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Pragmatic and discourse-analytic approaches to present-day English
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Journal of Pragmatics 40 (2008) 1497–1502 www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma
Editorial
Pragmatic and discourse-analytic approaches to present-day English Introduction 1. Present-day English in context Globalization and internationalization have had a tremendous impact on the form and function of present-day English in institutional and non-institutional contexts, where it has become the language of international communication, politics, science, commerce, travel, education and the media. There are an estimated 1680 million speakers of English. The global expansion of English comprises the inner circle, in which English is assigned the status of the first language, e.g. the United Kingdom and the United States of America, the outer circle, where English is assigned the status of (one of) the second language(s), e.g. India and Singapore, and the expanding circle, in which English is assigned the status of a foreign language, e.g. China and Russia (Crystal, 1997:54). As a consequence of globalization and social and international mobility, the rather simplistic differentiation between native and non-native speakers of English can no longer be upheld. Rather, the concept of a proficient speaker of English also needs to be adapted to the changing contextual constraints and requirements of a world becoming more global and more international while at the same time becoming more focussed on local values and more glocal. Present-day English, or rather present-day Englishes, has been examined from a number of different perspectives, namely as an international language (Trudgill and Hannah, 2002), as a global language (Crystal, 2004), as social, regional and functional varieties (Milroy and Milroy, 1993; Wolfram and Schilling-Estes, 1998), and as postcolonial English (Schneider, 2007). Against this background, the English language and English language use can never be a homogeneous construct, but rather needs to be conceptualized as heterogeneous in nature. This is reflected in research on grammaticalization (e.g. Traugott and Dasher, 2002) and pragmaticalization (e.g. Aijmer, 1997) as well as in grammars based on the premise that the language system and language use are connected dialectically (e.g. Biber et al., 1999; Givo´n, 1993; Greenbaum and Quirk, 1990; Halliday, 1994). 2. Pragmatic and discourse-analytic approaches 2.1. Discourse and context A pragmatic and discourse-analytic approach to present-day English not only needs to accommodate the fundamental requirements based on social context and anchored in language 0378-2166/$ – see front matter # 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2008.04.013
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use, as discussed above, but also the premise that grammatical constructions and communicative practices are embedded in context, and that their form and function are context-dependent. However, context is not a homogeneous whole either, but rather heterogeneous in nature and, like the English language, almost impossible to delimit. For the purpose of analysis, we suggest to decompose context along function-based and discourse-anchored lines into cognitive context, linguistic context, social context and sociocultural context (Fetzer, 2004). Cognitive context comprises the participants’ mental representations and metarepresentations of discourse, their knowledge of the language, communicative strategies, routines and activity types, their communicative intentions and communicative goals, and general background knowledge, and is seen as functionally synonymous with common ground (Givo´n, 2005; Fetzer and Fischer, 2007). Linguistic context or co-text is composed of all of the grammatical constructions and lexemes, which are linearized and sequentially organized to construct clauses, which are embedded in sentences, which are embedded in a text. The connectedness between the constitutive parts of cognitive context on the one hand and cognitive context as a whole on the other, and the connectedness between the constitutive parts of linguistic context on the one hand and linguistic context as a whole on the other, are conceptualized along the lines of the parts-whole perspective in general linguistics, which states that the whole is more than the sum of its individual parts. Against this background, the meaning of parts cannot be changed without changing the whole. The parts-whole perspective reflected in cognitive context and in linguistic context is also inherent in social context and in sociocultural context. Social context is often considered to comprise the context of a speech event and is defined by deduction from the holistic conception of context as the constitutive parts of a speech event. Thus, it is frequently used synonymously with extra-linguistic context composed of the interactional categories of speaker (writer), hearer/ addressee (reader), ratified and unratified audience, their physical and psychological dispositions and the specific knowledge or assumptions about the persons involved. Of course, the immediate extra-linguistic context is embedded in more remote extra-linguistic contexts, such as organizational contexts and other socio-historically constituted contexts of institutions and (sub)cultures. The synonymous use of extra-linguistic context and