The speech acts of the in-group

ELSEVIER

Journal of Pragmatics 33 (2001) 1207-1233 www.elsevier.nl/locate/pragma

The speech acts of the in-group Joan Cutting* 7, South Oxford Street (2Fl), Edinburgh EH8 9QF, UK Received 28 April 1998; revised version 20 August 2000

Abstract This article describes part of a longitudinal study of the casual conversations of six students as they become members of an academic discourse community. This article focuses on the speech acts of the students’ language. It suggests a model of speech act categories that takes into account who or what is referred to (self, interlocutor or third party) and the attitude expressed (neutral, positive and negative). It outlines the changes over time in attitude expressed, showing that overt lexicalisations of a positive attitude to interlocutors increase. In addition, the topic determines the speech act used: those expressing a negative attitude to self and the situation are most frequent in conversations about the course. The article explores the social rules and norms of the in-group and how certain speech acts require other speech acts to follow. It suggests that some speech acts may be used to show solidarity and claim ingroup membership. 0 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords:

Longitudinal study of conversation; Speech acts; Interactional Norms; Solidarity; In-group membership; English

sociolinguistics;

1. Background 1.1. Aims Traditionally, studies of the language of social groups have been ones of product, a synchronic description of language at a given time (Brown and Levinson, 1987; Labov, 1972; Tannen, 1989). The study referred to in this article is one of process, a diachronic description of changes in language over time. This developmental study examines the casual conversations of an academic discourse community (Swales, 1990): students of MSc courses in Applied Linguistics in the University of

*

Phone: +44-131-667 1070; E-mail: [email protected]

0378-2166/00/$ - see front matter 0 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: SO378-2166(00)00056-4

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Edingurgh (UE). It focuses on 1991-1992 in-group of students of students of the then Department of Applied Linguistics (DAL) and in particular on six native-speakers of English. This article describes the part of the study that examines the interpersonal semantics (Eggins and Slade, 1997) of the in-group’s conversations. It explores the speech acts that contain expressions of attitude, in order to describe the social rules of the student common room and to show how they change from the moment the students meet until the end of the course. The literature on expressions of emotion contains descriptions of the relationship between emotional language and degrees of intimacy. Goffman (1971: 326) says that the speaker “will often present initially a front of diffidence and composure, suppressing any show of feeling until he has found out what kind of line the others will be ready to support for him”. Altman and Taylor (1973) say that the difference between the language of ‘newly related’ speakers and that of ‘intimate’ speakers is that the intimate’s communication is more emotional, more personalised, and contains more positive and negative evaluation remarks. However, these studies do not attempt to trace the development of the expressions of feeling and evaluation as speakers pass from newly-related to intimate. Once this article has answered the general questions ‘What attitude do students find it acceptable to express? ’ and ‘How do the rules about speech acts change over time?‘, it turns to an analysis of the more specific questions ‘What particular speech acts must be used when students talk about the course?’ and ‘What speech acts do interlocutors use to respond to them?’ 1.2. The in-group The UE MSc in Applied Linguistics (a Master’s level, taught course) consists of three terms of lectures and a dissertation in the summer. In the autumn term, the students follow core courses and prepare short tutorial tasks; in the spring term, they take option courses, sit a written examination and write three projects; and in the summer term, they do option courses, write two projects, take home a portfolio examination and prepare for their dissertation. The 1991-1992 lectures and tutorials take place in DAL and the Institute for Applied Language Studies (IALS). The UE Applied Linguistics students are mostly language teachers with teaching experience abroad. The course attracts both native speakers of English from Canada, Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales, and non-native speakers of English from the rest of Europe, Asia and Africa. The student body fulfils Swales’ (1990) criteria for members of a discourse community: common goals, intercommunication mechanisms, particular genres and specific lexis. They have the common public goal of passing the course; their mechanisms for communication are mainly face-to-face interaction whether in tutorials or in the common room; they acquire a special lexis concerned with linguistics and language teaching; they have their genres - project genre, dissertation genre, lecture genre, tutorial discussion genre. This study was limited to six of the students so that the researcher, herself a UE DAL MSc student (1990-1991), could become familiar enough with each one’s

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linguistic idiosyncrasies, personalities and attitudes to interpret the findings. In 1990-1991, there were 34 students, 16 of whom were native speakers of English. Of the six recordees, three were English, one was Irish, one was Scottish and one Canadian. They were four men, referred to here as AM, BM, CM and DM, and two women, referred to as AF and BF. (In excerpts quoted, MM indicates any other male and FF any other female English native speaker, and NM indicates any male and NF any female non-native speaker of English.) Triangulation with the six recordees, in the form of an informal unguided conversation with them and a questionnaire (see Appendix A) which contained questions about the social and functional context of their conversations, confirmed that they were representative of all English native speaker members of the in-group. Each of the recordees had interacted as frequently with about eight different students outside the group of six as with the other recordees. All six recordees insisted that they did not consider themselves to be an exclusive group. 1.3. Data collection and analysis Students’ conversations in which the six chosen recordees participated were audio-recorded in the DAL common room once a week in the first half of each of the three terms. There were 15 days of recording and each one lasted from 10 to 30 minutes. Out of a total of seven hours, only five (26,000 words in 29 dialogues) were sufficiently intelligible to use. Recording was overt; at fast, the beginnings of recordings showed evidence of the Observer’s Paradox, but the students said that they soon became accustomed to the recorder. Recording was spontaneous: the students were neither asked to sit together (the six did not know that they were chosen), nor asked to talk if they did happen to sit together, nor guided in any way if they did happen to talk. The idea of video-recording was rejected on the grounds that it was too intrusive. For the data analysis, the texts were transcribed in discourse units (taken as a stretch of talk uttered by one person that ends with a falling intonation and a pause of more than 0.5 seconds). Then the text was tagged linguistically and the units labelled functionally. Excerpt (1) is an example of the tagged, labelled data; it is followed by a brief explanation of the coding system for the seven fields. (1) 01001 01002 01003 01004

02 02 02 02

S S S S

SD SD D D

21 11 22 11

MM AM MM AM

So you were-11 in em_XLUl? ((0.5)) In Sudan_21. Sudan_21. Mmm I’ve been-1 1 there_NDV2 for three years_20 but urn one year-20 em promoted one year-20 and that_NDP2 included_10 two years_20.

