphasizes the institutional role of the agent and not necessarily the person who holds the title. . The texts do not necessarily have the names given to the parts of structure as titles. . See also Mellinkoff (1963) or Gustafsson (1975).

Table of Cases C-213/99 José Teodoro de Andrade v Director da Alfândega de Leixões C-376/98 Federal Republic of Germany v European Parliament and Council of the European Union C-102/97 Commission of the European Communities v Federal Republic of Germany C-158/98 Staatssecretaris van Financiën v V.O.F. Coffeeshop Siberië C-187/98 Commission v Hellenic Republic C-214/99 Neste Markkinointi Oy v Yötuuli Ky, Eija Inkeri Ritamäki, AnnaKaisa Jukkola, Jari Markus Jukkola C-220/98 Estée Lauder Cosmetics GmbH & Co. ORG v Lancaster Group GmbH





Tarja Salmi-Tolonen

C-37/99 C-42/99 C-55/99 C-186/98 C-236/98 C-336/97 C-368/00 C-377/98 C-425/98 C-79/99 C-87/97

C-386/98 C-253/99

Criminal Proceedings against Roelof Donkersteeg Fábrica de Queijo ERU Portuguesa Ld v Tribunal Técnico Aduaneiro de Segunda Instância Commission of the European Communities v French Republic Ministério Público v Maria Amélia Nunes and Evangelina de Matos Jämställdhetsombudsmannen v Örebro Läns Landsting Commission of the European Communities v Italian Republic Commission of the European Communities v Kingdom of Sweden Kingdom of the Netherlands v European Parliament and Council of the European Union The Directive Marca Mode CV v Adidas AG and Adidas Benelux BV Julia Schnorbus v Land Hessen Consorzio per la Tutela del Formaggio Gorgonzola v 1. Käserei Champignon Hofmeister GmbH & Co. KG, Heising, Germany 2. Eduard Bracharz Gesellschaft mbH, Vienna, Austria Commission of the European Communities v Italian Republic Firma Bacardi GmbH v Hauptzollamt Bremerhaven

References Adam, Jean-Michel & Bonhomme, Marc (1997). L’argumentation publicitaire: Rhetoric de l’eloge et de la persuasion. Paris: Editions Nathan. Amossy, Ruth (2000). L’argumentation dans le discours: Discours politique, littérature d’idées, fiction. Paris: Editions Nathan. Ariel, Mira (2002). “Introduction”. Journal of Pragmatics, 34, 345–347. Austin, John (1962). How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bhatia, Vijay K. (1983). An Applied Discourse Analysis of English Legislative Writing. [A language studies unit research report.] Birmingham: University of Aston. Biber, Douglas & Finegan, Edward (1988). “Adverbial stance types in English”. Discourse Processes, 11, 1–34. Biber, Douglas & Finegan, Edward (1989). “Styles of stance in English: Lexical and grammatical marking of evidentiality and affect”. Text, 9 (1), 93–124. Bourdieu, Pierre (1971). “Le marché des biens symboliques”. LÁnnée sociologique, 22, 49– 126. Bourdieu, Pierre (1977). “L´économie des échanges linguistiques”. Langue française, 34, 17– 34. Bourdieu, Pierre (1979). Distinction critique sociale du jugement. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. Bourdieu, Pierre (1982). Ce que parler veut dire: l´économie des échanges linguistiques. Paris: Fayard.


Brown, Penelope & Levinson, Stephen C. (1978). “Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena”. In E. N. Goody (Ed.), Questions and Politeness: Strategies in Social Interaction (pp. 56–290). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Chafe, Wallace (1985). “Linguistic differences produced by differences between speaking and writing”. In D. R. Olson, N. Torrance, & A. Hildyard (Eds.), Literacy, Language, and Learning: The Nature and Consequence of Reading and Writing (pp. 105–123). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chafe, Wallace (1986). “Evidentiality in English conversation and academic writing”. In W. Chafe & J. Nichols (Eds.), Evidentiality: The Linguistic Coding of Epistemology (pp. 261– 272). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Dascal, Marcelo & Wróblewski, Jerzy (1991). “The rational law-maker and the pragmatics of legal interpretation”. Journal of Pragmatics, 15 (5), 421–445. DeVitt, Amy J. (1991). “Intertextuality in tax accounting: Generic, referential, and functional”. In C. Bazerman & J. Paradis (Eds.), Textual Dynamics of the Professions. Historical and Contemporary Studies of Writing in Professional Communities (pp. 336– 358). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. van Dijk, Teun (1980). Macrostructures: An Interdisciplinary Study of Global Structures in Discourse, Interaction, and Cognition. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Fairclough, Norman (1995). Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. London: Longman. Fleck, Ludwik (1981). The Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Foucault, Michel (1972). The Archeology of Knowledge. London: Tavistock Publications. Giora, Rachel (2002). “Literal vs. figurative language: Different or equal?” Journal of Pragmatics, 34, 487–506. Goffman, Erving (1981). Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Gustafsson, Marita (1975). Some Syntactic Properties of English Law Language. [Publications of the Department of English 4.] Turku, Finland: University of Turku. Hiltunen, Risto (1984). “Preliminaries for a structural variation in the legal register”. LSP and Theory of Translation. Papers from a seminar VAKKI IV (pp. 17–25). Vaasa, Finland: University of Vaasa. Holmes, Jennifer (1982). “Expressing doubt and certainty in English”. RELC Journal, 13 (2), 9–28. Hunston, Susan (1993). “Conflict in academic discourse”. In M. Baker, G. Francis, & E. Tognini-Bonelli (Eds.), Text and Technology. In Honour of John Sinclair (pp. 116–134). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine (1980). L´Énonciation de la subjectivité dans le langage. Paris: A. Colin. Leech, Geoffrey (1971). Meaning and the English Verb. London: Longman. Lyons, John (1977). Semantics. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. MacCormick, Neil & Summers, Robert S. (Eds.). (1997). Interpreting Precedents: A Comparative Study. Aldershot: Ashgate – Dartmouth. Mellinkoff, David (1963). The Language of the Law. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. O’Barr, William (1982). Linguistic Evidence: Language, Power and Strategy in the Courtroom. New York: Academic Press.

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O’Barr, William & Atkins, Bowman K. (1980). “‘Women’s language’ or ‘powerless language’?” In S. McConnell-Ginet, R. Borker, & N. Furman (Eds.), Women and Language in Literature and Society (pp. 93–110). New York: Praeger. Oh, Sun-Young (2000). “Actually and in fact in American English: A data-based analysis”. English Language and Linguistics, 4 (2), 243–268. O’Keefe, Daniel J. (1990). Persuasion: Theory and Research. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Östman, Jan-Ola (1986). Pragmatics as implicitness: An analysis of question particles in Solf Swedish, with implications for the study of passive constructions and the language of persuasion. University of California, Berkeley dissertations. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI, no. 8624885. Östman, Jan-Ola (1987). “Pragmatic aspects of persuasion: Coherence”. In H. Nyyssönen et al. (Eds.), Papers from the Conference of Departments of English in Finland (pp. 93–109). Oulu, Finland: University of Oulu, Department of English. Palmer, Frank R. (1990). Modality and the English Modals (2nd ed.). London: Longman. Perelman, Chaïm (1980). Justice, Law, and Argument: Essays on Moral and Legal Reasoning. Dordrecht: Reidel. Saarenpää, Ahti (1995). Hyvä päätös – ymmärrettävä päätös. Tuomioistuinratkaisun laatu. (Good decision – Comprehensible decision. The quality of a court decision.) Helsinki: Edita. Salmi-Tolonen, Tarja (1987). “On some syntactic features of European Community law English”. In Ch. Laurén & M. Nordman (Eds.), From Office to School: Special Language and Internationalisation (pp. 39–48). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Salmi-Tolonen, Tarja (1993). “Epistemic modality or the author’s comment in academic writing”. In M. K. Suojanen & A. Kulkki-Nieminen (Eds.), Folia Linguistica Fennica (pp. 263–283). [Publications of the Department of Finnish Language and General Linguistics 16.] Tampere, Finland. Salmi-Tolonen, Tarja (1994). “The linguistic manifestations of primary and secondary functions of law in the national and supranational contexts”. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, VII (19), 11–37. Salmi-Tolonen, Tarja (2001). “Legal language in national and supranational contexts: Law, ideology, power and language”. In F. Mayer (Ed.), Language for Special Purposes: Perspectives for the New Millennium, Vol. 2 (pp. 594–603). Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. Searle, John (1969). Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taglicht, Joseph (2001). “Actually, there’s more to it than meets the eye”. English Language and Linguistics, 5 (1), 1–16. Thompson, John B. (1984). Studies in the Theory of Ideology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Thompson, John B. (1990). Ideology and Modern Culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Trosborg, Anna (1997). “Contracts and social action”. In B.-L. Gunnarsson, P. Linell, & B. Nordberg (Eds.), The Construction of Professional Discourse (pp. 54–75). London: Longman. Weber, Max (1972). Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundrisse der verstehenden Soziologie. Erster Halbband. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr.

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Wilson, John (1996). “Authority”. In J. Verschueren, J.-O. Östman, & J. Blommaert (Eds.), Handbook of Pragmatics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Appendix 1 Expressions included in the five categories in Table 1. The figures in parentheses show the distribution of absolute frequencies within each category. 1. Cognitive Processes: In my opinion (27); I consider (27), I do not consider (15); to my mind (23); I think (11), I do not think (10); I believe (5), I do not believe (1); to my knowledge (2); I am convinced (1), I am not convinced (3); I find (1); I understand (1), I do not understand (1). Absolute frequency 128 Relative frequency 36.0% 2. Position: I accept (15); I agree (13), I reject (5); I am satisfied (6); I do not agree (3); I am not persuaded (3); I share (2); I would annul (1); I endorse (1); I contend (1); I advocate (1); to my satisfaction (1); I have been persuaded (1). Absolute frequency 53 Relative frequency 14.9% 3. Sensory Evidence: In my view (87); It seems to me (18); It (would) appear(s) to me (4); I take the view (8); It is my view (1); My own view (1); I regard (5). Absolute frequency 124 Relative frequency 34.8% 4. Speech Act Verbs and Reporting: I conclude (21); Note (10); I propose (5); Mention (4); My recommendation (3); I recommend (2); Say (2); My position (1); Reiterate (1); Make an observation (1); I would like to draw attention to (1). Absolute frequency 51 Relative frequency 14.3% The number of expressions collected: 356 5. Modals: I must (6); I would (56)

P 3

Focusing on public discourse

Chapter 4

In search of “successful” political persuasion A comparison of the styles of Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan Helena Halmari

Since the time when Aristotle wrote his Politics and Rhetoric, political rhetoric has been considered one of the typical areas of persuasion; more recently it has been joined in this field with the language of advertising (see, e.g., Jucker 1997: 121). Robert Denton (1996: ix) writes that “politics is ‘talk’ or human interaction. Such interaction may be formal or informal, verbal or nonverbal, public or private but it is always persuasive, forcing us consciously or subconsciously to interpret, to evaluate, and to act.” In search of the recipe for successful political persuasion, in this chapter I will investigate the public language of two U.S. presidents: Ronald Reagan, whose rhetoric dominated the 1980s, and Bill Clinton, whose verbal artistry prevailed during the last decade of the twentieth century. Looking for any shared rhetorical strategies used by these two presidents, I will here investigate their State of the Union addresses. But, of all U.S. presidents, why choose these two? My rationale is fairly simple: First, one of the aims of the present volume is to investigate how persuasion is realized in our times, and these two politicians can certainly be regarded as modern persuaders. Secondly, since the purpose of this chapter is to investigate the characteristics of “successful” strategies of persuasion, Reagan and Clinton are good candidates, because they both managed to be “popular enough” to be re-elected. “Success,” of course, is a tough term to define, and not everyone agrees about the success of these presidents; however, it is a fact that both have been widely praised for their rhetorical skills (Erickson 1985; Stuckey 1990; Smith 1994; Gelderman 1997). Reagan was referred to as the “Great Communicator” (e.g., Denton 1988: 10–12; Maltese 1994: 179) and the “Teflon President” to whom no dirt ever stuck. My favorite description of Clinton was written by a Washington Post reporter David von Drehle; it dates back to the times when

 Helena Halmari

Clinton was running for president for his first term, and it captures Clinton’s multisided persuasive charm: “He’s Elvis Presley with a calculator on his belt, an outsized candidate with a drawl as big as his brain, a would-be president of both pie charts and Moon pies” (von Drehle 1992: A1). In this chapter, I will focus on a subgenre of political persuasion in the public rhetoric of Reagan and Clinton: their planned, pre-written (team-written1 ), and extremely wellrehearsed State of the Union addresses from 1988 (for Reagan) and 1998 (for Clinton). Schäffner (1997: 2) classifies State of the Union addresses by American presidents as “external, albeit inner-state political communication.” This is a subgenre of the more general genre of political speeches. In a way, the State of the Union address can be seen as “successful” rhetoric – almost by definition. Its pre-planned and pre-rehearsed nature allows the speaker to package the speech in linguistic forms that have proven successful in the past, despite the fact that not all solutions suggested by the president will be politically acceptable to everyone in the audience. Learning what these shared strategies are provides us with a better understanding of political persuasion in general. In addition to the popular informal conception of Reagan and Clinton as “successful” rhetors (see references above), some polling data also support my claim that the State of the Union addresses in January 1988 and 1998 were rhetorically well delivered. The interpretation of the polling data is naturally not a straightforward issue (see, e.g., Brace & Hinckley 1992; Eisinger 2003; Virtanen, Chapter 6 in this volume); however, polls do give an indirect idea of the overall success of the speech. In the case of Clinton, available polling results allow the comparison of his approval ratings immediately before the State of the Union address and a few days after it (Table 1 below; for Reagan’s overall ratings in 1988, see Edwards with Gallup 1990). Clinton delivered his 1998 address on January 27. Two days later, Connelly (29 January 1998) writes: “Support for the job Mr. Clinton is doing increased in a poll conducted by CBS News” and “The State of the Union address appears to have bolstered the American public’s view that President Clinton can continue to govern effectively and accomplish policy goals.” Connelly reports that in the polls conducted by the Gallup Organization both before and after the address, Clinton’s ratings were considerably higher after the speech was delivered. The information on Clinton’s job ratings and favorability ratings in Table 1 is based on PollingReport.com (Bill Clinton: Favorability ratings, President Clinton: Job ratings). Only ratings from within two days before and within two days after the speech are reported in Table 1.

In search of “successful” political persuasion 

Table 1. Clinton’s job and favorability ratings immediately before and after the 1998 State of the Union address (The numbers refer to the percentage of favorable/approving answers among the people who were polled) Percentage of favorable/approving answers Within five days Within five days before after % % ABC News and The Washington Post Job ratings Favorability ratings CBS News Poll Job ratings Favorability ratings CNN/Time Poll Job ratings Favorability ratings Fox News/Opinion Dynamics Poll Favorability ratings Gallup/CNN/USA Today Poll Job ratings Favorability ratings The Los Angeles Times Poll Job ratings Favorability ratings NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll Favorability ratings Newsweek Poll Average

60 53

68 60

57 34

72 51

52 50

68 60

49

56

59 53

67 63

59 48

68 57

21 54

29 70

49.9

60.7

Even though there is variation in Clinton’s job and favorability ratings between the 13 different polls or questions, the general trend is the same: His ratings went up consistently from the polls a couple of days before the State of the Union address compared to those obtained either immediately, or a few days after, the speech. This is not direct evidence about the “success” of his address. However, we can look at the increase of over ten percent approval in the polls after the State of the Union address at least as indirect evidence that his speech did not make him look worse than he had looked before. Even though the State of the Union address seems a monologue, it is interactive in the sense that the audience is well defined: the whole nation, most concretely represented by the people sitting in the audience and those in front of their television sets. During the speech itself, concrete realizations of its in-

 Helena Halmari

teractive nature are the frequent applauses by the audience present, interrupting the delivery of the address (see, e.g., Atkinson 1984). Hence, this subgenre fits within Scollon’s (1998) notion of “mediated discourse” – discourse which Scollon emphatically sees as social interaction. By classifying the State of the Union addresses as mediated discourse and a form of social interaction, I wish to underscore their ultimately interactive nature as a dialogue between the nation and its head – a dialogue, which is influenced by previous discourses, and which is to influence numerous discourses to come. It is exactly this interactional nature that calls for persuasive strategies to influence the audience; this is an opportunity for the president to convince the nation of the rightness of his policies, to justify what he has done for the nation and what still remains to be done, and to convey the message that the union is in strong, competent hands. Sauer (1997: 48–49) discusses the relationship between persuasion and political success. Using Reagan’s language as one of his examples, Sauer points out the often-used qualification of political speeches as “rhetorically successful performance” (Sauer 1997: 35). In the State of the Union addresses the presidents are, indeed, in a good position to be rhetorically successful and to persuade, because in this genre, they – in unison with their consulting team – are able to focus and elaborate on the topics of their own choosing. This is in contrast to some other subgenres of political speech – other areas of public persuasion – that presidents also, on a regular basis, need to master. For instance, the presidents’ face-to-face encounters with the representatives of the media are one obvious example of these other genres. The nature of the persuasive strategies characterizing a genre (or a subgenre) depends highly on the situational factors such as whether the president is in charge of choosing the topic (as in the case of the State of the Union addresses) or not (as in the case of answers to questions by reporters). Different sets of persuasive strategies will surface. Before focusing on the shared persuasive strategies used by Reagan and Clinton in their State of the Union addresses, let us therefore digress briefly to discuss the nature of the persuasive strategies used by these same presidents during the question-and-answer sessions of press conferences.

.

Question-and-answer sessions

During press conferences, the presidents are often confronted with topics that they would rather not discuss. In these situations, they need to resort to distancing strategies and evasive strategies (Simon-Vandenbergen 1996; Clayman 2001; Scott 2002), including euphemisms and other means of associative en-

In search of “successful” political persuasion 

gineering, and abrupt shifts of topic – all examples that I include under the umbrella term “persuasion,” provided that the intention of the president is to mold the opinion of his audience in his favor. As an example of distancing strategies, we can look at Clinton’s infamous denial “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky” (WCPD = Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents 1998: 129), where Clinton uses the distal demonstrative that, calls Monica a woman, and adds her last name, with the title Miss, as an appositive. The employment of an evasive strategy is illustrated in the following exchange between Jim Lehrer and Clinton during a PBS News Hour interview, as published in the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents (1998: 104; italics are added; compare also Lehrer’s use of the proximal pronoun this and and the adjective young in front of woman, with Clinton’s use of that woman above): Jim Lehrer: You had no sexual relationship with this young woman? Clinton: There is not a sexual relationship – that is accurate. (WCPD 1998: 104)

While appearing to answer Lehrer’s question, Clinton in reality avoids answering it. This he accomplishes in a subtle way by a change of tense from the past tense in Lehrer’s question (had) to the present tense in his answer (is). In other words, he does not answer the question of whether there was a sexual relationship or not. In addition, the antecedent of the pronoun that in the clause “that is accurate” is unclear: It can refer either to what Clinton himself just said (“There is not a sexual relationship,” which evidently was the case at the time of the interview), or it can refer to Lehrer’s question, in which case the truth value of “that is accurate” would become questionable. Since the former interpretation is available, Clinton, while he certainly can be accused of being evasive, cannot be accused of downright lying. The use of euphemism can be seen as a special instance of evasive strategies. Euphemisms manipulate associations – they are a form of associative engineering (Leech [1977]: 50–62). For instance, when Jim Lehrer in his News Hour interview with Clinton asked about his relationship with Lewinsky, referring to this relationship as an affair, Clinton, in his answer denied this affair, referring to it euphemistically as an improper relationship: “There is no improper relationship” (WCPD 1998: 104). While Clinton certainly had reason to euphemize his relationship with Lewinsky, Reagan, defending the arms race that he was waging against the Soviet Union, needed to resort to euphemizing as well in order to defend the expensive weapons systems that this arms race required. In the early 1980s, in question-and-answer sessions with the representatives of the press (who often

 Helena Halmari

seemed to question Reagan’s military spending), bombers and nuclear warheads transformed into our technology, the ultimate technology (PP = Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States 1981: 952), deterrent for protection (PP 1982: 681), our potential capacity (PP 1981: 957), strategic force (PP 1981: 892) or, simply, equipment (PP 1981: 952) (Halmari 1993). And when a reporter asks Reagan about the Iran-Contra Aid controversy, referring to it as a scandal, Reagan refuses to call it a scandal – it becomes a so-called scandal: “The whole so-called Iran scandal – I find it hard to think of scandal in connection with it” (PP 1988: 390). In the encounters with the press, there are abrupt shifts in topic as well. Clinton answers several of the questions by the reporters regarding the Lewinsky incidents by a reminder directed to the questioning reporter (and to his whole audience) – an aversion – implying that the president has more important things to do than discuss “such a trivial issue”: “But I have got to get back to the work” and “But meanwhile, I’ve got to go on with the work of the country” (WCPD 1998: 105). And, of course, there are downright denials. Comparing the tactics that the two presidents used in dealing with their respective problems, it is interesting to note that in January 1988, when a reporter asked Reagan about the Iran-Contra Aid controversy, Reagan denied that there had been a scandal: “I did not see any – what I considered lawbreaking that was taking place on the part of anyone in the administration” (PP 1988: 20), and “. . .but that was not against the law” (PP 1988: 21). Ten years later, in January 1998, in an interview with Jim Lehrer, Clinton answers “There is no improper relationship” (WCPD 1998: 104; see also example (1) above). I argue that the question-and-answer sessions call for different strategies of persuasion since the presidents are forced to address topics they would rather not discuss. In those political speeches where the presidents get to choose their topics, State of the Union addresses being a case in point, the persuasive strategies will be different. The choice of persuasive strategies is a part of the interactive process – the mediated discourse between the speaker and the audience (Scollon 1998). In the section below, I will focus on illustrating the shared strategies of persuasion from Reagan’s and Clinton’s State of the Union addresses, a subgenre where they were in a position to choose their topics. And, despite the fact that their topics were different, despite their differing ideologies, and despite certain idiolectal differences in rhetorical strategies, both presidents, in these written-to-be-spoken speeches show surprising similarity in relation to audience-engagement strategies, lexical cohesion, and rhetorical organization. The audience dictates the choice of strategies, some of which are well-known, others less transparent and more subtle.

In search of “successful” political persuasion

Table 2. Data: State of the Union addresses

Number of words Number of sentences Average words/sentence

Reagan 1988

Clinton 1998

4,860 222 22

7,297 367 20

. State of the Union addresses In the same way as inaugural addresses, the State of the Union addresses follow an expected formula (Schlesinger 1967; Cheatham 1975: 192); certain things need to be said and a certain manner of presentation is expected. As a subgenre of political speech, the State of the Union address is well-defined and dates back to the first president of the United States, George Washington (Schlesinger 1967: xiii). While formulaic to a great extent, the State of the Union addresses still offer an important opportunity for the president to advocate his policy and boost his (and his party’s) ratings. A wide number of topics will be broached, certain common images will be evoked, similar anchorings to history will be made in order to assure, and re-assure, the audience that the Union is in good hands under the leadership of the speaker. Despite the appearance of a monologue, the presence of the audience makes these addresses interactive dialogues (Scollon 1998). The presidents are not speaking in a vacuum, and the shared audience and the shared purpose unite their styles. In her analysis of Clinton’s first State of the Union address, Drew (1994: 416) notes the similarity between Clinton and Reagan; she writes that the “Reaganesque touches were striking.” Some of these similarities are dictated by the constrained genre; however, a good part of the similarity comes from what I believe to be a shared understanding of political persuasion and a shared fluency in it. As Table 2 indicates, Clinton, in his 1998 State of the Union address was more longwinded than Reagan had been ten years earlier: Clinton’s address was one third longer than Reagan’s, even though their sentences were of the similar length. However, despite the difference in the length of the speeches, and differences in the issues addressed, the vocabularies that both presidents used, and the linguistic strategies they resorted to were, to a great extent, shared. . Lexical similarities For the purposes of this analysis, all the words the presidents used in their respective State of the Union addresses were counted according to the fre-





Helena Halmari

Table 3. Ten most frequent content words for each president in descending order of frequency Word

Reagan 1988 (4,860 words) Frequency per 1,000 words (N)

1. America, American 2. year 3. make 4. freedom 5. family, families 6. government 7. so 8. democracy, democratic 9. let’s 10. world

11.3 (55) 7.0 (34) 5.6 (27) 4.3 (21) 3.9 (19) 3.9 (19) 3.9 (19) 3.7 (18) 3.7 (18) 3.7 (18)

Word

Clinton 1998 (7,297 words) Frequency per 1,000 words (N)

1. America, American 2. year 3. new 4. child, children 5. make 6. help 7. Congress 8. work 9. now 10. nation

11.2 (82) 8.1 (59) 6.3 (46) 5.9 (43) 4.0 (29) 3.6 (26) 3.4 (25) 3.3 (24) 3.2 (23) 3.2 (23)

quency of their occurrence. The content words and the function words were analyzed separately. Table 3 is a list of the ten most frequent content words in each address. As Table 3 indicates, for both presidents, the two most frequent content words were America(n) and year. The frequency of the second of these words, year, is not surprising, given the nature of the task – an annual summary and discussion of the state of the union during the past year. Even the relative frequency of the occurrence of this word for both presidents was surprisingly similar: 7 per each 1,000 words for Reagan and 8.1 per each 1,000 words for Clinton. However, the most commonly evoked concept in both presidents’ speeches is realized in two words: America or American. Reagan evokes this concept 55 times in his speech and Clinton, 83 times. Interestingly, the word America/American appears in direct proportions to the length of the addresses, and its occurrence per each 1,000 words is almost identical: 11.3 for Reagan and 11.2 for Clinton. On an average, Reagan utters the word America/American once per every 88 words; for Clinton, this word appears once per every 89 words. For Reagan this word makes up 1.1 percent of all words used; for Clinton the percentage is the same. One cannot help but wonder whether this is merely a coincidence or the result of the careful planning and analysis on the part of the speechwriters. All the rest of the most common content words in the speeches of the presidents also occur in both State of the Union addresses. Table 4 shows a


Table 4. The frequency of each president’s 10 most common content words in the speech of the other president Reagan’s 10 most common content Clinton’s 10 most common content words (4,860 words) words (7,297 words) Word Frequency/1,000 words (N) Word Frequency/1,000 words (N) Reagan Clinton Clinton Reagan 1. America, American 2. year 3. make 4. freedom 5. family, families 6. government 7. so 8. democracy, democratic 9. let’s 10. world

11.3 (55) 11.2 (82) 7.0 (34) 8.1 (59) 5.6 (27) 4.0 (29) 4.3 (21) 0.7 (5) 3.9 (19) 3.9 (19) 3.9 (19) 3.7 (18)

2.9 (21) 1.5 (11) 2.6 (19) 0.5 (4)

3.7 (18) 1.0 (7) 3.7 (18) 2.7 (20)

1. America, American 2. year 3. new 4. child, children 5. make 6. help 7. Congress 8. work 9. now 10. nation

11.2 (82) 11.3 (55) 8.1 (59) 7.0 (34) 6.3 (46) 1.2 (6) 5.9 (43) 1.6 (8) 4.0 (29) 3.6 (26) 3.4 (25) 3.3 (24)

5.6 (27) 0.8 (4) 3.1 (15) 2.9 (14)

3.2 (23) 2.3 (11) 3.2 (23) 2.9 (14)

comparison of each president’s ten most common content words with the frequency of the occurrence of these words in the other president’s State of the Union address. For a political analyst, the information in Table 4 may offer interesting insights into the relative importance of certain concepts for the policies of the presidents. For instance, Reagan’s preferred concept is that of a family, while Clinton prefers to evoke the concept of children more often. Reagan evokes the concept of freedom more often than Clinton but talks about work slightly less often. From the point of view of a theory of persuasion, this information is not particularly interesting. In this subgenre of political speeches, the presidents are expected to evoke certain concepts, such as government, Congress, and democracy, or world and nation. Words like new and now evoke positive associations and currency. A phrase like let’s, with its hortative force, is expected to occur. Also, the word God is included in both presidents’ addresses three times. A selection of shared words, including God, appearing in both addresses is presented in Table 5. While the frequency of these words per one thousand words is not very high, it is interesting that these mainly positive concepts are evoked:

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Table 5. Other shared lexical items, in alphabetical order

better/best bipartisan community(ies) consensus continue Federal future God hope (noun) more/most opportunity(ies) peace strong today together tonight values

Reagan (4,860 words) per 1,000 words (N)

Clinton (7,297 words) per 1,000 words (N)

1.4 (7) 0.6 (3) 0.8 (4) 0.8 (4) 1.4 (7) 3.1 (15) 2.7 (13) 0.6 (3) 1.4 (7) 5.1 (25) 1.4 (7) 2.1 (10) 1.2 (6) 1.0 (5) 1.2 (6) 2.7 (13) 1.0 (5)

0.7 (5) 1.2 (9) 2.5 (18) 0.3 (2) 1.4 (10) 0.7 (5) 0.7 (5) 0.4 (3) 0.7 (5) 7.3 (53) 1.6 (12) 1.0 (7) 1.6 (12) 1.5 (11) 1.6 (12) 2.1 (15) 0.3 (2)

The shared words with clearly positive associations are better/best, community, consensus, future, hope, opportunity, peace, strong, together, and values. Also, function words such as more and most are often used by both presidents. More and most allow flattering references to the accomplishments of the presidents, and even though in themselves they carry little content, in combination with the nouns that follow, they give a positive picture of the presidents’ achievements. Other shared “peaks” are also clear markers of this persuasive genre. Words such as together, tonight, and today refer to the presidents’ awareness of current issues and the idea that the present time is the time to approve the president’s agenda for the union together. Another word used by both presidents was the word child/children (see Table 4 above). It was the fourth most frequently used content word in Clinton’s speech; it occurred altogether 43 times, or 5.9 times per each one thousand words. In Reagan’s speech, the word occurred eight times, or 1.6 times per one thousand words. The use of this word is clearly persuasive; it evokes an association with the future, and allows the presidents to infer that their proposed agendas will make the future of the audience’s children – a matter everyone cares about – a better one. In example (1), Reagan is speaking for his economic plan and uses the phrase to give our children a future of low inflation and full


Table 6. Percentage of shared content word types occurring more than five times Reagan (4,860 word tokens)

Clinton (7,297 word tokens)

Word types 120 (100 %) Shared with Clinton 74 types (62 %) Not shared with Clinton 46 types (38 %)

Word types 186 (100 %) Shared with Reagan 75 types (40 %) Not shared with Reagan 111 types (60 %)

employment, using this phrase as an adverbial of purpose. In (2), Clinton uses our children as the beneficiaries of his environmental agenda: (1) [. . .] steps we can take this year to keep our economy strong and growing, to give our children a future of low inflation and full employment. (Reagan) (2) Tonight, I ask you to join me in launching a new Clean Water Initiative, a far-reaching effort to clean our rivers, our lakes, our coastal waters for our children. (Clinton)

Of course, not all the words Reagan and Clinton use in their addresses are shared, and not all the words they use more than once are shared either. Table 6 presents the percentage of those words that occurred more than five times in both State of the Union addresses and the percentage of the words that occurred more than five times only in either Reagan’s or Clinton’s speech Almost as many word types were shared by Reagan and Clinton (74 and 75, respectively). It seems that there is a certain core vocabulary that reflects the notions that need to be referred to in a typical State of the Union address. The vocubulary that is not shared reflects, at least partially, the need to address the current issues during each president’s term. Words that appeared more than five times in Reagan’s address, but did not occur at all in Clinton’s address were words such as defense(s) (N = 10) and reduction (N = 5), reflecting two important issues in Reagan’s agenda, the building of the national defense system and his economic plan of reducing taxes. The words Sandinista (N = 7) and Nicaragua(n) (N = 6) reflect Reagan’s foreign policy topics. Words that appeared in Clinton’s, but not Reagan’s address can be exemplified by the following: worker(s) (N = 11) and environment (N = 7), and Bosnia(n) (N = 6), the first two reflecting Clinton’s persuasive needs with regard to the labor and environmentalist movements; the last one simply reflects a foreign policy issue current during the early 1990s – a topic which, nevertheless, needed addressing to convince the audience that the situation is being handled well. The shared vocabulary in this subgenre of political speeches is no surprise. Genres share features, and the frequent occurrence of the same words with positive associa-

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tions are indications of the presidents’ need to evoke favorable attitudes in the audience – their voters. In the next section, I will move from the investigation of the shared lexicon to other areas of persuasion, language-using strategies that have, since antiquity, been associated with persuasive goals. . Traditional persuasive strategies: An Aristotelian approach to the data Both Reagan and Clinton resort to traditional rhetorical strategies, such as rhetorical questions (examples in Section 2.2.1), appeals to authority (examples in Section 2.2.2), appeals to logic (examples in Section 2.2.3), superlatives and favorable numerical data (examples in Section 2.2.4), and poetic devices such as alliteration (examples in Section 2.2.5). Examples of the most frequently occurring content word (America, American) will be discussed under Section 2.2.5 as well. Direct audience-engaging strategies such as the use of vocatives and the use of humor will be discussed in Sections 2.2.6 and 2.2.7, respectively. Evoking the common enemy is discussed under 2.2.8 The use of personal pronouns will be discussed in Section 2.2.9. The chapter will continue with illustrations, by both presidents, of the need to evoke history and continuation (Section 2.2.10). Both the form of the language (as in the case of rhetorical questions) and its content (as when the speaker is appealing to some authoritative figure or the logical reasoning skills of the audience) contribute to the overall persuasive effect of the speech. In short, each president evokes all the three classical rhetoric concepts of ethos (presenting themselves as competent public officials and speakers), pathos (creating positive emotions and connotations in the minds of the listeners), and logos (appealing to logical reasoning) to affect the audience. .. Rhetorical questions The hallmark of a rhetorical question is that it is used to create an effect by engaging listeners and making them think, and it is not intended to elicit a reply. Spurgin (1994: 303) points out that “[T]he rhetorical question, because it invites assent, can provide a persuasive conclusion to the argument.” Since the format of the State of the Union address is that of a monologue, which does not sanction the audience members to address the president verbally during the talk, I have here defined all question forms asked by the presidents during their State of the Union addresses as rhetorical, following Crowley and Hawhee’s characterization of rhetorical questions as questions asked when the speaker “does not expect a reply” and uses the question to “emphasize a point” (2004: 299). Copi and Burgess-Jackson point out that rhetorical ques-


tions do not seek information; they function informatively as “an oblique way of communicating information” (1995: 77). In this chapter, it would also be legitimate to call some of the questions asked by the presidents topical questions when they introduce a new topic. While topical questions have a textual function, the function of rhetorical questions is interpersonal. According to Crowley and Hawhee (2004: 298–299), rhetorical questions belong to those “figures of thought that enhance ethos” by ”manipulating the flow of discourse” and by “decreas[ing] distance between the rhetor and and audience.” Whether called topical or rhetorical, we can argue that all the questions asked by the presidents exemplify rhetorical means of involving the listener. Reagan asked six questions, Clinton five. Examples (3–5) illustrate: (3) How can we help? Well, we can talk about and push for these reforms. (Reagan) (4) Instead of a Presidential budget that gets discarded and a congressional budget resolution that is not enforced, why not a simple partnership, a joint agreement that sets out the spending priorities within the available revenues? (Reagan) (5) What we have to do in our day and generation to make sure that America becomes truly one nation – what do we have to do? We’re becoming more and more diverse. Do you believe we can become one nation? The answer cannot be to dwell on our differences, but to build on our shared values. [. . .] We are many; we must be one. (Clinton)

In example (3), Reagan is talking about school reforms. He asks a rhetorical question, “How can we help?” and proceeds to answer this question himself. In (4), he delivers a hortative rhetorical question starting with “why not [. . .]?” in which the answer is suggested. In example (5), Clinton applies the same strategy. He poses a rhetorical question and proceeds to answer it himself in nineteen sentences, finishing with “We are many; we must be one.” The rhetorical strategy of asking a question to which the speaker himself provides the answer has been popular since antiquity. It reflects and imitates the Socratic method of inducing agreement by involving the audience member in a thinking process, leading to the idea that the answer, while here provided for the audience, is somehow a product of a mutual agreement between the speaker and the audience. The use of rhetorical questions is a subtle yet quite persuasive means to make the audience agree with the solutions provided.