social context is, however, an oversimplification as research in sociolinguistics and anthropology has informed us. Rather, social context can be subcategorized into different types of sociocultural context, which are defined by a particular perspective on social context in general. Thus, social context and all of its constituents can be conceived as an unmarked type of context (or a default context), and sociocultural context can be conceived as a marked type of context in which particular variables, such as time or location, are interpreted in a particular mode. Against this background, culture provides us with a filter mechanism, which allows us to interpret social context in accordance with particular sociocultural constraints and requirements. In discourse analysis, it is generally assumed that a current contribution requires a prior contribution in order to account for anaphora resolution, and for the retrieval of indexical expressions and of other types of contextual information. In a dynamic outlook on communication, however, a current contribution is not only anchored to a prior contribution, but also constrains the form and function of upcoming talk. For instance, an information question, such as ‘where is Peter’ requires a dovetailed answer, for example ‘in the garden’ which provides the requested information. An information question only allows a question as an upcoming contribution if it functions as a request for a specific type of information referred to in the prior question, such as ‘junior or senior’ or ‘I beg your pardon’
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This is also reflected in the conversation-analytic framework, where utterances are assigned the status of linguistic context. In Conversation Analysis the language produced (formulated) and interpreted, is assigned a dual function. On the one hand, it invokes linguistic context by constructing it; on the other hand, the production and interpretation of language provide the context for subsequent talk and recovery of intended meaning. Accordingly, the acts of speaking and interpreting build contexts and at the same time constrain the building of contexts. To employ Heritage’s terminology, ‘‘the production of talk is doubly contextual’’ (Heritage, 1984:242). An utterance relies upon the existing context for its production and interpretation, and it is, in its own right, an event that shapes a new context for the action that will follow. Against this background, the delimitation of linguistic context to a contribution’s directly or immediately adjacent contributions seems too narrow. Rather, linguistic context must be conceived of as delimited by the contextual constraints and requirements of genre, which entails the notions of text type (De Beaugrande and Dressler, 1981), macro speech act (van Dijk, 1977), macro validity claim (Fetzer, 2000), communicative project (Linell, 1998) and activity type (Levinson, 1979). These macro categories are hierarchically structured and sequentially organized, and they can be subcategorized into pre-sequences, core- or main-sequences, side-sequences and closing sequences. The parts-whole perspective, which has already surfaced in the differentiation between English and Englishes, and context and contexts, is also reflected in the distinction between communicative contribution, that is a whole, and its constituents, or the parts of which it is composed. It is also manifest in the communicative contributions, which compose the genre as a whole, and in the different genres composing the discourse as a whole. 2.2. Discourse and genre An examination of linguistic form and function in discourse needs to accommodate the constraints and requirements of context, that is: cognitive context, linguistic context, social context and sociocultural context. At the same time, the heterogeneous concepts of context and discourse need a delimiting frame so that they can be applied felicitously to an analysis of discourse. The delimiting frame required for an analysis of a constitutive part, that is a linguistic form and its function, in a parts-whole scenario, we argue, is the frame of communicative genre (e.g. Luckmann, 1995), communicative project (Linell, 1998) or activity type (Levinson, 1979), which provide the necessary apparatus for reasoning and inferencing anchored to cognitive context. Furthermore, the delimiting frame furnishes us with a linguistic and sociocultural apparatus for producing and interpreting communicative contributions in accordance with the constraints and requirements of a particular culture anchored to sociocultural context on the one hand, and to linguistic context on the other. This applies to generalized grammars for spoken and written English, and to particularized grammars for spoken and written English in the context of a particular genre. The investigation of a linguistic form and its function in discourse requires the accommodation of spoken and written language data, which are available from corpora such as the British National Corpus (BNC), and the ICE-GB Corpus (the British Component of the International Corpus of English). While these generalized corpora contain particularized corpora categorized along the parameters spoken and written, fiction and non-fiction, for instance, researchers have also collected their own data which account for a wider variety of contextual constraints, such as modulation of press material or genres within the genre of broadsheet newspapers.