The first field indicates the discourse unit number (e.g. 01001, for dialogue one discourse unit one); the second indicates the knowledge area (e.g. 02, for knowledge of the language teaching world); the third is the function (e.g. S, for social,

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interactional); the fourth is the topic shift type (e.g. SA, for main topic shift; SD, for first dialogue line; D for continuation of a topic); the fifth is the speech act (e.g. 11, for a neutral attitude to self; 21, for neutral to the interlocutor); the sixth is the speaker (e.g. AM, for the first male recordee; MM for a male speaker, not a recordee); and the seventh is the text itself. The text is tagged to indicate parts of speech (e.g. V, for adverb; P, for pronoun), as well as grammatical information (e.g. X, for non-anaphoric reference; N, for anaphoric; D, for demonstrative), lexical information (e.g. 20, for a common non-course noun; 21, for a proper noun; 10, for a non-general verb excluding ‘to be’; 11, for ‘to be’) and clause information (e.g. XLUl, for unfinished sentence). Intonation, tone, speed and voice quality were not analysed, as they do not contribute to the central interest of implicitness. The intercoder reliability of the coding system was tested. Three excerpts, each about 30 discourse units long, were taken: 25%, 50% and 75% of the way through the data, each excerpt starting at the beginning of a new topic. Linguists and EFL teachers (DAL and IALS members of staff and DAL Ph.D. students) were asked to read an explanation of the parts of the language coding system and of the speech act system and then to label each discourse unit in the three excerpts which had been printed out for them. Then, the Kappa test (the number of right answers minus the estimated score divided by total number of questions minus the estimated score) was applied to calculate how closely their understanding and use of the code corresponded to the researcher’s intentions and use of the code. The next stage was to find the densities of each linguistic item and functional feature by calculating the percentage of discourse units containing them out of all discourse units. The density of each of the features within each knowledge area was also calculated, as was the density within each of the three terms. Then, a comparison was made between densities over the terms and between dialogues on the course itself and dialogues on topics in the world outside the course. Finally, the significance of the findings was confirmed by carrying out the statistical tests of Chisquared and testing the correlation between changes in features over time. Before moving on to the part of the study that looked into speech acts, it is necessary to refer briefly to the part that examined the knowledge areas (‘K areas’) assumed, in order to complete the background description of the course. An explanation of the K area categories is needed here because the relationship between speech acts and topic of conversation is central to this article. As explained elsewhere (Cutting, 1999), common knowledge, which all these in-group members can be expected to have in varying amounts, was categorised in two main areas: course knowledge (CK) and non-course knowledge (NCK). CK is knowledge of the MSc course, such as courses, lectures and tutorials, the examinations, projects and dissertation, books and articles. NCK is general knowledge of the world outside the course, such as world events, TV programmes, Scottish traditions, language teaching, and the university buildings and life. The analysis of K areas occurred in two stages. Firstly, the percentage of discourse units in each K area was calculated in all the data, and it was found that CK dialogues occupy 42% of all conversations. Thus, nearly half of the time throughout the course, students talk about aspects of the course itself. Secondly, the percentage

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of discourse units in each K area was calculated in each term, and this showed that CK dialogues occurred in 26% of the data in the autumn term, in 57% in the spring, and 27% in the summer. In the spring term, therefore, the rule seems to be that the students speak mostly about the course. It is most likely that the course events, the sudden pressure from the written examination and three projects, dictate the topic. Let us move on now to the analysis of how these topics are talked about and what speech acts are used in each term. The speech act model devised for the study grew out of Speech Act Theory, but the methodological approach was one that combined interactional sociolinguistics and conversation analysis.

2. Speech acts 2 .I. Theoretical background The model is based on Speech Act Theory (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969) in that it takes into account the taxonomies of direct and indirect speech acts to categorise each discourse unit. However, the general approach to data collection and analysis in the study differs from that of Speech Act Theory in a number of ways. The study does not begin with functions and move on to establishing linguistic realisations of the functions, as Speech Act theorists tend to do; it takes a bottom-up approach. The model devised was born of ethnomethodological observation of the conversations: the data dictated the categories. The study’s approach also differs in that, whereas Speech Act Theory proposes a closed set of conventional options of utterance-types and idealised models based on native speaker intuitions, it deals with actual utterances as they occur in context as a result of shared rules of a group of speakers. As Goodwin and Duranti (1992) say, in Speech Act Theory, context usually does not go beyond speaker and hearer, but in the ethnographic approach, several other aspects of the speech event are taken into consideration, such as spatial and temporal dimensions. Context in the present model includes background knowledge of the course and of its rules. The study’s approach differs again from Speech Act Theory in that it deals not with isolated utterances but with sequential relationships between utterances and examines how one speech act can limit the sort of speech act that follows. It is guided by interactional sociolinguistics, which analyses the way that social occasions create expectations for a display of involvement and that interactions impose their own rules of involvement (Goffman, 1971). It owes something to interaction-centred linguistic anthropology which relates “strategies for engaging in verbal interaction to the socialisation, maintenance and transformation of social realities such as family, the school, work or community political structures” (Ochs et al., 1996: 7). The approach is also guided by conversation analysis which investigates ways in which “talk and interaction both organize and are organized by institutions, relationships and culturally specified environments” (Ochs et al., 1996: 3). As Bell (in Firth, 1994: 54) says, the workplace has a distinctive “normative order”, and this will “constrain the type of cooperation, and have an impact on the process of negotiation itself”.

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The model used adapts Speech Act Theory for its purposes. Not all speech acts are relevant to common room chat. Austin’s model of performatives and constatives, and Searle’s model of representatives (e.g. asserting), directives (e.g. requesting), commissives (e.g. promising), expressives (e.g. thanking), and declarations (e.g. appointing) do not suit the purposes of a description of casual conversations as they stand, because chat is not primarily necessitated by a practical task (Cook, 1989). Common room chat would seem to have an interactional function rather than a transactional one (Brown and Yule, 1983): the students are simply passing the time together between lectures and filling the silence agreeably. It was felt that they do not carry out performatives and rarely use directives and cornmissives, suggesting, persuading and promising etc., in order to complete a practical joint activity, and that the only thing being negotiated is agreement (Firth, 1994). The data was first examined to check whether their speech acts are indeed limited to representatives and expressives, and whether the students are mostly asserting, informing and expressing feelings. The model contains categories to accommodate the features of real-life conversations such as phatic fillers and backchannels, which are relatively empty semantically. Searle (1969) proposes a principle of expressability that states that speakers can say exactly what they mean. Vagueness, ambiguity and incompleteness have no place in his model. Searle (1979) says that one thing that we do with language is “express our feelings and attitudes”, and this is the main aspect of the speech act that the study’s model focuses on. Carlson (1983 : 73) sees the expression of attitude as an essential part of the speech act: “understanding what the speaker meant consists largely in trying to recognize the attitudes the speaker intended his listeners to recognize - the speech acts he performed”. The model can be seen in the light of Eggins and Slade’s (1997: 124-143) description of interpersonal semantics, which covers ‘appraisal’, ‘involvement’ and ‘humour’. Parts of the study of the academic discourse community described elsewhere (Cutting, 1999) include ‘involvement’, the pointing to shared interpersonal worlds through in-group code, and ‘humour’, which creates ties of solidarity through teasing. The speech act part of the model centres on ‘appraisal’, the attitudinal colouring of talk. Eggins and Slade say that this involves (a) ‘appreciation’, or social evaluations (expressions of like and dislike) of people, objects and processes, (b) ‘affect’, or expressions of negative and positive emotional states (happiness / unhappiness, insecurity / security, and satisfaction / dissatisfaction), (c) ‘judgements’ on the ethics, morality and behaviour of others (sanction and esteem), and (d) ‘amplification’, or the magnification / minimisation of the intensity or degree of reality. It was felt that these distinctions made between the four categories are a little forced, and that there is necessarily a certain amount of overlap. Feelings of like or dislike of a person or object can surely be shown through expressions of satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Social evaluations of a person are often made in terms of judgements on their morality or behaviour, and they can be expressed through magnification. For the study’s model, all four types of appraisal were treated as one. The main dimensions of the model were types of attitude: whether speech acts were neutral, positive or negative.