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.. Appeal to authority In order to justify their points of view and their actions, both presidents resort to authorities; Reagan refers to “an ancient Chinese philosopher” (example 6) and “Jefferson” (7). Clinton resorts to Generals such as Colin Powell (8): (6) And as an ancient Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu, said: “Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish; do not overdo it.” (Reagan) (7) In the spirit of Jefferson, let us affirm that in this Chamber tonight there are no Republicans, no Democrats – just Americans. (Reagan) (8) I’m pleased to announce that four former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – Generals John Shalikashvili, Colin Powell, and David Jones and Admiral William Crowe – have endorsed this treaty. And I ask the Senate to approve it this year. (Clinton)

Appealing to authorities such as ancient philosophers, the founding fathers, and high military officials is thus used by both presidents to back up their ideas, policies, proposals, and decisions. When Clinton needs to justify the American presence in Bosnia (example (9)), he resorts to his opponent and presidential rival, Bob Dole, and cites him verbatim: (9) [. . .] Bosnia’s fragile peace still needs the support of American and allied troops when the current NATO mission ends in June. I think Senator Dole actually said it best. He said “This is like being ahead in the 4th quarter of a football game. Now is not the time to walk off the field and forfeit the victory.” (Clinton)

By framing his citation of Dole by “I think Senator Dole actually said it best” and thus presenting not only his own, but also Dole’s view, with which he agrees on the issue of Bosnia, Clinton ensures that his view and decisions regarding Bosnia cannot be criticized by the Republicans. Resorting to one’s opponent’s authority – in other words, backing up one’s own ethical appeal with somebody else’s – exemplifies a clever persuasive strategy, which is likely to disarm the opposition. .. Appeal to logic For Aristotle, rhetoric, the art of public speaking is “the counterpart of Dialectic,” the art of logical discussion. As opposed to syllogisms, rhetorical arguments (Aristotle’s enthymemes) “are the substance of rhetorical persuasion” (Aristotle [1984]: 19–20). Hence it is not surprising that in both State of the Union addresses we can see a clear, systematic, and logical organization of


ideas – a strong appeal to logos, which yet implies the premises rather than states them explicitly. (For definitions and examples of enthymemes, see, e.g., Copi & Cohen 1990; Corbett 1965: 61–68; Crowley & Hawhee 2004: 141–146.) In example (10) below, Reagan divides his speech into four topics, numbering these from the first to the fourth and summarizing at the end: “This is a full agenda”: (10) [. . .] we have four basic objectives tonight. First, steps we can take this year to give our children a future of low inflation and full employment. Second, let’s check our progress in attacking social problems [. . .] Our third objective tonight is global [. . .] Fourth and finally, [. . . w]e must protect that peace [. . .] This is a full agenda. (Reagan)

In his speech, Clinton resorts to the same logical organization pattern. Following Aristotle’s example, Clinton, in (11) below, is not arousing emotions (Aristotle [1984]: 20); he is appealing to the audience’s logical thinking. Starting by an appeal to the authority of “[o]ur founders” he frames the campaign finance reform, an item on his agenda, as “first. ” He proceeds to state that “Everyone knows elections have become too expensive,” and that they fuel “a fundraising arms race.” The use of everyone in the phrase everyone knows is a clear appeal to logic: everyone includes even those who might oppose Clinton’s campaign finance reform. If everyone knows that elections have become too expensive, they should, if they are logical thinkers, agree with Clinton’s campaign finance reform; if they do not, the implication is that they are not logical. The use of the metaphor “fundraising arms race” exploits another persuasive strategy; it evokes negative, aggressive associations with the Cold War – a notion that should belong to the past even as a metaphor. Clinton then equates a “vote against McCain and Feingold” with “a vote for soft money and for the status quo” and frames this not as his opinion but as a fact: “Let’s be clear.” The hortative “let’s” and “I ask you” directly involve the audience: (11) Our founders set America on a permanent course toward “a more perfect union.” To all of you I say it is a journey we can only make together [. . .] First, we have to continue to reform our government – the instrument of our national community. Everyone knows elections have become too expensive fueling a fundraising arms race. This year, [. . .] the Senate will actually vote on bipartisan campaign finance reform proposed by Senators McCain and Feingold. Let’s be clear: A vote against McCain and Feingold is a vote for soft money and for the status quo. I ask you to strengthen our democracy and pass campaign finance reform this year. (Clinton)

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In the final sentence in (11) above, Clinton does not just ask the audience to “pass campaign finance reform”; he asks them to “strengthen our democracy” – something that every logical audience member would see as a positive action, whether they agree with the campaign finance reform or not. The ordering of the phrases presupposes that “passing campaign finance reform” will lead to “strengthen[ing] our democracy.” Apart from political speeches, the persuasive strategy exemplified in the final sentence in (11) can be heard in everyday indirect requests such as “Be an angel and bring me a cup of coffee!” This request implies that the addressee will deserve the title of an angel if he/she brings the coffee. Note that we would not say, “Bring me a cup of coffee and be an angel!” Similarly, even though Clinton’s sentence means “I ask you to pass campaign finance reform this year,” the added implied consequence following from the passing of the reform – the strengthening of democracy – makes this request more persuasive; the implied consequence is one with whose positive nature everyone has to agree. The quote in example (12) below from Clinton’s address is an example of careful associative engineering. The verb heal evokes positive associations: Something that needs healing has been in bad shape, sick, and the logical thing to do is to support the process of healing. Not only is it illogical to oppose the process of healing but also, if you do oppose it, you are called a pessimist. (12) Every time we have acted to heal our environment, pessimists have told us it would hurt the economy. (Clinton)

In his Rhetoric, Aristotle ([1984]: 32–33) wrote of political orators: The political orator aims at establishing the expediency or the harmfulness of a proposed course of action; if he urges its acceptance, he does so on the ground that it will do good; if he urges its rejection, he does so on the ground that it will do harm [. . .].

As examples (10) through (12) indicate, a careful appeal to the logic of the audience, along the lines already posited by Aristotle, is still today one of the hallmarks of political persuasion. .. Superlatives and “nice numbers” Superlatives may exaggerate, but the presidents do not avoid their use, especially when they can package the superlatives around convincing factual information. This factual information often involves the use of numerical data – facts backed up by numbers (see also Virtanen this volume). In example (13), Reagan uses the superlative fastest, surrounded by 4 straight years and more than


10 years. In (14), Clinton’s superlatives lowest unemployment and lowest core inflation, are accentuated by in 24 years and in 30 years. The “ultimate” superlative, the highest homeownership in history, is saved for last. Note also the use of the comparative more than 14 million more new jobs, where the information of what this number 14 million is compared to is left unspecified: (13) [. . .] family income has risen for 4 straight years, and America’s climbed out of poverty at the fastest rate in more than 10 years. (Reagan) (14) We have more than 14 million more new jobs, lowest unemployment in 24 years, the lowest core inflation in 30 years; incomes are rising; and we have the highest homeownership in history. (Clinton)

.. Poetic aspects of persuasion Campbell and Burkholder (1997: 5) write that “rhetorical discourse is frequently poetic”; it has “ritualistic, aesthetic, dramatic, and emotive qualities.” In their State of the Union addresses, both presidents resort frequently to the use of alliteration. Personification of America is another poetic means that both presidents use.

Alliteration. The tradition of using alliteration in the Anglo-American world goes back to the great poetry of Old English. Examples in (15) and (16) comprise a selection of alliterative phrases in Reagan’s and Clinton’s speeches, respectively: (15) Reagan’s alliterative phrases: courage to confront freedom fighters a future free of [. . .] totalitarianism and terror great halls of government and the monuments to the memory of our great men prevents a paralysis of American power protected and passed on lovingly this place called America shining shores soring spending sorry story (16) Clinton’s alliterative phrases: deadly diseases defect and defer face and future of America

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family and faith, freedom and responsibility fingerpointing and failure crack down on gangs and guns and drugs offer help and hope peace and prosperity police, prosecutor, and previous A strong nation rests on rock of rules weapons of war

The use of alliteration cannot be seen as directly persuasive; there is nothing in alliteration per se that would lead the audience to symphatize or agree with the speaker. Yet, if we take the classic view of Isocrates, who points out that “the power to speak well is taken as the surest index of a sound understanding” ([1988]: 48), it is easy to see how alliteration fits in with an overall persuasive style. Skillful use of alliteration is part of ethical appeal; alliteration does not attract attention by being overly decorative; it is a modest and subtle way of sending the audience the message that the speaker is a powerful speaker and, therefore, a man “of a sound understanding.”

Reference to America. The frequencies of the word America/American were already discussed above. For both presidents, America(n) was the most frequently evoked concept: 11.3 out of every one thousand words for Reagan, and the almost identical 11.2 for Clinton were occurrences of this word. However, the same concept was evoked by the use of other phrases as well. Both presidents refer to America as nation, and both, by subtle choices of determiners make the concept closer, dearer – Reagan, by the proximal demonstrative pronoun this (“this nation”) and Clinton, by the first person plural possessive pronoun our (“our nation”): (17) Reagan: this nation not a graveyard but a birthplace of hope a city of hope in a land that is free this shining city on a hill (18) Clinton: our nation an America which leads the world to new heights of peace and prosperity

Reagan’s metaphors in (17) (not a graveyard but a birthplace of hope and a city of hope), as well as Clinton’s use of alliteration in (18) (peace and prosperity),

In search of “successful” political persuasion 

give a poetic aura to America. Also, by subtle grammatical and lexical means, America is personified: The use of the inflectional possessive (America’s), as opposed to the use of a prepositional phrase in examples (19) and (20) is one way to personify America. As opposed to young people in America, Reagan in (19) talks about “America’s young people”; as opposed to schools in America, commitment of America, and creativity and innovation of/in America, Clinton in (20) uses the possessive inflectional suffix, more often used with human possessors. The relative pronoun whose in (19) – more often used with human antecedents – furthers the same purpose. In the word leader in (19) – the agentive suffix -er, is again a suffix which, since it is normally used of human agents, helps to personify America. Verbs like lead ((18) above and (20)) and create (19), which usually have agentive human subjects, are used with America as the subject. And, ultimately, America is personified as a female: America herself (19): (19) Reagan: America’s young people an America whose divergent but harmonizing communities [. . .] America is again a vigorous leader of the free world America has created [. . .] America herself (20) Clinton: America’s schools America’s commitment America’s creativity and innovation America led the world to reach a historic agreement [. . .]

Literary devices, such as the use of alliteration and personification, while not persuasive in the sense that they would be intended to directly cause a change in the behavior of the audience, can be seen as persuasive if they are used to create an overall image of the speaker as an eloquent and, by derivation, a competent leader. In Sections 2.2.6 and 2.2.7 below, I will look at more direct persuasive strategies used by the presidents, namely such additional audience-engaging strategies as vocatives (Section 2.2.6) and humor (Section 2.2.7). .. Vocatives When audience members are addressed directly by vocatives, they are made to feel as part of the dialogue that is taking place between them and the speaker. Getting, or keeping, the audience on the side of the speaker is the central purpose of persuasion, and vocatives aid this purpose by alerting the audience

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that the speaker is addressing their needs. In fact, deploying a vocative has become a conventionalized characteristic of the openings of political speeches. In addition, the State of the Union address allows only for a narrow range of possible openings, since certain members of the audience need to be specifically identified. Reagan opens his address by “Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, and distinguished Members of the House and Senate”; Clinton’s opening is “Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of the 105th Congress, distinguished guests, my fellow Americans.” Clinton’s inclusion of my fellow Americans (which he uses also another time during his speech) makes his address overtly more inclusive by addressing everyone listening to the speech, even viewers in front of their TV sets. However, both presidents make references to the American public, the people watching the speech on TV and voters in general, as in (21) and (22): (21) Reagan: [. . .] millions of Americans watching [. . .] [. . .] those who sent us [. . .] (22) Clinton: Let us say to all Americans watching tonight [. . .] I have something to say to every family listening to us tonight [. . .] But we’ll only move forward if all our fellow citizens – including every one of you at home watching tonight – is also committed to this cause.

By the phrase those who sent us in (21), Reagan infers to the audience that he has not forgotten that he is on a mission – he wants to further the cause of the voters. Both presidents use the phrase Americans watching (21)–(22). The use of this type of appeal to the audience may be slightly more characteristic of Clinton’s style; at least he addresses the viewing and listening audience additionally by individualizing every family (“every family listening to us tonight”) and “every one of you at home watching tonight” (22). Reagan’s way of engaging the audience during the speech is to address them as “My friends.” .. Humor A suitable amount of humor during a political speech can be a powerful persuasive strategy. It engages and entertains the audience and evokes a positive reaction – laughter. During their State of the Union addresses, Reagan evoked laughter six times, Clinton twice. (23) and (24) exemplify:


(23) Reagan: My friends, some years ago, the Federal Government declared war on poverty, and poverty won. [Laughter] And let’s remember our deadline is October 1st, not Christmas. Let’s get the people’s work done in time to avoid a footrace with Santa Claus. [Laughter] (24) Clinton: Tonight I ask the Senate: Follow the House; pass the bipartisan package as your first order of business. I hope to goodness before I finish I can think of something to say “follow the Senate” on, so I’ll be out of trouble. [Laughter] [. . .] we have to address the real reason for the explosion in campaign costs: the high cost of media advertising. [At this point, [an] audience member responded.] To the folks watching at home, those were the groans of pain in the audience. [Laughter]

Reagan’s wit and humor were his well-known characteristics, part of his personal charm that earned him the title of the “Great Communicator” (see, e.g., Speakes 1988: 301–303). While Reagan’s humorous remarks above in (23), as well as Clinton’s first one in (24), were pre-planned during the speechwriting stage, Clinton’s second remark in (24) was made on-the-spot, at a point when an audience member made an unwelcome remark. Wit and quick humor has the power to persuade. Laughter is a spontaneous reaction – a sign that the audience likes what is being offered to them, a sign that the speaker has, albeit it maybe only momentarily, won the audience to his side. .. Unification via addressing the enemy Different decades brought different enemies: For Reagan, the enemy was communism; for Clinton it was Saddam Hussein. As an audience-engaging strategy, both presidents evoked these “common enemies,” thereby creating an atmosphere of we-ness – we, Americans, against this enemy. Both evoke a scenario where they personally confront this enemy: (25) Reagan: All of this was made possible by an idea I spoke of when Mr. Gorbachev was here – the belief that the most exciting revolution ever known to humankind began with three simple words: “We the People,” the revolutionary notion that the people grant government its right, and not the other way around.

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(26) Clinton: I know I speak for everyone in this chamber, Republicans and Democrats, when I say to Saddam Hussein, “You cannot defy the will of the world,” and when I say to him, “You have used weapons of mass destruction before. We are determined to deny you the capacity to use them again.”

While Reagan describes his encounter with the Soviet leader Gorbachev by boasting about having evoked a phrase from Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, “government of the people, by the people, for the people” (Lincoln [1948]/1863), Clinton boasts by pretending to address Saddam Hussein directly. American unity is evoked. .. Personal pronoun use As a persuasive strategy, the choice of personal pronouns is a subtle and clever way to guide the thinking of the audience. It is a subtle strategy, but because of the frequency of occurrence of personal pronouns, they successfully penetrate throughout the speech. Table 7 below lists the uses of the first person and second person pronouns by both presidents. The use of I and you sends a message of the speaker (I) as a separate entity from the audience (you), and the percentages of all the first and second person pronouns show that both presidents use I and you in Table 7. Pronoun usage (Numbers have been rounded) Reagan (4,860 words) N per 1,000 words 1st person sg reference I me my 2nd person reference you 1st person pl reference we us our Total of all 1st & 2nd person pronouns

%

Clinton (7,297 words) N per 1,000 words

%

11.5 1 1.5 14

22

45 9 11 65

9 2 2 13

24

84 6 12 102

32

7

12

62

8

13

71 29 69 169

15 6 14 35

64

172 18 107 297

24 2 15 41

64

266

55

100

461

63

99

In search of “successful” political persuasion 

almost the same proportions. The use of I is 24 percent for Reagan and 22 for Clinton; the use of you is 12 percent for Reagan and 13 for Clinton. What is quite surprising is the fact that in the State of the Union addresses held ten years apart, the percentage of the first person plural we is exactly the same for both presidents: 64 percent (Table 7). The we-pronoun can be either exclusive (the speaker and someone else but not the audience) or inclusive (the speaker and the audience); however, all we-pronouns used by the presidents in these two State of the Union addresses can be interpreted to include at least some part of the audience (the president and his government sitting in the audience, the president and his party members), if not every single American watching the address on television. The fact that the pronoun can be interpreted as inclusive is the key persuasive feature. Examples (27) and (28) illustrate the implied, if not factual, inclusiveness of the use of we by both presidents: (27) Reagan: We’ve rebuilt our defenses. We must protect that peace and deter war [. . .] We’re for limited government, because we understand, as the Founding Fathers did, that it is the best way of ensuring personal liberty [. . .] Yes, we Americans like the future and like making the most of it. (28) Clinton: We must not go back to unwise spending [. . .] We have opened wide the doors of the world’s best system of higher education. We still have a lot more to do, all of us, to make welfare reform a success [. . .]

As Table 7 indicates, Clinton uses the we-pronoun somewhat more often than Reagan. For him, there are 41 occurrences of we/us/our per one thousand words. For Reagan, we/us/our occur 35 times per one thousand words. For both presidents, the use of we is considerably higher than their combined use of the first person singular and second person pronouns. Even if the pronoun we may not factually include all audience members, the persuasive intention is to make them feel included.

I-subjects + verbal collocations. The first person singular pronoun I is used relatively infrequently by both presidents if compared to the much more frequently used we. I portrays the speaker as a separate entity from the audience members, whereas we marks the speaker as part of the same group with his audience. (For a comparison of the use of the first and second person pro-

 Helena Halmari

nouns by Clinton and Dole during their 1996 presidential campaign debates, see Halmari 1998.) The pronoun I also collocates with certain kinds of “hedging” verbs or verbs expressing mental stages (so-called private verbs, such as I believe, I hope, I think), or with overtly “persuasive” verbs (so-called public verbs, such as I ask, I propose, I challenge, I urge). Examples (29)–(30) from both Reagan and Clinton illustrate this. The numbers in parentheses indicate the collocations of the first-person singular pronoun and the private and public verbs expressing either inner mental stages or persuasion: (29) Reagan (N of occurences): Private verbs: I believe (2) I hope (1) I know (1) I’m certain (1) Public verbs: I ask (Congress to pass this request) (1) I pledge (to you tonight) (1) I urge (2) (30) Clinton (N of occurences): Private verbs: I believe (1) I hope (3) I know (1) I think (6) I want (5) Public verbs: I ask (15) I challenge (Congress) (3) I propose (7) I thank (3) I urge (1)

We-subjects + verbal collocations. The hortatory or advisory aspect of political rhetoric, or persuasion (see, e.g., Campbell & Burkholder 1997: 4) is materialized in the use and frequency of modal auxiliaries: Things must or should get done, and we – the president and his audience – are the responsible parties. But not only do we have to; we also can. In addition, the tense of the verbs with

In search of “successful” political persuasion 

Table 8. We-subjects + verbal collocations Reagan

Clinton

NECESSITY we + must we + should we + have to we + ‘ve got to we + need to we + ought to

5 2 – – – –

23 16 7 4 2 2

ABILITY & INTENTION we + can we + will we + may we + are going to we + ‘d if we + V

8 4 – – – –

14 14 1 2 1 8

TENSE & ASPECT we + V in simple present we + V in present perfect we + simple past we + V in progressive we + appositive

35 7 6 1 3

40 18 12 8 –

Total

71

172

we-subjects is the simple present or the present perfect; the past is clearly not so important (Table 8). .. Rhetorical organization / Evoking history and continuity One common strategy shared by Reagan and Clinton is to evoke historical references, likening themselves to historical figures or making references to the importance of the office of the president. Compare the similar content of the following sentences. In (31a) and (32a), the presidents refer to the place, the Chamber, where the address is taking place as a historical place, in which they already have given State of the Union addresses before. In (31b) and (32b), both speakers refer to their lengthy tenure as presidents. In (31c) and (32c), the presidents speak about their intention and dedication to continue the work for the good of the country. Examples in (31d) are the references Reagan makes to the Founding Fathers, thus establishing himself as a continuation to their work; in (32d), Clinton also refers to our founders. (31e) and (32e) are confirmations

 Helena Halmari

about the strength of the United States – confirmations that the Union is in good hands: (31) Reagan: a. We meet here tonight in this historical Chamber to continue that work [. . .] b. Seven years ago, America was weak and freedom everywhere was under siege. c. If anyone expects just a proud recitation of the accomplishments of my administration, I say let’s leave that to history; we’re not finished yet. [. . .] So, my message to you tonight is put on your workshoes; we’re still on the job. d. Founding Fathers, forefathers, Gettysburg, Jefferson, Lincoln, Washington e. Today America is strong [. . .] Tonight, then, we’re strong, prosperous, at peace, and we are free. This is the state of our Union. (32) Clinton: a. Since the last time we met in this Chamber [. . .] b. The first time I made the State of the Union speech [. . .] c. But with barely 700 days left in the 20th century, this is not a time to rest. It’s a time to build, to build the America within reach [. . .] of peace and prosperity. This is the America we begun to build; this is the America we can leave to our children if we join together to finish the job at hand. d. our founders e. Our leadership in the world is unrivaled. [. . .] Ladies and gentlemen, the state of our Union is strong.

Both presidents end their speeches with a routine religious ending: (33) Reagan: Thank you, and God bless you. (34) Clinton: God bless you, and God bless the United States.

. In conclusion The descriptive data from two recent presidents helps to reach a better understanding of the systematics of political persuasion and of the register features


of persuasive genres in general. Yet, after presenting these descriptive examples, the question remains: Is there a way, in addition to a mere list of persuasive strategies – in addition to this taxonomy – , that these data could be used to build a model of persuasion? And another important question remains: Since the State of the Union addresses follow almost a formula, can we really say that Reagan and Clinton used this formula more successfully than other presidents? It might well be that a study of the persuasive strategies of presidents less successful than Reagan and Clinton would show similar or identical profiles since so much of the convincing effect is the result of performance and delivery – something at which both Reagan and Clinton were highly skillful. Persuasive lexical choices and skillful rhetorical organization will not save a politician if he is not able to deliver the speech in a persuasive manner. This question would take us to paralinguistic areas, but will be well worth pursuing in a separate study. The language of effective oral persuasion is not independent of delivery and vice versa (see, e.g., Simonton 1987; Denton 1988: 84–85). However, there is clearly something in this type of rhetoric, here exemplified by Reagan’s and Clinton’s language, that moves us. Let’s look at the final examples. The presidents have chosen to move towards the conclusion of their speeches by a short account of how the Constitution and the United States national anthem came to be. These were created by two ordinary people, Jacob Shallus and Francis Scott Key; people like the television viewers, people normally engaged in everyday activities. One took a pen and engrossed some words (35); one scribbled the words on the back of an envelope (36): (35) Reagan: You know, the world could never be quite the same again after Jacob Shallus, a trustworthy and dependable clerk of the Pennsylvania General Assembly, took his pen and engrossed those words about representative government in the preamble of our Constitution. (36) Clinton: Nearly 200 years ago, a tattered flag, its broad stripes and bright stars still gleaming through the smoke of a fierce battle, moved Frances [sic] Scott Key to scribble a few words on the back of an envelope, the words that became our national anthem.

Here we have a perfect mix of the ordinary and the glorified; an appeal to the ordinary – the dependable, average American in front of the TV on a tat-



 Helena Halmari

tered couch, an appeal to the average American who, from that couch, through simple and ordinary means, can access the grand and the glorified. It is the recipe for this mix that we are looking for.

Note . For accounts and background on presidential speechwriting and speechwriters, see, e.g., Ritter and Medhurst (Eds.) (2003) and Jeffrey Shesol (2002) (Online).

References Aristotle ([1984]). Rhetoric. Trans. W. R. Roberts. In The Rhetoric and the Poetics of Aristotle (pp. 1–218). New York: The Modern Library. Atkinson, J. Maxwell (1984). “Public speaking and audience responses: Some techniques for inviting applause”. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis (pp. 370–409). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brace, Paul & Hinckley, Barbara (1992). Follow the Leader: Opinion Polls and the Modern Presidents. United Kingdom: BasicBooks. Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs & Burkholder, Thomas R. (1997). Critiques of Contemporary Rhetoric (2nd ed.). Belmont: Wadsworth. Cheatham, Richard (1975). “An overview of contemporary gubernatorial inaugurals”. Southern Speech Communication Journal, 40 (2), 191–203. Clayman, Steven E. (2001). “Answers and evasions”. Language in Society, 30, 403–442. Connelly, Marjorie (1998, January 29). “The president under fire: In the polls; Confidence Grows in Clinton’s ability to remain effective”. The New York Times online. Retrieved 4 September 2003. http://query.nytimes.com/search/restructed/article?res =F60F1FFE3C5E0C7A8EDDA80894D0494D81 Copi, Irving M. & Burgess-Jackson, Keith (1995). Informal Logic (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Copi, Irving M. & Cohen, Carl (1990). Introduction to Logic (8th ed.). New York: Macmillan. Corbett, Edward P. J. (1965). Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. New York: Oxford University Press. Crowley, Sharon & Hawhee, Debra (2004). Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students (3rd ed.). New York: Pearson. Denton, Robert E., Jr. (1988). The Primetime Presidency of Ronald Reagan: The Era of the Television Presidency. New York: Praeger. Denton, Robert E., Jr. (1996). “Series foreword”. In R. E. Denton, Jr. & R. L. Holloway (Eds.), The Clinton Presidency: Images, Issues, and Communication Strategies (pp. ix–xi). [Praeger Series in Political Communication.] Westport: Praeger. Drew, Elizabeth (1994). On the Edge: The Clinton Presidency. New York: Simon & Schuster.


Edwards, George C. III with Gallup, Alec M. (1990). Presidential Approval: A Sourcebook. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Eisinger, Robert M. (2003). The Evolution of Presidential Polling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Erickson, Paul D. (1985). Reagan Speaks: The Making of an American Myth. New York: New York University Press. Gelderman, Carol (1997). All the Presidents’ Words: The Bully Pulpit and the Creation of the Virtual Presidency. New York: Walker and Company. Halmari, Helena (1993). “Dividing the world: The dichotomous rhetoric of Ronald Reagan”. Multilingua, 12 (2), 143–176. Halmari, Helena (1998). “On the language of the Clinton-Dole presidential campaign debates: General tendencies and successful strategies”. A paper presented at the Annual Conference of American Association for Applied Linguistics, Seattle, Washington, March 14–17, 1998. Isocrates ([1988]). “Antidosis”. Trans. George Norlin. In T. W. Benson & M. H. Prosser (Eds.), Readings in Classical Rhetoric (pp. 47–52). Davis, CA: Hermagoras Press. Jucker, Andreas H. (1997). “Persuasion by inference: Analysis of a party political broadcast”. In J. Blommaert & C. Bulcaen (Eds.), Political Linguistics (pp. 121–137). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Leech, Geoffrey ([1977]/1974). Semantics. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Lincoln, Abraham ([1948]/1863). “Gettysburg Address”. In F. C. Packard, Jr. (Ed.), Great Americans Speak: Short Speeches That Have Shaped Our Destiny (pp. 32–33). New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Maltese, John Anthony (1994). Spin Control: The White House Office of Communications and the Management of Presidential News (2nd ed.). Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. PollingReport.com “Bill Clinton: Favorability Ratings”. Online. Retrieved 4 September 2003. http://www.pollingreport.com/clinton1.htm PollingReport.com “President Clinton: Job Ratings”. Online. Retrieved 4 September 2003. http://www.pollingreport.com/clinton-.htm PP = Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Ronald Reagan. (1981). Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office. (1982). Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office. (1988). Vol. 1. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office. Ritter, Kurt & Medhurst, Martin J. (Eds.). (2003). Presidential Speechwriting: From the New Deal to the Reagan Revolution and Beyond. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press. Sauer, Christoph (1997). “Echoes from abroad – speeches for the domestic audience: Queen Beatrix’ address to the Israeli Parliament”. In C. Schäffner (Ed.), Analysing Political Speeches (pp. 33–67). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Schäffner, Christina (1997). “Editorial: Political speeches and discourse analysis”. In C. Schäffner (Ed.), Analysing Political Speeches (pp. 1–4). Clevedon: Multingual Matters. Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr. (1966). “Annual messages of the presidents: Major themes of American history”. In F. L. Israel (Ed.), The State of the Union Messages of the Presidents 1790–1966 (pp. xiii–xli). New York: Chelsea House.

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Scollon, Ron (1998). Mediated Discourse as Social Interaction: A Study of News Discourse. London & New York: Longman. Scott, Jeremy Walter (2002). Negotiating Expert Identity: Interviewee Identity Construction in Political News Interview Discourse. Unpublished MA-thesis. Gainesville: University of Florida, Department of Linguistics. Shesol, Jeffrey (2000, March 8). “People – Interviews – Other industries – Jeffrey Shesol”. Online. Retrieved 2 November 2002. http://www.justpeople.com/contentnew/People/ Interviews/General/JeffreyShesol.asp Simonton, Dean Keith (1987). Why Presidents Succeed: A Political Psychology of Leadership. New Haven: Yale University Press. Simon-Vandenbergen, Anne-Marie (1996). “Image-building through modality: The case of political interviews”. Discourse and Society, 7 (3), 389–415. Smith, Stephen A. (Ed.). (1994). Bill Clinton on Stump, State, and Stage: The Rhetorical Road to the White House. Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press. Speakes, Larry (1988). Speaking Out: The Reagan Presidency from Inside the White House. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Spurgin, Sally De Witt ([1994]/1985). The Power to Persuade: A Rhetoric and Reader for Argumentative Writing. 3rd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Stuckey, Mary E. (1990). Playing the Game: The Presidential Rhetoric of Ronald Reagan. New York: Praeger. von Drehle, David (1992). “Letter from the campaign trail: Clinton’s political persona blends redneck, policy nerd”. Washington Post, 7 March 1992, A1. WCPD = Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, 34 (4–5). 1998.

Chapter 5

In a nutshell Persuasion in the spatially constrained language of advertising* Paul Bruthiaux

The urge to persuade fellow humans is powerful, the opportunities are many, and the contexts varied. A consequence of this variation is that persuasive language takes many forms. The language of advertising, for example, is constrained by a range of contextual factors, one of the most immediately distinctive of which is the severe spatial constraints within which writers must operate. Even in display advertising (the larger type seen on billboards or in magazines and usually including graphics and photos), texts typically cover only a small proportion of the available space, while in classified advertising the requirement to compress content within tight limits is even more dramatic. So much so that this sense of spatial restriction appears to have become the primary defining characteristic of the language of advertising. Yet this sense of spatial restriction also goes against the very nature of persuasion. It is surely inconceivable (regrettably, perhaps) that similar restrictions should ever be imposed on prototypically persuasive genres such as sermons, electoral speeches, or legal arguments. Similarly, the very essence of persuasive language would seem to depend on writers operating free of spatial (or in the case of sermons and speeches, temporal) limitations, the better to display their skill, the better to persuade. Yet, professional advertisers prosper while millions of anonymous buyers and sellers transact business through classified ads. So persuasive their texts must be, and enough readers must in the end be persuaded, or outlets for these texts would have disappeared long ago.1 Instead, they flourish, on the Internet and elsewhere, as never before. For the linguist, this presents a double challenge: (1) to describe precisely the linguistic nature of the language of advertising and (2) to explain how the interaction between the urge to persuade

 Paul Bruthiaux

and the contextual factors that constrain all communication play out in this genre and give it its defining characteristics. In response, this paper presents a description of the syntax of advertising language in texts of both the classified and display types. It shows that the degree of syntactic elaboration varies substantially even when content of equal simplicity/complexity or familiarity to readers is being presented and that this variation appears to correlate with perceptions of status on the parts of both writers and readers. The paper proposes that the need for writers to manipulate readers’ self-image overrides the competing need to present content explicitly. That is, a display of sophisticated language may by itself be a key factor in determining which text will generate more interest among naturally statusconscious readers and which writers of advertising material will thus have the edge over less skillful competitors. The paper also suggests that the language of advertising reflects the development and role of social intelligence, namely, the need to correctly assess the desires and motives of other group members and to display our own advantageously. Thus, the manipulation of complex linguistic structures may be linked with the manipulation of complex social relationships, and hence with status. An initial working assumption is that the spatial constraints imposed on all advertising writing – of both the display and classified types – will create special difficulties for the writers. A second working assumption is that these constraints will be no match for the human urge to persuade and transact. The bet is that linguistic ingenuity will come to the rescue and that the communicative urge – and its persuasive component – will prevail as appropriate, context-specific linguistic adaptations emerge, at both the syntactic and discoursal levels. For several decades now, the literature of sociolinguistics and discourse analysis has recorded and explicated the mechanisms by which language form adjusts to the contexts in which it is used.2 Yet even today, innovative examples keep surfacing, sometimes from the most unexpected quarters. From the world of journalism, for example, comes the hitherto unacknowledged – and in any case now defunct – genre of cablese (Dionne 1999), a mostly nonpersuasive mode of communication between newspaper editors and foreign correspondents. This genre was honed in the titanic struggle between strict instructions from Head Office to keep cabling costs low and the relentless drive on the part of telegraph company officials to maximize revenue by counting as many words as possible. Inevitably, this pressure to condense led to immediate morphological creativity, as in the following examples:

In a nutshell

(1) Eye Exjoburging Nairobiward I am leaving Johannesburg and traveling to Nairobi (2) Queen Daughtered The Queen has given birth to a daughter

Naturally, rule-bending on this scale will only be effective if the interaction is limited to a small number of expert writers and readers who know each other well, if the specific contextual pressures are understood by both sides, and if the number of permissible departures from the norm – for example, the nature and scope of affixing rules – is small in number and mutually agreed, if only tacitly.3 Yet, even within these boundaries, there is room for humor born of deliberate miscommunication through misparsing, as illustrated by the response to an editor’s question regarding President Banda of Nyassaland – now Malawi – whose advanced age remained a state secret until his death: (3) How Old Banda – Old Banda Fine How You How old is Banda? / How is Old Banda? – Old Banda is fine, how are you?

In contrast, the language of advertising is the product of a linguistic adaptation to a context in which messages are aimed at a vast audience representing an array of backgrounds and presuppositions that can only be guessed at by the writers. Writers of advertising language have no personal connection with the consumers of their linguistic production and there is no scope for the immediate feedback that might allow writers to correct any interactional miscalculations. One direct result of this communicative situation is that writers must perform a persuasive double act in something of a communicative fog. They must first persuade unidentifiable readers to notice their text among a proliferation of competing offers. Then, they must convince readers of the superiority of their wares over those of their competitors. For writers, this creates a tension between the temptation to do whatever it takes to be noticed and the need to remain sufficiently conventional and to-the-point to be understood once noticed, all within strict spatial limitations.4 As with all language variation, linguistic adaptations to this challenge vary according to a cluster of factors, not least among them, content. This is especially apparent in the spatially constrained language of classified ads. In Bruthiaux (1996), I showed that far from being uniform across ad types, the language of classified advertising systematically covaries in syntactic elaboration with the nature of the proposed transaction (here, second-hand cars, apartments for rent, jobs offered, and romantic relationships sought). As measured by the ratio of function words (articles, auxiliaries, copulas, modals, and



 Paul Bruthiaux

prepositions) to content words (nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs), linguistic form varies from an almost complete absence of grammatical structure beyond mere juxtaposition of content words to a substantial degree of syntactic elaboration, surprisingly so given the pressures for spatial economy. At one extreme, texts advertising used cars for sale do little more than list the salient features of the item being offered: (4) 82 Chevy Camaro Z28, 59m, 4 speed, good tires, new paint, stereo, loaded, excellent condition, $4,200. Call [. . .]

Further along the content/function word continuum, ads offering apartments for rent show limited coordination and a higher frequency of prepositional phrases: (5) Los Angeles, large 1 bedroom apartment, employed and references required, near Western and King, no Section 8, $475 per month. Call [. . . ]

Classified ads for jobs offered go further still, with frequent use of fully elaborated noun and verb phrases and greater reliance on coordination: (6) Personal Assistant wanted for phones and reception room cleaning, must be able to follow procedures, $6 per hour + tips and bonuses after training, day or evenings. Call [. . .]

At the far end of the continuum, personal ads come closest to full syntactic elaboration in that, despite the genre-marking abbreviations that have become their trademark – such as ISO (in search of), SWF (single white female), or NS/ND (no smoking, no drugs) – they tend to consist of creative word choices and phrasings combining into often complex sentences: (7) I’m not dead yet – my love life is! DWF, 35, Monty Pythonite seeks emotionally mature thirty-something WM interested in torrid stability. Call [. . .]

Clearly, syntactic elaboration – or the weaving of lexical items into recognizable phrases and sentences – cannot take place without the introduction of function words into the linguistic edifice. Whenever space is not an issue, this has the effect of increasing the total amount of language being produced while lowering the lexical density of the whole. Under tight spatial constraints, however, the function words introduced into the mix as part of the sentence building process unavoidably take up some of the space that could have been devoted to semantically richer, presumably more valuable content words. Since all writers of classified ads operate under broadly uniform conditions and are presumed

In a nutshell 

to be aiming for maximum economy of form, the puzzle is the following: (1) Why is it that some ad types systematically exhibit features of syntactic elaboration normally found in spatially unconstrained texts while others avoid them almost totally? And, (2) what contextual forces lead to this systematic variation? In a sense, these issues parallel those at the heart of the grammaticalization process. The wonder is not that pidgins, for example, mutate into full-fledged languages by acquiring larger vocabularies and more complex syntax. Clearly, the complexities of social and interpersonal relations require a range of linguistic choices which mere pidgins cannot hope to provide. What is more puzzling is that language systems and language users alike so often opt for a level of complexity that seems gratuitous at first. To quote Klein (1998: 546), Why do some manifestations of the human language capacity have [. . .] complexifications, whereas others do not? Where and why are they necessary, where are they just decorum, faithfully handed down from one generation to the next without any deeper reason, highly esteemed by linguists, but utterly detested by second language learners?