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All of the contributions to this special issue employ a corpus-based and genre-anchored outlook on the examination of present-day English, and their order is explicated in the following. 3. The special issue The goal of this special issue is to examine the interrelation between linguistic form, communicative function and context. It focuses on the question of how the context may influence, if not determine, the use of initial positions (or themes), non-congruently configurated linguistic forms, adjectival constructions, adverbials, interrogative forms, concessive repair in present-day English. Special attention is given to the accommodation of sequentiality, information packaging and narrative patterns, to multimodality and to the status of English as an international language. The contexts under investigation are computer-mediated interaction (chat and forum discussions), media discourse (newspapers) in general and dialogic genre (interview) in particular, and picture books. The contributions examine morphological forms (adjectives, adverbs) in their functions and context, syntactic forms (themes, rhetorical questions) and communicative practices (concessive repair) and their function in context. They address interpersonal aspects of communication (Fetzer, Moya Guijarro and Pinar Sanz, SimonVandenbergen, Stenvall), repair and affiliation (Tanskanen and Karhukorpi), and genre and appropriateness (Fetzer, Mindt). The contribution, ‘Appropriateness in Discourse: the Adjectives surprised and surprising in Monologue and Dialogue’ by Ilka Mindt, addresses the notion of appropriateness in discourse. It applies the theoretical concept of appropriateness to data taken from the British National Corpus and discusses the connection between discourse types (monologue vs. dialogue) and the evaluation of appropriateness. The quantitative distribution of surprised + that-clause and surprising + that-clause in discourse reveals clear preferences in usage: whereas surprised + that-clause is found more frequently in dialogical contexts, surprising + thatclause typically occurs in discourse settings close to monologues. A qualitative analysis in terms of speech act theory demonstrates that the locutionary acts of both realizations are essentially the same but the illocutionary acts are different: whereas surprised + that-clause expresses an emotion, surprising + that-clause conveys a judgement. Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen’s contribution, ‘Almost certainly and most definitely: Degree Modifiers and Epistemic Stance’, examines the semantics and pragmatics of the adverbs certainly and definitely. Both express a high degree of epistemic certainty and of the speaker’s commitment to the truth value of the proposition they modify. Focussing on the observation that the two adverbs have different preferences regarding their choice of degree modifiers, the study based on data from the British National Corpus shows that while both almost and most are used to premodify both adverbs, there is a clear preference for almost certainly and for most definitely. The preferences of certainly and definitely for almost and most, respectively, can be explained from their semantic– pragmatic development. At the same time these collocations create new meanings. In her contribution, ‘Theme Zones in English Media Discourse: Forms and Functions’, Anita Fetzer uses an integrated approach to the investigation of the form and function of the theme zone in English media discourse giving particular attention to the communicative genres of political interview and editorial. It examines the connectedness between a theme zone and its function in discourse considering especially its definitions and delimitations. Because of its forward- and backward-pointing potentials, the theme zone is of key importance for the construction of discourse coherence, where it may signify a continuation or a discontinuation in the flow of discourse regarding topic, force or attitude. The linguistic configurations of the
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theme zones are classified into marked and unmarked variants considering genre, mode and sequential status. Maija Stenvall’s contribution, ‘On Emotions and the Journalistic Ideals of Factuality and Objectivity—Tools for Analysis’, investigates the linguistic realization of subjective-domain anchored emotions in the context of written media communication (AP, Reuters) and the journalistic ideals of objectivity and factuality. Its draws on central concepts adapted from Systemic Functional Grammar and the Appraisal framework. The study demonstrates how journalistic ‘objectivity’ exploits implicit Affect values and other non-congruent configurations to reveal the writer’s subjective point of view and the strategies used to align with the reader through evoking particular types of emotion. The contribution, ‘Concessive Repair and Negotiation of Affiliation in E-mail Discourse’ by Sanna-Kaisa Tanskanen and Johanna Karhukorpi, analyses the form, function and distribution of concessive repair in the context of computer-mediated communication considering different types of Englishes. It shows that the phenomenon of concessive repair, which has been examined primarily in face-to-face interactions, is also employed in written Internet communication. Particular attention is given to the contexts in which concessive repair is used and to its function as signifying