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Speech acts showing attitude amount to what Goodwin and Goodwin (in Duranti and Goodwin, 1992) call an ‘assessment action’, in which speakers evaluate a person or event in an ‘effect display’. They would see the sections of dialogues showing attitude as an ‘assessment activity’, which involves several participants producing assessment actions and co-participating in the evaluative loading, matching the affect display and making an alignment toward words that is congruent with the assessment. For the present model, categories included not only the expression of attitude towards a third person or event, but also the attitude towards the speakers themselves and the attitude towards the interlocutors and the interaction. The speech acts were examined to follow the development over time of the expression of attitude, feelings and emotions. Influenced by Goffman’s (1971) theory that those who know each other show feeling, and Altman and Taylor’s (1973) theory that intimates have more emotional and evaluative communication, the researcher hypothesised that the density of non-neutral speech acts would increase throughout the course. She expected too that there would be a difference between the type of nonneutral speech acts occurring in CK conversations and the type of non-neutral speech acts occurring in NCK conversations; she aimed to explore the difference in detail. 2.2. Speech act model The model of speech acts regroups Austin and Searle’s speech acts under nine general headings. Table 1 shows that speakers discuss either themselves, the interlocutor or a third party, and that they display either a neutral, a positive or a negative attitude. Within each of the nine categories, there are several speech acts, as this section demonstrates. Table 1 Speech acts of expressions of attitudes Attitude

Neutral

Positive

Negative

To self To interlocutors/ communication To third party/ situation

‘I work’ ‘You work’ ‘I see’ ‘He works’ ‘It is this’

‘I work well’ ‘You work well’ ‘I agree’ ‘He works well’ ‘It is good’

‘I work badly’ ‘You work badly’ ‘I don’t agree’ ‘He works badly’ ‘It is bad’

Within the category ‘attitude to self’, discourse units were labelled ‘neutral to self’ when the words had the illocutionary force of ‘inform’, ‘explain’, ‘answer question’ and ‘narrate’ without any overt attitudinal colouring, as in ‘I did the phonetics, syntax and er grammar’ and ‘Cos we all met up er in the town centre at ten o’clock’. In (2) for example, AM narrates part of his life history in a way relatively devoid of positive or negative evaluation: (2) 01007

AM

And then er (0.5) I actually applied for a job in Gabbitas through Gabbitas.

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01008

CM

01009

AM

Yeah they they do a lot of private em secondary school don’t they? So I was with them.

Speech acts ‘neutral to self’ also included ‘express own intentions, plans, wants, needs and desires’, as in ‘It’s the other mark I want’, ‘I need to write first by hand’ and ‘But I think I’m going to put it on a computer in the end’. Discourse units were labelled ‘positive to self’ when they contained speech acts ‘inform, explain, answer polarity/information question expressing satisfaction with self; ‘evaluate self positively’ and ‘show self in a positive light’, as in ‘I like what I did very well actually’. Also considered ‘positive to self’ was the speech act ‘reassure/console self’, as in ‘We’ve still got a long time’, and, as in (3), in which NF is trying to work out whether she needs a new word that she has just learnt: (3) +

07052 07053 07054

NF BM BF

It seems like I don’t have to worry about that. (heh heh) No you don’t. No don’t worry.

Units were labelled ‘negative to self’ when there were speech acts ‘inform, explain, answer polarity/information question expressing dissatisfaction with self’, evaluate self negatively’, ‘show self in a poor light’, ‘minimise praise of self’, ‘excuse/justify self’; and ‘apologise’. Examples are ‘I have difficulty getting my brain going first thing in the morning’, ‘Never get things done early’, and (4) +

29063 29064

AF AF

I’m not very good at thinking up ideas. Especially in Linguistics.

in which AF blames herself for the fact that she has not yet decided what topic to do her project on. The category ‘attitude to interlocutors or communication’ includes the attitude of speakers to hearers or to the conversation itself. The justification for having one category for both was that the attitude to interlocutors is often reflected in the attitude to the communication. Thus, those who echo their interlocutors’ words, or prompt them to continue, are showing solidarity with their interlocutors; and those who challenge the felicity conditions of interlocutors or draw attention to the fact that they have not gauged their background knowledge correctly could be said to be showing a negative attitude to their interlocutors. In the category ‘neutral to interlocutors or communication’, the speech act tended to be ‘greet’ and ‘say good-bye’, or ‘ask after health’, for example ‘Hi’, ‘Long time no see’ and ‘See you later’. It included ‘fill phatically with a sociocentric sequence’ as in ‘You know’, ‘check and show comprehension’ as in ‘Right?‘, and ‘catch interlocutor’s attention and take the turn’ as in ‘Listen listen’. It contained ‘repeat oneself’, ‘laugh at own joke’, ‘add an afterthought that adds no new information and relinquish the turn’ as in ‘But there you go’, and also ‘backchannel (laugh) and acknowledge’ as in ‘Aha’ and ‘Does he ?‘. In (5) for example, CM is not so much

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agreeing as backchanelling, simply showing that he is listening to what DM is saying about his study for the examination:

(5) + + + +

10001 10002 10003 10004 10005 10006 10007 10008

CM What are you - which ones are you concentrating on? DM On the grammar /I syntax. CM /I Grammar sure. DM Er the grammar syntax and semantics. CM Semantics. CM Urn. ((0.5)) DM And possibly the phonetics. CM Yeah.