In spatially constrained language especially, complexities appear not only gratuitous but downright wasteful. Thus the challenge is to understand the factors that may lead those individuals to make these seemingly irrational – and presumably subconscious – choices. One way to account for this phenomenon is to argue that syntactic variation, in these compressed texts as in all language use, should be directly linked to the communicative characteristics of each situation. Following Finegan and Biber (1994), the key would be to link syntactic elaboration in the language of advertising with a greater or lesser requirement for explicitness. Citing extensive crosslinguistic evidence, Finegan and Biber stress that language use is shaped in the competitive interplay between the need to make messages as clear as possible for decoders versus the temptation to cut corners and go for ease of encoding. As Finegan and Biber (1994: 337) write, [. . .] all interlocutors, irrespective of social affiliation, produce more explicit and elaborated expression in “literate” situations – having little direct interaction, little shared context, high informational purposes, and extensive opportunity for careful production. Conversely, all interlocutors produce more economical expression in “oral” situations – having extensive interaction and shared context, low informational purposes, and little opportunity for careful production.

In other words, how far writers will go the extra length and make things easier for readers depends on factors such as the amount and type of information

 Paul Bruthiaux

shared among the participants, whether the medium is spoken or written, and variation in planning time and opportunities for editing. Thus, it is the ever varying need for greater or lesser explicitness which determines the degree of syntactic elaboration which writers are willing to build into their texts in the hope that readers will settle for this compromise and that reasonably smooth communication will follow. In the language of classified advertising, the case for explicitness is strong when we examine the role played by prepositions. Though conventionally described as function words, these items are semantically highly contentful and low in redundancy. Thus, they cannot be left out of compressed messages without dramatically redirecting meaning or affecting comprehensibility, as in the following extract from a hypothetical classified ad in which different preposition choices change the content of the message quite radically: (8) Work at/in/from/through the airport

The difficulty is that not all function words are equal in terms of contentfulness. Rather, they range over a continuum from high contentfulness / low redundancy (as with prepositions) to low contentfulness / high redundancy (for example, indefinite articles). Meanwhile, items such as the highly deictic personal pronouns fall somewhere in the middle because their referents can often be recovered from contextual clues, in this register as in others. In classified ads, however, it is not clear how the costly inclusion of low contentfulness/high redundancy items such as articles or pronouns promotes greater explicitness than in alternative versions in which these items have been deliberately left out, as in the following examples: (9) I like going to the movies and the beach / Like movies, beach (10) You must have a home computer / Must have home computer

So, while a requirement for greater explicitness undoubtedly plays a part in shaping these texts, some other factor must also be at play in convincing advertisers – consciously or otherwise – that it is worth their while investing some of their precious linguistic resources in relatively dispensable material. In Bruthiaux (1996), I suggest that greater use of this dispensable material is found in texts predicting a long-term, more strongly interpersonal relationship between writer and reader – such as classified ads offering employment or seeking romantic partners – and less in texts predicting a brief to nonexistent interpersonal relationship – as in ads advertising apartments for rent and especially used cars. Thus, I suggest that the key factor behind this varia-

In a nutshell

tion may be the need to persuade and impress, manifested linguistically in the display of relatively sophisticated language. Although the language in which these messages are couched carries little readily identifiable propositional content, it is intended to show that writers have the ability to manipulate that language skillfully and they will choose to display this ability in the hope that the more skillful language user should have the edge over less skillful competitors. For evidence, I now turn to another type of advertising language, that of promotional catalogs. Advertising catalogs come in many forms, but they all share a number of basic characteristics. Like classified ads, their aim is to persuade readers to notice and then select specific products over the claims of equally determined competitors. They differ from classified ads, however, in that they are not produced by cost-conscious individuals but typically by organizations with substantial advertising budgets and with no direct competition for space from other advertisers within their own catalog. But as in classified ads, descriptions of products and exhortations to transact are subject to spatial compression, with large amounts of available space left unfilled by either photos or text. Given this broadly uniform – and apparently self-imposed – degree of textual compression, it can be hypothesized that (1) in advertising texts describing items in common usage such as groceries, standard furniture or everyday clothing, the need for explicitness will be broadly equal across different catalogs. Since readers hardly need to be reminded of the primary function of sardines, sofas, or socks, it can be reasonably assumed that (2) any language not primarily fulfilling an essential descriptive / informational purpose will be left out (including low contentfulness / high redundancy items such as articles, as discussed above). To test this hypothesis, a corpus was assembled from a range of advertising catalogs distributed in the Southern California area (with some available more widely on the Internet) and representing a wide variety of products. These sources were then divided into two groups according to the “glamorous” or “utilitarian” orientation of the source. At one end of the continuum were placed sources that trade on the sensuality of their products (Victoria’s Secret), cultivate a relatively upmarket image (Macy’s, Levitz), or are known locally for their dedication to providing quality products for the discerning (yet costconscious) palate (Trader Joe’s). All tend to offer products that appeal to the status conscious. At the other end of the continuum were placed a variety of sources that trade on their practical image by providing bare necessities while emphasizing immediate need, convenience, and affordability (Table 1).



 Paul Bruthiaux

Table 1. Catalog sources glamorous

N = 5,682 words

Levitz – furniture Macy’s – department stores Trader Joe’s – groceries Victoria’s Secret – women’s apparel

utilitarian

N = 3,192 words

Gerald’s – paint and hardware Home Depot – home improvement Pic ‘n’ Save – variety stores Ralph’s – supermarkets Riteaid – pharmacies Sav-On Drugs – pharmacies Von’s – supermarkets

At the glamorous end, it is immediately clear that, given the comparable amount of space devoted to text across all sources, the syntactic elaboration of messages reaches full sentence status in most cases. While missing items such as articles, subject pronoun/copula clusters, or auxiliaries constitute evidence of economy through truncation, spatial constraints appear to have had little restrictive influence on the syntactic elaboration of these texts. This can be seen from the following examples:5 (11) Reclining Wallaway Sofa or Wallaway Console Loveseat. Space-saving design lets you place furniture inches from the wall. Features wallaway recliner at each end. (Levitz) (12) Calvin Klein Eternity for Men Eau de Toilette Spray, 1.7 oz. Calvin Klein’s cool, fresh and woodsy scent that is the perfect companion for an active lifestyle. (Macy’s) (13) San Andrés 1998 Sauvignon Blanc. The wine has a bouquet of citrus fruits, followed by tropical flavors which finish cleanly. This is a good choice with poultry or Chilean sea bass. (Trader Joe’s) (14) Jewelled thong bikini, is like wearing a stunning piece of jewellery. Halter top has a black mesh overlay with our logo in ruby-coloured rhinestones. Faux leather trim. Halter top ties at neck and back. Thong bottom with our silver heart logo in back. (Victoria’s Secret)

In most cases, these texts share with classified ads a preference for a label-like opening consisting of the mere listing of the primary features of each item. In the items above, this is seen in Reclining Wallaway Sofa (11), Calvin Klein Eternity for Men Eau de Toilette Spray (12), San Andrés 1998 Sauvignon Blanc (13), and Jewelled thong bikini (14). In a few cases, a rare concession to the space-saving approach characteristic of classified ads is the absence of definite articles in otherwise fully elaborated segments. Examples are segments such as [the] space-saving design lets you place furniture inches from the wall (11)

In a nutshell 

or [the] halter top has a black mesh overlay (14). But the overall impression is one of substantial syntactic elaboration leading to the inclusion of items and features normally absent from spatially constrained texts such as pronouns and articles, as in the perfect companion for an active lifestyle (12) or [. . .] has a black mesh overlay with our logo (14). In addition, these texts are also characterized by the presence of fully elaborated relative clauses and prepositional phrases as in The wine has a bouquet of citrus fruits, followed by tropical flavors which finish cleanly (13). Nor have spatial constraints succeeded in keeping out of these texts richly evocative, yet somewhat redundant lexical items such as Klein’s cool, fresh and woodsy scent (12). In contrast, texts at the utilitarian end of the spectrum are characterized by the kind of syntactic minimalism typical of classified ads for used cars and apartments for rent. As in these ads, the typical formula here consists of relatively long paratactic strings, absence of semantically redundant articles, and little or no use of interactional markers such as personal pronouns. Among function words, only prepositions are frequently inserted, thus confirming their key role in making semantically essential relationships explicit: (15) Timberline Gas Log Sets. Complete with realistic logs, heavy duty steel grate, hardware for gas hook-up, steel ember pan, gas flex tube and more. (Gerald’s) (16) 19” Mulcher Rear Bag. Delivers cordless power equivalent to 5 hp gas mower. 24 volt battery. 3 in 1 convertibility to mulcher/side discharge. Side bag sold separately. (Home Depot) (17) AirRunner. Features sturdy steel construction. Extra wide, sure grip foot platforms. Wide base for total support. 300lb weight capacity. Easy to use. (Pic ‘n’ Save) (18) 3 lb. bag Extra Fancy Granny Smith Apples. Crisp and Tasty. $1.49 each. (Ralph’s) (19) Ciba Vision Quick Care 5 Minute System. For soft contact lenses. With 0.27-ounce starting solution, 12-ounce finishing solution and lens case. (Riteaid) (20) Whitmor Denim Storage. Shoe organizer, 4-drawer chest or storage box. Corrugated. Easy to assemble. Selected sizes. (Sav-On Drugs) (21) Large Grade AA Eggs. Vons one dozen. Buy one, get one free. with Valueplus. Limit 1 free coupon. (Von’s)

 Paul Bruthiaux

Table 2. Percentage of content versus function words in glamorous texts (N = 1,000 words) versus utilitarian texts (N = 1,000 words)

glamorous utilitarian

% content

% function

68.5 87.3

31.5 12.7

To provide a check that these observations were valid across the entire corpus, a count of content versus function words was performed, giving the following results (Table 2). The substantially higher percentage of function words in texts at the glamorous end of the spectrum (31.5%) confirms that these writers chose to weave their messages into more complex syntax.6 Here, function words are inserted in greater numbers to provide the building blocks of fully elaborated relative and subordinate clauses and more generally to give these texts full sentence status. Conversely, the much lower percentage of function words at the utilitarian end of the continuum (12.7%) indicates that the spatial resources available are devoted to making the message “speak for itself ” by presenting the product “as is.” Here, it is as though persuasion is expected to flow from the basic characteristics and inherent qualities of the product itself, not from any presentational skill on the part of the advertiser. It is possible that this variation may be due to the fact that the products at each end of the continuum are so different that any linguistic representation of their characteristics cannot help reflecting that difference. For example, some common household products are so well known or have so few distinguishing features that require description that no syntax may be needed to link the components of the message and make explicit the logical relationships between these components. This can be seen from the following example from the Von’s supermarket catalog: (22) Minute Maid Premium Orange Juice. Selected Chilled Varieties from Concentrate. 128 oz btl.

In contrast, because less indispensable items are by definition less familiar, their properties may require a greater degree of specification. Moreover, because they are intended at least in part to make affluent or image-conscious owners feel different, they will require a descriptive style that will make them appear unique, as in this example from the Macy’s catalog:

In a nutshell 

(23) 14K Gold Baguette Sapphire and Diamond Earrings. Take her breath away with the birthstone of September: the sapphire. We present them as earrings by alternating four, beautiful baguette-cut sapphires with radiant diamonds with a weight of .55 ct. t.w. Together, they shine in 14k gold.

Clearly, Finegan and Biber’s (1994) notion of the writer’s mandate to balance ease of encoding with comprehensibility applies here. Some products will simply require more language than others if their characteristics are to be represented fairly and persuasively and sales are to be made. However, given that the writers of both types of texts operate under comparable spatial constraints, it is still not clear how fully elaborated sentences, complete with definite articles (the birthstone, the sapphire), personal pronouns (we present them), or even prepositions (cut sapphires with radiant diamonds with a weight of .55 ct), make the description any more explicit than truncated alternatives. Further evidence that an additional factor is at play here can be found within the supermarket catalogs listed above. Using comparable amounts of space, these tend to present products that are similar in use, quality, and price. Most products are presented in the main body of each page in the catalog, as in the following example from a Ralph’s catalog: (24) La Victoria Thick ‘N Chunky Salsa. Mild, medium, or hot. 16 oz jar. $1.39.

However, similar products can also be found highlighted inside a boxed inset, as in another example from the Ralph’s catalog (appearing here in an inset box under the heading “Service Deli”): (25) PS True Blue Cheese Salad Dressing: If you love blue cheese, you’ve found a superb alternative to more pricey bottles of dressing. Our Private Selection Blue Cheese Salad Dressing is a unique blend of soft blue cheese with extra chunky cheese to put more flavor in every bite. Try our other fabulous flavors! $1.69 each.

Here, the linguistic representation of the first product is limited to the mere listing of its major characteristics. In contrast, the description of the second relies on fully elaborated syntax – including multiple prepositional phrases and subordination – as well as on a heavy dose of “feel-good” language (superb, unique, fabulous) offering readers an alternative from a private selection with extra chunky cheese and more flavor. Of course, these claims border on the absurd given how ubiquitous and inexpensive the product is. Yet, they are included at some spatial cost, presumably not for their informational value but as part of an overall attempt to persuade readers that the product is uncom-

 Paul Bruthiaux

monly desirable and, I suggest, that some of this uniqueness might rub off on the purchaser. At first glance, this would appear to contradict the pattern found in classified ads. In these texts, despite the obvious spatial cost to the writer, more elaborated language correlates with the greater expectation of long-term interpersonal relations between writer and reader. Cars can be sold and apartments rented over the briefest of encounters, with the projection of personal characteristics – and in particular, of a favorable self-image – playing little or no part. In contrast, the expectation of a longer-term commitment implied in recruitment and especially personal ads requires an exchange of information about the interlocutors that is so central to any future interaction that even strict spatial constraints cannot keep propositionally redundant linguistic display out of the message. Meanwhile in advertising catalogs, the degree of syntactic elaboration (as in example (25)) can be related in part to a requirement for explicit information about products with which readers may not be familiar. However, persuading readers to notice and then purchase a product from among those offered by myriad competitors requires that the product be made to appear distinctive and exceptionally attractive. This is done by appealing to an intangible but powerful sense of self-image in readers. Thus a tradeoff is reached in which precious space is sacrificed in order to accommodate propositionally redundant, yet syntactically elaborate linguistic devices including complex – and often redundant – syntax. This strategy amounts to a subliminal display of linguistic sophistication by the writer, thus flattering the reader by association and increasing the chance of successful persuasion by referring less to content than to self-image and sense of status. This correlation between social placement and communicative ability has been noted by analysts such as Pinker (1994) or Dessalles (1998), who argue that all accounts of language structure as well as use must have (among other things) evolutionary plausibility. That is, they must explain what they observe in terms of the selective pressures under which the human capacity for language may have evolved and with the web of environmental factors that favored certain linguistic features and practices over others.7 Thus, a selectionist, neoDarwinian account of language structure and use fits in well with functional approaches to the study of language. It does not mean, however, that our modern preoccupation with readily observable, quantifiable facts should restrict this account – as it so often did in early accounts of the evolution of language – to practical functions and the solution of immediate mechanical problems such as toolmaking, food gathering,

In a nutshell 

or hunting. Instead, much of the human cognitive and linguistic inheritance may be seen as having originated in selective pressures inherent in the development of social intelligence. That is, our modern linguistic capacity may be seen as having developed in parallel with the ability to correctly assess the desires and motives of other group members (Levinson 1995; Studdert-Kennedy et al. 1998). From a selectionist point of view that stresses social intelligence, language can be seen as a device for forming and maintaining alliances and thus achieving successful reproduction through a complex social network. As Studdert-Kennedy et al. (1998: 4) write, [. . .] the capacity to speak and listen [. . .] might afford an individual, male or female, and its close kin a selective advantage over conspecific rivals in forming coalitions, discussing plans of action, and otherwise negotiating a path to higher social status, and so to more successful feeding and mating.

Since social relationships vary in complexity, we should expect to find a range of viable language systems – or registers – varying in efficiency and expressive power, as indeed we do today in child language, pidgins, L2 interlanguages, aphasic language, and of course the spatially constrained language of advertising. But the more complex types of social interactions, and in particular the persuasive needs of group members, will require language that is capable of expressing these complex relationships, often involving displacement (that is, reference to individuals not present at the time of speaking) and recursion (the sequential embedding of modifying clauses). Clearly, none of this is possible without some considerable degree of syntactic elaboration.8 As Pinker (1994: 369) writes, I suspect that evolving humans lived in a world in which language was woven into the intrigues of politics, economics, technology, family, sex, and friendship that played key roles in individual reproductive success. They could no more live with a Me-Tarzan-you-Jane level of grammar than we could.

From this perspective, the successful manipulation of complex linguistic structures is bound up with the successful manipulation of complex social relationships, hence with status and ultimately reproductive success. In today’s much less deterministic environment, these selective pressures no longer apply quite as powerfully or predictably. But their powerful influence in the early development of human cognition and social practices may well have left us with a sense that, in the words of Dessalles (1998: 146), highly regarded people around us are not only those who have performed heroic acts or who have been appointed to official positions. A person who

 Paul Bruthiaux

merely makes sound remarks, expresses articulate thoughts and can hold the interest of an audience is likely to deserve esteem.

Thus, individual language users can be seen as advertisers, competing with each other in eloquence and persuasive skill in order to draw attention to themselves, to obtain status from their audience, and to reflect some of that status onto those who choose to associate with them. Thus from an evolutionary perspective, language as a whole may be considered as an “advertising device” (Dessalles 1998: 142), even when the tightest of spatial constraints apply. To sum up, I argue that the degree of syntactic sophistication apparent in advertising messages is influenced not only by relatively tangible constraints such as available space but also – and most importantly – by the complex social relations anticipated by the participants. I also argue that the expression of these social relations requires a display of linguistic sophistication achievable even within the tightest of constraints. And lest some readers require further persuading, consider Hal, the all-powerful but emotionally challenged computer, in 2001: A Space Odyssey as it painstakingly enunciates its truncated, low-redundancy syntax when relaying simple messages that need to be put over quickly and reliably: (26) Lock confirmed on beacon terra one. Message commencing.

Just a year after this linguistic minimalism made movie history, as two fleshand-blood adventurers are landing the Apollo 11 craft on the moon’s surface, the following message is heard: (27) Roger. Picking up some dust. Big shadow. Contact light. OK. Engine stopped. Tranquility Base here [. . .]

Here, the primary purpose of the message is to put across the technical details of the operation explicitly and economically. Thus, the language is almost entirely shorn of the kind of syntactic frills that would have added nothing to explicitness but possibly put comprehensibility at risk during a high-risk maneuver. But as the solemnity of the moment sinks in and posterity takes over from technicalities, the language abruptly changes to the fully elaborated: (28) The Eagle has landed

Later on, as the historic moonwalk gets under way, despite the inordinate physical effort required and the possibility that the syntactic details may be lost or ignored in the crackling transmission, the speaker marshals the full syntactic resources of the language and announces:

In a nutshell 

(29) This is a small step for a man, but a giant leap for mankind

A mere “Eagle landed,” I suggest, would have been something of an anticlimax, and a bare-bone “Small step for a man, giant leap for mankind” would not have survived the next day’s headlines. Persuading a world audience that this was indeed an epoch-making event required a display of verbal sophistication in which syntactic elaboration played a key part. Syntactic minimalism impresses no one, except Hal the computer, perhaps.

Notes * Reprinted from Language and Communication, Volume 20 (4), Paul Bruthiaux, “In a nutshell: Persuasion in the spatially constrained language of advertising”, 297–310, (2000), with permission from Elsevier Science. . From a business point of view, it is notoriously difficult to link advertising effort and specific sales. Indeed, the age-old joke in advertising circles is that managers know that half their advertising budget is wasted but have no idea which half (a state of affairs also known as “spray and pray”). In any given commercial situation some sales would undoubtedly have taken place without advertising effort on the part of the supplier, though this must be less true of classified advertising than of display advertising. . For a recent review of the mechanisms governing this adjustment in the language of mass media, see Leitner (1997). . Of course, a specific linguistic adaptation need not have a single cause. For reasons quite unconnected with spatial or financial constraints, creative affixing has become a feature of the neatly logical world of computer programming in which every operation must have its negative counterpart, leading to pairs such as delete/undelete, install/uninstall, or subscribe/unsubscribe. Similarly, in their endless search for ways to rationalize their activities, military strategists often frame them in an on/off format by de/escalating wars, de/militarizing zones, or de/conflicting air space. . It is true that in an apparent effort to maximize saliency, some types of advertising go for deliberately cryptic wordings that flirt with unintelligibility. This may be effective with the relatively small, well-identified audiences of special interest magazines or cable TV “narrowcasting.” However, much of the advertising material printed in high-circulation magazines or aired on conventional network broadcasting – at least in the US media – continues to consist of the straightforward sequence of (1) introducing a product, (2) possibly associating it with a celebrity, (3) listing its attractions, and (4) emphasizing that the viewer’s happiness is predicated upon owning it. . In all the catalogs examined for this study, prices were typically indicated in much larger font sizes outside the text itself. For this reason, most prices were not included in the database unless given within the text.

 Paul Bruthiaux . It is true that, as Halliday (1989) shows, a low frequency of function words – correlating with high lexical density – can be an indicator of semantic complexity characteristic of the heavy attributive nominalizations found especially in academic writing, as in “Confrontation and politeness strategies in physician-patient interactions” (Robins & Wolf 1988). However, academic discourse achieves its communicative aim by means of fully elaborated syntax, not the bare-bone parataxis (or mere juxtaposition of content words) typical of the more utilitarian types of classified advertising texts. . For a comprehensive discussion of the contribution of neo-Darwinian accounts to our understanding of language evolution and use, see Botha (1998). For an account of recent computer simulations showing how multiagent causal interactions may have shaped the evolution of modern language, see Steels (1997). . This view parallels Givón’s (1995) account of language evolution from a knowledgedriven to a grammar-driven process, the former being older and slower and the latter younger and faster. While the entire range of the continuum remains available to language users, the knowledge-driven mode is present in the language of L1 and L2 learners, pidgin speakers and agrammatical aphasics. It can also be seen as the mode of (subconscious) choice for writers anticipating little complexity in any social relationships that might result from the communicative act. Conversely, an anticipation of more complex social relationships would predict a recourse to more grammar-driven language.

References Botha, Rudolph P. (1998). “Neo-Darwinian accounts of the evolution of language (4): Questions about their comparative merit”. Language & Communication, 18 (3), 227– 249. Bruthiaux, Paul (1996). The Discourse of Classified Advertising: Exploring the Nature of Linguistic Simplicity. New York: Oxford University Press. Dessalles, Jean-Louis (1998). “Altruism, status and the origin of relevance”. In J. R. Hurford, M. Studdert-Kennedy, & C. Knight (Eds.), Approaches to the Evolution of Language: Social and Cognitive Bases (pp. 130–147). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dionne, E. J. Jr. (1999, March 2). “The unspoken art of Cablese”. International Herald Tribune. http://www.iht.com Finegan, Edward & Biber, Douglas (1994). “Register and social dialect variation: An integrated approach”. In D. Biber & E. Finegan (Eds.), Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Register (pp. 315–347). New York: Oxford University Press. Givón, Talmy (1995). Functionalism and Grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Halliday, Michael A. K. (1989). Spoken and Written Language. New York: Oxford University Press. Klein, Wolfgang (1998). “The contribution of second language acquisition research”. Language Learning, 48 (4), 527–550. Leitner, Gerhard (1997). “The sociolinguistics of communication media. In F. Coulmas (Ed.), The Handbook of Sociolinguistics (pp. 187–204). Oxford: Blackwell.

In a nutshell

Levinson, Stephen C. (1995). “Interactional biases in human thinking”. In E. N. Goody (Ed.), Social Intelligence and Interaction: Expressions and Implications of the Social Bias in Human Intelligence (pp. 221–260). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pinker, Steven (1994). The Language Instinct. New York: William Morrow. Robins, Lynne S. & Wolf, Fredric M. (1988). “Confrontation and politeness strategies in physician-patient interactions”. Social Science and Medicine, 27 (3), 217–221. Steels, Luc (1997). “The synthetic modeling of language origins”. Evolution of Communication, 1 (1), 1–34. Studdert-Kennedy, Michael, Knight, Chris, & Hurford, James R. (1998). “Introduction: New Approaches to Language Evolution”. In J. R. Hurford, M. Studdert-Kennedy, & C. Knight (Eds.), Approaches to the Evolution of Language: Social and Cognitive Bases (pp. 1–5). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.



Chapter 6

“Polls and surveys show” Public opinion as a persuasive device in editorial discourse Tuija Virtanen

Newspapers and other media commonly rely on public opinion polls and surveys to generate news. Further, polls and surveys provide writers of argumentative texts such as editorials with a pool of results which they can use as evidence to support claims. Of course writers need not take literally what polls and surveys seem to indicate in order to use them for persuasive purposes; even a critical discussion of polls and surveys presupposes the existence of polling as an established institution in society. It is important to investigate how the results of polls and surveys are presented in newspapers and other media because they steer people’s perceptions in hidden ways. Even if an informed readership is aware of the pitfalls of polling, the discourse of “public opinion” still readily serves persuasive purposes. By mediating the discourse of polls and surveys, interlocutors construct contexts for and through their texts, and the intertextuality and interdiscursivity of the media reinforce the impact of public opinion surveys on that very opinion. Studies of polling have hitherto primarily focused on the psychological consequences of asking questions. Polling has thus long been considered something of a reflection of public opinion and the concern has accordingly been with the mechanisms of eliciting that opinion. Yet, it is the discourse of polling and its mediation through the public space that help construct the public opinion referred to in newspapers and elsewhere. Hence, Lipari (2000) shows how polling discourse serves the purposes of social interaction and helps maintain and reinforce ideologies in society. She rightly concludes:

 Tuija Virtanen

What makes the tacit assumptions embedded in poll discourse doubly persuasive is the legitimacy lent them by the supposed voice of the public. What makes them doubly powerful is the repeated interpretation, dissemination, and reiteration of poll discourse in speeches, policy debates, news reports, and other forms of political discourse. (Lipari 2000: 210)

In this light, the ‘interdiscursive chain’ (Fairclough 2001) mediating and marketing the discourse of public opinion constitutes a crucial site of study. The present chapter focuses on one link in such a chain, i.e. that constituted by editorial discourse in a major American newspaper. The genre of editorials provides us with an argumentative space where polling can be used as a basis for discussions of a variety of topics. More specifically, the aim of this study is to uncover ways of using the discourse of public opinion surveys for persuasive purposes in newspaper editorials. Information generated through polls and surveys is proposed as an institutionalized basis for conclusions drawn or implied in such texts. Public opinion surveys can thus be used to claim common ground as readers are assumed to take surveying seriously, irrespective of whether they adopt a critical view of the results. Such assumptions have important implications for the construction of public opinion in society.

.

Methods and materials

Combining methods from corpus studies and discourse analysis, I investigate references to polls and surveys in the editorials of the 1994 and 1996 issues of The New York Times (NYT), with the purpose of (a) determining whether, to what extent, and how such references are used for persuasive purposes in those contexts, and (b) to test ways of using a computerized corpus to come to grips with persuasion as a process. The 1994 and 1996 issues of the NYT – these years having been chosen at random – consist of over one and a half million words of editorial text (i.e. 1,684,476 running words), available on cd-rom. The usual number of editorials per issue is three, and their average length is around 760 words. The program used for the automatic retrieval of lexical items from the corpus is WordSmith Tools. For the detailed analysis of entire texts I have extracted ten editorials which make reference to a poll and another ten which refer to a survey. The twenty texts, selected at random, are all from the 1996 issues of the NYT. It is impor-

“Polls and surveys show”

tant to keep in mind that since the data originate in the computerized NYT corpus, they have by definition already been decontextualized. The analysis of the twenty texts cannot therefore be related to the authentic multisemiotic newspaper context in which they originally emerged and which they helped construct. Similarly, these data, thus recontextualized, have been decontextualized from the time-space dimension of the authentic discourse which they represent. Still, the data allow an in-depth investigation of polling discourse in entire newspaper texts carrying the label ‘editorials,’ which is a well-established genre. In what follows, the focus is first on the corpus study. Here I attempt to establish shared characteristics which can be traced in the way polls and surveys are referred to in the data. Combining the corpus study with discourse analysis makes it possible to single out a pattern to which “poll sentences” (i.e. sentences which include a reference to a poll or survey) tend to conform in this genre. At the end of the chapter I turn to the analysis of entire texts to discuss the construction of the mediated “public opinion” and its use to support arguments in this context. For reasons of comparison I also touch upon the practices of voicing “public opinion” in the two adjacent genres of ‘letters to the editor’ and essays published on the page opposing the editorials and letters in the printed newspaper (‘Op-Ed’), in Sections 2.1 and 6, below.

. Corpus study The research questions of the corpus study are the following: 1. How frequent are references to public opinion polls and surveys in the data? 2. What form do they take? 3. What company do the keywords poll(s) and survey(s) keep in the sentence and the text? The analysis of the automatically retrieved references to poll(s) and survey(s) shows a wide range of regularities, which are here approached from the perspectives of the overall frequency of the two keywords, clusters of three words of which they make part, and recurrent elements in a wider, yet immediate textual context in which they appear.



 Tuija Virtanen

. Overall frequency References to polls and surveys appear 204 times in the data. As the editorial data consist of the total of 1,684,476 running words, the relative frequency of such references turns out to be 0.12 per 1,000 words, i.e. per long editorial. With three editorials per issue, a reference to a poll or survey can thus be estimated to appear in an editorial every third or fourth day. Furthermore, 72% of the references in the data are to polls and 28% to surveys. The higher percentage is explained by the inclusion of exit polls and other election-related polls in the automatic part of the analysis. To help situate these editorial data in their proper textual context, it is instructive to compare them with the adjacent genres of the two opposite pages in the NYT, pages which can be simultaneously accessed by the readership of the printed newspaper: ‘letters to the editor’ and the texts which appear on the ‘Op[posite]-Ed[itorial]’ page. In the issues examined for the present purposes, 25% of the text on the two opposite pages is from editorials (1,684,476 words), 34% is from letters (2,268,401 words), and 41% is from Op-Ed essays (2,691,731 words). Letters make 267 references to polls and surveys, which corresponds to 0.12 hits per 1,000 words. In the Op-Ed section, again, the comparable figure is 511, or 0.19 hits per 1,000 words. This gives us the average of 0.15 references to polls and surveys per 1,000 words on the two opposite pages of the paper (982 instances). In other words, both journalists and non-journalists contributing to the discourse of these two pages (entitled ‘Editorials/Letters’ and ‘Op-Ed’) regularly refer to a poll or survey in their writing. Because of the inclusion of election-oriented polls, Op-Ed texts manifest a similar division of the number of references to polls and surveys as editorials; i.e., 76% of the hits refer to polls and 24% to surveys. Letters, in contrast, show very different figures, i.e. 44% and 56%, respectively. In what follows the focus will again be on editorials alone. . Clustering Looking first at clusters of three or more words in which the keywords take part at least three times, we find a number of routine expressions such as in the polls; poll(s)/survey(s) show(s/ed/ing) that/the/a; poll/survey found that; according to a/the [poll/survey]; based on a [poll/survey]; (in) (a/the) (most) recent/new/latest poll(s)/survey; in opinion polls; survey after survey; poll after poll. These clusters disclose some of the main characteristics of mediated poll discourse in the editorial data.

“Polls and surveys show” 

To start with, these clusters indicate three major ways of attributing information to a given poll or survey. The prepositional phrase in the polls constitutes the most frequent cluster, with 36 instances (i.e. 18 % of the 204 references in the data). In a recent survey appears four times while in opinion polls is found another three times. All in all, these prepositional phrases are the most common way of indicating the source of recontextualized polling discourse in these texts. The second most important way of attributing information to polls and surveys is using the verb show, as in polls/surveys show that [+ clause]. The third way is to use one of the two phrases according to or based on [a poll/survey]. These two ways will be further discussed below, in connection with the study of collocation. Furthermore, the list of clusters discloses a need to point to the newness of the information; we find instances such as in a recent survey or the most recent polls. Recency is another issue which will be discussed in more detail in Section 2.3 below. Finally, what the study of frequent clusters also shows is that the given poll or survey tends to be left unspecified, as in (in) survey after survey, poll after poll, in polls and surveys, in opinion polls, polls/surveys show, opinion polls indicate, according to recent polls. Consider, in this light, examples (1) and (2), where the particular polling discourse mediated in the text is simply attributed to the fact that relevant polls are alleged to exist. (1) [. . .] Do politicians, corporate managers and doctors believe that, like the big lies of totalitarian states, this one can be repeated until people at last believe it? The people will not. In polls and surveys, most Americans still say they want universal health care, and they know that nations poorer than we have attained it. Where representative government has ground to a halt in gridlock, direct democracy is beginning to take its place. [. . .] (NYT Sep. 28, 1994) (2) It is not hard to see why Mr. Gingrich felt he had to trim back. President Clinton has surprised even his own supporters by standing firm against Republican threats to shut down the Government and limit its ability to issue debt. Polls show the public is fed up with Republican maneuvers and blames the Republicans more than the President for the budget deadlock. Even Wall Street was getting jittery as Moody’s Investors Service announced that it was considering lowering its ratings for Treasury bonds

 Tuija Virtanen

because of fears the political gridlock would lead to default. To top it off, [. . .] (NYT Jan. 26, 1996)

In contrast, news texts rather tend to refer to the origin of a given poll in a more specific way, e.g. A USA TODAY / CNN / Gallup Poll of 662 adults Thursday night showed that the public wasn’t impressed. This is so in particular in texts which are generated solely on the basis of polling. Example (3), below, from the NYT illustrates the kind of information that is usually included in news reports mediating polling discourse. (3) A poll released yesterday found that when it comes to Federal aid, it appears that more people have sympathy for the plight of the elderly than for children. Forty-six percent of those polled by the Empire State Survey said [. . .] [. . .] The random telephone poll was conducted Nov. 14 to 24 among 1,200 American adults by the Empire State Survey, which is financed by the Empire Foundation and the Lehrman Institute, nonprofit organizations that study public policy. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points. (NYT Nov. 29, 1996, Metropolitan Desk)

It is beyond the scope of the present study to discuss how news stories mediate polling discourse and create contexts through the voicing of an alleged opinion of the general public. Yet, we may note in passing that the particularized reference is related to an expectation of news stories to be based on “facts.” In contrast, editorials are more readily associated with persuasion and argumentation (cf. e.g. Tirkkonen-Condit 1996; Werlich 1976). Hence, Davis and Brewer (1997: 48–49) note that American students participating in an experiment where newspaper data were used “brought expectations to the text about genres that would tell them how to read these texts.” A shared presupposition about the editorial genre appeared to be that “editorials should be persuasive.” Examples (1) and (2), above, also serve to demonstrate the inherently argumentative nature of editorial discourse. To take a closer look at the company that the two keywords poll(s) and survey(s) keep in the NYT editorials, we will now turn our attention to their collocates.