affiliation thus providing further support for the dialogic nature of language. The final contribution, ‘Compositional, Interpersonal and Representational Meanings in a Children’s Narrrative. A Multimodal Discourse Analysis’ by A. Jesu´s Moya Guijarro and Maria Jesu´s Pinar Sanz, presents multimodal analysis of a picture book informed by Social Semiotics and Hallidayan linguistics. The textual analysis reveals a strong association between the point of departure of the clause and the story’s main characters. The thematic progression corresponds with the visual component. From an interpersonal perspective, gaze is utilized to signify offer and images presented frontally are used strategically to create involvement on the part of the viewer. This interactive nature is supported through imperative mood structure. References Aijmer, Karin, 1997. I think—an English modal particle. In: Swan, T., Jansen, O. (Eds.), Modality in Germanic Languages. Historical and Comparative Perspectives. de Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 1–47. Biber, Douglas, Johansson, Stig, Leech, Geoffrey, Conrad, Susan, Finegan, Edward, 1999. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Longman, London. Crystal, David, 1997. English as a Global Language. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Crystal, David, 2004. The Language Revolution. Polity Press, Cambridge. De Beaugrande, Robert, Dressler, Wolfgang, 1981. Einfu¨hrung in die Textlinguistik. Niemeyer, Tu¨bingen. Fetzer, Anita, 2000. Negotiating validity claims in political interviews. Text 20 (4), 1–46. Fetzer, Anita, 2004. Recontextualizing Context. Grammaticality meets Appropriateness. Benjamins, Amsterdam. Fetzer, Anita, Fischer, Kerstin, 2007. Introduction. In: Fetzer, A., Fischer, K. (Eds.), Lexical Markers of Common Grounds. Elsevier, London, pp. 1–13. Givo´n, Talmy, 1993. English Grammar. A Function-based Introduction. Benjamins, Amsterdam. Givo´n, Talmy, 2005. Context as other Minds. Benjamins, Amsterdam. Greenbaum, Sidney, Quirk, Randolph, 1990. A Student’s Grammar of the English Language. Longman, London. Halliday, M.A.K., 1994. Introduction to Functional Grammar. Arnold, London. Heritage, John, 1984. Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Polity Press, Cambridge. Levinson, Stephen C., 1979. Activity Types and Language. Linguistics 365–399. Linell, Per, 1998. Approaching Dialogue. John Benjamins, Amsterdam. Luckmann, Thomas, 1995. Interaction planning and intersubjective adjustment of perspectives by communicative genres. In: Goody, E. (Ed.), Social Intelligence and Interaction. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 175–188. Milroy, James, Milroy, Lesley (Eds.), 1993. Real English. Longman, London. Schneider, Edgar W., 2007. Postcolonial English. Varieties around the World. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
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Traugott, Elizabeth Closs, Dasher, Richard, 2002. Regularity in Semantic Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Trudgill, Peter, Hannah, Jean, 2002. International English. A Guide to Varieties of Standard English, 4th ed. Arnold, London. Van Dijk, Teun, 1977. Text and Context: Explorations in the Semantics and Pragmatics of Discourse. Longman, London. Wolfram, Walt, Schilling-Estes, Nathalie, 1998. American English. Blackwell, Oxford. Anita Fetzer is a professor of English linguistics at Leuphana University of Lueneburg, Germany. She received her PhD from Stuttgart University in 1993 and her habilitation in 2003, and is currently engaged in research projects on the strategic use of pronouns and attitudinal markers in political discourse, and on the form and function of the theme zone in present-day English. She has taught a variety of courses on functional grammar, pragmatics, sociolinguistics and discourse studies. Her research interests focus on spoken English, functional grammar, contrastive analysis, modality, discourse markers and context. She has had a series of articles published on rejections, context, political interviews and intercultural communication. Her most recent publications are Political discourse in the Media (2007, with Gerda Lauerbach), Context and Appropriateness (2007), Pragmatic Aspects of Political Discourse in the Media (2006, with Elda Weizman), and Recontextualizing Context: Grammaticality Meets Appropriateness (2004). Karin Aijmer is professor emerita at the University of Gothenburg. Among her publications are Conversational Routines in English. Convention and Creativity (1996), English Discourse Particles. Evidence from a Corpus (2002), The Semantic Field of Modal Certainty. A Corpu-Based Study of English Adverbs (with Anne-Marie Simon -Vandenbergen), (2007). She is co-editor of English Corpus Linguistics. Studies in Honour of Jan Svartvik (1991), Discourse Patterns in Spoken and Written Corpora (2004) and Pragmatic Markers in Contrast (2006). Her research interests include pragmatic and discourse, spoken English, corpus linguistics, cross-cultural linguistics, learner English.
Anita Fetzer* English Linguistics, Institute of English Studies, Leuphana University of Lueneburg, Scharnhorststr. 1, D-21335 Lueneburg, Germany Karin Aijmer1 English Department, University of Gothenburg Box 200, SE 40 530 Go¨teborg, Sweden *Corresponding author. Tel.: +49 4131 677 2662; fax: +49 4131 677 2666 E-mail addresses: [email protected] (A. Fetzer) [email protected] (K. Aijmer) 1 Tel.: +46 31 786 5274; fax: +46 31 786 4726.