On the other hand, to backchannel is to show a certain degree of support. The expression of an entirely neutral attitude to interlocutors is rare in that even an enquiry after interlocutors’ health could be said to be an expression of interest in them. Acts were nevertheless categorised as neutral when there was no marked overt lexicalised expression of empathy or disagreement. The ‘neutral to interlocutors or communication’ category also included ‘ask polarity/information question’ with no attitudinal colouring, as in ‘You study at home I suppose? ’ , ‘Where- where do you stay then BF?’ and ‘What are you which ones are you concentrating on?‘. It included ‘request and command’ as in ‘So can I borrow it sometime? ’ and ‘Can I ask you to get the notes for me for the last few classes? ’ The category ‘positive to interlocutors or the communication’ contained speech acts ‘evaluate the interlocutor positively’, ‘reassure’, ‘console’ and ‘encourage’ as in ‘You’re doing the right thing’, as well as ‘congratulate’ and ‘praise’ as in ‘Oh that’s pretty impressive’, ‘sympathise’ and ‘empathise with interlocutors’ feelings about their situation/themselves’ as in ‘It must be actually very awkward’, and ‘establish normality of interlocutor’s situation’ as in ‘Urn I mean we all have the same problem I think’. In (6), in which DM, looking over BF’s project that she is about to hand in, reassures her that her problem is normal:

(6) + + +

22074 22075 22076 22077 22078 22079

DM BF DM DM DM BF

Is that the conclusion? Yeah. Don’t worry. The conclusion isn’t it’s not (1) it’s not (2) I couldn’t get anything like that. OK.

Within this category there were also the speech acts ‘agree with interlocutor’, ‘accept’, ‘admit’, ‘permit’, as in ‘Exactly yeah’, ‘Ah that’s it yeah’ and ‘Yeah I thought so too’. There was also ‘prompt to continue’, for example ‘You’re beginning to realise what?‘, as well as ‘predict their drift’ and ‘finish their sentence’, for example: (7)

01024

BM

Well, I was looking at it later and I thought well=

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+

01025 01026

CM BM

You fancy getting it clear. Yeah I-I don’t fancy this.

Showing a positive attitude also means ‘thanking’, ‘advising’ and ‘warning’, as in ‘It’s in your interest isn’t it to do more than one’ and ‘Don’t do any reading for it though’. Thus, in (8), BM is showing a positive attitude to NF by offering her some ideas about how to organise her essay:

(8)

+ +

17051

NF

17052 17053 17054 17055 17056 17057 17058

CM NF NF NF BM BM BM

It’s just my my paper is on Language and Linguistics is just what everybody says. Yeah. According to Newmeyer we have this. According to Lyons this. (2) I’m sure I’m sure it would be much better to get rid of it. Mm. Can you draw links? I always find it to draw to- to compare and contrast what the two what two or three people say.

It means ‘offering’, ‘promising’ and ‘inviting’, and ‘suggesting joint action’, as in ‘Do you want to see mine?‘, ‘So do you want me to change it?‘, ‘We er should have a-another battle of squash’. and as in (9): (9) + +

15148 15149 15150 15151 15152

BM We’ll have to go out sometime. DM Yeah. BM Before we forget each other’s faces. BM // (heh heh) It’s true. DM // (heh heh heh)

The category ‘negative attitude to interlocutors or the communication’ included ‘disagree with interlocutors’, ‘mention opposite point of view/situation’, and ‘challenge the factual content or truth value of what the interlocutors say’, as in ‘That’s not exactly the same thing’ and ‘Yeah I wouldn’t look at it like that anyway’. It was decided to put this act here despite the fact that speakers can disagree and at the same time feel positive towards the interlocutor, because an overt disagreement contravenes Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness principle and is often a focus on form when content is more important. Excerpt (10) demonstrates this. CM tells his non-British colleagues that they have the wrong information about the procedure for bringing a computer into the country:

(10)

06055

AM

+ 06056 + 06057

CM CM

Because you’re a foreigner in fact because you’re a foreigner you can not pay VAT. No you guys. Show them your passport and it says you have a temporary visa and then=

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06058

AF

1217

You’ve got to take it out.

This category includes ‘challenge felicity conditions’, ‘interrupt for clarification’ and ‘seek repetition’, as in ‘What did you say?‘, ‘What do you mean by ‘canvassing’?‘, and ‘Er you mean the book?‘. This category also includes ‘decline’, ‘refuse’, ‘deny’, ‘defend’, as in (1 l), in which BM teases AM that he has a negative attitude when BM asks them if they can their task until he has got his coffee:

(11)

03025 03026 03027 03028 + 03029 03030 03031

AM AM NM NM BM BM NM

I’ll just go and nip down and get some coffee. If that’s all right? Yes. That’s all right. Well I don’t know actually. /I We have we are all ready er // Probably start without you.

Finally, there was the category ‘attitude to the situation or a third party’. This category of speech acts includes both ‘situation’ and ‘third party’ because it contains references to everything outside the speaker and the interlocutor. The ‘neutral’ speech acts were ‘inform’, ‘explain’, ‘answer polarity/information question’ and ‘narrate’, as in ‘And they were doing a profile of him’, ‘Because I mean they had the same kind of divide didn’t they? ’ and ‘Well at six thirty this morning downstairs comes up and rings the door bell’. (12) contains an animated but non-evaluative description of a hypnotist show: (12)

02008

02009 02010 02011

MM It’s just that I met someone afterwards and they said that what was happening was things like em (1) like at one-one point they got these glasses. MM OK. MM And they put these glasses on these blokes. MM And the blokes acted as if the audience was naked.

The category included ‘ask polarity/information question’, as in ‘She must have a big sewing machine then?‘, ‘Did he direct you to any books or anything about your er?’ and ‘What about the Institute here? ’ The attitude ‘positive to the situation or the third party’ was ‘inform’, ‘explain’, ‘answer polarity/information question’, ‘express satisfaction with situation/third party’ and ‘evaluate the situation or the third party positively’, as in ‘But a good teacher all the same’ and ‘Absolutely brill’ as they say’. In (13), BF evaluates positively the warden’s house that her partner has been offered: (13) 04102 04103

BF BF

And the house is really nice so. (0.5) I reckon it’s all right. ((5))

The category ‘negative to the situation or the third party’ included ‘inform, explain, answer polarity/information questions expressing dissatisfaction with situation/third

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party’ and ‘evaluate situation/third party negatively’, as in ‘It’s completely useless’ . In (14), AF critic&es the writer of an article: (14)

16021

AF

16022

AF

I thought she was bit of a bore and hedging and surveying and so on and I couldn’t see the point of this semantic field boundary. I found it extremely fiddley.