“Polls and surveys show” 

. Collocation Access to large computerized corpora using software which basically works on lexical cues has led to something of a renaissance of the study of collocation. These tools have, however, necessitated the adoption of a new, non-linguistic definition of the term, based on the idea of automatic retrieval of lexical items from corpora (cf. Sinclair 1991). Adopting this option for the purposes of the present study, I have regularly defined the context for the automatic search of collocates to be five words preceding and following the node. The maximum allowed by the software, i.e. 25 words, has also been opted for, to track the occurrence of explicit signals of conjunction in the vicinity of the two keywords. The presence of connectors in the immediate textual context of the node is of potential relevance to the study of the persuasive functions of recontextualized polling discourse in the argument, as will be shown below. The minimal number of instances required for a pair of words to qualify as a collocation, in the automatic sense of the term, is set at five. When the program is run on raw text, as is the case in the present study, homonyms will of course not be automatically separated and they have thus been checked manually. Collocation can be of many kinds. In Chapter 7 of this volume, Östman discusses the linguistic notion in terms of the traditional Firthian concept. He points out the importance of not only focusing on lexico-grammatical issues but also studying what he calls ‘pragmatic collocation.’ To find instances of these, however, it is particularly expedient to adopt an automatic view of collocation, as shown by his analysis. While Östman’s concern in Chapter 7 is with pragmatics, the present chapter is primarily focused on ‘textual collocation,’ i.e. collocates discernible when we extend the scope from the immediate linguistic context of the node to cover words that appear in the vicinity of the node or further away from it but not necessarily in the same phrase, clause or sentence. Though not identical, this approach is concomitant with Hoey’s (1991) view that collocation is basically a textual phenomenon: “Words only have collocations because they appear in recurrent combinations in text; indeed our ability to recognize collocations supports the belief that the connections made between sentences across long distances of text are subconsciously recognized by the reader” (Hoey 1991: 219). It is obvious that a non-linguistic definition of collocation leads to insufficient precision in the search procedure; the output can, in principle, consist of any relatively frequent lexico-grammatical items, including common function words. Yet, it is exactly this lack of ‘precision,’ combined with maximal ‘recall’ (for these concepts, see Brodda 1991), that allows us to make unexpected find-

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ings; any element of language is potentially of interest in the study of textual and pragmatic collocation. Furthermore, the way in which collocates are automatically computed can, for instance, result in a particular form of a verb, rather than the lemma, being singled out as a collocate. In what follows, the most frequent collocations of the two keywords are dealt with in terms of eight different groups (Sections 2.3.1–2.3.8 below). The absolute number of instances is regularly given when it is higher than ten; in the remainder of the cases the figures range between five and nine. While an extension of the corpus would yield a larger number of instances of most of the collocations, the present results are indicative of tendencies well worth discussing. .. That introducing a nominal clause Ignoring the obvious articles and central prepositions (such as in, to, at), we note that the most important collocates in the immediate textual context of the two keywords are and (37 instances), to be discussed below, and that (34 instances). Nearly half of the instances of that (47%) appear in the second slot following the node, as in polls/surveys show that. .. Show and related verbs The analysis of clusters of three or more words which appear at least three times in the data revealed the central position of the lemma show in the immediate textual context of the two keywords (cf. example (2), above). The study of collocates confirms this finding: The forms show, showed, shows, showing (in that order of frequency) appear in connection with the two keywords altogether 25 times in the editorials, which makes show one of the top collocates. As can be expected, the verb show rarely appears elsewhere than immediately after the node. For both poll(s) and survey(s), show is thus clearly the most important of the verbal collocates. This is also apparent if the collocates of show are computed from the corpus. Only studies/study (35 times) collocate to a larger extent with this verb than poll(s) (20). Survey(s) are a less important but still a conspicuous companion of show (5). To continue with verbs that appear in the immediate context of the node, it is evident that when polls and surveys do not show that something is the case, they find (especially found, as in example (4), below), suggest, indicate, tell us, demonstrate and prove that something is the case. They can also show that something is not the case; the figure for not is as high as 12. Note, however, that the position of not shows a high degree of variation in relation

“Polls and surveys show” 

to the node. Often, as in example (1) above, Americans, or people, say what they think of a particular issue; much more rarely do they believe something to be the case. Of these verbs, however, only found and suggest are collocates in the sense of the minimum number of instances being set at five. Interestingly, the KWIC concordance of suggest shows that it is evidence (11) that suggests something in these data, rather than poll(s). Example (5), below, is one of the only five instances in my data where poll(s) collocates with suggest. Survey(s) do not suggest; survey(s) simply show. Finally, studies/study also indicate something to be the case, as do reports, data and evidence, rather than polls and surveys. (4) For Mr. Dole to accuse President Clinton of responsibility for the increase in drug use is no surprise, but surely it is a stretch. True, some experts say that after the favorable trends of the last two decades, many Americans have become complacent about the danger of drugs. In addition, a survey by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University has found what its chairman, Joseph A. Califano Jr., calls ‘an air of resignation’ among parents who came of age in an era of greater tolerance toward drugs. These attacks, however, are not so much about drugs as about Mr. Dole’s attempts to invigorate the character issue. [. . .] (NYT Sep. 23, 1996)

The study of collocations thus confirms that reports of polls and surveys in these data tend to simply show a state of affairs, rather than suggesting that something is or may be the case. What we therefore need to do next is to further investigate the degree of assertiveness or tentativeness present in the “poll sentence” by turning our attention to the nominal clause introduced by that. .. Modal auxiliaries in the nominal that-clause The analysis of important collocates shows that hedging modals or other expressions of tentativeness seldom appear in connection with references to survey results. One of the few instances where modals are found is (5) below, featuring may and a host of other hedges. Interestingly, however, the most important auxiliary among the collocates of poll(s) and survey(s) is will expressing futurity (10 instances), which appears predominantly in the context following the node. This can be explained by the inclusion of election-related polls in the data, as illustrated by example (5). (5) Hindu rightists have long wielded great influence in India, but they have never been able to govern by themselves. Recent polls suggest that their

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party may win a large plurality of votes. If so, they will no doubt try to form a government with the help of splinter groups and regional factions. (NYT Apr. 30, 1996)

Another modal collocate in the data is would (5 instances). In contrast, can, could, may, and should do not reach the minimum of five instances. The tentative modals seem to appear in contexts where predictions are made concerning future elections – as in example (5) above – or hypothetical actions or opinions ascribed to those polled, as in (6) below. Incidentally, in such contexts we also find a frequent use of questions and if -clauses, as shown by these two examples. (Argumentative uses of conditional clauses are in focus in Chapter 2 of the present volume, by Bülow-Møller.) (6) Is it any wonder then that the overwhelming majority of Canadian physicians, once bitterly opposed to their national health plan, now endorse it with pride? That polls show that 85 to 95 percent of Canadians consistently praise their own system and say they would not change it for ours? (NYT Sep. 28, 1994)

In light of the large number of modal auxiliaries in the present editorial data, they are not particularly important as collocates of the two keywords. For instance, would appears 3.17 times per 1,000 words in the editorial data while the corresponding figures for the others are as follows: will 2.89, can 1.52, could 1.32, and may 1.08. These figures can be compared with the much lower overall frequency of 0.12 per 1,000 words of the two keywords in the data. What is more conspicuous still is the fact that there are no modal adverbials (e.g. perhaps, possibly, probably, maybe) or other hedging expressions (e.g. be likely to, seem, tend or appear to) among the collocates. We can thus conclude that both the verb following the keywords in subject position and the verb of the nominal that-clause show a high degree of assertiveness, i.e. ‘polls/surveys show that something is (or is not) the case.’ .. According to Another way of attributing “public opinion” to a source is to use the phrase according to, and less often based on. We have seen above that according to a/the constitutes one of the three-word clusters in the present data. According to collocates 7 times with poll(s)/survey(s), all of these appearing before the node. Based on appears on both sides of the node, altogether 6 times. In example (7) a paragraph starts with a reference to a recent survey; in contrast, the second mention of a poll in example (14), below, illustrates an

“Polls and surveys show” 

instance where the reference to the poll is indicated only after the information based on the poll in question has been given in the text (fewer than 6 percent of whom support current policies, according to a Roper poll released in February). These two examples raise the issue of the placement of the reference to a poll or survey in the sentence, which is a textually motivated decision. This issue is worthy of a discussion of its own; it is the focus of Section 4 below. (7) [. . .] So what is there not to like about a bill that is so kind to children? According to a recent survey, 36 state senators do like the bill, none are opposed and the rest have not yet taken a position. Gov. Mario Cuomo, at whose request it was introduced, likes it too. So do a wide array of medical and public health associations, the Board of Regents and organizations ranging from the League of Women Voters to the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies. (NYT Jun. 22, 1994)

To continue with the central noun phrases present in the “poll sentence” in the data, let us now turn to two aspects highlighted by frequent collocates: (1) the polls and surveys referred to are recent, and (2) public opinion is quantifiable. .. Recency of information The study of the immediate textual context preceding the node also shows that recency is crucial as regards the results of public opinion surveys. Earlier surveys are, in fact, only referred to for contrastive purposes. (8) One of the things Mr. D’Amato was sensing was undoubtedly that pesky gender gap. The most recent Marist poll on Mr. D’Amato shows that men’s approval-disapproval breaks down 41 to 55. For women voters, however, the numbers are 25 to 64. (NYT Nov. 10, 1996) (9) But a new survey commissioned by the United Federation of Teachers has revealed a harrowing picture. (NYT Jan. 15, 1996) (10) But with Mexico’s least predictable presidential election of modern times just two months away, Mexicans have a chance to move toward real democracy. Some polls now show Diego Fernandez de Cevallos of the opposition National Action Party running almost even with the PRI candidate, Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon. Mr. Fernandez’s campaign caught fire last month after Mexico’s first televised presidential debate. (NYT Jun. 20, 1994)

Two of the most important lexical items collocating with poll(s) and survey(s) are recent (16 instances) and new (12 instances). All instances of the collocate recent are found before the node, while new appears both before and after the

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node, within five words in both directions. We also find latest and current. Further, the deictic adverbial now (6 instances) collocates with poll(s)/survey(s), and there are also a few instances of last, today, and ago in the data. Deictic adverbials of time serve to emphasize the freshness of the information by relating it to the ‘now’ of the text (e.g. last month, a week ago, now). Deictic adjectives such as recent and new constitute a handy way of highlighting the timeliness of the information without actually indicating when the given poll or survey was conducted. While the reference can clearly attribute responsibility for a poll or survey to a source, that need not be the case; witness the simple recent polls in example (5), above. Expressions of absolute time, such as Nov. 14, can rather be expected to appear in news reports (cf. example (3) in Section 2.2 above). .. Quantifiers Other collocates worth reflexion are quantifiers since results of polls and surveys are usually given in a numerical form. While the software used for this study does not list figures, we still find a range of collocates serving to indicate the commonness of the voiced opinion. Hence, we find percent, than, times, out (as in out of ), and a few instances of number(s), ratings, and figures. We find the hedging about, and a number of figures typed out: one, two, three, third, four, eight. Due to software restrictions, it is not possible to judge from these data whether the numbers and percentages indicated in editorials are overall less precise than those found in news reports mediating polling discourse, though the guess is that it would be so. Interestingly, among the collocates we find most and more, and a couple of instances of the following: all, majority, many, high, half, and over. In contrast, lexical items appearing in close contact with the keywords also include a few instances of the focusing adverbs only and just. It is, however, rare that a figure is low or less. This shows that the results of polls and surveys to which attention is given basically concern the opinion of the majority of those polled. Another quantifier found among the collocates is some, which predominantly appears in instances such as some polls/surveys (cf. example (10) above). .. Gender As can be expected, the gender marker collocating with poll(s) and survey(s) is his. Presidential campaigns in the U.S. are a matter of choosing between male candidates, where the other gender is only implicitly included in groupings such as voters, Americans, people, those [polled], or their/they predominantly referring to a political party, except when the discussion is specifically concerned

“Polls and surveys show” 

with women (cf. e.g. (8) above). Findings suggest that this is also true of the rest of the poll discourse mediated by the present editorial data. He (33 instances) and his (17 instances) are two of the most conspicuous collocates, and him (3 instances), manifesting a figure below the minimum of five instances, still adds another couple of indices to this group. Their collocates 9 times and they another 8 times, while party appears five times in the company of the keywords. No collocations with she/her/hers were found. .. Connectors and adverbials indicating focus and attitude Argumentative texts such as editorials can be expected to exhibit a set of connectors, in particular connectors indicating contrast and concession. Indeed, but (15 instances) occurs prominently in the immediate context of poll(s)/survey(s). Other signals of contrast and concession found in the vicinity of the node include still, despite, however, and yet. We also find because, since, also, and in fact. The focusing adverbial even is also present in the data, as is the conjunction when, predominantly following the node. Widening the context to cover 25 words to the left and right of the node yields a rich collection of connectors. Hence, we find 49 instances of but. We also find more instances of still (10) and because (9). The majority of but, still, and because precede the node. Among the collocates there are also or (17), when (16), even (15), now (15) (mostly preceding; cf. also the discussion of recency of information, above), so (13), also, too, in fact, since, then, and while. Many of the examples above exhibit a connector of some kind, often several, in the context included in these examples (cf. e.g. example (4), above, which manifests the chain of but surely – true – in addition – however). In (11)–(13) below, we can see that connectors (e.g. but, moreover, yet) and adverbials indicating attitude (e.g. indeed) are in no way unexpected in the vicinity of the two keywords simply because the texts are inherently argumentative. (11) The victory of the separatist Parti Quebecois was expected. The party will have a solid majority in the provincial parliament, but pre-election polls predicted it would be significantly larger. Moreover, the separatists’ failure to win 50 percent of the popular vote, and their slim margin over the Liberal candidates – less than one-half of 1 percent – say voters are less than enthusiastic about their new government’s aim to create a sovereign nation. Indeed, the Liberals’ defeat had more to do with high unemployment and low regard for the party after nine years in office. (NYT Sep. 15, 1994)

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(12) What the public is seeing here is no mystery but rather a mirror of its own ambivalence. In survey after survey, Americans say they are turned off when the attacks get too personal. Yet deep down they know that American campaigns have always been in part an adversarial spectator sport. High-minded debate has a traditional role, too, but politicians have learned that voters sometimes turn the high road into a losing road. (NYT Oct. 13, 1996) (13) Constructing separate areas for smokers, the small-restaurant owners testified at previous Council hearings, is impractical and impossibly costly for them. It probably is. But there is no reason they can’t ban smoking entirely. In the 100 American cities with anti-smoking legislation that does not exempt small restaurants, the law has had little or no effect on their revenues. According to a recent Gallup Poll of 763 adult New Yorkers, a smoking ban might, in fact, increase restaurant patronage and revenues. (NYT Dec. 7, 1994)

It has been pointed out above that one of the top collocates is and. Using the context of five words to the left and right of the node, it was found that and appears 37 times. The majority are found after the node, and one third of the instances appear in the slot immediately following the node. Widening the context to 25 words gives 134 instances, and a more varied pattern of placement. The conjunction and is a good example of a high-frequency collocate whose role in the argument can only be understood through manual analysis of entire texts. In fact, most signals of contrast, concession, reason, and addition have to be extracted manually because of multiple meanings and because of the wide range of possibilities to express these meanings, apart from connective adverbials and conjunctions. Also, some of the instances of, for instance, now indicate the current status of the information while others function as connectors; since can be used to indicate a period of time and reason; then can be inferential, temporal, listing, and so forth. The present section has demonstrated how far it is possible to proceed using automatic retrieval of lexical items from a body of data. We can note a set of lexico-grammatical signals but whether they really signal what we infer from the figures will always have to be checked through an analysis of their functions in the actual texts. Let us therefore now turn to the analysis of representative editorials in their entirety, focusing first on the “poll sentence” and proceeding then to a macro-view of the work it does in the text and genre.

“Polls and surveys show” 

. The optimal pattern of vagueness and assertiveness? What is conspicuous both in the output when keywords such as poll(s) and survey(s) are retrieved automatically and in close analysis of texts is the fact that the editorials under attention often do not specify which poll or survey they are, in fact, referring to. We find a host of examples such as in survey after survey; in polls and surveys; polls/surveys show that; public opinion polls indicate; according to recent polls. There is also vagueness in the way in which the numerical information is given in these texts, e.g. overwhelmingly, consistently, most Americans, people, the majority, fewer than 6 percent, the high number. Opting for some degree of vagueness is a handy solution for presenting such information in support of one’s claims. It also allows one to highlight crucial information by printing it as a number, e.g. about 7 out of 10. In terms of Figure-Ground distinctions, the vagueness indicated by about in this example fades away as part of the less salient Ground while the Figure-like numbers 7 and 10 attract attention. Both the group of people polled and the number of responses to the different choices they were originally presented with are vague. Thirdly, there is vagueness in the formulation of the issues at hand. These can, for instance, be referred to as current policies or doing what is right most or all the time. It is evident that the poll sentence reflects the syntax of polling discourse. Hence, in (15) below, two choices in the poll (i.e. “most of the time” and “all of the time”) seem to have been recontextualized in terms of just one figure (i.e. 17 percent). Examples (14) and (15) thus serve to illustrate the three kinds of vagueness identified above: (1) source (polls; a Roper poll released in February; a June Gallup poll), (2) counts (overwhelmingly; reductions in the number; fewer than 6 percent; only 17 percent), and (3) issues (current policies; doing what is right). Apart from the numerical results, the group of people polled is vague: Americans, and in (14) possibly even ‘fewer than 6 percent of puzzled Americans.’ (14) Polls showed that Americans overwhelmingly favored reductions in the number of legal migrants. [. . .] Puzzled Americans – fewer than 6 percent of whom support current policies, according to a Roper poll released in February – may wonder why Congress was able to take modest steps against illegal immigration but backed down from limiting the legal influx. (NYT Apr. 30, 1996)

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(15) The Government is well on its way to a crisis of legitimacy. A June Gallup poll indicated that only 17 percent of Americans trust the Government to do what is right most or all of the time. What to do? Congress is riding to the rescue with an answer: banning fruit baskets. (NYT Sep. 30, 1994)

The domain for the expression of vagueness in these texts is constituted by the noun phrases mediating the poll or survey referred to, the group of people polled, the number of responses received for a particular alternative, and the issue focused on in the poll. Tentativeness attached to the verb following the keywords (such as suggest) and the main verb in the subsequent that-clause (such as may, seem to) would obviously considerably weaken the impact of the statement. One of the main findings of the corpus study is, however, that polls and surveys overwhelmingly show, rather than suggest, and that modal hedges are to a large extent missing in the context following the reference to polls and surveys. In other words, the verbs in the “poll clause” and the nominal that-clause do not express tentativeness; they appear to be maximally assertive. It seems to me that the reason for the distribution of markers of assertiveness and vagueness in these sentences can be explained if we look at their persuasive effect. The verb in the nominal clause conveys a firm opinion, sometimes reinforced by vague adverbials such as consistently or overwhelmingly. The verb accompanying the reference to polls and surveys (such as show) indicates a “fact.” In other words, these verbs do not show signs of tentativeness. The nouns in these sentences are, however, vague and hence provide the writer with a way out. Yet the vagueness of the lexical items referring to the issues at hand, the often very general reference to the source of information, or the approximateness of the numerical information is not in focus in these noun phrases. What is given prominence is the timeliness and importance of the issue, the recency of the poll or survey, and the concerns of the majority of those polled. The reference is usually to a large and general group of people with which the reader can easily identify or who form an established category in society such as professional groupings of various kinds. This use of information from polls and surveys can be explained by its function in the service of the argument. So the question is: how, then, does it function in the argument?

“Polls and surveys show” 

. Placement In this section the focus is on the placement of the reference to a poll or survey in the sentence. It is established that this is a textually motivated decision. The data show that references to polls and surveys typically precede the information attributed to those sources. This order is linguistically realized using sentence-initial adverbials (cf. e.g. in polls and surveys in (1) above, and in survey after survey in (12) above, or phrases such as according to a recent poll), or starting the sentence with the keywords in subject position, as in the typical structure polls/surveys show that [+ clause]. All of these structures permit the attribution of knowledge to the source before the particular poll discourse is mediated in the sentence or paragraph. While it is syntactically easy to vary the position of the adverbials indicating a given source within the “poll sentence,” initial placement is here favoured for textual reasons. Let us take a closer look at some of the examples where according to is used. The large majority (75%) of the instances of according to a/the [+ keyword] appear at the outset of a sentence (cf. e.g. (7) and (13) above), or less often, at the beginning of a coordinated or subordinated clause. Example (16), below, illustrates its placement in initial medial position (i.e. after the subject but before the first auxiliary or main verb) in a relative clause. In (17), the comment clause the polls tell us is similarly inserted in a relative clause mediating poll discourse. (16) But this does not really look like a decision driven by rivalry and ambition. There were too many cost-free options available to save Mr. Giuliani trouble from the one Republican in five who, according to the polls, will be angry at him. (NYT Oct. 25, 1994) (17) In a State of the Union address designed mainly to mobilize support for his universal health insurance proposals, President Clinton was careful not to slight an issue that, the polls tell us, troubles the public even more than health care: crime. (NYT Jan. 27, 1994)

In contrast, 25% of the instances of according to a/the [+ keyword] occur at the end of the sentence, in texts where one and the same poll or survey is repeatedly referred to. Hence, example (18) below originates from an editorial where a given poll serves as the point of departure for the entire text; the headline of the editorial is “1996 was year of discontented voter, poll shows.” The particular poll is thus introduced in the headline, and in the lead, included as the first paragraph in (18) below. Details are given, as customary in news reports (see example (3) above), in the last paragraph of the text. The text is

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structured according to topics, which are introduced in topic sentences. The first two italicized references in the extract appear in clause-final or sentencefinal position in paragraphs where the text organization of first introducing the topic and then presenting relevant quantitative information originating in the given poll is being established. Here it is important to foreground the issues at hand (cf. the entire election; the outcome, which receive end-weight in the two topic sentences), rather than the less crucial 1996 poll which constitutes given information at this point (cf. according to the poll; the particular poll has been introduced in the headline, and it has been repeatedly referred to in the text preceding these two paragraphs). A chain of references to the ‘voters’ polled create coherence and help keep the discourse topic activated while the temporal references serve local coherence and specify comparisons with earlier polls. The third italicized example in the extract, having identical form and reference as the two preceding ones (according to the poll), again appears at the outset of the sentence at a stage where the topic-oriented text organization is well established and a paragraph-initial topic sentence introducing the next issue alone is no longer necessary. This is a short-hand way of indicating topic shift at the same level of abstraction as above; initial placement here signals the starting point of a new textual unit. The topic of this unit, ranging over two paragraphs, is introduced later in the sentence opening with according to the poll. This example also shows that there is an additional advantage of starting with reference to the given poll: The end of the sentence is left open for crucial information, which can be picked up in the subsequent text. (18) WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 – Compared with 1992, the 1996 elections left voters disappointed with the candidates, the press, the pollsters, the talk show hosts and even themselves. [. . .] The Pew Center conducted similar polls after the 1988 and 1992 elections, when voters generally gave themselves and the candidates higher grades. But the voters were not bleak about the entire election. This year, they said the candidates slung less mud than in 1992, and fully 75 percent said they felt well enough informed to choose among candidates, according to the poll, even though 65 percent also said there was less discussion of the issues this year than before. In 1992, 59 percent said there was more discussion of the issues than in previous elections. A majority of voters said they were pleased with the outcome. While 49 percent of voters voted for President Clinton on Election Day, a narrow majority – 53 percent – said they were pleased that he won, according to the poll. Fully 65 percent said they were happy the Republicans kept control of

“Polls and surveys show”

Congress, a view held even by almost 4 in 10 of those who voted for Mr. Clinton. [. . .] According to the poll, 54 percent of voters favor a special Congressional committee to investigate accusations of improper campaign contributions to the Democratic Party. [. . .] The poll of 1,012 people who voted was conducted from Nov. 7 to 10. (NYT Nov. 15, 1996)

It is not difficult to see why attribution of knowledge to a source – here the source of the recontextualized polling discourse, i.e. a given poll or survey – is usually indicated at the beginning of a sentence. This is where we expect to find information that is presented as a background for what follows. As such it is processually something to be kept activated in view of the goal of the sentence, which is expected to receive end-weight and end-focus. Since the reader’s main inferencing effort coincides with the focus of the sentence, what is presented as the background is associated with given information and therefore easily taken for granted. Sentence-initial position also has the advantage of providing the item placed here with a scope that can extend beyond the limits of the clause or sentence in which it appears. Hence, in (18) above, the last instance of according to the poll has two paragraphs in its scope. (For a discussion of discourse functions of sentence-initial adverbials, see also Virtanen 1992.) In example (1) above, repeated below for ease of reference, it is not totally clear whether the claim made in the second clause of the poll sentence is also supported by the polls and surveys very generally referred to at the outset of the sentence. In other words, the simple indication of polls and surveys is judged to be adequate both for the claim that ‘most Americans say they want universal health care,’ and presumably, though not certainly, also for the second claim concerning what ‘most Americans know.’ Textual scope is not identical to syntactic scope, and writers can profit from this difference when arguing a case. In this particular instance, the writer has not deemed it necessary to point out specifically how s/he knows what kinds of things most Americans know. (19) [. . .] Do politicians, corporate managers and doctors believe that, like the big lies of totalitatian states, this one can be repeated until people at last believe it? The people will not. In polls and surveys, most Americans still say they want universal health care, and they know that nations poorer than we



 Tuija Virtanen

have attained it. Where representative government has ground to a halt in gridlock, direct democracy is beginning to take its place. [. . .] (NYT Sep. 28, 1994)

. Mediating polling discourse in editorials Editorials constitute an inherently argumentative genre. In a cross-cultural comparison of argumentative styles in newspaper editorials, Tirkkonen-Condit (1996) found that editorials in the NYT indicate a thesis summary in an explicit manner in 93% of the cases. A thesis summary was defined as “a sentence or a longer passage of text which summarized the major theses or opinions argued for in the text” (Tirkkonen-Condit 1996: 261). The first paragraph of extract (18), in Section 4 above, illustrates such a thesis summary. This section continues the analysis of references to polls and surveys in their textual context, with the purpose of pinpointing their function in the argument in the editorial data. As stated in Section 2 above, twenty editorials have been selected for this analysis. The focus is on the following three questions: 1. Is polling discourse used to support claims in these texts? 2. Does polling discourse appear in connection with the main point of the text, or is it rather connected with side issues? 3. Does polling discourse appear before or after a claim to which it is related in the text? All three questions are in principle answerable with a yes or no from the available data. In contrast, a detailed analysis of entire texts in context answering the pressing question of how polling discourse contributes to the argument would clearly demand a separate study. In the present chapter the point of departure has been the corpus study, and these last sections, in a sense, serve to stretch the limits of that kind of a study towards a more comprehensive analysis of authentic discourse. The present analysis shows, first of all, that the twenty editorials refer to polls or surveys in support of a claim made in the text. Polls and surveys are not referred to for the purpose of going against an argument in any of the texts, though this would obviously be fully possible. Consider, in this light, extract (20) from the data. Four kinds of support are provided for the evaluative claim made in the topic sentence and repeated in the comment sentence of the second paragraph (both in boldface): President Clinton’s stance, what polls show (in

“Polls and surveys show” 

italics), what Moody’s announced, and most important of all, how President Clinton’s State of the Union address and Mr. Dole’s response to it were received (for an analysis of State of the Union addresses, see Chapter 4 in this volume, by Halmari). (20) It is not hard to see why Mr. Gingrich felt he had to trim back. President Clinton has surprised even his own supporters by standing firm against Republican threats to shut down the Government and limit its ability to issue debt. Polls show the public is fed up with Republican maneuvers and blames the Republicans more than the President for the budget deadlock. Even Wall Street was getting jittery as Moody’s Investors Service announced that it was considering lowering its ratings for Treasury bonds because of fears the political gridlock would lead to default. To top it off, Mr. Clinton’s State of the Union address appears to have played very well with the voters, while Bob Dole’s response was deemed a lackluster turnoff even by many Republicans. No wonder Mr. Gingrich concluded he had better cut a deal and wait for the fortunes of battle to shift. (NYT Jan. 26, 1996)

Interpreting argumentation dialogically as a series of replies to anticipated questions, we can insert the implicit questions ‘why are you saying that?’ or ‘how do you know that?’ between propositions, to highlight the thought processes mediated through the text. In the above example, the stated claim is highly evaluative; the readers are told that the reasons behind Mr. Gingrich’s feeling, presupposed in the topic sentence, are not hard to see. The subsequent sentence provides some support for the alleged easiness of the observation. Next, the “poll sentence,” starting with polls show, conveys another reason for the observed feeling, as an additional reply to the anticipated question ‘how do you know that?’ The implicit question raised by the claim at the outset of the first paragraph is answered by a sequence of four explicit replies, which carry increasing weight (cf. the sentence-initial signals of weightiness even and to top it off ). These four motivations for the stated claim lead to a conclusion which is evaluated as no wonder in the commentized sentence closing this textual unit. In addition to the implicit dialogue between the journalist making observations and interpreting them and the readership asking questions anticipated by the writer which forward the argument, the text mediates a number of implicit and explicit voices that were present in the media and other relevant political fora of the time. Some such voices in the above extract invoke interdiscursive chains other than the one mediating poll discourse. The voices in the text can also be part of the audience design of the editorial; the readership of texts of this

 Tuija Virtanen

kind is of a multiple nature and the readers themselves constitute interlocutors who construct interdiscursive links. Finally, the poll discourse introduced in the third sentence of the above extract evokes the alleged voice of “the public,” whose feelings and opinions have been constructed through recontextualizations across the public scene. The public is assumed to be “one-voiced” and the poll discourse referred to a reliable source of that highly important voice, despite the multi-voiced interdiscursive chain mediating poll discourse that is familiar to the informed interlocutors engaged in persuasive discourse today. Polls show constitutes a valid source to attribute motivations to when claims are made in editorial discourse. And the readership is evidently expected to be able to keep track of a number of current interdiscursive chains, as suggested by the vague references to the particular polls or surveys that provide evidence for the claims made in the data. The analysis of the twenty editorials further shows that in 80% of them the claim supported by poll discourse concerns the central issue raised in the text while 20% of these editorials refer to polls or surveys in connection with side issues. The identification of the central issue and side issues raised in these texts is based on my study of the thesis summaries found in the texts, their overall structure, and their headlines, the results of which were subsequently compared, and found concomitant, with the short abstracts included above the texts on the cd-rom. Polling discourse is thus typically recycled along the main path of the argument, in support of the discourse topic, rather than a local topic related to it. This is yet another reason for further investigating the construction and mediation of poll discourse in the public sphere. The analysis also shows that 90% of the references to polls and surveys in the twenty editorials studied here appear right after the claim which they support, in a sentence of their own. Furthermore, the relation between the claim and the polling discourse supporting it can be made explicit with the help of a connector. Hence, in the texts studied closely, most connectors appear in the same sentence as the reference to a poll or survey. In other cases they appear in the preceding sentence. The preceding sentence here typically serves to make an explicit claim, which is supported through a recontextualization of appropriate polling discourse in the immediately following sentence. Some connectors also appear in the sentence following the reference to polls or surveys, or in the preceding or following paragraph. In addition to connectors, a number of adverbials indicating focus (e.g. also, even) and attitude (e.g. no doubt, undoubtedly), together with evaluative markers of other kinds (such as evaluative adjectives and nouns), appear in the

“Polls and surveys show” 

poll sentences and their vicinity. This is even more evident if the context to be searched automatically is extended maximally. The distance between attitudinal adverbials and the two keywords is, however, usually too large for them to qualify as collocates in any traditional sense of the term. Still, a thorough analysis of texts of the present kind might reveal patterns of evaluative lexis and recontextualized poll discourse that could be labelled ‘textual collocation’ – a topic, which however lies outside the scope of the present chapter.

. Comparisons with adjacent genres As pointed out in Section 2.1 above, in the printed NYT, editorials are accompanied by letters to the right of them on the same page, and by Op-Ed essays on the opposing page. The three genres of editorials, letters and Op-Ed essays differ in terms of their communicative purposes, the discourse communities owning them, the writers’ personae and their professional roles, audience design, the established genre labels, and the prototypical structure of the texts (cf. Swales 1990; Bhatia 1993; see also the discussion in Chapter 1, above). Yet, they constitute adjacent genres, both in the concrete, spatial sense and as categories of communicative activities. It is therefore of interest to touch upon the ways in which the so-called “public opinion” is voiced in each of them, in order to compare similarities and differences. To start with, the counts and a textual analysis of a comparable sample of entire texts from each set of data show striking similarities across the three adjacent genres in terms of the individual aspects discussed above: These editorials, letters and Op-Ed essays refer to polls and surveys in roughly the same way. Hence, the lexico-grammatical pattern of assertiveness and vagueness identified in the “poll sentence,” the preferred placement of the reference to the source in relation to the information attributed to the particular poll(s) or survey(s), and the placement of the “poll sentence” itself in relation to the claims made in the text are very similar indeed. It is obvious that polling discourse is used to support claims in ways that closely resemble each other in these three inherently argumentative genres. Where, however, differences appear, they seem to be related to the length of the texts. We have seen above that there are usually three editorials per issue, and their average length is some 760 words. Op-Ed essays tend to be as long or longer than editorials. Their average length is around 830 words, and there are three to four of them in each issue, printed on a page of their own. Letters, in contrast, are short (some 320 words in average) and much more numerous

 Tuija Virtanen

(usually seven letters per issue). They appear to the right of the editorials, on the same page. Because editorials and Op-Ed texts are given more space than letters, they manifest a greater elaboration of the argument, and claims can be discussed in more detail. This shows in the study of collocation: The two genres exhibit a greater variety of expressions indicating the tendencies uncovered above, as compared with the short letters. Thus, the concerns of the majority of those polled, the recency of the poll or survey referred to, and the indication of certainty are given prominence through a larger selection of lexical phrases. We find, for instance, the lexical items majority, all, most, more, many, instead of just most and more in the letters; recent, new, latest, instead of just recent or new in the letters; or show, found, (people, Americans) say/said, rather than just show or found in the letters. In this light, it is not an unexpected finding that the list of explicit connectors, too, is shorter and less varied in the letters as compared with the longer texts of the editorial and Op-Ed genres. Connectors typical of argumentative discourse occur in connection with references to polls and surveys in these three genres, and such references clearly contribute to the persuasive function of the texts. Further, the discussion of election polls shows in the figures obtained for collocation with auxiliaries, where will, can and would, could appear in such contexts in the editorials and Op-Ed essays but not in the letters. As pointed out above, references to polls are more frequent than references to surveys both in the editorials and Op-Ed texts as these are often concerned with election matters. The opposite is true of the letters. Computing figures from the data covering the three adjacent genres on the two opposite pages which the reader of the printed newspaper can view simultaneously, discloses tendencies which are strikingly similar to those resulting from a separate examination of each of the three individual genres. And the textual analysis of these data suggests the existence of an established practice of using polling discourse to support claims in the three adjacent genres.

. Conclusions and implications In this chapter we have seen that a computerized corpus can help us detect patterns in texts that are of significance for our understanding of the communicative style of a particular genre and the forms which persuasion takes in the texts constructing that genre. In the present data polling discourse can di-

“Polls and surveys show” 

rectly reflect the conventionalized syntax of that discourse: Fragments of the questions asked in a given poll or survey may thus reappear in the sentences of these texts (e.g. A June Gallup Poll indicated that only 17 percent of Americans trust the Government to do what is right most or all of the time). At the same time, polling discourse only vaguely indicates the source of the “public opinion” which it is assumed to represent. The outcome is a pattern of assertiveness and vagueness which allows the voicing of the alleged public opinion to be used for persuasive purposes. The corpus study showed that polls and surveys are often referred to in newspaper editorials. This takes place in the form of a “poll sentence” that usually starts with the indication of the source of the information and then proceeds to the information to be mediated in the text. Despite the high degree of vagueness found in the poll sentence, the information that it conveys is essentially presented as indicating a “fact.” This “fact” is anchored to the opinion of the majority of a group of people – a group that the reader can readily identify, or identify with. The vague lexis referring to the issue at hand must be read in the context of the argument; at the point where it appears the reader may well be able to figure out what issue exactly the polling discourse is referring to, making use of the relevant textual context and intertextual cues. The high degree of saliency assigned to the opinion of the majority of those polled, linked to the easy identifiability of that particular group of people, serve to legitimate the use of polling discourse for the purposes of the argument. The vagueness of the numerical information and the lack of detail concerning the source of the particular poll or survey free the writer from some of the responsibility for the information mediated in the text. Yet, none of this vagueness is in focus in the noun and adverbial phrases of the “poll sentence:” What is foregrounded here is the timeliness and importance of the issue, the recency of the poll or survey, and the concerns of the majority of those polled. The verbs of the “poll sentence,” we have seen, are predominantly assertive. Further, the study showed that not only collocates but also the lack of potential collocates can convey important information about the use of polls and surveys in the service of the argument. Hence, the lack of modal elements in poll sentences also tells us something about the poll sentence pattern that seems conventionalized in the genre. The analysis of the editorial data showed that placement in the sentence of the source of the recontextualized poll discourse serves textual purposes, related to information structuring, text segmentation, and coherence. At the same time, this placement is ideal in view of persuasion. Starting from an indication of a source of information, however vague, has the advantage of

 Tuija Virtanen

presenting that information as given and hence, as something that can be taken for granted. At the same time, the information at the outset of the poll sentence can be assigned a wide textual scope. Some degree of indeterminacy can thus be present in the text as to what exactly is assumed to originate from a particular poll or survey, without the reader necessarily paying particular attention to that kind of indeterminacy. The placement of poll sentences in the texts has a function in the argument: These sentences typically appear after the claim which they support, and which is more likely to be a central issue raised in the text than a side issue. We have also seen that connectors and evaluative lexis appear in poll sentences and their vicinity but they do so even elsewhere in these editorials. How exactly poll sentences function in the service of the argument is, however, a topic that demands in-depth analyses of entire texts in authentic context, in relation to the networks of intertextual links and interdiscursive chains that they participate in and help create. In other words, the second purpose of the present study, i.e. to test ways of using a computerized corpus to come to grips with persuasion as a process, raises the issue of the feasibility and analytical success of the present combination of methods. We have seen that automatic analyses of computerized data can take us some way on the road, as long as we keep in mind the dynamic character of the discourse thus decontextualized. A corpus study of the present kind generates a great deal of information which needs to be manually checked against the texts included in the corpus. Automatic searches of clusters, collocations, and other patterns of lexico-grammatical elements provide linguists with a fascinating possibility to observe shared features and variation across the data. While the processual aspects of persuasion are still best studied in terms of entire texts in authentic contexts, and as parts of intertextual and interdiscursive networks which they help create, a combination of corpus analysis and discourse analysis serves to highlight aspects of the data which can help us pinpoint the kinds of phenomena that are worth studying further. Such a starting point, however, also has consequences for the kinds of findings that we can hope to have as a result of the analysis. A study of authentic polling discourse in relation to its time-space dimension and socio-cultural, and ‘glocal’ (i.e. global and local), contexts lies beyond the scope of a corpus study or a textual analysis of the present kind. Yet, the implications of this study for our understanding of how poll discourse is recontextualized in newspaper editorials are important enough to warrant further linguistic studies in the area. Hence, a similar analysis of the use of polling discourse for persuasive purposes in other newspaper genres, such as news stories, promises to be instructive in view of defining

“Polls and surveys show” 

genre-specific tendencies. It was pointed out above that the two adjacent genres of letters to the editor and Op-Ed essays manifest tendencies that closely resemble those found in the present editorial data; in other words, polls and surveys are regularly referred to, in a very similar way, by both journalists and non-journalists. Further studies are also necessary to relate the present analysis of polling discourse to other links in the interdiscursive chains that the genre of editorials participates in. Recontextualizing polling discourse from one and the “same” source in different newspapers and other media is another future avenue, as is a comparison of the use of poll discourse in the genre of newspaper editorials across cultures, in view of the degree of globalization of the “public opinion” and its local relevance (‘glocalization’). The linguistic study of polling discourse in argumentation helps pinpoint the ways in which the voice of the public is constructed, mediated, and recontextualized to serve persuasive purposes. Polling is an institutionalized practice in today’s world. The ways in which discourse helps construct “public opinion” need to be understood beyond the mechanisms of conducting polls and surveys, whose linguistic effects are in themselves as yet poorly understood. The informed readership is aware of the status of the “public opinion” thus generated and repeatedly recontextualized in the media; yet, the texts that make use of public opinion as a persuasive device go on doing so, apparently with some degree of communicative success. Thus it seems expedient to close the present chapter with a plea for more attention to polling discourse by linguists of various orientations, as well as others concerned with the use of language.