Journal of Pragmatics 40 (2008) 1497–1502 www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma
Editorial
Pragmatic and discourse-analytic approaches to present-day English Introduction 1. Present-day English in context Globalization and internationalization have had a tremendous impact on the form and function of present-day English in institutional and non-institutional contexts, where it has become the language of international communication, politics, science, commerce, travel, education and the media. There are an estimated 1680 million speakers of English. The global expansion of English comprises the inner circle, in which English is assigned the status of the first language, e.g. the United Kingdom and the United States of America, the outer circle, where English is assigned the status of (one of) the second language(s), e.g. India and Singapore, and the expanding circle, in which English is assigned the status of a foreign language, e.g. China and Russia (Crystal, 1997:54). As a consequence of globalization and social and international mobility, the rather simplistic differentiation between native and non-native speakers of English can no longer be upheld. Rather, the concept of a proficient speaker of English also needs to be adapted to the changing contextual constraints and requirements of a world becoming more global and more international while at the same time becoming more focussed on local values and more glocal. Present-day English, or rather present-day Englishes, has been examined from a number of different perspectives, namely as an international language (Trudgill and Hannah, 2002), as a global language (Crystal, 2004), as social, regional and functional varieties (Milroy and Milroy, 1993; Wolfram and Schilling-Estes, 1998), and as postcolonial English (Schneider, 2007). Against this background, the English language and English language use can never be a homogeneous construct, but rather needs to be conceptualized as heterogeneous in nature. This is reflected in research on grammaticalization (e.g. Traugott and Dasher, 2002) and pragmaticalization (e.g. Aijmer, 1997) as well as in grammars based on the premise that the language system and language use are connected dialectically (e.g. Biber et al., 1999; Givo´n, 1993; Greenbaum and Quirk, 1990; Halliday, 1994). 2. Pragmatic and discourse-analytic approaches 2.1. Discourse and context A pragmatic and discourse-analytic approach to present-day English not only needs to accommodate the fundamental requirements based on social context and anchored in language 0378-2166/$ – see front matter # 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2008.04.013
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Editorial / Journal of Pragmatics 40 (2008) 1497–1502
use, as discussed above, but also the premise that grammatical constructions and communicative practices are embedded in context, and that their form and function are context-dependent. However, context is not a homogeneous whole either, but rather heterogeneous in nature and, like the English language, almost impossible to delimit. For the purpose of analysis, we suggest to decompose context along function-based and discourse-anchored lines into cognitive context, linguistic context, social context and sociocultural context (Fetzer, 2004). Cognitive context comprises the participants’ mental representations and metarepresentations of discourse, their knowledge of the language, communicative strategies, routines and activity types, their communicative intentions and communicative goals, and general background knowledge, and is seen as functionally synonymous with common ground (Givo´n, 2005; Fetzer and Fischer, 2007). Linguistic context or co-text is composed of all of the grammatical constructions and lexemes, which are linearized and sequentially organized to construct clauses, which are embedded in sentences, which are embedded in a text. The connectedness between the constitutive parts of cognitive context on the one hand and cognitive context as a whole on the other, and the connectedness between the constitutive parts of linguistic context on the one hand and linguistic context as a whole on the other, are conceptualized along the lines of the parts-whole perspective in general linguistics, which states that the whole is more than the sum of its individual parts. Against this background, the meaning of parts cannot be changed without changing the whole. The parts-whole perspective reflected in cognitive context and in linguistic context is also inherent in social context and in sociocultural context. Social context is often considered to comprise the context of a speech event and is defined by deduction from the holistic conception of context as the constitutive parts of a speech event. Thus, it is frequently used synonymously with extra-linguistic context composed of the interactional categories of speaker (writer), hearer/ addressee (reader), ratified and unratified audience, their physical and psychological dispositions and the specific knowledge or assumptions about the persons involved. Of course, the immediate extra-linguistic context is embedded in more remote extra-linguistic contexts, such as organizational contexts and other socio-historically constituted contexts of institutions and (sub)cultures. The synonymous use of extra-linguistic context and social context is, however, an oversimplification as research in sociolinguistics and