It contained speech acts ‘express fear and apprehension of situation/third party’ as in ‘Kind of scary actually’. The explanation and examples given here of the nine macro-categories and speech acts within them, show that the model is necessarily crude. It is not being suggested that the speech acts always occur in the macro-category in which they have been placed, but that they tend to occur there. To take an example, the speech act ‘reassure/console self’ is generally used to be positive to self, but it can show a negative attitude to the interlocutors if the speaker breaks the Modesty Maxim (Leech, 1983) ‘minimise praise of self’ and the common room rule ‘be negative about yourself (see below). However, in the coding of the speech acts, the researcher took into account what she saw as the intention of the speaker, not the possible unintended effect on the interlocutor. Moreover, she considered the illocutionary force, not the perlocutionary effect. The coding system did not include conjectures of perlocutionary intentions as it would have complicated the system unnecessarily, but mainly because the interpretation of overall intention is even more subjective than the interpretation of speech acts. Speech acts were labelled at their face value. If words were spoken tongue-incheek, they were analysed at their face value in the speech act field of the spreadsheet, and labelled as humorous in the function field to show that there was irony, humour, etc. (11) above is an illustration of this: when AM asks if it is all right if he nips down and gets some coffee, and BM’s answer is ‘Well I don’t know actually’, this was labelled ‘negative to interlocutor’ and also as a ‘humorous utterance’. This double labelling system meant that findings were not disturbed by speech acts being taken at their face value. In order to be able to test the assumption that common room chat is mainly interactional, speech acts were considered in a different grouping, outside the nine categories named above. This time they were put under two main headings: (a) ones that tend to be used for a mainly transactional, instrumental function, for getting things done and (b) ones that could be used with a interactional purpose for socially cohering. Transactional language, practical discourse designed to accomplish specific purposes (Berry, 1981: 132), is “talk for getting business done in the world . . . in order to produce some change in the situation that pertains” (McCarthy, 1991: 135). An exchange was categorised as transactional when immediate action was needed in the present, as in a ‘request’ and a ‘command’, from the ‘neutral attitude to interlocutors’ category. (15) is an example: the students are at their first day welcoming buffet :

.I. Cutting /Journal

(15)

01053 01054 + 01055 01056

MM AM BM AM

of Pragmatics 33 (2001) 12074233

1219

I think I might go and have another bun. I thought I was going to get another one. Could you get me a tuna and sweet corn one please? Me as well.

It was also categorised as transactional if the information was needed for a certain action in the future, as in ‘advise’ and ‘warn’ from the ‘positive attitude to interlocutor’ category. In (16), CM gives advice about buying a computer by mail order : (16) 06011 06012

CM NF

The best thing to do is use a the- master card or something. I don’t have a master card.

When intercoder reliability tests were carried out on the coding system of speech acts, the results were not all satisfactory: the three coders scored 70, 50 and 50. One reason for this is that, given that one form can have many functions, even a broad coding system cannot avoid situations in which words can be interpreted in two ways or in which words realise two speech acts, and one coder thinks that one predominates, while another feels the other predominates. The following example is from a particularly marked area of disagreement in the coding excerpts: (17)

15 101 + 15102 15 103 + 15104 + 15105 + 15106

AF DM CM AF DM CM

Are you shutting out this lovely sunshine? It’s getting in my eyes. = Getting in my eyes. Oh no! Yeah. Yeah.

DM’s comment ‘It’s getting in my eyes’ was coded in the analysis as a negative attitude to the sun, but two of the coders saw this as evaluating himself negatively. AF’s ‘Oh no! ’ was coded as showing a negative attitude to the sun, but two coders saw it as a criticism of CM and DM and one saw it as an expression of sympathy with CM and DM. DM and CM’s ‘Yeah’ was coded in the analysis as showing a positive attitude to each other by agreeing; one coder saw this as a showing a negative attitude to themselves, another saw it as implying a negative attitude to AF and the other as simply filling the conversation with a backchannel. Another reason for the disagreement is that coding speech acts is subjective and each person’s interpretation of the implications of one excerpt can vary according to their own personality, attitude and perception of the world. Not surprisingly, coders seem to see a meaning in the sentences that they themselves would have intended if they had spoken them. In the coding excerpts, this passage about the Psycholinguistics lecture and lecturer occurs:

(18)

15110 15111

DM AF

Psycholinguistics? Mhm.

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15112 + 15113 + 15114 15115

AF DM DM AF

I have difficulty getting my brain going first thing in the morning. She certainly fills- fills it up doesn’t she? She’s got lots of things to tell you I’m sure. Yeah. (6) ((yawns)) (3)

On the coding of ‘She certainly fills it up, doesn’t she? She’s got lots of things to tell you I’m sure’ coders did not agree. Whereas in the analysis, it had been coded as a neutral description of the lecturer, two coders saw it as a positive evaluation and one saw it as a negative evaluation. This seems more a reflection of their own opinion of lecturers that deliver a densely packed lecture, than an interpretation of DM’s opinion of them. The low reliability of this part of the code does not undermine the validity of this part of the study because of the size of the corpus (26,000 words; 3,605 discourse units). If an intercoder had been asked to take 3,605 decisions, it is likely that the majority of the codings would have corresponded to those of the researcher. In addition, it is most likely the case that the nine global macro-categories were more reproducible and reliable, easy to agree on, than 50 specific individual speech act categories would have been. 2.3. Description of speech acts The analysis of speech acts occurred in four stages. First, each discourse unit was classified in one of the nine categories. Then, the percentage of discourse units containing the transactional speech acts ‘order’, ‘command’, ‘advise’ and ‘warn’, out of the total number of discourse units in each of the three terms was calculated. Next, the percentage of discourse units containing of each of the nine categories out of all discourse units was calculated for each of the K areas in each of the three terms. Finally, each of the non-neutral speech acts was analysed qualitatively. Analysis of speech acts from the point of view of function showed that whereas in the autumn term, 32% of all conversations contained transactional speech acts, in the spring and summer the level was on average lo%, thus confnming the researcher’s impression that common room chat has a mainly interactional function. Presumably, transactional speech acts occur in the autumn because the students are still finding their way about then; dialogues are concerned with negotiations about tasks - who is in whose tutorial group, what a tutorial task consists of, and so on. In the rest of the course, there is less to be negotiated, since they have got all their ways of studying and their support mechanisms established. Analysis also showed that CK speech acts are less likely to have a transactional function than NCK topics are (see Table 2). Thus, in the spring term, there is practically no transactional talk: that is when CK dialogues are the norm, and CK dialogues then have but 3% of ‘talk for getting things done’. The stressful spring term requires rather expressions of in-the-sameboatness and solidarity. An examination of non-neutral speech acts (to self, to interlocutors and to a third party) showed that 24% of all discourse units contain language overtly expressing a

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Table 2 Percentage of transactional units out of all units within each K area Term

NCK

CK

Autumn term Spring term Summer term

82 15 48

60 3 24

non-neutral attitude, and that, as hypothesised, these speech acts do increase throughout the course (Autumn: 15%, Spring: 25%, Summer: 27%). Thus, it appears that speech acts expressing an attitude are acceptable once the students come back after Christmas; once they get to know each other and the group has jelled, they can express more emotion. This is regardless of topic: it happens across both K areas. The analysis of each type of non-neutral speech act taken separately suggested more specific social rules, ones that could not have .been predicted. In both CK and NCK dialogues, the predominant attitude is ‘positive to interlocutors and communication’, constituting almost half of all non-neutral speech acts (see Table 3). Students know that they must ‘be nice to each other’, whatever they are talking about. Conversely, ‘negative to interlocutors and communication’ is three times as likely in NCK dialogues as it is in CK; students know not to risk being negative towards each other in the context of the course. Table 3 Percentage of each non-neutral speech act out of all non-neutral units Speech Act category

NCK

CK

Positive to self Negative to self Positive to interlocutors/communication Negative to interlocutors/communication Positive to third party/situation Negative to third party/situation

1 3 43 19 13 21

8 14 43 7 5 24

A longitudinal analysis of the speech act ‘positive to interlocutors and communication’, taking both K areas together, shows that there is a steady increase throughout the year (see Table 4). Statistical analysis of the difference between the number of units with speech acts expressing a ‘positive attitude to interlocutors and the communication’, and those not expressing it, in the three terms (see Table 5), gave a value of 2 of 35.899, significant at < 0.005 level. This significant increase may be indicative of an increased need to express in-the-same-boatness. The first social rule seems to be ‘Express a positive attitude to your interlocutors and the communication, whatever topic you are talking about, and especially in the spring and summer terms ‘.