References Bhatia, Vijay K. (1993). Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings. London and New York: Longman. Brodda, Benny (1991). “Doing corpus work with PC Beta; or, how to be your own computational linguist”. In S. Johansson & A.-B. Stenström (Eds.), English Computer Corpora: Selected Papers and Research Guide (pp. 259–282). Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Davis, Boyd H. & Jeutonne P. Brewer (1997). Electronic Discourse: Linguistic Individuals in Virtual Space. Albany: State University of New York Press. Fairclough, Norman (2001). “Discourse, genre and style in Critical Discourse Analysis”. Keynote lecture at the international interdisciplinary conference on Genres and Discourses in Education, Work and Cultural Life: Encounters of Academic Disciplines on Theories and Practices, Oslo, Norway, May 13–16, 2001. Hoey, Michael (1991). Patterns of Lexis in Text. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 Tuija Virtanen

Lipari, Lisbeth (2000). “Toward a discourse approach to polling”. Discourse Studies, 2 (2), 187–215. Sinclair, John McH. (1991). Corpus, Concordance and Collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Swales, John M. (1990). Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tirkkonen-Condit, Sonja (1996). “Explicitness vs implicitness of argumentation: An intercultural comparison”. Multilingua, 15 (3), 257–273. Virtanen, Tuija (1992). Discourse Functions of Adverbial Placement in English. Åbo, Finland: Åbo Akademi University Press. Werlich, Egon (1976). A Text Grammar of English. Heidelberg: Quelle and Meyer.

P 4

Theoretical considerations

Chapter 7

Persuasion as implicit anchoring The case of collocations Jan-Ola Östman

The primary aim of this study is to suggest some of the tools needed for an adequate analysis of persuasion in discourse. Taken together the tools constitute a system referred to as the PIA toolkit, where PIA stands for “Pragmatics as Implicit Anchoring.” Building on the established usefulness of the PIA toolkit for research in other fields, the study illustrates how the system can be put to work vis-à-vis the persuasive function of collocations in newspaper discourse.1

.

Towards a notion of ‘implicit collocation’

Generally speaking, the notion of collocation has to do with the tendency for lexical words to repeatedly co-occur, the way green and grass tend to go together. Some scholars in addition talk about the formulaic co-occurrences of prepositions and nouns – at school –, of verbs and particles – carry on – and adjectives and prepositions – interested in – as also being collocations. And some scholars view collocation very mechanically, as any statistically specified co-occurrence of words, including article + noun combinations. (Cf. Benson, Benson, & Ilson 1997; Kjellmer 1994.) In the traditional, Firthian sense, the collocational choices we make in language are semantic choices: collocations are concerned with how words get part of their meaning from the characteristic verbal company they keep. Collocational choices are thus made on the syntagmatic axis. They furnish additional and different aspects of meaning than choices made on the paradigmatic axis (where choices are made from the set of other words and constructs that could have been used) and aspects of meaning provided through the interaction of

 Jan-Ola Östman

such choices with the context-of-situation and the cultural context. (For Firth’s view of meaning, see Firth 1957a, 1957b, 1968; a brief overview is given in Östman & Simon-Vandenbergen 1995.) Even though the study of collocations has a fairly long history, finding an adequate answer to the question of “What company does word X keep?” has proven to be rather cumbersome. Compounds (blackbird) and idioms (trip the light fantastic) are lexicalized combinations whose parts (black and bird) do indeed collocate, but calling them compounds or idioms, respectively, is more informative than calling them collocations. The same holds true of many of the formulaic types of collocations that typically consist of a lexical word together with a function word; for instance, talking about them as phrasal verbs (carry on) is more informative than calling them collocations. Co-occurrences like these have become crystallized and received grammatical and lexical stringency; in the sense of Construction Grammar (cf. e.g. Fillmore, Kay, & O’Connor 1988; Fried & Östman 2004), their specific combination of form, meaning, and function is licensed by abstract constructions. The similarity between one-word units and constructional combinations of words is particularly well handled in Construction Grammar, since single words are also seen to have constructional properties. The co-occurrence relations between open-set lexical words that do not form compounds (like green and grass) are, however, more difficult to systematize. Intuition is helpful for more formulaic combinations – we toast bread and grill meat, although the actual procedure of heating up the bread and the meat might be very similar. But since collocations typically have more to do with acceptability than with grammaticality, individual intuitions may vary extensively. Because of such shortcomings, computational corpus research has proven to be very useful in studies on collocations. With the help of the computer we can easily and rapidly scan through masses of text, produce well-organized KWIC concordances, and pick out statistical tendencies for what words co-occur with what other words. There is still, however, no clear-cut way of deciding what counts as a collocation: What is the statistical cut-off point? Is it safe to call a co-occurrence a collocation (in general, in a particular corpus, or in a particular text or discourse) if we find five cases in, say, one million running words? Or is it enough to talk in relational terms – if two words co-occur more often than any other words in a text, are we entitled to say that this co-occurrence should be counted as a collocation? How close to each other do the words have to be – if we only count words that stand next to each other, we are likely to end up with

Persuasion as implicit anchoring 

a list of collocations that might just as well be characterized as (more or less) loose compounds; does five words (cf. Sinclair 1991: 170) before and after the node make up a wide enough span to capture the most important collocates of the node? If so, what is the status of sentence boundaries (not to mention paragraph boundaries)? And finally, should we really accept all words – including interjections, conjunctions, adverbs, and other particles – as possibly collocational, or do nouns, verbs, and adjectives have special status? In order to suggest answers to some of these questions I will investigate the collocations of the words propaganda, manipulation, and persuasion, and some of their derivatives. These words belong to the larger group of suasive words, and have been chosen for closer study for several reasons. First, they are near-synonyms with a very strong force of “attempting to change others’ views, beliefs, or actions.” A speech at an election campaign could thus on different occasions be retold and characterized by the same observer as propaganda, as manipulative, or as persuasive. Such characterizations can be said to be very similar with respect to their propositional content. Secondly, because the words are rather strong in force, they are all fairly infrequently used – in Sinclair’s (1991: 115–116) terminology, they would together with their collocates all be instances of upward collocations. The third reason for choosing these words is the nature of persuasion itself. It is difficult to unambiguously characterize any text or piece of discourse as persuasive discourse. But at least when discourse participants, or the author of a text talk about persuasion we know that they have the concept (and the related frame) at the center of their interests, until they shift orientation to move on to a new topic. If we take seriously the view that words get parts of their meanings from the company they keep, then being informed about other locutions that are used when talking about words denoting persuasion will in effect add to our understanding of persuasive discourse in the particular genre under investigation. (For a recent discussion of suasion within Frame Semantics, see Fried & Östman 2003.) And finally, it is crucial for a study attempting to suggest a toolkit for the adequate analysis of persuasive discourse to know for sure that it is dealing with some aspect that the discourse participants conceptualize as persuasive. To set the scene, let us have a look at the excerpted occurrences of the suasive words just mentioned, together with their immediate co-text, in the New York Times for 1996.2 The beginning of the raw KWIC data for propaganda is given in Table 1 (slightly edited for purposes of illustration).

 Jan-Ola Östman

Table 1. The beginning of the raw KWIC data for propaganda 1 2 3 4 5 6

Whipped up by his a result of government the ‘construction of our this archeologicalhim. This was pure and deceitful campaign

propaganda propaganda. propaganda’ propaganda propaganda. propaganda

machine, The United in the days juggernaut Mr. Yeltsin is making

Table 2. Propaganda. The most common collocates N WORD

TOTAL LEFT RIGHT L5 L4 L3 L2 L1 ∅

R1 R2 R3 R4 R5

1 2 3 4 ...

75 37 20 10

2 2 4 1

propaganda the and for

4 17 9 6

4 20 11 4

0 5 1 2

0 4 1 0

0 1 1 1

1 4 4 0

3 3 2 3

67 0 0 0

1 2 3 1

0 5 0 1

0 6 2 1

1 5 2 0

Table 3. Propaganda. Summary of collocates N

COLLOCATE

TOTAL

TO THE LEFT

TO THE RIGHT

1 2 3 4 ...

the and for propaganda

37 20 10 8

17 9 6 4

20 11 4 4

Using available computer software like WordSmith Tools (henceforth, WST), we can reorganize the “raw” data to produce tables of the form presented in Table 2. The number of words registered to the left (L) and to the right (R) of the excerpted word (here: propaganda) is five.3 Five instances of the co-occurrence of the excerpted word with some other word within the specified span are required for the program to register them as a collocation, with the excerpted word as the node, and the other word as collocate. Table 2 is a partial (and somewhat edited for ease of reference) display of what WST produces as the most common collocates of propaganda. The numbers to the far left (under N) indicate the order of importance (in terms of frequency of occurrence) of the collocate to the node. The zero (∅) indicates the position of the node (here: propaganda); L1 stands for the slot for the ‘first word to the left of ∅,’ i.e. immediately before propaganda; R1 is the slot immediately after propaganda; an instance specified as R5 indicates that it has four other words between it and the node, etc.4

Persuasion as implicit anchoring 

Table 4. Manipulat*. Summary of collocates N

COLLOCATE

TOTAL

TO THE LEFT

TO THE RIGHT

1 2 ... 5 6 ... 18 ... 25 ... 30 ...

the and

129 88

32 49

97 39

market stock

17 15

6 9

11 6

possible

8

8

0

attempt

6

5

1

often

6

4

2

Table 5. Persua*. Summary of collocates N

COLLOCATE

TOTAL

TO THE LEFT

TO THE RIGHT

1 ... 9 ... 11 ... 24 ...

the

264

70

194

not

27

11

16

trying

27

27

0

could

16

14

2

Table 3 is a summary of the results presented in Table 2. In particular, the 67 instances of propaganda as node have been subtracted from the total 75 instances of propaganda, which makes propaganda the fourth most frequent collocate of propaganda. Similar summaries for the words manipulate / manipulation and persuade / persuasion in the same New York Times data are given in Tables 4 and 5. The strings searched for in this study were propaganda, manipulat*, and persua*. (The asterisk at the end of the search item indicates any continuation of the word after the initial string of letters, thus allowing automatic retrieval of derivations.) Although these words tend to co-occur with the definite article, few linguists would want to talk about, say, the and propaganda as forming a collocation. In theory, there is nothing wrong with calling it a collocation, but such a categorization does not provide us with any systematicity in addition

 Jan-Ola Östman

to what we can say about their co-operation as a syntactic construction. Calling this co-occurrence a collocation would in effect question the usefulness of the very concept collocation: for instance, typologically speaking, the similarity between English and Swedish definiteness marking would be hidden if we were to say that English marks definiteness at the level of collocations (the car), whereas Swedish uses morphological means (bil-en, ‘car-the’). But what are we to say about some of the other frequent words that the mechanical WST-excerption from this relatively small material suggests as collocates of our three suasive words? Do we want to say that propaganda typically collocates with propaganda? Are we prepared to say that manipulation – in addition to collocating with words having to do with economics (market, stock) – tends to collocate with possible and often? And do we want to say that persuasion collocates with not, trying, and could? Do such co-occurrences qualify as “tight” enough to be called collocations? Before I even attempt to suggest answers for these questions, there is one very important methodological point that needs to be made. My questions in the preceding paragraph have been dressed up with mitigating words like “typically,” and “tends to”; such specifications raise a number of issues. In the case of upward collocations with very infrequent nodes, even a co-occurrence of “more than once” (across two or more texts) can be seen as a serious contestant for collocation status. Seen in this light, the five instances that were required in the WST program-runs clearly indicate a fairly strong collocational relationship. According to Sinclair (1991: 116), “[b]ecause of the low frequency of the vast majority of words, almost any repeated collocation is a most unlikely event”; however, in the same breath he continues, “but because the set of texts is so large, unlikely events of this kind may still be the result of chance factors.” In Table 2, because propaganda is the most frequent lexical word collocating with propaganda, the attribute ‘typically’ seems justified. The mechanical answer to the questions posed above is clearly that these co-occurrences can, indeed, be seen as collocations; in fact, a more appropriate question might be: Why wouldn’t they be seen as collocations? For propaganda, Kjellmer (1994) gives communist propaganda his propaganda of propaganda a college of propaganda do we need a college of propaganda

and the BBI (1997) gives

Persuasion as implicit anchoring 

1. to engage in, spread _ 2. to counteract, neutralize _ 3. enemy; ideological; political; vicious _ 4. _ against

Is the New York Times with its propaganda collocate in this light to be regarded as very different from “typical” English usage? The BBI does not even register manipulate nor manipulation; Kjellmer only gives the following combinations: to manipulate, of manipulating, and manipulation of – no economics-related items, no possible, no often. Both dictionaries fail to indicate not as a collocate for persuade. The BBI (both the 1986 and 1997 editions) also misses the co-occurrences of persuade with modals (could) and catenatives (try). Here Kjellmer does a better job – both modals and catenatives are given as collocates. But since manipulate and attempt are not recorded as forming a collocation, the potential similarity between manipulate + attempt and persuade + try is missed. There is thus clearly more to collocations than what we find in the most up-to-date collocation dictionaries. But why is this so? I would like to suggest that one reason might be that the notion of collocation has become conventionalized as a prototype in linguistics on several related fronts. The category status of “collocation” both in linguistics and in grammar books has taken on a life of its own: we have certain expectations of what a prototypical collocation should look like. At least the following five characteristics are part of this prototype: 1. Irrespective of whether formulaic constructs (like phrasal verbs) are counted as collocations or not, a collocation is more prototypical if it consists of members of the lexical-word categories main verb, noun, and adjective. 2. Although the typical number of words (5) taken into account as potentially containing collocates to a node before and after it can be justified on grounds of memory restrictions (cf. Miller 1956), this span may be of importance mainly as regards propositional meaning. 3. Although punctuation is not taken into account when producing a KWIC concordance, it is generally held that “few intuitively interesting collocations cross a punctuation mark” (Sinclair 1991: 117). 4. Words that are adjacent to each other have a special status. This is not a strong characteristic, and researchers would immediately deny that such compound-like collocations are more prototypical than collocations with 1–4 words intervening between the node and the collocate. “Collocation illustrates the idiom principle [. . .] words appear to be chosen in pairs or

 Jan-Ola Östman

groups and these are not necessarily adjacent” (Sinclair 1991: 115). However, as we have seen above, collocation dictionaries do present the collocates and nodes in an adjacent fashion. In addition, as we see in the quote from Sinclair, collocation is close to idiom, in fact, “[c]ollocation is a contributing factor to idiom” (Sinclair 1991: 170). 5. Pairs of words constitute more prototypical collocations than larger groups. This criterion also needs qualification, especially if criterion no. 1 is relaxed – collocations containing function words can well consist of more than two words. Again, in the same manner as Sinclair notes with respect to criterion no. 4 that the words in a collocation “are not necessarily adjacent,” he also notes (1991: 170) that “[i]n most of the examples, collocation patterns are restricted to pairs of words, but there is no theoretical restriction to the number of words involved,” and by so doing, he indirectly spells out the prototype. In my discussion of the relatively small material of one year of the New York Times, I was conservative in retaining the traditionally established span of five words on either side of the node – but still the WST search presented me with collocations typically not accounted for in collocation dictionaries (in particular, collocations with adverbs as collocates). Furthermore, being offered the collocate propaganda for the node propaganda suggests that punctuation really should not matter – since two close occurrences of (especially an infrequent word like) propaganda will be found on different sides of a major punctuation mark. For Firth, meaning implies choice. It is generally held that linguistic choice refers to (propositionally based) semantic choice. We can call such choices explicit choices. Notice that the term ‘explicit’ is here used as a technical term. Thus, saying that something is done explicitly does not, for instance, imply a high degree of consciousness or premeditation. However, it is clear even in Firth’s view of meaning, where the notion of context-of-situation plays a crucial role, that communicators make several kinds of choices simultaneously. The choices relating to propositional meaning constitute only one aspect of meaning. As a general term for other-thanpropositional choices, I will talk about implicit choices. For instance, if the span of words before and after the node is extended to include whole paragraphs, whole subsections, sections, chapters, or even texts or pieces of discourse as a whole, the types and numbers of collocations to reckon with will no doubt increase quantitatively and acquire a different quality from what I have called prototypical collocations. Since such collocations are

Persuasion as implicit anchoring

of a different kind, produced or co-constructed on the basis of implicit choices, I will refer to them as implicit collocations. Returning to the set of New York Times collocates that WST suggested for the three strings that constitute the empirical focus of this study, I would now like to argue that the odd ones out (propaganda; often; not; etc.) do qualify as collocations: they qualify as implicit collocations. Since the small-scale corpus study has shown that such combinations clearly occur quite frequently,5 cooccurrence as such is not the issue. The issue is rather the feasibility of treating them as collocations, and in particular, why they should be seen as a category distinct from the garden-variety, prototypical collocations. The crucial concept is clearly that of implicitness, or, more specifically: implicit anchoring. This concept is, however, tied to a particular theoretical model within pragmatics, a model which is specifically geared towards accounting for persuasion and manipulation in language, but its sphere of application is language function in general. Before I return to the notion of collocations, I will in the following sections have a closer look at persuasiveness and implicit anchoring.

. Introduction to persuasiveness I want to take seriously the view that all interaction and informationtransaction is more or less persuasive. Persuasiveness is a gradient phenomenon that can be graphically displayed as in Figure 1 below. In this figure, the position called interaction on the continuum stands for the default “interaction as persuasion,” and persuasion stands for what we in every-day terms think of as “persuasiveness.” “Interaction” is intentionally used both to denote the continuum as a whole and as a position on the continuum: the two coincide in the notion ‘prototypical interaction.’ To say that everything is persuasion does not make the concept empty; it merely specifies the general perspective from which the issue is approached. The notion of ‘interaction as a continuum of persuasiveness’ can be linguistically approached in the following manner.

propaganda

manipulation

persuasion

interaction

Figure 1. Interaction as a continuum of persuasiveness

phatic-communion

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 Jan-Ola Östman

We need to see communication as simultaneously taking place on several levels: on one level, we explicitly anchor what we say or write with linguistic units and structures that refer to the time, place, and participants; on this level, we make explicit choices of meaning to construe or co-construe the propositional contents of a message. The alternatives to choose from prototypically constitute the codified form-meaning constellations of a language. At the same time, on another level, we make implicit choices of how to express ourselves in relation to the demands of the cultural context at hand, in relation to our reader or co-interactant, and our attitudes. In this manner we implicitly anchor our discourse to other (especially socio-cultural) aspects of our behavior. When we in everyday terms talk about reading between the lines of what people say, write, or sign, we are in fact attempting to decipher in what ways our interlocutors are implicitly anchoring their messages. We – both as linguists and as laypeople – have an abundance of knowledge about explicit communication, about how propositional, codified pieces of language are transmitted. We know quite a lot about how we cognitively categorize “the world around us,” how units of language like words help us categorize things and activities. At this level of explicit communication we explicitly anchor our messages to the ideas, opinions, and descriptions we express. And we can vary the strength of the persuasiveness of the discourse. Due to the general nature of discourse, writers or speakers are hardly ever in full command of the persuasiveness of their discourse. In theory, at least, it is ultimately up to the readers or addressees what kind of effect a piece of discourse will have on them. What might have been intended as a piece of phatic communion may be taken at face value; what might have been intended as propaganda or manipulation may be lost to the addressee, or it may be (silently) scorned at – and might thus have the opposite effect. We also know that we can in our explicit communication say one thing, and mean something very different. In this case, we count on our interlocutor to find the cues for deciphering the manner in which we are anchoring our message implicitly. What determines whether the implicit anchoring is of interest to the linguist or not is precisely the existence of cues. If somebody wants to be ironic but none of the interlocutors or readers notice the intended irony, then there are no cues for the linguist to study – in effect, the message is not ironic, no matter how much the producer wants it to be ironic. Implicit communication is not hidden communication; the different manners in which anchoring is accomplished implicitly have different cues; we use different linguistic devices to accomplish different kinds of anchoring. Linguistic choices are made, albeit they are implicit choices. The choices can, for instance, be

Persuasion as implicit anchoring 

choices of words, of constructs, of sequentiality, of rhetorical organization, or they can be choices in terms of Grice’s (1975) maxims. Like the explicit choices, the implicit choices can also be of varied persuasive strength, and they can have the desired effect, the opposite effect, or go completely unnoticed. It is the task of pragmatics, especially as conceived of in terms of Pragmatics as Implicit Anchoring (cf. Östman 1981, 1986, 1995a), to investigate how interactants manage implicit communication and implicit anchoring, and how implicit choices are made. We are still far from knowing the details of how language functions in this respect. The PIA toolkit pertains to address these issues and thus offers a model for how to systematically describe and explain how language and discourse function on the levels of implicitness.

. Pragmatics as implicit anchoring: The case of you know Following Morris’s 1938 view, there is a clear need for three major tools in linguistic analysis, (1) one for the analysis of linguistic form, structure (Morris used the term ‘syntactics’), (2) another for analyzing codified meaning, what is here referred to as explicit communication, and what we typically call semantics. (3) The third tool is that of pragmatics. Participants in an interaction are said to explicitly anchor their communicative acts in so far as they can be held accountable for the propositional content of their message. If I say to somebody, (1) You know nothing about implicitness!

I can be held accountable for the propositional message in this utterance; I cannot deny that I was of the opinion that the person I spoke to had no knowledge of the concept of ‘implicitness.’ In a court of law I can try to deny that this is what I meant, if it turns out that the addressee in fact knows quite a lot about the concept of implicitness. But – in principle, at least – I may have a lot of explaining to do in order to avoid getting convicted for slander. As we have already seen, interactants also implicitly anchor what they say – to their (sub)culture, to their role-relationship in an interaction, and to their attitudes. We are not accountable to the same extent for the implicit aspects of communication, but as we saw, we do indicate in our discourse how our utterances are implicitly anchored: in what we say, we make linguistically manifest to what subculture we belong, aspects of politeness, and our attitudes and feelings. The way our attitudes are realized linguistically can be likened to different kinds of windows (cf. Figure 2) that are more or less opaque, but through

 Jan-Ola Östman discourse form explicit implicit 0

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Figure 2. The windows metaphor for explicit and implicit anchoring

which we can get a peek into what goes on with respect to how an utterance is implicitly anchored. Figure 2 gives a schematic picture of the interaction between discourse and language users. This two-dimensional picture is only intended as an illustrative metaphor; it is clearly a gross oversimplification of what actually happens. For one thing, the explicit and implicit anchoring would be better depicted as potentially different dimensions of communication, rather than – as is the case in Figure 2 – having the implicit being visually dependent on the explicit. Another disturbing aspect of the figure is its unidirectional (cf. the arrows) depiction of discourse as being there for speakers to discover and objectify. The picture overlooks the dialogical, supporting kind of interaction between texts and readers, between discourses and their participants. Language users (either as interpreters of sense, or as co-constructors of sense) come in contact with discourse as form (written down, spoken, or signed). If the language is their mother tongue, it can be assumed that all the words are familiar in form; thus, all the windows are wide open at this stage (cf. the “0’s” under “form” in Figure 2). Many forms are also explicitly anchored to codified meanings – exceptions (cf. the “0” in the column under “explicit”) include pragmatic particles like oh, and non-conventionalized prosodies and gestures: these are only anchored implicitly (in Figure 2: to the asterisk under “implicit”). The units of explicit communication, in turn, also function as windows (some more transparent, others more opaque) to the implicit communication. In principle this means that any piece of language (words, morphemes, constructs, prosodies, orderings, etc.) can have an implicit-anchoring function. The explicit and implicit choices are made simultaneously: for in-

Persuasion as implicit anchoring 

stance, propositionally, you may want to characterize somebody as taking good care of his/her money; if you choose to make such a characterization with one word – as a categorization – you have at your disposal in English at least three alternatives: in your linguistic expression you have to choose whether to refer to him/her as stingy or economical or greedy. Any of these three would be propositionally acceptable. But irrespective of which of these you choose, you simultaneously also choose to anchor your categorization to your attitudes about the person in question, or to your attitude about the activity of taking good care of one’s money. That is, you cannot opt out of implicitly anchoring your message once you have chosen one of these words. As we saw, there are elements in language (phrases, prosodies, particles) that are specifically geared towards the task of implicit anchoring – so much so that they do not have any propositional content; that is, they lack the explicit anchoring function. Pragmatic particles like you know are a case in point (cf. Östman 1981). If in a casual conversation I say (2), I and my co-interactant will most likely not even notice that I said you know. (Some qualification to the effect that we are talking about spoken language is necessary, since the mere effect of writing down the expression you know as an example makes it more susceptible to a propositional analysis. For further discussion, see Östman 1995b, and references there.) (2) You know, nothing about implicitness amazes me anymore.

The you know in (2) has very little to do with the propositional content of the combination of the 2nd person pronoun with a verb expressing “having knowledge.” (There is, nevertheless, a connection between the you know’s in (1) and (2): since it is possible – as a joke – to respond to (2) with something like No, as a matter of fact, I don’t know, the propositional and the implicit you know’s are not conceptually completely cut off from one another. For further discussion, see Östman 1981.) Yet, the crucial point is that, when uttering (2), I am not accountable for using the pragmatic particle you know in the same way as I am accountable for using the 2nd person pronoun together with the verb ‘to know’ (cf. example (1)). With particles like you know, discourse – including persuasive and interactional discourse – gets implicitly anchored. Explicit persuasion can materialize linguistically and non-linguistically. In the latter case, it can even be realized as physical force, or in other manners of taking recourse to authority. Linguistically, the most obvious manifestations of explicit persuasion are when it takes the form of straightforward imperatives.

 Jan-Ola Östman

Implicit persuasion, however, can only be understood and analyzed through meticulous research into the pragmatics of language. The next important thing to realize is that in order to be able to describe implicit anchoring in language, we cannot use the toolkit that we have access to for the study of conventional meaning, i.e. semantics. It is not enough to refine the semantics toolkit. We need a separate toolkit for the study of pragmatics, and of implicit anchoring in language. The obvious reason for this is that explicit and implicit anchoring are not – as we have just seen – of the same kind. For purposes of analysis, the pragmatics toolbox needs to have at least three sections, three parameters. These three pragmatic parameters in terms of which the PIA toolkit gets a handle on implicit communication are called Coherence, Politeness, and Involvement. With these parameters, the model attempts to tie down what other approaches loosely refer to as “context.” The rationale for this division into three parameters is discussed in detail in Östman (1986). The basic starting point is that whenever we establish categories for linguistic analysis, in order for them to be of any concrete value, such categories have to have specific and distinguishable areas of focus assigned to them. The areas of analysis will overlap, but their prototypical foci need to be established. In the case of language function, we need to address the way interactants implicitly anchor their communication (1) to their society and culture at large; (2) to their relation to their co-participants in an interaction, or to their relationship in terms of text-producer and text-consumer; and, (3) to themselves, their feelings, attitudes, and prejudices. The parameter of Coherence is precisely attuned to cater for how to analyze and explain the communicative restraints a (sub)culture and society impose on our linguistic behavior. For instance, linguistic choices can contribute to maintaining the story-telling tradition in a (sub)culture, or such choices can contribute to changing the tradition. Discourse and culture are inseparable, but whereas culture can be “merely” lived, discourse has to be organized – explicitly or implicitly. Pragmatic particles like you know and anyway are important implicit organizers of discourse. They are also important persuasive devices, which we use in order to structure narratives and interaction, both for ourselves as speakers or co-participants, and as cues for our interlocutors. One of the potential functions of the use of you know is thus to implicitly anchor discourse to aspects specified in the parameter of Coherence. The parameter of Coherence also caters for genre-specific restraints and norms. As becomes evident in the chapters of this volume, persuasion is accomplished differently in different genres precisely because different genres

Persuasion as implicit anchoring 

require different types of implicit anchoring. We get socialized into culturespecific practices, each of which requires differential discourse organization. The parameter of Politeness caters for the demands of different aspects of interaction. Comparable to the cultural “norms” (specified under Coherence) that we take into account, there are also interactional constraints that need to be adhered to. Linguistic choices contribute to maintaining (or, indeed, changing) the social relationships between discourse participants. Again, such choices can be explicitly or implicitly anchoring in nature. The choice between a tu or Vous form for addressing people is the result of an explicit choice; the choice to use you know implicitly attempts to maintain an already existing close relationship with one’s co-interactants, or to establish such a relationship. Such a choice can be an implicit part of a persuasive argument. The pragmatic particle you know in this manner has a potential pragmatic function vis-à-vis the parameter of Politeness. The PIA toolkit analyzes language in terms of Involvement with regard to the prevalent norms of affect and emotion. The function of the Involvement parameter is to specify the restraints of how to – and how not to – express feelings and attitudes; linguistic choices also contribute to how discourse participants’ attitudes towards the topic under discussion, the situational context, and the co-participants are established, maintained, or changed. As I show in Östman (1981), the potential function of the pragmatic particle you know with respect to Involvement is to indicate that the co-participants share the views expressed – again, a strong potential for the strategic use of you know in persuasive discourse. The three anchor-points that have been introduced in the discussion above – the (sub)culture, the interaction, and the self – are all present in any piece of discourse. They are present in the sense that they can be utilized by the co-participants in the ensuing discourse; and since they are present for the interactants, they can be systematically studied by the pragmatically attuned discourse linguist. For the actual linguistic analysis, we need first to specify what potential functions, say, the pragmatic particle you know has with respect to each of the three parameters. Here I am relying on my earlier work and summarize some of the functions that have already been mentioned in passing in the discussion above. (See especially Östman 1981; but also, Östman 1995b and references there.) On the Coherence parameter, you know is used to open up a new topic as if it wasn’t a new topic; on the Politeness parameter, you know is used as an indication that there is a need to change the participant relation from a deferential to a camaraderie relationship (cf. R. Lakoff 1979); and on the Involvement pa-

 Jan-Ola Östman

UTTERANCE COHERENCE POLITENESS INVOLVEMENT

You know . . . a . . . oh, I don’t know when it was SUNday TURN-TAKING, ATTENTION-GETTING DEFERENCE → CAMERADERIE SIMULATION OF SHARED VIEWS

Figure 3. Level analysis of one specific occurrence of you know (based on Östman 1981: 40)

rameter, affect is communicated by simulating similarity of feelings, and thus shared views. Once the potential functions of you know have been established on the basis of meticulous linguistic analysis of its use in different genres and by members of different groups (with respect to age, gender, social status, ethnicity), the system of potential functions can then be used in the analysis and explication of specific (new) instances. An example of the partial “level analysis” of one specific occurrence of the pragmatic particle you know in a casual conversation is given in Figure 3. In Figure 3, the utterance in which the particular linguistic unit to be analyzed – you know – is found, is presented on top. The potential functions of you know with respect to each of the three parameters are given “at different levels” underneath the empirical data. Typically, in each instance when you know is used, its function on one parameter will be more activated or highlighted than its function on the other two: in Figure 3, the bold-face for the function on the Coherence parameter indicates that this function is highlighted in this particular utterance in its context. We thus see how Firth’s slogan of “meaning implies choice” is being put to use in relation to implicit anchoring; not only is the particle you know chosen as such, but a further – simultaneous – choice is being made as regards which pragmatic function to highlight on the implicit level of communication. In previous studies on persuasion, manipulation, and propaganda (Östman 1986, 1987a, 1987b, to appear) I have dealt with the implicit anchoring of pragmatic particles in a variety of languages, showing how pragmatic particles – like any linguistic material – by virtue of their very existence, tend to crystallize a set of potential functions, with one (or sometimes several) of them being actualized in a specific context. That is, as soon as a manifestation of form is allocated, co-constructed, or used by members of a group for a specific purpose – albeit as an idiolectal use at first – the combination of a form with its use tends to crystallize into a function to be utilized in subsequent encounters. For further discussion, see Östman (1995b).

Persuasion as implicit anchoring 

The persuasive processes of changing and strengthening people’s views are accomplished by – among other things – the use of pragmatic particles attuned to Coherence, Politeness, and/or Involvement – in accordance with the task and situation at hand. That is, pragmatic particles play different roles with respect to these parameters, and persuasion and manipulation as linguistic phenomena can be seen in the co-operation of various linguistic manifestations relating to, or being relatable to, these three parameters. In previous studies I have primarily used qualitative research methodology: close-readings, introspection, Conversation Analysis, discourse analysis, or some variety of Critical Discourse Analysis. But it is in the nature of the study of implicitness that often one cannot get at it by reason and argumentation alone. This is why the usefulness of corpus study for getting hold of implicit anchoring mechanisms needs to be assessed. After a further specification of persuasive discourse in relation to implicitness has been made in the next section, I will in the rest of this study try to sketch some of the directions which such corpus study research could take. This study is itself not a corpus study, since I will throughout my analysis rely on pragmatic and discourse analytic methods. The statistical stringency required of a proper corpus study will have to await the endeavors of future scholars. As I hope to show, though, there is an abundance of possibilities for meticulous corpus research in the field of implicit communication.

. Persuasive discourse One intriguing aspect with respect to persuasion is that the more you try to overtly persuade somebody into doing something, the less likely this somebody will be to actually do the thing. The success rate is even worse with manipulation and propaganda. Thus, if you were to say (3) to somebody, you can be sure that whatever you are doing next is not manipulation. (3) Now, let me manipulate you!

This indicates two things. First, the interactive nature of persuasion is crucial: like any form of interaction, persuasive discourse is characterized by (and therefore also has to be linguistically analyzed in terms of) concepts like negotiability, adaptability, ambivalence, and variability. That is, meanings and senses are negotiated among discourse participants – interactive meanings are codified only prototypically; meanings change and adapt to whatever situations and circumstances they encounter – as do conversationalists. Discourse is not

 Jan-Ola Östman explicitness

propaganda

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persuasion

interaction

phatic-communion

implicitness

Figure 4. Explicit and implicit anchoring in relation to (persuasive) interaction

only at times ambiguous, it is frequently ambivalent – even the conversationalists themselves often do not have a clear picture of what they want to say when they enter an interaction. And we do not only find a lot of variation across interactions, but interaction is characterized by an inherent feature of potential change, variability. (For some of these concepts, see Verschueren 1999.) What all this means is that the communicative effect of persuasive discourse is not only just as important as whatever the speaker’s, writer’s, or signer’s intention might have been, but – ultimately – the intention and the effect are co-constructed by discourse participants. The second point, and the one that I will dwell on below, is that persuasion and manipulation have to be carried out very implicitly if they are to be successful. In fact, the explicitness-implicitness axis can be seen as perpendicular to, and crossing, the interaction axis, as displayed in Figure 4. As stated earlier, any piece of language (a word, structure, prosodic pattern, etc.) can in principle have an implicit-anchoring function – metaphorically speaking, it can be a more or less transparent window in Figure 2. Figure 4 says that the names for the types of persuasion occupying different positions on the gradient scale of interaction are names for types of interaction that can, in principle, be carried out either explicitly or implicitly. Intuitively, it may seem that “propaganda” is more explicit, and that “phatic communion” is more implicit, but such a view can only be supported if discourse is seen as being inherently a matter of transference of propositional information. Propaganda does indeed have a strong persuasive element, both with respect to the (potential) intention and the (potential) effect associated with it, but this says nothing about how propaganda is accomplished as discourse. In the same manner, phatic communion may be said to have a weak persuasive element, but phatic communion can still be accomplished explicitly or implicitly. The relation of explicitness and implicitness to the gradience of interaction can be characterized as perpendicular if we in addition to what has already been discussed remember that explicitness and implicitness – explicit and implicit

Persuasion as implicit anchoring 

anchoring – are categories established for the sake of linguistic analysis. They are clear-cut categories when they are used as tools, but in reality we do not make discrete decisions of whether to anchor the discourse we participate in explicitly or implicitly. As I have pointed out, we simultaneously do both, and since – as we have just seen – adaptability is in the very nature of language, it would be surprising if language users did not exploit nor strategically use the different types of anchoring for their own (persuasive) benefits. That is, explicitness and implicitness also form a gradient scale – a scale that (metaphorically) is perpendicular to the gradience of interaction.

. Persuasion as taboo Let us now return to the very words of persuasion, the three strings that were introduced as propaganda, manipulat*, and persua* in Section 2. These strings, and the words that are hidden behind the asterisks6 are particularly interesting because the activities they portray are to a certain extent taboo – or at least “impolite” – in our society: propaganda more so than manipulation, and manipulation more so than persuasion, but the gradient scale in Figure 1 can also be seen as a gradient scale where the words, rather than the concepts, indicate less politically correct manners of behaving the further we move to the left on the gradient scale. If these three words are taboo words, then we should not find many instances of them in newspapers. And indeed, we do not find many of them. But when we do find them, and since we nevertheless do find them, we also need to ask: “How and when can they be used?” If they really are taboo words, then the paradigmatic axis will not give us an answer. We have to look for the answer in the company these words keep. Another way to put this is to say that it is possible and acceptable for native speakers to use taboo words in a natural manner as long as speakers supply them with the appropriate company. However, in the case of words that are used of activities that can only be carried out implicitly, activities like manipulation, these words need to keep their company secret. In addition to having explicit collocations like most any word (the way green and grass collocate), words describing taboo activities have very strong implicit collocations. Section 3 presented a model for how to deal with implicit anchoring in language. But this is not enough; for the model to be useful, it needs to be attuned to methods that have the strength to look beyond the explicit level of communication. In this case, I would suggest that one possibility to find out

 Jan-Ola Östman

about implicit collocations is to consult large-scale corpora. How else could we access the implicit collocations of words? At least at the initial stages of research, without corpora, we would not even have any evidence that potential collocations are “there” – not to mention what they would look like. This is not to say that all implicit collocations can be directly retrieved or found through corpus study. I will return to this issue at the end of the study. Even intuitively, it is clear that we use words together with other words without realizing that we are making unconscious choices of what combinations go well together, of what co-occurrences have – however partly – some degree of being ready-made in our minds, waiting to be used. And since such implicit co-occurrences are constantly used as combinations, they are also potential carriers of culture, of a certain ideology: when we use them, they attach us to our implicit views of the world, our views of our interactants, and of ourselves. And if this is so, such implicit collocations can naturally also be strategically exploited – e.g., for persuasive purposes. Implicit collocations are as implicit as the use of pragmatic particles: we seldom realize that we are using pragmatic particles, and we seldom realize that there is anything special about re-using combinations of words and phrases. Furthermore, in the same way as we can specify the potential functions pragmatic particles have with respect to the parameters of Coherence, Politeness, and Involvement, we can also specify the conditions for use of, say, words like propaganda, in terms of their collocates, and how these relate to – and thus can be linguistically analyzed with reference to – the three parameters.