anthropology has informed us. Rather, social context can be subcategorized into different types of sociocultural context, which are defined by a particular perspective on social context in general. Thus, social context and all of its constituents can be conceived as an unmarked type of context (or a default context), and sociocultural context can be conceived as a marked type of context in which particular variables, such as time or location, are interpreted in a particular mode. Against this background, culture provides us with a filter mechanism, which allows us to interpret social context in accordance with particular sociocultural constraints and requirements. In discourse analysis, it is generally assumed that a current contribution requires a prior contribution in order to account for anaphora resolution, and for the retrieval of indexical expressions and of other types of contextual information. In a dynamic outlook on communication, however, a current contribution is not only anchored to a prior contribution, but also constrains the form and function of upcoming talk. For instance, an information question, such as ‘where is Peter’ requires a dovetailed answer, for example ‘in the garden’ which provides the requested information. An information question only allows a question as an upcoming contribution if it functions as a request for a specific type of information referred to in the prior question, such as ‘junior or senior’ or ‘I beg your pardon’
Editorial / Journal of Pragmatics 40 (2008) 1497–1502
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This is also reflected in the conversation-analytic framework, where utterances are assigned the status of linguistic context. In Conversation Analysis the language produced (formulated) and interpreted, is assigned a dual function. On the one hand, it invokes linguistic context by constructing it; on the other hand, the production and interpretation of language provide the context for subsequent talk and recovery of intended meaning. Accordingly, the acts of speaking and interpreting build contexts and at the same time constrain the building of contexts. To employ Heritage’s terminology, ‘‘the production of talk is doubly contextual’’ (Heritage, 1984:242). An utterance relies upon the existing context for its production and interpretation, and it is, in its own right, an event that shapes a new context for the action that will follow. Against this background, the delimitation of linguistic context to a contribution’s directly or immediately adjacent contributions seems too narrow. Rather, linguistic context must be conceived of as delimited by the contextual constraints and requirements of genre, which entails the notions of text type (De Beaugrande and Dressler, 1981), macro speech act (van Dijk, 1977), macro validity claim (Fetzer, 2000), communicative project (Linell, 1998) and activity type (Levinson, 1979). These macro categories are hierarchically structured and sequentially organized, and they can be subcategorized into pre-sequences, core- or main-sequences, side-sequences and closing sequences. The parts-whole perspective, which has already surfaced in the differentiation between English and Englishes, and context and contexts, is also reflected in the distinction between communicative contribution, that is a whole, and its constituents, or the parts of which it is composed. It is also manifest in the communicative contributions, which compose the genre as a whole, and in the different genres composing the discourse as a whole. 2.2. Discourse and genre An examination of linguistic form and function in discourse needs to accommodate the constraints and requirements of context, that is: cognitive context, linguistic context, social context and sociocultural context. At the same time, the heterogeneous concepts of context and discourse need a delimiting frame so that they can be applied felicitously to an analysis of discourse. The delimiting frame required for an analysis of a constitutive part, that is a linguistic form and its function, in a parts-whole scenario, we argue, is the frame of communicative genre (e.g. Luckmann, 1995), communicative project (Linell, 1998) or activity type (Levinson, 1979), which provide the necessary apparatus for reasoning and inferencing anchored to cognitive context. Furthermore, the delimiting frame furnishes us with a linguistic and sociocultural apparatus for producing and interpreting communicative contributions in accordance with the constraints and requirements of a particular culture anchored to sociocultural context on the one hand, and to linguistic context on the other. This applies to generalized grammars for spoken and written English, and to particularized grammars for spoken and written English in the context of a particular genre. The investigation of a linguistic form and its function in discourse requires the accommodation of spoken and written language data, which are available from corpora such as the British National Corpus (BNC), and the ICE-GB Corpus (the British Component of the International Corpus of English). While these generalized corpora contain particularized corpora categorized along the parameters spoken and written, fiction and non-fiction, for instance, researchers have also collected their own data which account for a wider variety of contextual constraints, such as modulation of press material or genres within the genre of broadsheet newspapers.