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J. Cutting I Journal of Pragmatics 33 (2001) 1207-1233

Table 4 Percentage of ‘positive to interlocutors’, ‘negative to self’ and ‘negative to third party’ speech acts out of all units Term

Positive to interlocutors

Negative to self

Negative to third party

Autumn term Spring term Summer term

5 9 13

2 3 1

4 7 4

Table 5 Frequencies of DUs with speech acts expressing a positive attitude to interlocutor/communication K areas in each of the three terms

in all

Positive to interlocutor and communication

Autumn

Spring

Summer

Yes No

38 702

161 1624

145 937

The second most frequent non-neutral speech act in both CK and NCK dialogues is ‘negative to third party or situation’, and in CK dialogues the rate is only slightly higher than in NCK (see Table 3). Students expect each other to sound negative about things in general. Conversely, CK dialogues have but a third of the ‘positive to third party or situation’ that NCK dialogues have; students know to avoid appearing pleased with components of the course context. Table 3 also shows that CK dialogues have five times more of the speech act ‘negative attitude to self’ than NCK dialogues do. The category is the third densest of CK non-neutral categories. Statistical analysis of the difference between the number of units with speech acts expressing a ‘negative attitude to self’ and ‘negative attitude to third party’ in CK and those expressing these speech acts in NCK (see Table 6) gave a value of 2 of 41.492, significant at < 0.005 level. This suggests that the difference between CK dialogues and NCK dialogues with respect to these negative categories is significant. Students know that they are expected to sound negative about the course and their progress through it. Table 6 Frequencies of DUs with speech acts expressing a negative attitude to self and situation in CK and in NCK in all the data Negative to self and third party/situation

CK

NCK

Yes

1.52 1343

97 1999

No

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A longitudinal analysis of all dialogues taking both K areas together showed that both the speech acts ‘negative attitude to self’ and ‘negative attitude to third party’ peaked in the spring and then dropped in the summer (see Table 4). The increase in all non-neutral speech acts in the spring may be a reflection of the fact that CK dialogues predominate then, or of the fact that the pressure from the course increases then. Thus the second social rule seems to be: ‘Express a negative attitude to yourself and to the situation, especially if you are talking about the course, and especially in the spring term’. A detailed qualitative analysis of the predominant speech acts within the category ‘negative attitude to a situation or third party’ in CK dialogues showed that students evaluate negatively the work, books and lecturers. They complain that the revision for the examination is ‘a lot of work’, that 3,000 words for the project is ‘lot’ to write, that there is ‘a lot of pressure’, and that the main problem is ‘time’. They express dissatisfaction with theories, fields of thought and courses about them, saying that they are ‘rubbish’, as in: (19)

08016 08017 08018 08019 + 08020 + 08021

AM AM AM AM AM CM

Gram- Grammar Two. But it I mean it’s it’s just (0.5) I don’t know. It’s just I don’t know. Bloody tosh, isn’t it? Well it’s- it’s a bit abstract. ((1))

This example shows that negative evaluations are interactive in the sense that if one speaker displays a negative attitude, the other(s) are expected to do the same. The students complain that books are too ‘theoretical’, and that articles are ‘completely useless’. In (20), BM and DM are discussing an article: (20)

15199 15200

BM DM

It’s pretty it’s scurrilous isn’t it? I think it is awful.

Again, BM chooses to talk negatively and the DM is expected to echo the sentiments. They evaluate some lecturers in an exaggeratedly negative fashion: one is ‘a fanatic’, and another ‘a complete maniac’. It would seem that one way that students can show a positive attitude to the course is when they are being ironic and flouting the maxim of quality to imply a negative attitude : (21)

29052 29053 + 29054 29055 + 29056

AF NF NF AF DM

You did this last week didn’t you? // (heh) /I Yeah. I really like the teacher very much. (heh heh) It’s very relaxing, (1)

Here, NF gives the teacher as the cause of her being late to class again. Using an indirect speech act, she implies that she does not like the teacher; DM echoes her sentiments and her ironic conversational implicature.

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J. Cutting I Journal of Pragmatics 33 (2001) 1207-1233

The analysis of expressions of a ‘negative attitude to self’ in CK dialogues showed that the main speech acts in this category are ‘criticise yourself’, ‘express worry’, and ‘minimise your progress’. Students evaluate themselves and their work negatively, possibly in the expectation that the interlocutor will contradict them or reassure them of the normality of the situation. They say that their ‘handwriting is awful’, that they are ‘no good at memory things’, that they ‘never get things done on time’, that they cannot ‘get [their] brains going’, that they cannot ‘come up with’ a point themselves in their project. In (22), the speaker shows himself in a negative light as he describes how he did the tutorial task: (22) +04111 04112 04113

BM BF BM

+04114 04115 04116 04117

BM BF BM BM

04118

BF

And I reached the stage where I’d no idea. Yeah. ((1)) And also when I- when I was looking back I realised I actually hadn’t read the first part again which gave me a real big clue for one of the first. It was really stupid. Yeah. But em (1.5) I didn’t do any reading. (0.5) I just had one book which wasn’t on the list which was tootoo long really to give // me any conclusions. // No I- I haven’t read anything specific for it. (2.5)

If speakers feel that they may have alarmed interlocutors about their good progress, perhaps showing themselves in a good light, they minimise the significance of it by playing it down, as in: (23) 29010

/.../

29011 29029

AF DM DM

I’ve got a couple of totally uninformed sort of basically stupid ideas for a project. What? Well what are these yeah what are these ideas then? ((1.5))

A qualitative analysis of expressions of a ‘positive attitude to interlocutors’ shows that the main speech acts in this category are ‘empathise’, ‘console’, ‘encourage’ and ‘advise’. These occur in response to the negative evaluations of situation and self mentioned above. The students ‘empathise’ with each other using expressions such as ‘I’ve done that’ and ‘same here’; they show solidarity by saying that they are in the same boat. In (24) below, about whether to do a higher degree immediately or leave it till later; DM empathises with CM’s attitude in ‘It’s either now (2) or never for me’ and encourages him in his decision: (24) /...I

27069 27070 27077 27078 + 27079

CM CM DM CM DM

Not doing any more schooling. It’s either now (2) or never for me. Yeah. But = But as- as I feel at the moment I’m the same as you.