. Implicit collocations How, then, do collocations manage implicit anchoring? And, in view of the understanding of discourse we have established through Figure 4, we need to ask: “How do implicit collocations take part in persuasive discourse?” In line with the way I set the scene for this study by consulting a corpus, I will in this section make a number of further suggestions of how a corpus study might proceed in searching for implicit collocations. I want to stress that what I do is not as such a corpus study – a meticulously performed corpus study will be a major enterprise. My purpose here is to suggest some directions of argumentation. Remember also that the overarching purpose of this study is to get a better understanding of persuasive discourse: I have chosen to approach this question

Persuasion as implicit anchoring 

by looking at the very words denoting persuasion, and rather than looking at the explicit, codified meanings of these words (which can be found in dictionaries), I have noted that they are sparsely used taboo words, which – because of this – will have to keep their company a secret. Thus, in order to be able to understand their “true essence,” we need to focus our attention on unearthing their company. In order to get a more diverse picture of the implicit collocations of propaganda, manipulation, and persuasion, the three strings mentioned earlier together with their co-texts were excerpted from three additional newspapers and run through the WST software.7 The way I have approached the material is as follows. At this stage of analysis, I have retained the traditional collocate span of five words to the right and five words to the left of the node, and I have focused on pairs of words (rather than on, say, triplets). The object is to look for combinations that could be characterized as possible implicit collocations. I will go through each of the three strings in turn, and start out by suggesting – on the basis of dictionary entries and the material at hand – what kinds of co-occurrences could be characterized as explicit collocations. The criteria for establishing explicit collocations are those given in Section 2 and defined as characteristics of prototypical collocations. Criteria 2 and 5 are taken care of by default, since they involve the collocate span of five words, and the focus on word pairs, respectively; criterion no. 1 says that main verbs, nouns and adjectives have a special status as collocates; criterion no. 3 suggests that punctuation does matter; and criterion no. 4 gives special attention to adjacency. Non-prototypical collocations are thus our prime suspects for the status of implicit collocations, and, in a more extensive study, criteria 2 and 5 would also need to be loosened in order to get at the potential implicit collocations such variation may incur. The expanded material – consisting of quite randomly selected newspapers – suggests that the initial observations made in Section 1 on the basis of the New York Times data by and large hold generally. . Propaganda Propaganda forms explicit collocations with words referring to nations and groups that tend to be viewed in a negative fashion. Thus, we find collocates like Soviet, Nazi, IRA, Korean, and Turkey’s. Although the dictionaries consulted (the BBI, and Kjellmer 1994) do not give any of these as such, they do supply more general collocates like communist, and political.

 Jan-Ola Östman

One of the possible implicit collocates of propaganda was already discussed in Section 2: the fact that it tends to collocate with other instances of the word propaganda. That is, the word propaganda is very often used in “propaganda contexts”: it is acceptable to use it if you “talk about it.” In comparison, I found that in these data, persuade hardly ever collocated with other occurrences of the word persuade, and manipulate collocated with other occurrences of manipulate only occasionally in the Guardian and in the tabloid Today.8 This implicit collocation is clearly a specific feature of propaganda, which is related to certain views of, and perspectives on, society – views that are related to ideologies and subcultures. This manner of collocation will thus be noted and dealt with in reference to the parameter of Coherence. There are indications in the data that this kind of Coherence feature may in addition be relatively strong for manipulation in tabloids, but not in dailies. Another tendency in need of further study is that manipulation is used more often in “manipulation contexts” in the British media than in the United States media. The collocates of propaganda also figure extensively on the Involvement parameter. Propaganda combines happily and frequently with words like against, but, and not. A linguistic manifestation that simultaneously needs to be addressed with respect to the parameters of Coherence and Involvement is that it combines more readily with their than with our: their propaganda, but not as often our propaganda. With respect to the Coherence parameter this has to do with how reference to Others is implicitly anchored; with respect to the Involvement parameter, the opposition of ‘they’ versus ‘we’ expresses attitudes and prejudices. Most typically, propaganda co-occurs with very negative words like war, coup, and death. These are close to being explicit collocations, as are clearly the collocates poster and film. The BBI gives enemy propaganda, vicious propaganda, and propaganda against. Because propaganda is such an emotively loaded word, many of its collocates are perhaps what we expected. The very use of the word draws attention to it, and thus also fairly explicitly draws attention to its collocates. . Manipulation Manipulation is more complex with respect to its implicit collocates than propaganda. Manipulation has two clear semantic (i.e. explicit) frames from where it draws its collocates, those related to economics, like market, stock(s), price(s), securities, financial, figures, interest, rate(s), exchange, fund, corp, etc.; and those related to society at large: nicotine, sexual, public opinion, law, etc. None of these are, however, indicated in the collocation dictionaries.

Persuasion as implicit anchoring 

More interestingly, manipulation seems very much to co-opt the Involvement parameter of implicit anchoring. Indications of this can be found in collocates from virtually all word classes: Nouns: Verbals: Adjectives: Adverbs:

fraud, allegations accused, alleged cynical, difficult, possible often, well, highly, always

The reason why I suggest that these are implicit (rather than explicit) collocations is that manipulation does not as such collocate extra strongly with any one in particular of these words. What manipulation seems to collocate with is a concept – a frame – of “strong engagement or involvement.” With respect to its verb, noun, and adjective collocates, the concept they share is clearly a negative sentiment. These co-occurrences tally well with the view that manipulation is a taboo word. It is not as clear what the set of adverbs that collocate with manipulation have in common. Let us have a closer look at the very frequent collocate often. For dictionary makers, often is close to a function word – but in dictionaries function words are given as collocates only when they occur adjacent to the dictionary entry (i.e. the node). (Cf. especially Kjellmer 1994.) Thus, collocations of the type manipulate + often tend to be missed. Table 6. Manipulate and often N

L5

L4

L3

L2

L1

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

the with were and from one his market nicotine its tobacco has but for are who said new that OFTEN into was

the and they as about are has over who for that stock new their from with

that the allegations are and new was they its for price market into but financial their OFTEN

and the attempt into that possible tobacco about OFTEN their who over one with allegations its for was were

and stock had from possible the for price financial market securities are into OFTEN were was

∅

R1

R2

R3

R4

R5

the and nicotine prices its images but his stocks into over were one that they stock

the levels market and company price images securities one OFTEN were copper was are prices nicotine his

and the that for stock one copper company who stocks financial prices market with

the that cigarette its said and for stock market their securities was stocks new they his copper attempt with had

the his and for their price has but copper into with who tobacco are OFTEN market said cigarette stocks new were about

 Jan-Ola Östman

If we take a closer look at the pattern display in Table 6,9 we see clearly that often does not occur in a particular slot with respect to its node manipulate. For instance, often does not occur immediately before manipulate; it occurs all over the place. Keeping in mind criterion no. 4, this (seemingly) random positioning of often in relation to manipulate by itself makes the collocation a candidate for implicit anchoring. This randomness in the co-patternings of manipulate and often is an important aspect of the notion of implicit collocation: the co-occurrence is “there” but rather haphazardly, even chaotically manifested. But to the extent that often and manipulation implicitly collocate, this collocation can be used strategically – consciously or unconsciously – for persuasive purposes. How it can be used for persuasive purposes is the topic of another study. The important thing to realize here is that this is a potential locus of persuasion. A native speaker using these two words as an implicit collocation is not accountable for the implicit anchoring s/he performs through this collocation in the same manner as s/he is accountable for the propositional meaning ‘frequently’ of often in an utterance like (4). (4) I often manipulate my partner into making dinner for me.

. Persuasion Persuasion, finally, seems to co-opt the Politeness parameter. Typical collocates of persuasion are words like trying, tried, tries; effort, efforts; could, would, must, might; failed; help; approve; force. What these words have in common is a shared focus on interaction, and even more so, on attempting to get the addressee to participate in the discourse. We can see the strength of these collocates in the fact that they very often form clusters of three words: trying to persuade, effort to persuade, etc. Table 710 gives the twelve most frequent three-word clusters, and – for illustrative purposes – some of the less frequent clusters involving the notion of attempting to get the addressee to participate. We note that out of the twelve most frequent three-word clusters, eight have this force; the other four (numbers 1, 3, 7, and 12) contain function words. Persuasion is not a straightforward activity, but one that has to be mitigated – as Table 7 suggests, typically with a catenative verb (try) expressing effort. As already mentioned in Section 2, a very frequent, and perhaps the most surprising of all the collocates of persuade is the negative particle not. A poste-

Persuasion as implicit anchoring 

Table 7. Three-word clusters for persuasion N

Cluster

Frequency

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 ... 20 21 ... 24 ... 28 29

to persuade the trying to persuade to persuade a try to persuade effort to persuade campaign to persuade to persuade them tried to persuade persuade them to efforts to persuade failed to persuade to persuade him

56 25 14 12 11 10 9 9 8 7 7 7

able to persuade attempt to persuade

4 4

could not persuade

4

seeking to persuade to help persuade

4 4

riori it might not seem like a big thing, maybe not even a surprise, to find that persuade often collocates with not: it is certainly more politically correct not to persuade than to persuade. Still, this collocation is not one that dictionaries have noted. * This small pilot study of the collocations of the strings propaganda, manipulat*, and persua* set out to investigate the usefulness of corpus study for research on implicit anchoring mechanisms on the basis that persuasion in language is a matter of implicitness. As part of a study pertaining primarily to introduce a number of theoretical and methodological concepts and distinctions, the actual analysis of collocations has remained in the background. Both the detailed analysis of collocations, and the more refined categories and processes by which I would further analyze the linguistic manifestations that end up under each of the parameters, obviously need to be approached more in full. For the details of the PIA toolkit, I refer the reader to Östman (1986); for the detailed analysis of implicit collocations the floor is open, and I look forward to future research.

 Jan-Ola Östman

On the basis of my preliminary discussion of implicit collocations, I would venture to suggest that propaganda seems to particularly exploit the Coherence parameter (which anchors communication to society and culture at large), persuasion the Politeness parameter (i.e., relations to co-participants), and manipulation the Involvement parameter (that is, feelings, attitudes, prejudices). This would not mean, however, that I would be content with only specifying the potential implicit collocations of any of these words in relation to the parameter they seem to most clearly co-opt or exploit. I would still expect to find that all three words have collocational realizations on all the three parameters of implicit anchoring, in the same manner as we have seen that other linguistic units carry potentials for implicit anchoring – a case in point being the discussion of you know in Section 3. At the same time, though, if it turns out on closer scrutiny that there is a distribution of tasks among the three words, I will not deny the possibility that these words have quite rigidly carved up the semantic field they cover – even at the implicit level of communication.

. Conclusions Although the gist of this study has been explicitly in favor of corpus study as an additional method for finding manifestations of implicit anchoring in language, and for finding implicit collocations in particular, it is still pertinent to ask whether corpus study is the ultimate answer on all accounts. We already saw that words tend to collocate not necessarily with other words, but with concepts, with the conceptual networks that other words make up. This is not a major problem for corpus study; quite the contrary. Corpus study will help you define such concepts or networks. It does suggest, though, that corpus study should be seen more as an aiding tool for pragmatic and discourse analytic research than as the method to be adopted par excellence. This suggestion is further supported when we realize the importance of looking beyond the traditional span of not more than four words intervening between a node and its collocates. Indeed, technically speaking, there is no problem in expanding the span to include full paragraphs, subsections, or even full texts and discourses. Even the question of “where to stop” might not as such be relevant – since the technical tools are available. The problem is, though, that choices of span do have to be made for every study. For instance, what if we have a book, a collection of articles with the provocative title Foreigner problems, but none of the articles (which all may have different authors) ever refer to foreigners, refugees, or asylum seekers as a “problem.” All the authors may

Persuasion as implicit anchoring 

take it for granted that foreigners are problematic. In this case I would like to say that there is a strong implicit collocation running through the book of problem and words for Others. And in this case, expanding the span to include the book as a whole might be a solution. But what if there is no word like problem that can stand as the unifying concept for an (editor’s) attitude? What if we simply know that the publisher represents a particular view against Others? These and similar questions relating to implicit anchoring do not seem to be solvable by corpus study. And although I tend to think of corpus study as an aiding tool for pragmatics and discourse analysis, I would like to think that this preliminary study has shown that these methods and approaches to get at a deeper understanding of language and persuasion can fruitfully be combined. More specifically, I have given a rough outline of the model Pragmatics as Implicit Anchoring, and I have shown its usefulness in that, with the help of this model, implicit communication can be systematically studied by linguistic means. Thus, since persuasive discourse is implicit communication, it can be studied by analyzing rigorously the linguistic cues of implicitness and their manifestations. In principle, no element of language can be left untouched in such an analysis of implicit anchoring – even words like often and not will have very important contributions for the study of implicitness. Even more specifically: all words can be thought of as having implicit collocations. We have seen how two methods which have so far been practiced quite separately – implicit pragmatics and corpus study – can be usefully combined, so much so that in certain cases it seems virtually necessary to combine the two. Furthermore, if some implicit collocations cannot be retrieved nor even discovered except through corpus study, then there are probably a number of other similar pragmatic phenomena that can be fruitfully approached with this combination of methods. Although there is clearly a lot to be done in this field, the results of this small scale study have already proven that this type of study has important implications for the study of collocation in general and for the study of persuasive discourse.

Notes . I am greatly indebted to Helena Halmari and Tuija Virtanen for their suggestions and critical reading of earlier versions of this paper. Thanks are also due to the other participants in the workshop at the AAAL meeting in Stamford for most fruitful discussions.

 Jan-Ola Östman . The words and their co-texts were run through WordSmith Tools – all the constellations on which the tables of collocations used in this study are based were produced with this software. I am indebted to Tuija Virtanen for suggesting this method to me, and for her technical help in running the data through a set of different WordSmith Tools programs. . Words the size of one or two letters have not been included, neither have numbers. Although such exclusions constitute obvious drawbacks from a structural linguistic point of view, the primary objects of this study are not the kind of formulaic phrases mentioned at the beginning of this section (cf. at school). . In the tables, LEFT stands for the added-up number of collocates occurring before the node; RIGHT stands for the number of collocates following the node; TOTAL stands for the total number of instances of this collocate. . The locution “quite frequently” here means relatively speaking, in relation to other cooccurrences. As will become clear, this work is not a report on a corpus study; calculations of significance are therefore also lacking. . Since I am not presenting the results of a corpus study, but seek to get a deeper understanding of the very concepts behind the extracted strings through an analysis of their implicit collocations, I have not found it necessary to specify whether the node is, say, manipulate or manipulation. For presentational purposes, I have variably referred to manipulat* and persua* with any word that fits the context, respectively. I am well aware that such loose formulations have no place in a proper corpus study. . I am grateful to Tuija Virtanen for excerpting the New York Times, and to Timo Järvinen for excerpting the material from the other three newspapers from the Bank of English corpus. The newspapers and the number of instances of the three strings that the excerption produced were as follows: New York Times, 1996, 8 million words – propaganda 67 instances – manipulat* 212 instances – persua* 513 instances

Guardian, 1993, 12 million words – propaganda 174 instances – manipulat* 300 instances – persua* 1,142 instances

Wall Street Journal, 1989, 6 million words – propaganda 55 instances – manipulat* 138 instances – persua* 272 instances

Today, 1992, 10 million words – propaganda 64 instances – manipulat* 108 instances – persua* 612 instances

. At the risk of sounding wishy-washy, I have decided to use expressions like frequently, and hardly ever to indicate tendencies. Since my initial observations are not to be understood as a corpus study proper, I see no reason to pretend to make the results more scientific by now and then mentioning a percentage figure. . The pattern display is given in the form it is produced by WST. The numbers to the left indicate the order of frequency with respect to each slot; the data are excerpted from the New York Times; the cut-off point is five instances – fewer collocates are not displayed. The slots filled by often are capitalized and given in bold face. . The output in Table 7 is one kind of reorganization of the data that WST can perform. The data for this table have been extracted from the New York Times corpus only.

Persuasion as implicit anchoring

References BBI. See Benson et al. (1986/1997). Benson, Morton, Benson, Evelyn, & Ilson, Robert (1986). The BBI Dictionary of English Word Combinations. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Benson, Morton, Benson, Evelyn, & Ilson, Robert (1997). The BBI Dictionary of English Word Combinations. 2nd revised edition. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Fillmore, Charles J., Kay, Paul, & O’Connor, Mary Catherine (1988). “Regularity and idiomaticity in grammatical constructions: The case of Let alone”. Language, 64 (3), 501–538. Firth, J. R. (1957a). Papers in Linguistics 1934–1951. London: Oxford University Press. Firth, J. R. (1957b). Studies in Linguistic Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell. Firth, J. R. (1968). Selected Papers 1952–1959. London: Longman. Fried, Mirjam & Östman, Jan-Ola (2003). “The explicit and the implicit in the Suasion Frame”. In E. Hajiˇcová, A. Kotˇešovcová, & J. Mírovský (Eds.), Proceedings of CIL17 (22 pp.). Prague: Matfyzpress, MFF UK. CD-ROM publication. Fried, Mirjam & Östman, Jan-Ola (2004). “Construction Grammar: A thumbnail sketch”. In M. Fried & J.-O. Östman (Eds.), Construction Grammar in a Cross-Language Perspective (pp. 11–86). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Grice, H. P. (1975). “Logic and conversation”. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts (pp. 41–58). New York: Academic Press. Kjellmer, Göran (1994). A Dictionary of English Collocations. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lakoff, Robin Tolmach (1979). “Stylistic strategies within a grammar of style”. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 327, 553–578. Miller, G. A. (1956). “The magical number seven plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information”. Psychological Review, 63, 81–97. Morris, Charles W. (1938). “Foundations of the theory of signs”. In O. Neurath, R. Carnap, & C. Morris (Eds.), International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Vol. 1, Part 1 (pp. 78– 137). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Östman, Jan-Ola (1981). You know: A Discourse-Functional Approach. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Östman, Jan-Ola (1986). Pragmatics as Implicitness: An analysis of question particles in Solf Swedish, with implications for the study of passive constructions and the language of persuasion. PhD Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley. Available from University Microfilms International (Ann Arbor, MI). No. 8624885. Östman, Jan-Ola (1987a). “Pragmatic markers of persuasion”. In J. Hawthorn (Ed.), Propaganda, Persuasion and Polemic (pp. 90–105). London: Edward Arnold. Östman, Jan-Ola (1987b). “Pragmatic aspects of persuasion: Coherence”. In H. Nyyssönen, R. Kataja, & V. Komulainen (Eds.), CDEF 86: Papers from the Conference of Departments of English in Finland (pp. 93–109). University of Oulu, Finland: Publications of the Department of English, no. 7. Östman, Jan-Ola (1995a). “Explicating implicitness”. Pragmatics, Ideology, and Contacts Bulletin, 2, 4–7. Department of English, University of Helsinki. Östman, Jan-Ola (1995b). “Pragmatic particles twenty years after”. In B. Wårvik, S.-K. Tanskanen, & Responsibility in Discourse and the Discourse of Responsibility.

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Östman, Jan-Ola & Simon-Vandenbergen, Anne-Marie (1995). “Firthian linguistics”. In J. Verschueren, J.-O. Östman, & J. Blommaert (Eds.), Handbook of Pragmatics: Manual (pp. 278–282). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Sinclair, John (1991). Corpus, Concordance, Collocation. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Verschueren, Jef (1999). Understanding Pragmatics. London: Edward Arnold.

Chapter 8

Generic patterns in promotional discourse Vijay K. Bhatia

If there is one dominant characteristic of professional and, to some extent, even academic genres that has influenced the essential nature and function of discourse in general in recent years, it has been the invasion of promotional values in most forms of discourse. Promotional genres, in this respect, have undoubtedly become the most versatile and fast developing area of discourse. This has been the result of several factors, some of which include the availability of new technology in mass communication and a massive information explosion as a result of this, the compulsive nature of advertising and promotional activities in business and other areas of social concern, the essentially competitive nature of much of professional and academic activities. The most significant changes were found in the eighties in traditional financial sectors, especially in banking and investment, which turned advertising into a subtle art form rather than traditional hard selling. In the last few years, the entire range of advertising activities has undergone radical changes and in turn has influenced other forms of discourse, which only remotely and perhaps occasionally displayed promotional elements. As Featherstone (1991) points out, the world of today is a “consumer culture,” where many of our discursive activities, whether in business or in the academia, or even in personal contexts, have to some extent been influenced by promotional concerns. The inevitable result of this development is that many of the institutionalized genres, whether they are social, professional, or academic, are seen as incorporating elements of promotion. Fairclough (1993: 141), referring to such changes in discursive practices, points out, [. . .] there is an extensive restructuring of boundaries between orders of discourse and between discursive practices; for example, the genre of consumer advertising has been colonizing professional and public service orders of discourse on a massive scale, generating many new hybrid partly promotional genres [. . .]

 Vijay K. Bhatia

As an instance of such a hybrid genre, Fairclough (1993) discusses the case of contemporary university prospectuses, where he highlights an increasing tendency towards marketization of the discursive practices of British universities. The main purpose of this paper is to highlight a range of professional and academic discourse in an attempt to investigate the complexity of promotional generic patterns, and to further investigate mixing and embedding of non-promotional generic elements to achieve promotional goals.

.

Traditional forms of promotional discourse

The most traditional form of promotional discourse is found in advertisement, which is often viewed as a form of discourse intended to inform and promote in order to sell ideas, goods, or services to a selected group of people (see, e.g., Bruthiaux, Chapter 5, this volume). Advertising is one of most dynamic and versatile genres of public discourse today, in that it can boast of some of the most varied and innovative uses of lexico-grammatical and discoursal forms and rhetorical strategies. However, these innovations are often used within rather outside the typical generic boundaries of promotional discourse (for detailed accounts of this kind of variation, see Kathpalia 1992; Bhatia 1995). Without going into any detailed generic and discoursal specification of the general advertising genre, I would like to point out that most print advertisements of hard sell type make use of some of the following rhetorical moves to persuade potential customers to buy the product or service they promote.

Generic structure of advertisements in terms of rhetorical moves: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Headlines Targeting the market Justifying the product or service by establishing a niche Detailing the product or service Establishing credentials Endorsement or Testimonials Offering incentives Using pressure tactics Soliciting response Signature line and Logo etc.

Generic patterns in promotional discourse

Diagram 1. An example of rhetorical moves in a print advertisement

It must be pointed out that advertising copywriters often select from a range of rhetorical moves from the above. It is very rare to find all the moves in the same advertisement and in the same order. These moves are often creatively exploited by good copywriters to achieve an effect most suitable for a particular product or service keeping in mind the audience they target. The example of advertisement from Hong Kong Standard (30 September 1998) illustrates the use of some of these rhetorical moves used in print advertisements, which Kathpalia (1992) refers to as “hard-sell” type.



 Vijay K. Bhatia

. Sources of promotional input Advertising in the context of today is an extremely innovative and versatile artefact. It is almost impossible to give a comprehensive account of the strategies advertisers may use to influence their targeted audience. Therefore, without attempting to be comprehensive in this regard, I shall briefly take up one of the strategies traditionally used, i.e.,product differentiation. . Product differentiation in advertising The most essential element in advertising is product differentiation. The copywriter must analyze all the background information, all the “evidence,” in the light of discovering what makes a particular product different from that of competitors. An excellent illustration of this strategy one may find in an old story, which seems to capture the essential spirit of product differentiation in advertising. It goes somewhat like this. In the good old days, there were two shops selling sausages in the same street in London. Initially both were doing well, but as days went by, the competition became tough and the promotional activities intense. Suddenly, one fine morning the shop on the right side of the road put up a poster claiming, “We sell the best sausages in London.” The next morning, the shop on the left side, in an attempt to outsmart his competitor came up with the claim “We sell the best sausages in England.” The next day, the first one came up with the claim, “Our sausages are the best in the world.” The second one responded by saying, “We sell sausages to the Queen,” to which the first one responded the following day by displaying a huge poster saying, “God save the Queen!”

. Discoursal resources for product differentiation The most common form of product differentiation is achieved by offering a product description which is good, positive, and favorable. In today’s advertising, the traditional practice of direct comparison of products has become somewhat risky, although subtle forms of comparison exist, for example, in the case of a household product, where it is typically claimed that this “special” brand is so much superior to an “ordinary” one. However, it is the generic values of “description” and “evaluation,” which are most often called upon to serve the cause of millions of products and services across the corporate world (see Bhatia 1993, for a detailed discussion of this). The most common denominator in most of the efforts for product differentiation is the use of the

Generic patterns in promotional discourse 

Diagram 2. Levels of Generic Description

primary generic values of description and evaluation. Table 2 above displays the relationship between various levels of generic description. Although genres are essentially identified in terms of communicative purposes they tend to serve, these communicative purposes can be characterized at various levels of generalizations. These communicative purposes can be realized in terms of a combination of rhetorical processes, which can also be considered as primary generic values. In professional genres, it is often possible to posit several levels of generalization. To take the case of promotional genres, one may find at the highest level of generalization “promotional discourse” in the form of a constellation of several closely related genres with an overlapping communicative purpose of promoting a product or service to a potential customer. Some of the common examples of promotional genres may include advertisements, promotional letters, job applications (in the sense that their purpose is also to sell the services of the applicant to a potential employer, see Bhatia 1993), book blurbs, company brochures, travel brochures, and a number of others. All these and a number of other instances of this kind have a large degree of overlap in the communicative purposes they tend to

 Vijay K. Bhatia

serve, and that is the main reason why they are seen as forming a closely related discourse colony, serving more or less a common promotional purpose, in spite of the fact that some of them may also display subtle differences in their realizations. It is further possible for us to view any one of these genres, advertisements, for example, at a lower level of generalization and make distinctions between more specific realizations of this genre. Obvious examples will include print advertisements, TV commercials, radio advertisements, and others. The differences between these are less discernible in terms of communicative purposes but more in terms of the medium of discourse, and therefore as genres, they belong to the same broad category, popularly known as advertisements. Taking a step further, this time considering only print advertisements, it is further possible to view these in terms of categories like straight-line advertisements, picture-caption reminder advertisements, image-building advertisements, testimonials, pretend genres (advertisements embedded in other genres) etc. (Kathpalia 1992). Whatever the subcategory, all these advertisements serve the same set of communicative purposes, though most of them use different strategies to promote the product or service. Straight-line advertisements, where the focus is product selling, most often use “product appraisal” as the main persuasive strategy, whereas image-building advertisements, where the focus is on brand popularization, rely more heavily on establishing credentials as the main source of persuasion. Another variation one may find in the use of linguistic resources is that whereas some types rely on verbal strategies (straight-line advertisements using product appraisal) others, for example picture-caption advertisements, rely more on visual inputs. Once again, it is possible for us to take up straight-line advertisements and differentiate them further either in terms of their use of linguistic features for product evaluation, or maybe in terms of the kind of product they advertise, or even in terms of the audience they serve. In each case, we are sure to find subtle differences in the use of strategies for product description, evaluation, product differentiation, and these eventually give rise to specific uses of linguistic resources. But the interesting thing is that all these variations become distinctive genres only at a level at which they start indicating a substantial difference in their communicative purposes.

. Colony of promotional genres As a result of this kind of variation, one may find a variety of promotional genres forming some kind of a colony, which will have members serving a

Generic patterns in promotional discourse 

range of communicative purposes, of which the most dominating one might be promotional in nature. If we take advertising to be the most central member of such a colony, with marketing as one of the most dominant characteristic communicative purpose, then sales promotion letters and advertisements can be placed very close to each other. There may be major differences in terms of the medium in use, i.e., print, audio, or visual and the format they are often associated with, i.e., somewhat personalized letter format for sales promotion letters as against a general appeal for a large groups of potential customers for advertisements. Book blurbs can be placed close to these two, although they are different from these two in terms of the specificity of the product they promote, i.e., books, the selection and size of the market or audience they target, and also the nature of the strategies and hence lexico-grammatical resources they employ, of course depending upon the subject discipline of the book. However, all three of them are almost completely overlapping in terms of their communicative purpose of marketing: that of selling for profit (Kathpalia 1992). Very closely related to these are job application letters, which have traditionally been regarded as very different from sales promotion letters, but as indicated in Bhatia (1993), they are very similar in terms of their communicative purpose and the use of lexico-grammatical and discoursal resources. Somewhat similar to these two types of letters are testimonials and reference letters. Although a letter of reference is essentially a review of the candidate’s suitability to a particular job description, in practice, it most often turns out to be a letter of recommendation, which is a positive, rather than neutral evaluation of the competence of the candidate in question.

. Invasion of territorial integrity As mentioned in the previous sections, genres more often than not operate within their own territorial boundaries, displaying what Bhatia (1993) calls “generic integrity,” which is recognizable by reference to both the text-internal as well as the text-external aspects of the genre. Text-internal aspects constitute lexico-grammatical, discoursal, and rhetorical features of the textualization of the genre. They are easily accessible to professional discourse analysts. Conversely, text-external aspects constitute socio-rhetorical, contextual, and procedural elements which make the genre possible. They are most often used by members of a specific discourse or professional community with which the genre is typically associated. However, in the context of present-day interdisciplinary and dynamic world of work, it is often difficult to keep the

 Vijay K. Bhatia

Diagram 3. Invasion of territorial integrity

individual generic boundaries intact, which has become even more difficult because of the explosion of information technology and the new media and also the overpowering influence of promotional activities in today’s overly competitive world. Of all the genres which have invaded the territorial integrity of most professional and academic genres, ‘advertising’ clearly stands out to be the most predominant instrument of colonization. It has successfully invaded a number of institutionalized genres, including academic, corporate, political, journalistic and many of the reporting genres, displaying the use of a range of strategies from a relatively subtle appropriation of lexico-grammatical and discoursal resources to a much more conspicuous “hybridization” (Fairclough 1993) or “mixing” and “embedding” of genres (Bhatia 1995, 1997c). In an earlier discussion of genre-mixing in professional discourse (Bhatia 1995), I give examples from several settings, where genre-mixing and embedding is becoming increasingly common. I also mention several instances where one may find an increasing use of promotional strategies in genres, which are traditionally considered non-promotional in their communicative purposes.

Generic patterns in promotional discourse 

The examples include job advertisements and academic introductions, where I found rather explicit indications of promotional elements. These have traditionally been regarded as either purely informative or at best persuasive, but certainly not promotional in the marketing sense. However, in all these instances of genre-mixing, there is at least one thing in common. Almost all the instances of genre-mixing are somewhat compatible with each other, in that they do not show any conflict in communicative purposes. For instance, it is highly unlikely to mix promotional purpose in advertising with negative evaluation of the product being advertised. Similarly, in a reference letter, one is less likely to be openly critical of the achievements of the candidate. This kind of negative appraisal aspect is more appropriately conveyed through silence rather than explicit expression. A closer look at these instances will indicate that informative functions are more likely to be colonized by promotional functions rather than any other. As pointed out in Bhatia (1993), the most popular promotional strategy in advertising has been to describe and evaluate a product or service in a positive manner, which may be seen as information-giving function of language. These two functions of language, i.e., informational and promotional are therefore unlikely to create tension, even if they may not be entirely complementary to each other. A number of such instances of mixed genres are getting established and are being given innovative names, as in the case of infomercial, infotainment, or advertorial (see also Halmari and Virtanen, Chapter 9 in this volume). Although it may appear that this kind of genre-mixing is more common in genres that are less likely to create functional tension, it will be somewhat premature to assume that it will always be the case. It is possible to view this subtle colonization of genres in terms of appropriation and mixing of genres, depending upon the degree of invasion one may find in individual members of the colony. This can be diagrammatically represented (see Diagram 4). The primary and most dominant form of promotional discourse is what is commonly known as advertising discourse, which of course has a number of exponents. Variations, in terms of forms, (“hard sell” and “soft sell”), medium (radio, TV, or print), range of products (cars, cosmetics, and computers), and the strategies employed partly capture the enormous potential that promotional discourse displays in a culture of consumerism. A very closely related marketing genre which has remarkable similarities with advertising is what is popularly known as a book blurb or a publisher’s blurb, to distinguish it from author’s introduction. Most traditional forms of advertisement manifest a near overlap with book blurbs with respect of the rhetorical moves that both advertisements and book blurbs use to persuade their readership to buy

 Vijay K. Bhatia

Diagram 4. Colonization of academic, professional, and institutionalized genres

the advertised product. Sales promotional letter, though remarkably similar to a typical advertisement is interdiscursively more complex, in that it is always embedded in a letter format. This interdiscursivity is also partly responsible for bringing together yet another genre, i.e., job application letter. This genre shares not only the embedded format with the sales promotional letter but also a striking range of lexico-grammatical resources. In spite of their very different contextual configurations, as genres they may share their communicative purposes, the lexicogrammatical resources, and their move-structure (Bhatia 1993). This probably is one of the most interesting appropriations of generic resources across conventional socio-rhetorical boundaries. Somewhat similar but more radical appropriation of linguistic and discoursal resources we find in the case of philanthropic fundraising letters, which are very different from sales promotional letters in terms of the rationale, ideology, and the nature of appeal, but are remarkably similar in terms of their move structures (see Bhatia 1997b). Closely related to job application letters, we have testimonials, reference letters, and CVs, all of which tend to have promotional intentions. In addition to these appropriated forms, we do get a number of other public and profes-

Generic patterns in promotional discourse 

sional genres, which tend to be persuasive though not exactly for marketing ends. Some of the most notable candidates for inclusion in this category are genres related to socio-political and diplomatic contexts, such as consultation papers (see Bhatia 1997a), diplomatic communiqués, press releases, and what are popularly known as memoranda of understanding (Bhatia 2000). Although most of these are designed to serve informative purposes, they invariably focus on only positive aspects and incorporate persuasive and sometimes even promotional elements. Somewhat more distant category of discourses, which still have a number of genres, essentially informative and traditionally non-promotional in intent, are increasingly being influenced and even colonized by promotional concerns. The main communicative purpose they serve is still informative, but they can sometimes be mixed or hybrid in appearance. Fairclough (1993) discusses several interesting instances of academic course descriptions and job advertisements, which, he rightly claims, are becoming increasingly promotional. Similarly, Bhatia (1995, 1997c) points out two interesting developments in the case of academic introductions, i.e., book introductions, prefaces and forewords. Firstly, the traditional distinctions between these closely related genres are disappearing in practice, so that it is very difficult to establish each one having separate generic integrity of its own. Secondly, and perhaps more interesting from the point of view of this paper, most of these forms of academic introductions are becoming increasingly promotional in practice, so that sometimes it becomes rather difficult not to take notice of such promotional elements in these essentially informative genres, particularly in the case of book introductions. Coming to review as a genre, one may still continue to find book reviews as essentially balanced evaluation, where one may find reasonable description of the book, which may incorporate positive as well as negative aspects of the product in question. However, in the case of reviews of food and restaurants, software, new cars, and a number of other similar products, one may find a majority of them predominantly promotional in character, focussing mainly on positive description and evaluation. Leaflets on services from corporations, banking as well as financial, medical and health institutions, travel industries, and government departments are primarily informative, but some mixture of promotional or persuasive overtones cannot be ruled out in most cases. Similarly, brochures and reports, whether they report on the company services, financial matters, investment appreciation, or travel opportunities, are essentially mixed genres, incorporating informative as well as promotional elements.

 Vijay K. Bhatia

. Concluding remarks The foregoing discussion presents an increasingly complex and rather expanding picture of colonization of a range of professional, academic, and institutionalized genres. The so-called rapid appropriation of linguistic and discoursal resources has, to some extent, been accelerated by several factors in the last few years. Although several genre scholars have pointed out that genres are dynamic constructs (Swales 1990; Bhatia 1993, 1995; Berkenkotter & Huckin 1995), and they often undergo change and development over a period of time, it must be pointed out that such a large-scale colonization by just one kind of discourse has some special significance. In my view, this has been inspired by a number of interesting and significant developments in recent years. Almost an unprecedented exploitation of new technology to make public discourse accessible to large audiences across the globe has prompted millions of new “makers” of discourse to give varied interpretations to conventional forms of discourse, often creating new forms. Appropriation of lexico-grammatical and rhetorical resources from the discourse of corporate advertising has offered a very attractive option because of its innovative character and creative use of language. Advertising has turned the process of writing into an art form, where writers constantly compete for attention getting by not only innovative use of language but also by the creative use of traditional expressions and clichés, which are often shunned by good writers in other forms of discourse. This process of colonization is given a further boost by the fact that the world we live in today provides an extremely competitive environment in which academics and professionals are required to perform. Universities for example, until very recently, have always maintained their special status and dignity in society, because of their territorial demarcation and also because of their excellence in specialist areas of knowledge. However, in the present-day competitive environment most of them are finding it extremely difficult now to maintain their privileged status of excellence. As a result of an increasing number of students going for higher education, the universities are gradually coming closer to the concept of a marketplace, where each has to compete with everyone else for clients’ attention. Similarly, in the corporate world, the events in the past few years have made the present corporate far more competitive than what it was in the past. In the sixties and seventies, the corporate world was rather small and varied, with very few multinationals operating globally. The markets were also somewhat segmented and often protected by governments. With the competition in trade and commerce becoming more and more intense, multinationals were on the increase in the eighties and became almost a norm in the nineties.