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Editorial / Journal of Pragmatics 40 (2008) 1497–1502
All of the contributions to this special issue employ a corpus-based and genre-anchored outlook on the examination of present-day English, and their order is explicated in the following. 3. The special issue The goal of this special issue is to examine the interrelation between linguistic form, communicative function and context. It focuses on the question of how the context may influence, if not determine, the use of initial positions (or themes), non-congruently configurated linguistic forms, adjectival constructions, adverbials, interrogative forms, concessive repair in present-day English. Special attention is given to the accommodation of sequentiality, information packaging and narrative patterns, to multimodality and to the status of English as an international language. The contexts under investigation are computer-mediated interaction (chat and forum discussions), media discourse (newspapers) in general and dialogic genre (interview) in particular, and picture books. The contributions examine morphological forms (adjectives, adverbs) in their functions and context, syntactic forms (themes, rhetorical questions) and communicative practices (concessive repair) and their function in context. They address interpersonal aspects of communication (Fetzer, Moya Guijarro and Pinar Sanz, SimonVandenbergen, Stenvall), repair and affiliation (Tanskanen and Karhukorpi), and genre and appropriateness (Fetzer, Mindt). The contribution, ‘Appropriateness in Discourse: the Adjectives surprised and surprising in Monologue and Dialogue’ by Ilka Mindt, addresses the notion of appropriateness in discourse. It applies the theoretical concept of appropriateness to data taken from the British National Corpus and discusses the connection between discourse types (monologue vs. dialogue) and the evaluation of appropriateness. The quantitative distribution of surprised + that-clause and surprising + that-clause in discourse reveals clear preferences in usage: whereas surprised + that-clause is found more frequently in dialogical contexts, surprising + thatclause typically occurs in discourse settings close to monologues. A qualitative analysis in terms of speech act theory demonstrates that the locutionary acts of both realizations are essentially the same but the illocutionary acts are different: whereas surprised + that-clause expresses an emotion, surprising + that-clause conveys a judgement. Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen’s contribution, ‘Almost certainly and most definitely: Degree Modifiers and Epistemic Stance’, examines the semantics and pragmatics of the adverbs certainly and definitely. Both express a high degree of epistemic certainty and of the speaker’s commitment to the truth value of the proposition they modify. Focussing on the observation that the two adverbs have different preferences regarding their choice of degree modifiers, the study based on data from the British National Corpus shows that while both almost and most are used to premodify both adverbs, there is a clear preference for almost certainly and for most definitely. The preferences of certainly and definitely for almost and most, respectively, can be explained from their semantic– pragmatic development. At the same time these collocations create new meanings. In her contribution, ‘Theme Zones in English Media Discourse: Forms and Functions’, Anita Fetzer uses an integrated approach to the investigation of the form and function of the theme zone in English media discourse giving particular attention to the communicative genres of political interview and editorial. It examines the connectedness between a theme zone and its function in discourse considering especially its definitions and delimitations. Because of its forward- and backward-pointing potentials, the theme zone is of key importance for the construction of discourse coherence, where it may signify a continuation or a discontinuation in the flow of discourse regarding topic, force or attitude. The linguistic configurations of the
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theme zones are classified into marked and unmarked variants considering genre, mode and sequential status. Maija Stenvall’s contribution, ‘On Emotions and the Journalistic Ideals of Factuality and Objectivity—Tools for Analysis’, investigates the linguistic realization of subjective-domain anchored emotions in the context of written media communication (AP, Reuters) and the journalistic ideals of objectivity and factuality. Its draws on central concepts adapted from Systemic Functional Grammar and the Appraisal framework. The study demonstrates how journalistic ‘objectivity’ exploits implicit Affect values and other non-congruent configurations to reveal the writer’s subjective point of view and the strategies used to align with the reader through evoking particular types of emotion. The contribution, ‘Concessive Repair and Negotiation of Affiliation in E-mail Discourse’ by Sanna-Kaisa Tanskanen and Johanna Karhukorpi, analyses the form, function and distribution of concessive repair in the context of computer-mediated communication considering different types of Englishes. It shows that the phenomenon of concessive repair, which has been examined primarily in face-to-face interactions, is also employed in written Internet communication. Particular attention is given to the contexts in which concessive repair is used and