J. Cutting I Journal of Pragmatics 33 (2001) 12074233

/...I

27080 27098 + 27099 27100 27101

DM DM DM DM CM

1225

Finish. No if you want to do it badly enough. You’re doing the right thing. // Do it now yeah. //Yeah.

Another response to worried colleagues is to ‘console’ them; to tell them ‘don’t worry’, that their progress seems fine. This happens mostly in CK. In (25), CM says that he is going to miss the last week of class and seeks the approval of his colleagues; DM reassures him by minimising the problem: (25)

+ 27126 27127

DM DM

+ 27128

DM

Er it’s no big deal. By the time you get to the last week you’ll have done most of what you need to- you’ll know what you need to know for the portfolio. If you’re answering questions anyway (3) shouldn’t be a problem ((2))

On occasions, the students ‘encourage’ each other by praising or congratulating. This happens more in CK than in NCK: students tell each other they have done well, or have good arguments and ideas. In (26), DM has just read through BF’s project and praises it:

(26)

22086

DM

+ 22087

DM

There’s nothing (1) there’s nothing startling that I can see missing from this (2) and it’s very readable. (1)

Another reaction to the ‘negative to self’ speech act is to ignore it. Notice in (22) that BF’s reaction to BM’s ‘It was really stupid’, and in (23) that DM’s reaction to AF’s ‘totally uninformed sort of basically stupid ideas for a project’ is not to ‘console’ (e.g.: ‘Don’t worry if you’re stupid’) or to ‘encourage’ by disagreeing (e.g.: ‘Oh no, you’re not stupid’), but rather to ignore the negative evaluation of self as if they knew that BM and AF were not serious about it. They let it pass with ‘Yeah’ or ‘What?’ and then concentrate rather on empathising with the negative evaluation of the situation (‘No I- I haven’t read anything specific for it’) and prompting the speaker to continue with a question emptied of negative evaluation (‘Well what are these yeah what are these ideas then? ‘). In the summer term, sometimes students who feel close to each other do not respond to colleagues evaluating the situation and themselves negatively by showing empathy at all. By then, they trust each other enough to risk threatening each other’s face by offering ‘advice’ and ‘warning’ (transactional ‘positive to interlocutor’ talk). Thus, in (27) DM fears that he will have difficulty finding a dissertation topic: (27)

21109

DM

Been trying to think of something that might stretch to twenty thousand words. ((2))

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I.../

/.../

21111 + 21115

DM AF

21116

DM

And is not excruciatingly boring. ((Blows nose)) Well you might have to just face that and cope with it. ((sniffs)) Mm ((2))

and AF’s response is not ‘I’ve been trying to think of something too’ but ‘face it and cope with it’. Her advice is softened with the hedge ‘well’ and the tentative modal ‘might’. Just as students can show a positive attitude to the course if they are using irony and implying a negative attitude, they can show a negative attitude to the interlocutor if they are indulging in a little banter and implying a positive attitude. Teasing colleagues in the context of the course is a risky endeavour and it only occurs in the autumn and the summer when the stress-level is lower (Cutting, 1996). In (28), DM expresses contentment that the deadline for a project has been moved forward: (28)

23033 23034 23035 + 23036 + 23037 23038

AM DM BF BF BF DM

An /I extra week. // 0::h. Ah. Oh you dosser! You’re an absolute dosser! (heh heh heh) Brilliant=

BF evaluates his attitude negatively, just to tease. It becomes more obvious that these social rules exist in the common room, when speakers break them and meet with an adverse reaction. Let us start with the first ‘social rule’: ‘Express a positive attitude to your interlocutors and the communication, whatever topic you are talking about, and especially in the spring and summer terms ‘.

Speakers rarely go out of their way to worry their colleagues. Thus, when it happens, the tension that it creates is striking. (29) comes from the beginning of the spring term when the pressure has just begun; CM and AM are discussing their revision for the examination: (29)

/...I

08022 08023 + 08024 08025 08026 08027 08028 08029 08035 08036

AM AM CM AM AM CM

But things like this linguistics as well. You know I don’t mi-mind it. You still got enough time for that? ((0.5)) There’s not a lot of things they can ask. Cos we haven’t actually done it that deeply have we? I’ve spent the most time right now on all this all this load of er in Language and Linguistics. AM I/ Yes. CM // Cos I really want to answer that question. AM And I’ve I’ve haven’t done anything about the Psycholinguistics. AM I haven’t done Chomsky.

1. Cutting I Journal of Pragmatics 33 (2001) 1207-1233

08037 + 08038

AM CM

08039 08040

AM AM

08041 08042

CM AM

1227

Which is (0.5) probably very stupid but you /I know. // Avoiding Chomsky in Linguistics is: : procrastination I think. We::ll. No em avoiding it in terms of em (1.5) in terms of er I mean obviously in relation to other things you’ve got to= Yeah= but not necessarily you know in depth.

AM is evidently nervous about the linguistics revision. He obeys the rule of speaking negatively about oneself: ‘and I haven’t done Chomsky. Which is (0.5) probably very stupid but you // know’. However, CM makes no attempt to ‘console’ or ‘empathise’. His reaction is to intensify AM’s worry: ‘You still got enough time for that?’ and ‘Avoiding Chomsky in Linguistics is: : procrastination I think’. These two conflicting utterances (amounting to ‘don’t do it now’ and ‘do it now’), co-occurring with statement that shows himself in a positive light (‘I’ve spent the most time right now on all this all this load of er in Language and Linguistics cos I really want to answer that question’) do not sound as friendly as AF did with her advice in example (27) above. More solidarity and less power, could have been expressed with a hedge and a modal, ‘Perhaps you might not have time for that now’. Unconsoled, AM is left consoling himself, showing himself a positive attitude, with ‘There’s not a lot of things they can ask. Cos we haven’t actually done it that deeply have we?‘. He is thrown into confusion; witness his incoherent ‘No em avoiding it in terms of em (1.5) in terms of er I mean obviously in relation to other things you’ve got to but not necessarily you know in depth’. When the second social rule of the common room, ‘Express a negative attitude to yourselfand to the situation, especially if you are talking about the course, and especially in the spring term’, is broken, it meets with an adverse reaction. Starting with evaluations of the course, it would be fair to say that when students realise that they have expressed a positive attitude to the course, they themselves immediately counter-act it with a negative expression. For example, in (30) AM says that the courses ‘Linguistics Research’ and ‘Language and Linguistics’ are ‘interesting’ and that he is ‘really quite pleased’: (30)

08043

AM

08044 08045 08046 + 08047 08048 08049

AM AM AM AM CM AM

Cos (0.5) I mean things like Linguistics Research and that stuff in Language and Linguistics. It’s quite interesting actually. I was really quite pleased. I mean it’s (2) I don’t know. I’ll be glad when it’s finished. ((1)) Yeah //it’s // I’m not really into it. ((4))

and then has to add negatively that he will ‘be glad when it’s finished’ and that he is ‘not really into it’. If, on the other hand, speakers express a positive attitude to the

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course and then leave it, this is met with open disagreement, an attitude ‘negative towards the interlocutor’. That is to say: if the speaker breaks the rules, the hearers break them too. (31) is an example: CM is overjoyed that the Easter holidays are upon them: (31)

13126

CM

Do you realise that we have from er March nineteen until (0.5) April the twentieth? 13127 CM With nothing to do? + 13 128 AM Nothing // to do! + 13129 FF // Well got a project to hand in at // em (heh heh) + 13130 AM //Yes!