Generic patterns in promotional discourse 

From the point of view of discourse development, there were two important consequences: first, promotion and advertising activities became almost essential for survival, and second, cross-cultural variations became a significant factor in promotional and advertising discourse. The most important consequence of these developments on the discourse of advertising has been that in a very short period of time this has become one of the most dynamic and innovative forms of discourse today, which in turn has influenced the construction, interpretation, use, and exploitation of most other forms of academic, professional, and institutional genres, thus invading their territorial integrity to create appropriated, embedded, mixed, or hybrid forms of discourse.

References Berkenkotter, Carol & Huckin, Thomas N. (1995). Genre Knowledge in Disciplinary Communication: Cognition, Culture, Power. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Bhatia, Vijay K. (1993). Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings. London: Longman. Bhatia, Vijay K. (1995). “Genre-mixing in professional communication: The case of ‘private intentions’ v. ‘socially recognised purposes”. In P. Bruthiaux, T. Boswood, & B. Bertha (Eds.), Explorations in English for Professional Communication (pp. 1–19). Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong. Bhatia, Vijay K. (1997a). “Democratizing legislative decision-making in Hong Kong: A study of generic patterns used in public discourse”. The Journal of Pragmatics, 28, 525–532. Bhatia, Vijay K. (1997b). “Discourse of philanthropic fund-raising”. In Written Discourse in Philanthropic Fund Raising: Issues of Language and Rhetoric [Indiana University Center on Philanthrophy. Working Papers 98-13] (pp. 27–64). Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University, Indianapolis. Bhatia, Vijay K. (1997c). “Genre-mixing in academic introductions”. English for Specific Purposes, 16 (3), 181–196. Bhatia, Vijay K. (2000). “Genres in Conflict”. In A. Trosborg (Ed.), Analysing Professional Genres (pp. 147–162). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Fairclough, Norman (1993). “Critical discourse analysis and the marketization of public discourse: The universities”. Discourse and Society, 4 (2), 133–168. Featherstone, Mike (1991). Consumer Culture and Postmodernism. London: Sage. Kathpalia, Sujata S. (1992). A Genre Analysis of Promotional Texts. An unpublished PhD thesis, National University of Singapore. Swales, John M. (1990). Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

P 5

Concluding remarks

Chapter 9

Towards understanding modern persuasion Helena Halmari and Tuija Virtanen

This book has been built around the notion of persuasion – a concept for which we gave the working definition in Chapter 1 and a notion whose use the chapters of our contributors have given various examples of or elaborations on. Persuasion has been understood as language that attempts to change or reconfirm the opinions and behaviors of an audience. This process of persuasion we always understand as an interactive one: It is a process that is shaped by contextual factors arising from the various situations in which the verbal encounters take place. Persuasion never happens in a vacuum; it is targeted for an audience. But while the need to persuade is as old as humanity, the linguistic forms of persuasion do not constitute a stable, monolithic phenomenon. The very nature of persuasion requires that its forms need to be kept implicit (see Östman, Chapter 7, this volume). Few like to be persuaded against their will and, hence, the best kind of persuasion is often implicit persuasion. This volume has so far dealt with several synchronic aspects of persuasion across genres; we have made a conscious effort to illustrate contemporary genres, genres from the last two decades of the twentieth century. In this final chapter, we open up the diachronic dimension of persuasion, and we claim that it is the implicit nature of persuasion that largely accounts for its changing forms across and within different genres.

.

Implicitness of persuasion and generic change

As Östman argues in this volume (Chapter 7; also 1987), effective persuasion is implicit persuasion. This is a simple, yet brilliant, observation. The chapters of this volume present ample evidence of the intricate interplay of the two key notions: persuasion and genre. Bhatia approaches the processes of in-

 Helena Halmari and Tuija Virtanen

creasing hybridization and promotionalization of genres that we are currently witnessing (Chapter 8; also 1993). Genres function as vehicles for persuasion. We argue that implicit persuasion can trigger generic change, thus explaining the evolving forms of inherently persuasive genres. Genres can be partially characterized by their lexico-grammatical and discourse-organizational forms. When one genre is used heavily for persuasive purposes, persuasion becomes explicit and loses some of its power. Hence, the linguistic markers of persuasion need to change in order for persuasion to be more implicit. When the linguistic markers change, the genre itself starts to resemble something else – it is no longer a prototypical example of the established genre. It is obvious that the more familiarity the audience gains with the forms of persuasive language, the more explicit persuasion becomes. The less conscious we are about the persuasive purposes of the text, the more open we can be to its message. And, on the contrary: The more closely a genre becomes associated with direct persuasion, the more carefully speakers or writers need to craft their texts for effective persuasion to take place. The process works in a way similar to the evolving nature of euphemisms. People want to cover the fact that they are referring to something taboo or unpleasant. In a sense, persuasion too is taboo and unpleasant. Euphemism leads to constant change since the words used to euphemize an unpleasant referent become, so to say, tainted by this referent and become themselves “dirty.” We claim that persuasion is a force that causes language change (in a similar manner as euphemism) since it needs to be veiled over and over again in new linguistic and generic forms. Persuasion is hence a powerful force causing generic change. The author of a persuasive text faces a difficult balancing act: The persuasive message needs to be coded clearly enough to alter or maintain a particular behavior in the audience, yet not so clearly as to dispel the audience. The dynamic dimension of persuasion is directly linked to the effects of the persuasive messages on the audience. Van Eemeren and Houtlosser (1999) convincingly show the fundamentally dialectical nature of argumentative discourse. Persuasion, even more so, involves a dialectical dimension – the effect on the audience is of critical concern to persuasive texts. Will my business partner be convinced to agree to my terms? Will the foundation give me the grant? Will my academic audience see the value of my research? Will the higher court be convinced by my letter? Will the voters decide to vote for me? Will the potential dating partner write back to me? Will the newspaper reader buy my argument? Entering into dialogue with the audience forces the author of a persuasive text repeat-

Towards understanding modern persuasion 

edly to re-consider the packaging, the linguistic form into which the persuasive message will be wrapped. The composition of the audience – its values, opinions, and worldviews, which will never remain constant – forces the persuader to monitor the text in search of the best possible package that leads to the desired outcome: a change in the behavior of the audience toward the desired direction, or the maintenance of the status quo, if this is the goal. Over time, changes in the composition of the audience, together with changes in the world we live in (which influences our values, opinions, worldviews, and reactions) will inevitably lead to new developments in the language of persuasive genres. Let us take an example from the field of advertising. An advertisement is, of course, created to sell a product. But the best way to sell a product cannot be a constant; what sold decades ago is not necessarily the best persuasive packaging today. The passing of time per se is bound to affect people’s reactions, and advertisers also need to be creative to attract attention – the prerequisite for any kind of persuasion. For the advertiser, the invention of the color TV was a blessing. This allowed experimentation with a new dimension since after the inevitable relative monotony of the black-and-white TV, viewers were naturally drawn to and entertained by the new, colorful ads. It was only after decades, during which a growing number of TV-viewers started to consist of those who had never experienced the colorless TV, that black-and-white ads reappeared. Since ads with colors had now become the norm, reintroduction of the quaint broke the monotony, attracting attention. This packaging is, however, used sparingly lest its attention-getting effect should fade away. The incidental use of the blackand-white ad has been a clever strategy to influence the subconsciousness of the viewers – to make them pay attention. These types of attention-getting devices may be regarded as part of the implicitness of persuasion, and this attempt to appeal to the subconsiousness of the audience leads to a constant flux in the form of the persuasive message. Repetition up to a certain point may lead to persuasion, after which the audience may become immune to the message. The next section presents a showcase illustrating some diachronic aspects of generic change motivated by persuasive needs. We will offer two glimpses into the development of promoting one specific consumer product where the need for persuasion has dictated changes over time.

 Helena Halmari and Tuija Virtanen

. An example In the area of advertising, it is possible to see a change over time in the form of the message from the seemingly explicit and overt to the more implicit and obscure. A Coca-Cola® ad from the 1930s that appeared in a December issue of The American Magazine depicts a happy, plump Santa Claus clad in his brightred suit, toasting with a glass of Coca-Cola. At the bottom of the page are two Coca-Cola glasses next to the logo on their right, stating, “Drink Coca-Cola. Delicious and Refreshing.” What we have here is a direct speech act: a command in the form of an imperative. The rest of the page is filled with the following text (Figure 1). This ad from the 1930s has all the traditional linguistic ingredients of advertising. It is pregnant with positive adjectives: beautiful, intelligent, buoyant, tingling, ice-cold, lighter, better, pure, wholesome, natural. The noun phrases have positive connotations (and even denotations): refreshment, buoyancy, natural products, no artificial flavor or coloring, [complying with] pure food laws all over the world. It includes three imperatives: Have one, and like Old Santa, be buoyant. Drink Coca-Cola. The colors are the Christmas colors: Coca-Cola red and green. Compare this ad to a Coca-Cola ad from the year 2001 – seven decades later. The later ad comes from GQ magazine, a magazine that along the lines of Bruthiaux’s glamor-utilitarian continuum (Chapter 5) would fall towards the “glamor” end. While in the older Coca-Cola ad the price (5¢) was included, there is no price mentioned in this recent ad; in fact, there is very little of anything on the page, which mostly consists of emptiness. At the top of this otherwise completely empty page, there is the following text in silvery gray, stretching through the width of the page on a line and a half:

She hides love notes for me in my suitcase. And at the right lower corner is the following text in small print, that certain somethingTM next to a picture, immediately to its right, of the top of a dull-green bottle with dull-brown liquid inside, whose cork has the text “Diet Coke.” The only bright color on the page is the red word Coke. The gray of the text is the gray of the diet version of the drink – the silver gray of the Diet Coke can. Love notes and certain something are the only phrases with positive connotations, but the

Towards understanding modern persuasion 

Figure 1. Coca-Cola ad from the 1930s

 Helena Halmari and Tuija Virtanen

significance or relevance of these phrases to the selling of Coca-Cola is at first obscure. There are no adjectives with unambiguously positive connotations, let alone denotations. There are no imperatives. The difference between these two Coca-Cola ads, separated from each other by decades, seems at first striking. From the very explicit persuasive language of the 1930s ad, the ad has changed into a message with obscure meaning. Explicit persuasion seems to have become implicit. This difference is not dictated by the sophistication of the audience since the readers of The American Magazine in the 1930s were most likely as sophisticated as today’s readers of GQ. The difference results from a need of change in the linguistic and graphic form of persuasion. What has, however, remained intact is the standard placement of the “ideal” at the top (Santa Claus and the positive Christmas spirits; love notes in a suitcase – and the fact that the entire statement by someone appears in the same position as speech/thought bubbles in cartoons, religious images, and other pictures portraying speaking characters) and the “real” at the bottom (the glasses in the old ad, the bottle in the new one – both with the name of the product). In addition, both ads also utilize the conventions of western culture with regard to the placement of “given” and “new” information (see Kress & van Leeuwen 1996): given information on the left and new information immediately to its right. In the recent Coca-Cola ad, what is portrayed as given information (that certain something TM) precedes what is portrayed as the new information: the top of the Diet Coke bottle. Tops of Diet Coke bottles are hardly new information to the Americans of the 21st century; however, this “newness” is forced by the placement of the bottle top in the new information slot (i.e., in the focus position). At the same time this old product, as if rejuvenated by its placement on the page, is juxtaposed with the two text blocks she hides love notes for me in my suitcase and that certain something in the given information slot, that is, before the top of the Diet Coke bottle. The old product is depicted as “new,” and the two text blocks are treated as “pseudo-given” (Enkvist 1978) – as in an in medias res opening. Thus, in the 2001 Coke ad, the product, represented by the traditional typography of its logo and signs of its genre (the bottle top) is found at the lower right-hand corner; it is recontextualized as new information. The 1930s ad also conforms to the western “given” versus “new” information structure; however, the seven decades have changed the slots where some of the information is placed. Yet, in both ads, implicit persuasion lies behind these organizational choices. We wish to underscore that even though the 1930s ad includes instances of explicit persuasion (e.g. the imperatives), implicitness prevails there

Towards understanding modern persuasion 

as well. In the same way as in the newer ad, the starting point is the ideal – the happiness of Christmas and Santa Claus, which are followed by Coke glasses and the Coca-Cola logo, again with the traditional typography. But in this instance, in the bottom part of the full-page ad, the Coke glasses and the logo are not found in the new information slot like in the 2001 ad; they precede the text, which informs the readers about the healthful qualities of the product: (1) You can be sure it is pure and wholesome. Coca-Cola is a pure drink of natural products, with no artificial flavor or coloring. Complying with pure food laws all over the world.

It is understandable why this text, in the 1930s ad, is presented in the new information slot; Coca-Cola’s “healthful” qualities were certainly something that consumers needed to be informed about. What seems initially puzzling is the placement of the product and its logo at the bottom of the page in these two ads, separated by decades. In the newer ad, the product, which according to all logical thinking should be given information by now, is located in the new information slot. In contrast, in the 1930s ad the product, which was a long way from having become the commonplace drink it is today, occupies the given information slot on the left-hand side of the bottom of the page. This apparent illogic can be explained in simple terms. What the advertiser is doing is utilizing the readers’ collective cognition. Presenting something as given information creates a self-fulfilling prophesy: the product will become popular and commonplace; hence the placement of the picture of the product in the left-hand corner in the older ad. In the 1930s, Coca-Cola was a drink comparable to present-day expensive specialty coffees; it was not a drink people regularly hauled home in twelve-packs. However, the ad seems to be implicitly persuading the consumers to start seeing the product not as a rare treat but as a common, everyday drink. Additional evidence of this goal is provided by the inclusion of the price in the ad (cf. Bruthiaux, Chapter 5, this volume). The opposite trend can be seen in the newer ad: a no longer “glamorous” product is being represented as “glamorous.” The associations with ‘love’ and ‘travel’ (cf. suitcase) create a glamor atmosphere. And what in the 1930s needed to be marketed as “pure and wholesome” now sells through reference to a different, culturally desirable state of things: slenderness – associated with successful, “glamorous” people. Further, the placement of the product in the right-hand corner is an attempt to present this old product as “new” by appealing to the collective cognition of the audience, used to associating this slot with new information. These slots alone provide us with another implicit means of mediating the message. In addition, the semantically obscure text of the newer

 Helena Halmari and Tuija Virtanen

ad sends an implicit message; since consumers do not need to be persuaded to familiarize themselves with the product any longer, a more explicit ad along the 1930s lines of Drink Coca-Cola, would not do any more. (An old “retro” ad can, of course, be employed to attract attention for persuasive purposes, and the direction of change of what is fashionable in advertising can never predicted; cf. the reintroduction of black-and-while TV ads in the 21st century). Over the decades, together with the familiarization of the product, linguistically explicit persuasion has become obsolete. The message needs to be recontextualized, and persuasion has simultaneously adopted a linguistically more implicit form. This has been caused by the dialectic between the advertised and the audience. A change in consumer habits has been answered by a change in the form of the persuasive language. Hence, the investigation of the diachronic aspects of promotional genres such as advertising reveals what changes have taken place as a result of these genres being in a constant dialogue with their audiences. In this section we have examined two concrete samples of the genre ‘advertisement.’1 We are quite aware of the fact that our scholarly analysis of these texts may also inadvertently contribute to promoting the product itself, even if this is obviously not our goal or the goal of the genre ‘academic research article.’ What we are, in fact, witnessing here is the pervasiness and subtlety inherent in the process of genre hybridization. Thus, the mere mentioning of a company, musical production, or an author, say, in a TV documentary may promote the very product that this company, production, or author is associated with. This suggests that the process of hybridization of genres needs to be considered in more detail. The following section will therefore be devoted to a model of persuasion which we wish to propose to account for some of the intricacies of genre dynamics. This model is based on the notion of intergenre.

. A model of persuasion Our claim – in the framework of Briggs and Bauman’s (1992) discussion of the processes of minimizing and maximizing intertextual gaps (which accounts for the fuzziness of genres, that is, their dynamic nature) and of Östman’s notion of implicitness as effective persuasion (see Chapter 7) – is that the need for persuasion to be implicit is often the force behind generic change in inherently persuasive genres. Another force behind generic change is the need to revitalize and renew the existing form of persuasion within the genre, as in the case of colored versus black-and-white TV ads, discussed above. This attention-getting

Towards understanding modern persuasion 

aspect of “fresh” persuasion, we argue, also falls under the umbrella of implicitness. In order to present our model, we need to introduce two key concepts: intertextual and interdiscursive gaps. These will help us to come to grips with what we suggest could be termed intergenres. . Generic intertextuality, minimizing intertextual gaps, and persuasion In order for a text to have a generic “home,” the audience needs to be able to identify it clearly as a representative of this genre; the text needs to resemble its generic prototype. For instance, an advertisement looks like an advertisement. A sermon sounds like a sermon. A research article reads like a research article. However, as Briggs and Bauman (1992: 141) rightly point out, genres are “conventionalized yet highly flexible organizations of formal means and structures that constitute complex frames of reference for communicative practice.” And it is this flexibility that allows for generic change. The concept of genre is based on intertextuality (see Chapter 1). When a genre is maximally conventionalized, the intertextual gaps between the representatives of that genre are minimized. In other words, the texts realizing and constructing the given genre closely resemble one another lexicogrammatically and in terms of their discourse organization. For instance, the weather forecasts on the local TV channel will manifest a great deal of intertextual linking within the genre. Despite daily changes in their content, these forecasts textually resemble one another so much that they are always easily identifiable by members of the particular speech community as representatives of their genre, the weather forecast. The intertextual gap between the actual instances of the genre is thus minimal. But we also need the notion of interdiscursivity (see Chapter 1). While intertextuality is related to the matching of texts with other texts that we encounter, interdiscursivity refers to the process of matching genres with other genres. For instance, weather forecasts closely resemble one another textually (i.e., their intertextual gap is small), but as a genre they are clearly different from, for instance, stock market reports on the same TV channel. There is an interdiscursive gap between these two genres such that members of the given speech community do not easily mix them with each other. Even more so, a sermon and a lecture are easily identifiable as representatives of two different genres because of the sizeable interdiscursive gap between them. In persuasive genres, minimized intertextual gaps lead to a situation where the text is saliently and unambiguously identified as an instance of the genre that it represents. When the intertextual gaps between persuasive texts are min-

 Helena Halmari and Tuija Virtanen

imized (e.g., all ads are unambiguously identifiable as ads), persuasion becomes explicit, unless pains are taken to make it implicit within the text. To return to our Coca-Cola ad examples, presented in Section 1.1, above: Both the older ad and the newer ad are salient as ads; in other words, in the newer ad, the intertextual gap has been kept narrow enough to allow for the text to be identified as a representative of the genre ‘ad,’ and not, say the genre ‘poem.’ However, since explicit persuasion does not sell well, both ads persuade implicitly – the newer one more so than the older one. Both employ positive associations, carefully chosen collocations, and meticulously planned organization of text and graphics, with a special audience and a special goal in mind. But the ads are not identical in their implicitness. A creation of an intertextual gap of a certain width has taken place over the decades. It has not been maximized, though. If it were, we might be in danger of mistaking the newer ad as a short love poem (particularly if poems were expected to appear in the given context). When the texts are near-prototypical, coherent within one genre, their intertextual gaps are minimized within the genre. Because of the high prototypicality of such texts, persuasion needs to be implicit. When genres stand out as clearly different from one another and there is no genre-mixing, the interdiscursive gaps between near-prototypical texts realizing these genres are maximized. In this type of situation, blurring genre boundaries cannot be used as a persuasive device (e.g., trying to sell a product through an “infomercial,” cf. Section 2.3 below). An ad cannot be mistaken for anything else than an ad if all ads are near-prototypical. If this is the situation, persuasion needs to be realized in implicit means within the genre; an ad would continue to be identifiable as an ad but, because of the need to persuade, the ad needs to become more implicit. Too much repetition and too much familiarity may be detrimental to persuasiveness in ads; therefore, Drink Coca-Cola becomes that certain something TM over the decades. Another example of minimized intertextual gaps comes from the genre ‘grant proposals.’ A grant proposal is inherently persuasive: you are asking for money. If you minimize the intertextual gap, for instance, by writing a grant proposal strictly according to conventionalized moves and their linguistic realizations, your grant proposal will be easily identifiable as a grant proposal. However, despite its high readability, the more similar your grant proposal is to everybody else’s (i.e., the narrower the intertextual gap), the less salient it is as an individual text – it may suffer the fate of being ignored because it is just one among many others. In order to get the readers’ attention and in order to persuade them, you need to resort to implicitness. Your proposal needs to be different from the others, but not too different. Optimizing the width of the

Towards understanding modern persuasion 

intertextual gap in persuasive genres is a skill worth learning; however, learning such a skill may not lead to life-long positive results since what works as successful persuasion this year may not do so next year. . Generic change and maximizing intertextual gaps Generic change starts to take place when the representatives of a genre begin to move further and further away from their generic prototype. Texts within one genre start to resemble the prototype less and less, and wider intertextual gaps are created in this process. This is the process of maximizing intertextual gaps. Maximizing the intertextual gap is a process that takes place over time, and it is caused by the dynamic and dialectic nature of genres. Persuasive genres specifically are sensitive to genre-external pressures: social, cultural, ideological, and economic changes related to the owners of the genre or its audience. Maximizing the intertextual gaps within a persuasive genre over time may also be caused by the genre-internal pressure to aim at implicitness – this genreinternal pressure is naturally interrelated with genre-external pressures and is ultimately a result of the highly dialectic nature of persuasive genres. In the light of this dialectic nature of persuasive genres, the division into genre-internal and genre-external factors in generic change would be arbitrary and ultimately impossible. When looking at genres from a diachronic perspective, it is possible to see how the initial creation of intertextual gaps has led to their maximization. What at some point used to be conventionalized as a characteristic of a genre may have become more and more flexible, and the linguistic forms of a particular genre may have transformed into quite different shapes. Limiting our discussion to persuasive genres, we argue that a lot of the “categorical ambiguity” (for a discussion, see Briggs & Bauman 1992: 135) encountered in the attempts to typologize various texts into their generic “types” can be explained by looking at diachronic changes caused by (1) the need for new, fresh forms of persuasion within one genre and (2) the need to keep persuasion implicit. The first factor is often embedded in the second. The result is a hybridization of genres (see Fairclough 1992; Bhatia, Chapter 8, this volume) – what Briggs and Bauman (1992: 135) call “generic hybrids.” Ultimately, this process may result in the birth of a whole new genre.

 Helena Halmari and Tuija Virtanen

. Generic change and minimizing interdiscursive gaps When the process of maximizing the intertextual gaps is carried out to the extreme, a genre may pick up characteristics of another genre in this process. In this case, maximizing intertextual gaps within a genre has led to minimizing interdiscursive gaps (i.e., gaps between genres). Implicit persuasion may lead to minimizing the interdiscursive gap. A case in point is the fairly new generic hybrid of infomercials. Infomercials (a blend of information and commercial) are, quite simply, long advertisements in the disguise of product information. These can be found both in newspapers and on TV. For instance, a new product may be advertised on TV through an extensive introduction to its various specifications; the program includes demonstrations of its use and, for instance, interviews with happy owners or product-users. Length is the most salient difference between a traditional advertisement and an infomercial; length-wise TV infomercials resemble full-fledged programs. In newspapers, the length of infomercials comes close to the length of articles. These infomercials are longer than regular ads; their length makes them non-salient as ads, and hence, the implicitness of persuasion works. The birth of this new hybrid genre ‘infomercial’ has taken place through the processes of maximizing the intertextual gap within the genre ‘advertisement’ and the simultaneous minimizing of the interdiscursive gap between the genres ‘advertising’ and ‘product information.’ Maximizing the intertextual gap causes the ad to start looking less and less like an ad. When the maximization of the intertextual gap takes place via “borrowing” lexico-grammatical and discourse characteristics of another genre, the “original” genre starts to resemble the genre from which the characteristics are being borrowed. Thus the interdiscursive gap towards the direction of the “lending” genre is minimized. The advertisement starts to resemble product information, and the force behind this process is the need for implicit persuasion. Genre-boundaries are blurred and generic hybrids are born. Hence, minimizing the interdiscursive gap may lead to the blurring of the genre-boundaries to an extent where it is not clear any more which genre a given text realizes. This strategy can be argued to represent implicit persuasion; an ad cannot be recognized as an ad if people mistake it for product information. However, when promoting products in infomercials becomes “normative,” other ways of persuasion need to be found. Therefore, persuasion is always dynamic; it is always on the move.

Towards understanding modern persuasion 

For an ad to be persuasive, it first needs to be noticed. It needs to be salient, it needs to stand out. However, at the same time, the ad needs to be non-salient as an ad. For instance, medical ads are nowadays often veiled as medical information in the form of a short newspaper or magazine article or notice. In this case, it is critical what the context of this article or notice is: if it is embedded amongst a number of other advertisements, the reader is in the cognitive mode of processing it, too, as an ad. However, if the reader finds this infomercial embedded amongst news articles and notices, the persuasive potential is likely to be higher. Even the section of the newspaper can have an effect on the generic interpretation; medical infomercials appearing among political news are thus more salient as ads than those appearing in a section which regularly refers to issues of health and lifestyle. Since readers run the risk of mistakenly interpreting infomercials as information, many societies require that such ads and entire promotional magazines be explicitly labeled as advertisements (e.g., by stating above them that this is a paid advertisement). Interestingly, while many informational genres are today being promotionalized (see Chapter 8; for instance, research abstracts have incorporated an element of marketing, and many educational genres manifest shifts towards “edutainment,” i.e., genres of entertainment), the opposite process of “informationalization” can been detected in the inherently promotional genre of ‘ad’ in the case of infomercials. Figure 2 summarizes the Intergenre Model as discussed above. Interdiscursive gaps GENRE 1

INTERGENRE

GENRE 2

Advertisement

Infomercial

Product Information

A1 A2 A3 … An

I1 I2 I3 … In

P1 P2 P3 … P

Intertextual gaps

Intertextual gaps

Intertextual gaps

n

Figure 2. The Intergenre Model: Monitoring intertextual and interdiscursive gaps

 Helena Halmari and Tuija Virtanen

In this model, Genre 1, exemplified by Advertisement, and Genre 2, exemplified by Product Information, are two completely separate genres at the onset. Within these two genres A1, A2, etc. represent various actual etic instances of advertisements; similarly P1, P2, etc. represent the etic instances of product information texts. When for instance A1 and A2 start to diverge, the intertextual gap between them may gradually become maximized. If, say, the lexical, grammatical, and textual form of A1 moves towards the genre of Product Information, the interdiscursive gap between Advertisement and Product Information becomes minimized. This process leads to an implicit form of persuasion. As a result, two emic levels (Advertisement and Product Information) may enter the process of merging, and a new emic category “Infomercial” is born. By the same token, promotionalization of Product Information may result in the emergence of another emic intergenre. . Juxtaposing genres and blurring their boundaries as persuasion Intergenres may serve the goal of persuasion, selling one genre as another one by mixing the elements of both. But genres can retain their identities while their juxtaposition, combined with the blurring of the boundaries, serves the purpose of persuasion. For instance, American radio news, weather forecasts, and traffic announcements are interspersed with ads. This cognitively blurs the interdiscursive gap as the same radio announcer reads both the ad and the news/traffic reports/weather forecast. The target audience is thus exposed to two genres, one following the other: The announcer is reading the news, giving a weather forecast, or a traffic report, and after having read the report, without inhaling, continues to read an advertisement. The fractions of the second during which the listener is (erroneously) processing the advertisement still as news, or as a weather or traffic report, are critical: you take the advertisement as “truth.” The fact that the ad is not explicitly framed as such invites the listener to process it differently. This is a fairly recent, and admittedly, culturally restricted form of subconscious persuasion. When advertisers’ tricks enter the collective memory of society, their persuasive power will diminish since understanding how ads work has made the trick explicit. At this point, other strategies are required for persuasive purposes on the interdiscursive level. Let us now return to Robin Tolmach Lakoff ’s (2000: 7) question presented in Chapter 1: “Why do we late-twentieth-century sophisticates, after a century’s barrage of advertising, still find ourselves bedazzled by the language of persuasion, economic and political?” To venture an answer, persuasive genres

Towards understanding modern persuasion 

change over time and genre-boundaries are blurred because of the inherent drive of these genres to persuade via implicit means. The changing genres are responses to alterations in the distributed cognition within modern societies – they do not evolve in a vacuum. But generic change also contributes to the shaping and reshaping of distributed cognition. Understanding how distributed cognition works constitutes one of the major challenges for the authors of persuasive genres. This volume has brought together two important concepts: implicit persuasion and genre dynamics. In closing, we wish to recall the old fairytale about the North Wind and the Sun. The North Wind and the Sun see an old woman, huddled in her winter coat and scarves, making her way on a road towards home. Shivering from cold, she pulls her coat tighter around her body and ties the scarf tighter around her head. The North Wind and the Sun enter an argument about which one of them will be able to persuade the old woman to take off her coat. The North Wind is certain of its power and it starts to blow harder and harder around the poor old woman, trying to rip away the coat from around her. The harder the North Wind blows, the tighter the woman wraps her coat around her. You guess the rest. The Sun wins. Its implicit power, its gentle warmth, eventually forces the woman to first unbutton and then take off her coat. Implicit persuasion has won. In order for the North Wind to be able to persuade the woman to take her coat off, it would need to pick up some characteristics of the Sun – it would need to be warmer, it would need to blow a bit less. In order to persuade more successfully, mere explicit persuasion will not do. The North Wind would need to change its form.

Note . We are grateful to The Coca-Cola Company for allowing us to describe and discuss their two ads in this chapter, “so long as the representation to the company, our products and our advertising is favorable, and your use is limited to the proposed usage” and so long as the pictures are not reproduced (electronic mail correspondence, December 14 and 17, 2001).

References Bhatia, Vijay K. (1993). Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings. London and New York: Longman. Briggs, Charles L. & Bauman, Richard (1992). “Genre, intertextuality, and social power”. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 2 (2), 131–172.

 Helena Halmari and Tuija Virtanen

van Eemeren, Frans H. & Houtlosser, Peter (1999). “Strategic manoeuvring in argumentative discourse”. Discourse Studies, 1 (4), 479–497. Enkvist, Nils Erik (1978). “Linearity and text strategy”. In J. Weinstock (Ed.), The Nordic Languages and Modern Linguistics (pp. 159–172). Austin, TX: The University of Texas at Austin. Fairclough, Norman (1992). Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kress, Gunther & van Leeuwen, Theo (1996). Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London and New York: Routledge. Lakoff, Robin Tolmach (2000). The Language War. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. Östman, Jan-Ola (1987). “Pragmatic markers of persuasion”. In J. Hawthorn (Ed.), Propaganda, Persuasion and Polemic (pp. 91–106). London: Edward Arnold.

Author index

A Adam, Jean-Michel 62–63, 98 Amossy, Ruth 67, 98 Ariel, Mira 97n14, 98 Aristotle 5–7, 23, 34, 59, 62, 105, 116, 118–120, 132 Atkins, Bowman K. 90, 100 Atkinson, Maxwell J. 108, 132 Aubuchon, Norbert 32, 55 Austin, John 62, 70, 88, 98 B Bacharach, Samuel B. 29, 34–35, 55 Bakhtin, Mikhail 10, 66 Barry, Bruce 29–30, 34, 57 Bauman, Richard 8, 11, 23, 236–237, 239, 243 Bazerman, Max H. 30, 32–34, 55, 57 Bednar, David A. 33, 55 Benson, Evelyn 183, 188–189, 203–204, 211 Benson, John 35, 55 Benson, Morton 183, 188–189, 203–204, 211 Berkenkotter, Carol 224, 225 Bhatia, Vijay K. 10–13, 22, 23, 64, 98, 175, 179, 213, 214, 216–217, 219–224, 225, 229–230, 239, 243 Biber, Douglas 69, 71–72, 74, 76, 89, 98, 139, 145, 150 Bonhomme, Marc 62–63, 98 Botha, Rudolph P. 150, 150n7 Bourdieu, Pierre 59, 96n3, 98 Bowers, John W. 31, 51, 55, 57 Brace, Paul 106, 132 Bradac, James J. 31, 51, 55, 56, 57

Brewer, Jeutonne P. 158, 179 Briggs, Charles L. 8, 11, 23, 236–237, 239, 243 Brodda, Benny 159, 179 Brown, Penelope 31, 56, 89, 99 Bruthiaux, Paul 13, 20, 135, 137, 140, 149, 150, 214, 232, 235 Bülow-Møller, Anne Marie 17, 27, 42, 51, 56, 162 Burgess-Jackson, Keith 116–117, 132 Burgoon, Judee K. 31, 56 Burgoon, Michael 51, 56 Burkholder, Thomas R. 121, 128, 132 Busch, Jon D. 31, 56 Buttny, Richard 45, 56 C Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs 121, 128, 132 Carlisle, J. 29, 58 Carroll, John S. 34, 56 Casselman, Barry 9, 23 Chafe, Wallace 72, 83, 99 Chatman, Jennifer A. 32, 56 Cheatham, Richard 111, 132 Cheng, Rong 31, 56 Cialdini, Robert B. 42, 58 Clayman, Steven E. 108, 132 Cohen, Carl 119, 132 Connelly, Marjorie 106, 132 Connor, Ulla 12, 23 Copi, Irving M. 116–117, 119, 132 Corbett, Edward P. J. 119, 132 Courtright, J. A. 51, 55 Crowley, Sharon 116–117, 119, 132 Curington, William P. 33, 55

 Author index

D Dailey, William O. 27–28, 32, 58 Dascal, Marcelo 64, 99 Davis, Boyd H. 158, 179 de Beaugrande, Robert 10–11, 23 Denton, Robert E. Jr. 105, 131, 132 Dessalles, Jean-Louis 146–148, 150 DeVitt, Amy J. 67, 99 Dickson, David 29, 57 Diez, Mary E. 31, 56 van Dijk, Teun 88, 99 Dillard, James P. 51, 56 Dionne, E. J. Jr. 136, 150 Donohue, William A. 51, 56 Dressler, Wolfgang 10, 23 Drew, Elizabeth 111, 132 Dunbar, Norah E. 31, 56 E Ede, Lisa S. 6–7, 24 Edwards, George C. III 106, 133 van Eemeren, Frans H. 230, 244 Eisinger, Robert M. 106, 133 Enkvist, Nils Erik 234, 244 Erickson, Paul D. 105, 133 F Fairclough, Norman 10–11, 23, 42, 56, 61, 99, 154, 179, 213–214, 220, 223, 225, 239, 244 Fanshel, David 41, 57 Featherstone, Mike 213, 225 Fillmore, Charles J. 47, 56, 184, 211 Finegan, Edward 69, 71–72, 74, 76, 89, 98, 139, 145, 150 Firth, John Rupert 159, 183–184, 190, 198, 211 Fisher, Roger 30, 34–35, 56 Fleck, Ludwik 66, 99 Ford, Cecilia 47, 56 Foucault, Michel 60, 99 Fowler, Alastair 4, 23 Fowler, Roger 42, 56 Fried, Mirjam 184–185, 211

G Gaeth, Gary J. 34, 57 Gallup, Alec M. 106, 133 Gelderman, Carol 105, 133 Gibbons, Pamela 31, 56 Giora, Rachel 97n14, 99 Givón, Talmy 150, 150n8 Goffman, Erving 31, 97n11, 99 Grice, H. Paul 48, 193, 211 Gulliver, P. H. 33, 56 Gustafsson, Marita 97n21, 99

H Halliday, Michael A. K. 150, 150n6 Halmari, Helena 3, 18–20, 61, 105, 110, 128, 133, 173, 221, 229 Hamilton, Mark A. 51, 57 Hargie, Owen 29, 57 Hawhee, Debra 116–117, 119, 132 Hiltrop, Jean M. 29, 57 Hiltunen, Risto 64, 99 Hinckley, Barbara 106, 132 Hodge, Bob 42, 56 Hoey, Michael 159, 179 Holmer, Majia 30, 34, 57 Holmes, Jennifer 71, 99 Houtlosser, Peter 230, 244 Huckin, Thomas N. 224, 225 Hunston, Susan 72, 99 Hunter, John E. 51, 56, 57 Hurford, James R. 147, 151 Hymes, Dell H. 10, 24