to its function as signifying affiliation thus providing further support for the dialogic nature of language. The final contribution, ‘Compositional, Interpersonal and Representational Meanings in a Children’s Narrrative. A Multimodal Discourse Analysis’ by A. Jesu´s Moya Guijarro and Maria Jesu´s Pinar Sanz, presents multimodal analysis of a picture book informed by Social Semiotics and Hallidayan linguistics. The textual analysis reveals a strong association between the point of departure of the clause and the story’s main characters. The thematic progression corresponds with the visual component. From an interpersonal perspective, gaze is utilized to signify offer and images presented frontally are used strategically to create involvement on the part of the viewer. This interactive nature is supported through imperative mood structure. References Aijmer, Karin, 1997. I think—an English modal particle. In: Swan, T., Jansen, O. (Eds.), Modality in Germanic Languages. Historical and Comparative Perspectives. de Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 1–47. Biber, Douglas, Johansson, Stig, Leech, Geoffrey, Conrad, Susan, Finegan, Edward, 1999. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Longman, London. Crystal, David, 1997. English as a Global Language. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Crystal, David, 2004. The Language Revolution. Polity Press, Cambridge. De Beaugrande, Robert, Dressler, Wolfgang, 1981. Einfu¨hrung in die Textlinguistik. Niemeyer, Tu¨bingen. Fetzer, Anita, 2000. Negotiating validity claims in political interviews. Text 20 (4), 1–46. Fetzer, Anita, 2004. Recontextualizing Context. Grammaticality meets Appropriateness. Benjamins, Amsterdam. Fetzer, Anita, Fischer, Kerstin, 2007. Introduction. In: Fetzer, A., Fischer, K. (Eds.), Lexical Markers of Common Grounds. Elsevier, London, pp. 1–13. Givo´n, Talmy, 1993. English Grammar. A Function-based Introduction. Benjamins, Amsterdam. Givo´n, Talmy, 2005. Context as other Minds. Benjamins, Amsterdam. Greenbaum, Sidney, Quirk, Randolph, 1990. A Student’s Grammar of the English Language. Longman, London. Halliday, M.A.K., 1994. Introduction to Functional Grammar. Arnold, London. Heritage, John, 1984. Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Polity Press, Cambridge. Levinson, Stephen C., 1979. Activity Types and Language. Linguistics 365–399. Linell, Per, 1998. Approaching Dialogue. John Benjamins, Amsterdam. Luckmann, Thomas, 1995. Interaction planning and intersubjective adjustment of perspectives by communicative genres. In: Goody, E. (Ed.), Social Intelligence and Interaction. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 175–188. Milroy, James, Milroy, Lesley (Eds.), 1993. Real English. Longman, London. Schneider, Edgar W., 2007. Postcolonial English. Varieties around the World. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
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Traugott, Elizabeth Closs, Dasher, Richard, 2002. Regularity in Semantic Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Trudgill, Peter, Hannah, Jean, 2002. International English. A Guide to Varieties of Standard English, 4th ed. Arnold, London. Van Dijk, Teun, 1977. Text and Context: Explorations in the Semantics and Pragmatics of Discourse. Longman, London. Wolfram, Walt, Schilling-Estes, Nathalie, 1998. American English. Blackwell, Oxford. Anita Fetzer is a professor of English linguistics at Leuphana University of Lueneburg, Germany. She received her PhD from Stuttgart University in 1993 and her habilitation in 2003, and is currently engaged in research projects on the strategic use of pronouns and attitudinal markers in political discourse, and on the form and function of the theme zone in present-day English. She has taught a variety of courses on functional grammar, pragmatics, sociolinguistics and discourse studies. Her research interests focus on spoken English, functional grammar, contrastive analysis, modality, discourse markers and context. She has had a series of articles published on rejections, context, political interviews and intercultural communication. Her most recent publications are Political discourse in the Media (2007, with Gerda Lauerbach), Context and Appropriateness (2007), Pragmatic Aspects of Political Discourse in the Media (2006, with Elda Weizman), and Recontextualizing Context: Grammaticality Meets Appropriateness (2004). Karin Aijmer is professor emerita at the University of Gothenburg. Among her publications are Conversational Routines in English. Convention and Creativity (1996), English Discourse Particles. Evidence from a Corpus (2002), The Semantic Field of Modal Certainty. A Corpu-Based Study of English Adverbs (with Anne-Marie Simon -Vandenbergen), (2007). She is co-editor of English Corpus Linguistics. Studies in Honour of Jan Svartvik (1991), Discourse Patterns in Spoken and Written Corpora (2004) and Pragmatic Markers in Contrast (2006). Her research interests include pragmatic and discourse, spoken English, corpus linguistics, cross-cultural linguistics, learner English.
Anita Fetzer* English Linguistics, Institute of English Studies, Leuphana University of Lueneburg, Scharnhorststr. 1, D-21335 Lueneburg, Germany Karin Aijmer1 English Department, University of Gothenburg Box 200, SE 40 530 Go¨teborg, Sweden *Corresponding author. Tel.: +49 4131 677 2662; fax: +49 4131 677 2666 E-mail addresses: [email protected] (A. Fetzer) [email protected] (K. Aijmer) 1 Tel.: +46 31 786 5274; fax: +46 31 786 4726.