I Ilson, Robert 183, 188–189, 203–204, 211 Isocrates 122, 133

J Johannesen, Richard L. 7, 24 Jucker, Andreas H. 5, 7, 24, 105, 133

Author index 

K Kathpalia, Sujata S. 214–215, 218–219, 225 Kay, Paul 184, 211 Kennedy, Gavin 34–35, 46, 55, 57 Keough, Colleen M. 45, 57 Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine 67, 99 Kinneavy, James L. 5, 24 Kjellmer, Göran 183, 188–189, 203, 205, 211 Klein, Wolfgang 139, 150 Knight, Chris 147, 151 Kress, Gunther 42, 56, 234, 244 Kristof, Nicholas D. 9, 24 L Labov, William 41, 57 Lakoff, Robin Tolmach 3, 24, 197, 211, 242, 244 Larson, Charles U. 33, 57 Lawler, Edward J. 29, 34–35, 55 Lax, David A. 34–35, 57 Leech, Geoffrey 71, 99, 109, 133 van Leeuwen, Theo 234, 244 Leitner, Gerhard 149n2, 150 Levin, Irwin P. 34, 57 Levinson, Stephen C. 31, 56, 89, 99, 147, 151 Lewicki, Roy J. 29–30, 34, 57 Lim, Tae-Seop 31, 57 Lincoln, Abraham 126, 133 Lipari, Lisbeth 153–154, 180 Lunsford, Andrea A. 6–7, 24 Lyons, John 71–72, 99 M MacCormick, Neil 96n6, 99 Maltese, John Anthony 105, 133 Mauranen, Anna 12, 23 McKersie, Robert B. 34–35, 58 McMillan, John 35, 55 Medhurst, Martin J. 132n1, 133 Mellinkoff, David 97n21, 99 Miller, G. A. 189, 211 Miller, Gerald R. 3, 24

Minton, John W. 29–30, 34, 57 Morley, Ian E. 33, 57 Morris, Charles W. 193, 211 Mulholland, Joan 3, 7, 8, 13, 24, 34, 57 N Neale, Margaret A. 30, 32–34, 55, 57 Ng, Sik Hung 31, 57 O O’Barr, William 90, 99, 100 O’Connor, Mary Catherine 184, 211 O’Keefe, Daniel J. 62, 100 Oh, Sun-Young 97n13, 100 Östman, Jan-Ola 12, 21–22, 27, 32, 61, 69, 100–101, 159, 183–185, 193, 195–198, 207, 211–212, 229, 236, 244 P Palmer, Frank R. 72, 100 Payne, John W. 34, 56 Pendergast, William R. 43, 57 Perelman, Chaïm 5–6, 9, 24, 97n10, 100 Pinker, Steven 146–147, 151 Pruitt, Dean G. 31, 33–34, 52, 57 Putnam, Linda L. 30, 32–35, 51, 56, 57, 58 R Rackham, Neil 29, 35, 58 Ramesh, C. 51, 56 Reardon, Kathleen Kelley 34, 58 Rhoads, Kelton V. L. 42, 58 Ritter, Kurt 132n1, 133 Robins, Lynne S. 150n6, 151 Roloff, Michael E. 27–28, 32, 58 Rubin, Jeffrey Z. 52, 57 S Saarenpää, Ahti 88, 100 Salmi-Tolonen, Tarja 18, 59–61, 64, 66, 88, 100 Sauer, Christoph 108, 133

 Author index

Saunders, David M. 29–30, 34, 57 Saville-Troike, Muriel 13, 24 Schäffner, Christina 106, 133 Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr. 111, 133 Schneider, Sandra L. 34, 57 Scollon, Ron 13, 24, 108, 110–111, 134 Scott, Jeremy Walter 108, 134 Scott, Robert L. 7, 24 Searle, John 88, 100 Sebenius, James K. 34–35, 57 Segrin, Chris 31, 56 Shesol, Jeffrey 132, 134 Simonton, Dean Keith 131, 134 Simon-Vandenbergen, Anne-Marie 108, 134, 184, 212 Sinclair, John 159, 180, 185, 188–190, 212 Smith, D. L. 31, 57 Smith, Stephen A. 105, 134 Sondak, Harris 32, 56 Speakes, Larry 125, 134 Spurgin, Sally De Witt 116, 134 Steels, Luc 150n7, 151 Stephenson, Geoffrey M. 31, 33, 57, 58 Steward, John 7, 24 Storey, Richard 32, 58 Stuckey, Mary E. 105, 134 Studdert-Kennedy, Michael 147, 151 Summers, Robert S. 96n6, 99 Swales, John M. 4, 8–9, 11–13, 24, 175, 180, 224, 225 Sweetser, Eve E. 47, 58

T Taglicht, Joseph 97n13, 100 Thompson, John B. 60, 100 Thompson, Leigh L. 30, 58 Ting-Toomey, Stella 31, 58 Tirkkonen-Condit, Sonja 158, 172, 180 Todorov, Tzvetan 4, 24 Toulmin, Stephen 34, 58 Trew, Tony 42, 56 Trosborg, Anna 97n12, 100 Turner, Dudley B. 33, 51, 58 Tutzauer, Frank E. 27–28, 32, 58 U Udall, Sheila 29, 57 Unt, Iwar 31, 58 Ury, William 30, 34, 56 Verschueren, Jef 200, 212 Virtanen, Tuija 3, 10, 20, 24, 61, 106, 120, 153, 171, 180, 221, 229 von Drehle, David 105–106, 134 W Walton, Richard, E. 34–35, 58 Weber, Max 72–73, 87, 100 Werlich, Egon 158, 180 Wilkes-Gibbs, Deanna 44, 58 Wilson, John 87, 101 Wilson, Steven R. 29–31, 33, 35, 51, 58 Wolf, Fredric M. 150n6, 151 Wróblewski, Jerzy 64, 99

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Subject index

A abbreviations 20, 138 academic genres 12, 22, 72, 82, 89, 150, 213–214, 220–225 accountability 193, 195, 206 accounting see accounts accounts 31, 45, 48 active voice see passive voice adaptability 199, 201 addressing 124–125, 197 adjectives 76–77, 81–82, 86, 109, 138, 164, 174, 183, 185, 189, 203, 205, 232, 234 adverbials 69, 73,115, 162, 164–166, 168–169, 171, 174–175, 177 adverbs 81, 138, 185, 190, 205 see also adverbials advertisements see advertising advertising 3, 5–6, 8, 13–15, 20, 22, 63, 105, 213–225, 231–238, 240–242, Chapters 5 & 8 catalogues see promotional catalogues classified advertising 135–138, 140–143, 146, 149n1, 150n6 display advertising 135–136, 149n1 hard-sell 214–215, 221 image-building 20, 123, 142, 218 personal ads 138, 146 print 14, 20, 214–215, 217–219, 221 soft-sell see hard-sell straight-line 218 Advocate General 18, 59–60, 62–68, 70, 73, 76, 80, 83, 86, 88–96 A-event 41, 44, 51 agent 97n19, 123, 150n7 agreeing 73, 79

agreement, assumed 46 AIDA principle 35 alignment 28, 31, 53 alliteration 19, 116, 121–123 ambivalence 199, 200 anchoring explicit 22, 191–197, 200–201 implicit 22, 183, 191–202, 204, 206–209 aphasic language 147, 150n8 appeal to authority 116, 118–119 appeal to logic see logos appropriation 11, 22, 220–222, 224–225 argumentation 5–6, 8, 15, 19, 27–29, 32–34, 47, 50–51, 54–55, 59–61, 63, 65–66, 68–71, 73, 75–80, 85, 87–88, 90–95, 116, 118, 135, 153–155, 158–159, 165–166, 168, 171–179, 197, 199, 230 articles 140–143, 145, 160, 183, 187 see also function words assertiveness 21, 161–162, 167–168, 175, 177 associations 21, 108, 113–116, 119, 149, 235, 238 associative engineering 19, 108–109, 120 attention 35, 198, 224, 231, 236, 238 attitude 4, 28, 62, 69–73, 81-83, 116, 165, 174–175, 192–193, 195–197, 204, 208–209 audience 3, 5–11, 13, 15, 19–20, 22–23, 61–62, 64, 66–67, 70, 73, 96, 106–111, 114–117, 119–120, 123–128, 137, 148–149, 173–175, 215–216, 218, 229–231, 234, 237–239, 242 multiple audiences 3, 7–9

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 Subject index

onlookers 3, 66–67 primary audience 8, 13, 67 secondary audience 8, 67 audience-engaging strategies 19, 110, 116–117, 123, 125 author’s comment 61, 70–73 authority 63–64, 71, 77, 82, 86–94 auxiliaries see modals B B-event 41, 44, 46, 51 business negotiations 3, 6–8, 14–15, 17, Chapter 2 C cablese 136–137 categorical ambiguity 239 catenatives 189, 206 child language 147 Classical Rhetoric 5–7, 20, 116 classified ads see advertising Clinton, Bill 6, 19–20, 105–131 clustering 71, 73, 137, 155–158, 178, 206–207 co-construction 191, 194, 198, 200 cognitive processes 18, 70–71, 73–79, 90, 94–95, 101 coherence 8, 21, 170, 177, 196–199, 202, 204, 207–208, 238 collective cognition 235, 242 collective memory see collective cognition collective nouns 90 see also collective subjects collective subjects 94 collocates see collocations collocations 6, 19, 21–22, 127–129, 155, 157–166, 175–178, 238, Chapter 7 as prototype 189–191, 203 explicit 203–205 implicit 22, 183, 190–191, 201–209, 210n6 pragmatic collocations 159–160 textual collocations 159–160, 175 upward collocations 185, 188

colonization (of genres) see genre common ground 28, 34–37, 41–48, 50–54, 154 communicative purpose/goal 8, 10–12, 14, 17–20, 22–23, 28, 66, 69–70, 175, 217–223, 238 comparatives see superlatives compounds 184 conditionals 44, 46–48, 51, 53–54 comparative 47 epistemic 47 conjunctions 47, 165, 185 see also connectors connectors 159, 165–166, 174, 176, 178 concessive 165 contrastive 165 connotations 5, 21, 116, 232, 234 see also denotations constative force 63 Construction Grammar 184 containing 44–45 content words 20, 112–116, 138, 144, 150n6 content/function word continuum 138 contentfulness 140–141 context 4, 10–13, 15–18, 20, 27, 32–33, 45, 62, 64, 70, 78, 88, 135–140, 153–155, 158, 172, 178, 196–198, 204, 214, 219, 222–223, 229, 238 context-of-situation 3–4, 11, 21, 184, 190 socio-cultural context 3–4, 11, 17, 21, 184, 192 textual context 156, 159–166, 168, 172, 175–177 co-operation 48, 55 coordination 138, 169 corpora 159, 202 corpus linguistics/research see corpus studies corpus studies 21–22, 154–166, 172, 176–178, 184, 199, 202, 207–209, 210n5, 210n6, 210n8 Critical Linguistics 42, 199 cross-cultural variation 172, 225 crystallization 184, 198

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D deadlock 17, 27–28, 32, 48, 54–55 declaring position 73–75, 79–80 definiteness 140, 142, 145, 187–188 delivery 20, 108, 131 denotations 55, 232, 234 description (in advertising) 141, 144–145, 216–218, 221, 223 dialectic 7, 11, 118, 230, 236 dialectic nature of persuasive genres 236, 239 dialogic 7, 66, 108, 173, 194 direct address 51 directive force 63 directives 76 disagreeing see agreeing disalignment see alignment discourse analysis 4, 21, 27, 31, 136, 154–155, 178, 199, 208–209, 219 discourse characteristics see discourse-organizational form discourse colony 218–219, 221 discourse community 8–9, 11, 13–16, 175, 219 discourse form/resources 214, 219–220, 222, 224 discourse markers see pragmatic particles discourse organization 196–197, 237 see also textual organization discourse-organizational form 19, 230, 240 discourse-pragmatic patterns see persuasive strategies displacement 147 distance see distancing distancing 19, 50, 53–54, 108–109, 117 distributed cognition 12–13, 243 Dole, Bob 118, 128 ducking 52–54 E editorials 6, 8, 13, 15, 20–21, Chapter 6 see also newspaper discourse elaborated language 20, 146 elaboration see elaborated language

embedding of generic elements 214 see also genre emotional qualifiers see language intensity emotions 21, 119, 197 emphasis see emphatics emphatics 76–77, 82, 84–86, 97 enthymemes 118–119 epistemic modality 18, 61, 66, 70–75, 82–83, 89 ethical appeal see ethos ethos 5–6, 19–20, 116–118, 122 euphemism 34, 108–109, 230 European case law 18, Chapter 3 European Court of Justice 18, Chapter 3 evaluation (in advertising) 216–218, 221, 223 negative evaluation 221 evaluative lexis see evaluative markers evaluative markers 174–175, 178 evasive strategies 19, 108–109 evidentiality 18, 72, 82–83, 94 evoking the enemy 116, 125 evolution 146–148, 150n7, 150n8 explicitness 44, 61, 63, 72–73, 89, 90–95, 139–140, 148, 173–174, 176, Chapters 7 & 9 F face 31, 34, 35, 45–46, 48, 51, 53–54, 89 competence face 31, 35, 45, 47, 52 solidarity face 31, 42, 45, 47, 53 felicity conditions 7, 63 Figure-Ground 167 focus 52–54, 164–165, 171, 174, 234 see also new information frame 30, 34–35, 41–43, 52, 118–119, 185, 204–205, 242 Frame Semantics see frame frameshift see frame framing see frame function words 112, 114, 137–138, 140–144, 150n6, 159, 184, 190, 205–206 functional approach 146



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 Subject index

G gender 164–165, 198 generic change 11, 224, 229–243 generic hybrids see genre, hybridization of generic integrity 219–223, 225 genre(s) 5, 10ff., Chapter 8 appropriation of see hybridization of colonization of 22, 213, 220–224 definition of 8, 10–11 dynamic nature of 10, 236 embedding of genres see genre-mixing genre-mixing 10–11, 22, 214, 220–221 hybridization of 4, 10–11, 213–214, 220–221, 223, 225, 230, 236, 239–240 juxtaposing of 242–243 multigenre 10 multitype see multigenre occluded genres 13 private genres 14–15 professional discourse 3, 5, 13, 22, 68, 92, 213–216, 220, 222, 224–225 promotional 12, 14, 22, 230, 236, 241–242, Chapter 8 see also advertising promotionalization of see promotional prototypes 8, 10, 13–14, 22, 90–91, 230, 237–239 public genres 13–16, 214 semiprivate genres 13–15 semipublic genres 13–15 subgenre 11–12, 14, 18–20, 64, 76, 94–95, 106, 108, 110–111, 113, 115 teachability of 12 unigenre 10 unitype see unigenre virtual genres 11, 13 genre-mixing see genre genre-embedding see genre genre-external pressures 136–138, 239

genre-internal pressures see genre-external pressures Gettysburg Address 126, 130 given information 78, 170–171, 178, 234–235 see also information structure; new information glamor see glamor-utilitarian continuum glamor-utilitarian continuum 20, 141–144, 150n6, 232, 235 goal(s) 17, 30, 50ff., 59, 62 global 42, 54 local 42, 54 see also communicative purpose/goal grammar-driven processes see knowledge-driven processes grammaticalization 139 Gricean co-operative principle see co-operation H hedge(s) see hedging hedging 18, 31, 35, 43, 45, 76, 82, 89–90, 97n18, 128, 161–162, 164, 168 see also vagueness high-risk elements 29 homonyms 159 hortative force see hortatives hortatives 113, 117, 119, 128 hortatory aspect of political rhetoric see hortatives humor 19, 116, 123–125, 137 hybrid genres see genre hybridization of genres see genre I ideology 12, 14, 60, 72, 91, 110, 153, 202, 204, 222, 239 idiom 184, 189–190 imperatives 21, 60, 195, 232, 234 Implicit Anchoring see anchoring implicit choices 190–194 implicitness 4, 12, 14, 16–18, 20–23, 54, 61, 63, 66, 68, 88, 90–94, 164, 173, 191, 207, Chapters 7 & 9

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see also persuasion, implicit implied consequences 120 impolite 201 see also politeness impression formation 31, 54 inaugural addresses 111 infomercials 221, 238, 240–242 information structure 78, 234–235 see also given information; new information; focus information structuring see textual organization informationalization 241 information-giving function 65, 67, 117, 221, 223 informative function see information-giving function institutional power 18, 60, 73, 87–88, 93–94 institutionalized genres 22, 43, 59, 63–64, 70–73, 213, 220, 222, 224–225 interdiscursive chains see interdiscursivity interdiscursive gaps 12, 16, 237–238, 240–242 see also interdiscursivity minimization of 12–13, 240, 242 interdiscursivity 4, 10–11, 20–22, 153–154, 173–174, 178–179, 222 see also interdiscursive gaps intergenre 12, 16, 236–237, 241–242 Intergenre Model 241 interlanguage 12, 147 intertextual gaps 11–13, 16, 236–242 see also intertextuality maximization of 11–13, 236, 238–240, 242 minimization of 11–12, 236–238, 240–242 intertextuality 4, 10–11, 21, 67–68, 153, 177–178, 237 see also intertextual gaps involvement 21, 196–199, 202, 204–205, 207 irony 192 irritators 29

J joint reasoning 47–48 judicial arguments see legal documents judicial documents see legal documents Judicial Opinion 18, Chapter 3 judicial reasoning see legal reasoning judicial writing see legal documents K knowledge-driven processes

150n8

L language intensity 51–52 language of politics 3, 6, 8, 13, 15–16, 18–19, Chapter 4 legal communication see legal discourse legal deduction see legal reasoning legal discourse 17–18, Chapter 3 legal documents 3, 5–8, 14–15, Chapter 3 legal informatics 18, 96 legal knowledge see professional knowledge legal language see legal discourse see also legal documents legal reasoning 66, 70–71, 75–76, 78, 88, 94 legal register see legal discourse see also legal documents legal writing see legal discourse see also legal documents legislative discourse 17 legislative writing see legal documents letter to the editor 155–156, 175–176, 179 level analysis 198 lexical choices see lexicon lexical cohesion 110 lexicon 19, 68, 111–112, 114–116, 131 linearization 21 see also textual organization linguistic adaptation 136–137 linguistic form 9, 23, 59–60, 106, 138, 193, 229, 231, 239

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 Subject index

linguistic means/realizations of persuasion see persuasion, linguistic form of linguistic strategies see linguistic form see also persuasive strategies; rhetorical strategies locking 35 logos 5–6, 19–20, 116, 118–120 M manipulation see suasive words markers of persuasion see persuasion, linguistic form of mass media 149n2 media discourse 3, 5–6, 8, 13, 15, 20, Chapters 6 & 7 mediated discourse 13, 15, 108, 110 metaphors 119, 122 metaphrasis 10 methodology 4, 178, 188, 199, 201, 207–209, 210n2 mitigated activity 206 modality 18, 73, 94, 206 see also modals; epistemic modality modalized expressions see modals; modality modals 21, 65, 70, 75, 78, 84, 90, 93, 95, 101, 128, 137, 154–155, 161–162, 168, 176–178, 188–189, 199 Modern Rhetoric 7 moves 22, 28, 41–48, 54–55, 70–71, 214–215, 221–222, 238 N negation 41–42 negative particle not 160–161, 206 new information 52, 164–165, 171, 174, 234–235 see also focus; given information newness of information 157, 163–164, 168, 176–177 news stories 158, 164, 169, 178 newspaper discourse Chapters 6 & 7 nominalizations 41–42, 150n6 nouns 73–74, 114, 128, 138, 168, 174, 183, 185, 203, 205

numbers 6, 115, 120–121 numerical information see quantitative information see also numbers O objectivity see subjectivity old information see information structure Op-Ed 155–156, 175–176, 179 Opinion see Judicial Opinion P paradigmatic axis see syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes paraphrasing 34 parataxis 143, 150n6 passive voice 90, 94 pathos 5–6, 19–20, 116 performance see delivery perlocution see speech act persona 28, 30, 35–37, 45–48, 51, 54 personification 121, 123 Perspective Taking Ability 32 persuasion as a process 3–4, 6–8, 12, 28, 154, 178, 229 as Implicit Anchoring 21–22, Chapter 7 definition 3, 5–10, 28–29, 32, 55, 61–62, 69–70, 229 diachronic dimension of 9–10, 16, 229, 231, 236–239 dialectical dimension of 230 discourse-pragmatic realizations of see persuasive strategies effective 9, 19, 61, 131, 229–230, 236 explicit 4, 9, 17, 20, 36, 55, 63–64, 72, 195, 230, 234, 236, 238, 243 implicit 4, 12, 16–17, 20–22, 54, 61, 229–240, 242–243, Chapter 7 implicitness of see implicit see also implicitness in speech act theory 7 intentionality of 8, 62

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interactive nature of 3–4, 6–10, 27–28, 50–52, 59–61, 96, 105, 107–108, 110–111, 191, 199–201, 206, 229 linguistic form of 4, 9, 60–61, 70, 123, 195–196, 204, 207, 209, 214, 219–220, 222, 224, 229–231, 234, 240 overt persuasion see explicit persuasion poetic aspects of 121–123 resisted 48 successful 7, 9, 15, 17, 20–21, 31–32, 62–63, 68, 105–108, 131, 146, 179, 199–200, 239 see also suasive words persuasive devices see persuasion, linguistic form of persuasive strategies 7, 14–20, 23, 52, 62–63, 69–71, 73, 94–95, 124, 202, 206, 218, 241 see also rhetorical strategies; persuasion, linguistic form of persuasiveness 92, 191–193, 199–202, 239 see also persuasion phase structure 32–33, 50–51 phatic communion 191–192, 200 PIA see Pragmatics as Implicit Anchoring PIA toolkit 183, 193–199, 207 pidgins 139, 147, 150n8 placement see textual organization politeness 21, 31, 45–46, 79, 194, 196–199, 202, 206–208 political rhetoric 19, 105–106, 111, 113, 115, 120 political speeches see language of politics see also political rhetoric poll clause see poll sentence poll sentence 21, 155, 161, 163, 166–169, 171, 173, 175, 177–178 polling data 106–107 polls and surveys 6, 20–21, Chapter 6

potential and actualized function/meaning 60, 196–198, 202–203, 208 power 18, 28–30, 43, 45–46, 48, 60, 71–73, 87–88 powerless speech 90 pragmatic parameters 21, 196ff., 202, 207–208 pragmatic particles 195–199, 202 Pragmatics as Implicit Anchoring (PIA) 20, 22, Chapter 7 prepositional phrases 123, 138, 143, 145, 157, 162–163, 169 prepositions 140, 143, 145, 183 see also prepositional phrases pretend genres 218 product appraisal 218 product differentiation 216–218 product information 240–242 professional genres 5, 22, 67, 213–214, 217, 220, 222, 224–225 professional knowledge 70, 72, 75, 78, 92, 94–95 promotional catalogues 141–146 promotional elements/strategies 220–221 promotional function 221–223 promotional genres 12,14, 22, 213–214, 217–221, 225, 236, 241 promotionalization of genres 22, 223, 241–242 pronouns 60, 73–74, 76, 81, 83–84, 87, 89–90, 94, 109, 116, 122–123, 126–128, 143, 145 propaganda see suasive words prototypical collocations see collocations pseudo-given see new information public opinion polls and surveys 6, 20–21, Chapter 6 Q qualifiers 35, 51 qualitative research 4, 199 quantifiability see quantitative information quantifiers see quantitative information

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 Subject index

quantitative information 163–164, 167–168, 170, 177 quantitative research 4, 19 question-and-answer sessions 19, 108–111 questions 17, 31, 33–36, 45, 51–53, 173, 177 rhetorical 19, 116–117 topical 117 R Reagan, Ronald 6, 19–20, 105, 109–131 recategorization 41–42, 53 recategorizing see recategorization recency see newness of information recontextualization 11, 174–175, 177–179, 234, 236 recursion 147 reframing see frame register 61, 63–64, 72, 76, 94–96, 130–131, 140, 147 see also linguistic form relative clauses 143, 169 religion 130 repetition 45, 47, 54, 83, 231, 238 requests 31, 45, 51, 120 rhetorical organization 110, 129–131, 193 rhetorical strategies 105–106, 108, 110, 116ff., 126, 129, 131, 214 see also persuasive strategies S salience/saliency 12, 149n4, 167, 177 selectionist account of language see evolution self-image 136, 146 self-persuasion 35 semantic field 193, 208 sensory evidence 18, 73–76, 81–84, 94–95, 101 sequence in ads 149n4 sequence of negotiation 32–33, 35–36 shepherding 43–44 signalling through implication 34 social intelligence 136, 147

social practice 59, 147 Socratic method 117 spatial constraints 20, 135–139, 141–148, 149n3 spatial limitations/restrictions see spatial constraints speech act 7, 28, 32–33, 43, 53, 62–63, 88, 232 speech-act verbs 18, 73, 75–76, 84–87, 93, 101 speech community 8, 13, 237 speechwriters see speechwriting speechwriting 112, 125, 132n1 SPIN sequence see sequence of negotiation stance 69–72, 74, 79, 93, 172 stance markers see stance State of the Union addresses 6, 19–20, 173, Chapter 4 status 20, 29, 89, 136, 141, 146–148, 198 suasion see suasive words suasive words 185, 188 propaganda Chapter 7 manipulation Chapter 7 persuasion Chapter 7 subjectivity 41, 51, 68–69, 72–73, 79, 95 subordinate clauses 144–145 see also that + nominal clause summarizing 34, 43–44, 86, 89, 119, 172 superlatives 116, 120–121 surveys see polls and surveys syllogisms 118 syntactic elaboration 136–149 syntactic minimalism see syntactic elaboration syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes 183, 201 T taboo 21, 201–203, 205, 230 tags 51 tense 109, 128–129 tentativeness see hedging see also vagueness textual compression see spatial constraints

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textual organization 21, 163, 169–172, 174–175, 177–178 see also discourse organization textual scope 171, 178 that + nominal clause 160–162, 168 topic shift 109–110, 170 topos 34 translating 18, 65, 95–96

verbs 18, 205 catenative 206 hedging 128 doubt verbs 76 private verbs 73, 128 public verbs 128 vocabulary see lexicon vocatives 19, 116, 123–124

U unification via addressing the enemy 125–126 utilitarian see glamor-utilitarian continuum

W

V vagueness 21, 167–168, 175, 177 see also hedging variability 199–200 verbals see verbs

warrant 34 Washington, George 111 writer’s comments see author’s comment Y “yesability” 34–35 yesable proposition see “yesability” you know 193–198, 208

In the Pragmatics & Beyond New Series the following titles have been published thus far or are scheduled for publication: 80 UNGERER, Friedrich (ed.): English Media Texts – Past and Present. Language and textual structure. 2000. xiv, 286 pp. 81 DI LUZIO, Aldo, Susanne GÜNTHNER and Franca ORLETTI (eds.): Culture in Communication. Analyses of intercultural situations. 2001. xvi, 341 pp. 82 KHALIL, Esam N.: Grounding in English and Arabic News Discourse. 2000. x, 274 pp. 83 MÁRQUEZ REITER, Rosina: Linguistic Politeness in Britain and Uruguay. A contrastive study of requests and apologies. 2000. xviii, 225 pp. 84 ANDERSEN, Gisle: Pragmatic Markers and Sociolinguistic Variation. A relevance-theoretic approach to the language of adolescents. 2001. ix, 352 pp. 85 COLLINS, Daniel E.: Reanimated Voices. Speech reporting in a historical-pragmatic perspective. 2001. xx, 384 pp. 86 IFANTIDOU, Elly: Evidentials and Relevance. 2001. xii, 225 pp. 87 MUSHIN, Ilana: Evidentiality and Epistemological Stance. Narrative Retelling. 2001. xviii, 244 pp. 88 BAYRAKTAROĞLU, Arın and Maria SIFIANOU (eds.): Linguistic Politeness Across Boundaries. The case of Greek and Turkish. 2001. xiv, 439 pp. 89 ITAKURA, Hiroko: Conversational Dominance and Gender. A study of Japanese speakers in first and second language contexts. 2001. xviii, 231 pp. 90 KENESEI, István and Robert M. HARNISH (eds.): Perspectives on Semantics, Pragmatics, and Discourse. A Festschrift for Ferenc Kiefer. 2001. xxii, 352 pp. 91 GROSS, Joan: Speaking in Other Voices. An ethnography of Walloon puppet theaters. 2001. xxviii, 341 pp. 92 GARDNER, Rod: When Listeners Talk. Response tokens and listener stance. 2001. xxii, 281 pp. 93 BARON, Bettina and Helga KOTTHOFF (eds.): Gender in Interaction. Perspectives on femininity and masculinity in ethnography and discourse. 2002. xxiv, 357 pp. 94 McILVENNY, Paul (ed.): Talking Gender and Sexuality. 2002. x, 332 pp. 95 FITZMAURICE, Susan M.: The Familiar Letter in Early Modern English. A pragmatic approach. 2002. viii, 263 pp. 96 HAVERKATE, Henk: The Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics of Spanish Mood. 2002. vi, 241 pp. 97 MAYNARD, Senko K.: Linguistic Emotivity. Centrality of place, the topic-comment dynamic, and an ideology of pathos in Japanese discourse. 2002. xiv, 481 pp. 98 DUSZAK, Anna (ed.): Us and Others. Social identities across languages, discourses and cultures. 2002. viii, 522 pp. 99 JASZCZOLT, Katarzyna M. and Ken TURNER (eds.): Meaning Through Language Contrast. Volume 1. 2003. xii, 388 pp. 100 JASZCZOLT, Katarzyna M. and Ken TURNER (eds.): Meaning Through Language Contrast. Volume 2. 2003. viii, 496 pp. 101 LUKE, Kang Kwong and Theodossia-Soula PAVLIDOU (eds.): Telephone Calls. Unity and diversity in conversational structure across languages and cultures. 2002. x, 295 pp. 102 LEAFGREN, John: Degrees of Explicitness. Information structure and the packaging of Bulgarian subjects and objects. 2002. xii, 252 pp. 103 FETZER, Anita and Christiane MEIERKORD (eds.): Rethinking Sequentiality. Linguistics meets conversational interaction. 2002. vi, 300 pp. 104 BEECHING, Kate: Gender, Politeness and Pragmatic Particles in French. 2002. x, 251 pp. 105 BLACKWELL, Sarah E.: Implicatures in Discourse. The case of Spanish NP anaphora. 2003. xvi, 303 pp. 106 BUSSE, Ulrich: Linguistic Variation in the Shakespeare Corpus. Morpho-syntactic variability of second person pronouns. 2002. xiv, 344 pp. 107 TAAVITSAINEN, Irma and Andreas H. JUCKER (eds.): Diachronic Perspectives on Address Term Systems. 2003. viii, 446 pp.

108 BARRON, Anne: Acquisition in Interlanguage Pragmatics. Learning how to do things with words in a study abroad context. 2003. xviii, 403 pp. 109 MAYES, Patricia: Language, Social Structure, and Culture. A genre analysis of cooking classes in Japan and America. 2003. xiv, 228 pp. 110 ANDROUTSOPOULOS, Jannis K. and Alexandra GEORGAKOPOULOU (eds.): Discourse Constructions of Youth Identities. 2003. viii, 343 pp. 111 ENSINK, Titus and Christoph SAUER (eds.): Framing and Perspectivising in Discourse. 2003. viii, 227 pp. 112 LENZ, Friedrich (ed.): Deictic Conceptualisation of Space, Time and Person. 2003. xiv, 279 pp. 113 PANTHER, Klaus-Uwe and Linda L. THORNBURG (eds.): Metonymy and Pragmatic Inferencing. 2003. xii, 285 pp. 114 KÜHNLEIN, Peter, Hannes RIESER and Henk ZEEVAT (eds.): Perspectives on Dialogue in the New Millennium. 2003. xii, 400 pp. 115 KÄRKKÄINEN, Elise: Epistemic Stance in English Conversation. A description of its interactional functions, with a focus on I think. 2003. xii, 213 pp. 116 GRANT, Colin B. (ed.): Rethinking Communicative Interaction. New interdisciplinary horizons. 2003. viii, 330 pp. 117 WU, Ruey-Jiuan Regina: Stance in Talk. A conversation analysis of Mandarin final particles. 2004. xvi, 260 pp. 118 CHENG, Winnie: Intercultural Conversation. 2003. xii, 279 pp. 119 HILTUNEN, Risto and Janne SKAFFARI (eds.): Discourse Perspectives on English. Medieval to modern. 2003. viii, 243 pp. 120 AIJMER, Karin and Anna-Brita STENSTRÖM (eds.): Discourse Patterns in Spoken and Written Corpora. 2004. viii, 279 pp. 121 FETZER, Anita: Recontextualizing Context. Grammaticality meets appropriateness. 2004. x, 272 pp. 122 GONZÁLEZ, Montserrat: Pragmatic Markers in Oral Narrative. The case of English and Catalan. 2004. xvi, 410 pp. 123 MÁRQUEZ REITER, Rosina and María Elena PLACENCIA (eds.): Current Trends in the Pragmatics of Spanish. 2004. xvi, 383 pp. 124 VINE, Bernadette: Getting Things Done at Work. The discourse of power in workplace interaction. 2004. x, 278 pp. 125 LERNER, Gene H. (ed.): Conversation Analysis. Studies from the first generation. 2004. x, 302 pp. 126 WU, Yi’an: Spatial Demonstratives in English and Chinese. Text and Cognition. 2004. xviii, 236 pp. 127 BRISARD, Frank, Michael MEEUWIS and Bart VANDENABEELE (eds.): Seduction, Community, Speech. A Festschrift for Herman Parret. 2004. vi, 202 pp. 128 CORDELLA, Marisa: The Dynamic Consultation. A discourse analytical study of doctor–patient communication. 2004. xvi, 254 pp. 129 TABOADA, María Teresa: Building Coherence and Cohesion. Task-oriented dialogue in English and Spanish. 2004. xvii, 264 pp. 130 HALMARI, Helena and Tuija VIRTANEN (eds.): Persuasion Across Genres. A linguistic approach. 2005. viii, 257 pp. 131 JANOSCHKA, Anja: Web Advertising. New forms of communication on the Internet. 2004. xiv, 230 pp. 132 ONODERA, Noriko O.: Japanese Discourse Markers. Synchronic and diachronic discourse analysis. 2004. xiv, 253 pp. 133 MARNETTE, Sophie: Speech and Thought Presentation in French. Concepts and strategies. xii, 357 pp. + index. Expected Spring 2005 134 SKAFFARI, Janne, Matti PEIKOLA, Ruth CARROLL, Risto HILTUNEN and Brita WÅRVIK (eds.): Opening Windows on Texts and Discourses of the Past. xi, 399 pp. + index. Expected Spring 2005 135 ARCHER, Dawn: Questions and Answers in the English Courtroom (1640-1760). A sociopragmatic analysis. Expected Spring 2005

A complete list of titles in this series can be found on the publishers website, www.benjamins.com

Persuasion Across Genres: A Linguistic Approach (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Written Communication Across Cultures: A Sociocognitive Perspective on Business Genres (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Written Communication Across Cultures: A Sociocognitive Perspective on Business Genres (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Confronting Metaphor in Use: An applied linguistic approach (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Youngspeak in a Multilingual Perspective (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Beyond Misunderstanding: Linguistic Analyses of Intercultural Communication (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Cognitive Semantics: Meaning and Cognition (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Persuasion: A New Approach to Changing Minds

Academic Voices: Across languages and disciplines (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Perspectives on Semantics, Pragmatics and Discourse: A Festschrift for Ferenc Kiefer (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Discourse Description: Diverse Linguistic Analyses of a Fund-raising Text (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series)

Impoliteness in Interaction (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

South Slavic Discourse Particles (Pragmatics and Beyond. New Series)

Humor in Interaction (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Cognitive Semantics: Meaning and Cognition (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series)

Style Shifting in Japanese (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Second Language Interaction (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Constraints in Discourse 2 (Pragmatics and Beyond. New Series)

Constraints in Discourse (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series, 172)

Recontextualizing Context: Grammaticality Meets Appropriateness (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Connectives As Discourse Landmarks (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Metapragmatics in Use (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Broadening the Horizon of Linguistic Politeness (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Computer-mediated Communication: Linguistic, Social and Cross-cultural Perspectives (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series)

Computer-Mediated Communication: Linguistic, Social and Cross-Cultural Perspectives (Pragmatics & Beyond. New Series, 39)

Creativity and Convention: The pragmatics of everyday figurative speech (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Linguistic Politeness in Britain and Uruguay: A Contrastive Study of Requests and Apologies (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Linguistic Politeness in Britain and Uruguay: A Contrastive Study of Requests and Apologies (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Discourse Constructions of Youth Identities (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series)

Discourse Constructions of Youth Identities (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series)

Persuasion Across Genres: A Linguistic Approach (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Written Communication Across Cultures: A Sociocognitive Perspective on Business Genres (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Written Communication Across Cultures: A Sociocognitive Perspective on Business Genres (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Confronting Metaphor in Use: An applied linguistic approach (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Youngspeak in a Multilingual Perspective (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Beyond Misunderstanding: Linguistic Analyses of Intercultural Communication (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Cognitive Semantics: Meaning and Cognition (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Persuasion: A New Approach to Changing Minds

Academic Voices: Across languages and disciplines (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Perspectives on Semantics, Pragmatics and Discourse: A Festschrift for Ferenc Kiefer (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Discourse Description: Diverse Linguistic Analyses of a Fund-raising Text (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series)

Impoliteness in Interaction (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

South Slavic Discourse Particles (Pragmatics and Beyond. New Series)

Humor in Interaction (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Cognitive Semantics: Meaning and Cognition (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series)

Style Shifting in Japanese (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Second Language Interaction (Pragmatics and Beyond New Series)

Constraints in Discourse 2 (Pragmatics and Beyond. New Series)

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