There is a group outcry. Moving on to evaluations of self, when students realise that they have expressed a positive attitude to themselves, they again counter-act it with the expression of a negative one. The difference here is that the counter-acting with a negative expression only comes after the interlocutors have ‘congratulated’ and thus possibly embarrassed the speaker, or at least reminded them of the rule. Thus, in (32), in which AM says how pleased he is with his survey of sample examination questions, (32)

08007

AM

08008 08009 08010 08011 + 08012

AM AM CM AM AM

08013

AM

And I’ve been I’ve been pleased with the progress of essay type questions. I’ve been doing a lot of the grammar. I did a lot of the grammar recently. Oh you have // excellent. // Of the grammar. Not necessarily coming up with the answer but I just I don’t know it. // That was all.

It may be CM’s ‘Oh you have // excellent’ that makes AM tone it down with ‘Not necessarily coming up with the answer’. Here, too, there are examples of ‘if the speaker breaks the rules, the hearers break them too’. In (33), when CM describes with satisfaction his method for organising his learning for the examination and does not add a negative comment about himself, DM gives him minimal feedback (‘Oh! ‘, ‘Ah’ and ‘Oh yeah’) and no praise or congratulations: (33)

10071 10072 + 10073 + 10074 10075 10076 10077

CM // I have s-sort of made an outline for each for each person. DM Oh! CM And er (2) I think I’ll be OK now. (1) CM I like essay questions. DM Ah. CM That was all my undergraduate exams were essay questions. DM Oh yeah.

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Thus CM has to go on talking on his own, as it were. Another reaction to speakers expressing a positive attitude to themselves is for interlocutors to respond with banter, a humorous expression of a negative attitude to the interlocutor which carries the indirect speech act of expressing a positive attitude. In the following, AM describes how he got on with the preparation for a tutorial task: (34)

03076 03077 03078 03079 03080 + 0308 1 03082 03083

BM BM BM BM BM AM

And I like what-I-did very well actually. Oh did you? You did! Very good ! That’s great. (heh heh heh) (1) Well do you want us to take it to pieces or something? Yeah yeah yeah go on. Rip it to pieces.

BM almost ‘puts him down’ with his banter and AM plays along with it. Another reaction is for interlocutors to respond with irony, with a humorous expression of a positive attitude to the interlocutor, carrying the indirect speech act of expressing a negative attitude. In the following, BF describes how she managed to get her sandwich before anyone else: (35)

14031 14032 + 14033 + 14034 14035

BF DM DM DM BF

I beat the sandwich rush. Oh yeah! (heh heh) That’s quite clever. (5) On the ball as ever. When it comes to food yeah that’s about it.

Again, BF co-operates with the irony. The rule could be: ‘when teased for breaking the rules, react positively’. The study of speech acts shows general tendencies regardless of personality. Although personality was not studied in depth, an overall global impression of personality in the data was included. BM likes to express negative feelings about third parties and situations; CM tends to show himself in a positive light and deny solidarity and reassurance to his colleagues; DM is the warmest solidarity-giver, guaranteed to express a positive attitude towards his interlocutors; AF goes in for selfdeprecation, modestly showing herself in a poor light; and BF most enjoys a little banter with her male colleagues, playfully showing a negative attitude to them. These differences were not great enough to invalidate the overall results: it can be seen that they are not the causes of the changes observed over time. When a calculation was made of the distribution of discourse units spoken by each of the six recordees in each of the three terms (see Table 7), it was found that BM and AF feature less in the spring and summer term recordings; yet they are the ones who are most negative to self and third party, and speech acts expressing a negative attitude to self and third party peak in the spring. It was also found that CM features more in

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the spring and summer dialogues than he does in the autumn and that he does not go in for expressions of positive attitude to interlocutor; yet the rate of such speech acts increases over the spring and summer. Thus it would seem that the changes are not a reflection of the characteristics of the recordee featuring most in each term. Table I Proportion of discourse units spoken by each of the six recordees Tenu

AF

BF

AM

BM

CM

DM

Autumn term Spring term Summer term

16 8 8

19 9 18

18 26 1

36 12 12

5 28 31

6 17 30

Triangulation showed that the recordees felt that the function of their conversations was mainly interactional. In the questionnaire (see Appendix A), most indicated that they spoke to all students to ‘enjoy their company’, to ‘have a laugh’, ‘to pass the time’, ‘see how they fared compared to others’ and ‘to relieve their anxieties’. In the discussion, they emphasised that their main aim had been ‘to pass the time’. In the questionnaire question, they all said that they talked about the world, Edinburgh, everyday life, linguistics and the course, but only half said that they talked about the staff and other students. As regards the topic of feelings, the male recordees protested that they never spoke to any of their colleagues on topics showing their feelings, and the female recordees commented that this sort of topic was reserved for close friends. Yet they all said that they spoke ‘to relieve their anxieties’. Analysis has shown, too, that by the spring term, all six of them could not help showing feelings, emotions and attitudes to everyone. It could be, of course, that they interpreted the question differently from how the researcher intended, understanding ‘feelings’ to mean not non-neutral attitudes in speech acts, but selfdisclosure of private matters or an overt expression of sentimental feelings. It could also be that they were quite simply unaware of how their words showed negative feelings about the course and a generally positive attitude to their colleagues.

4. Conclusion This article has defined the speech acts of the in-group’s casual conversations in terms of interpersonal pragmatics. It has suggested that the main function of common room chat is interactional and that speech acts expressing non-neutral attitudes increase over time, as was expected. The article has demonstrated that there are some tendencies that occur regardless of topic, and others that are reserved for CK topics. Whereas speech acts expressing a positive attitude to the interlocutor increase throughout the course in all topics, those expressing a negative attitude to self and to the situation are typical of moments of increased work pressure in CK topics. In CK topics, an attitude of positive to the course or self can only be expressed in jest.

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The speaker’s choice of speech act depends on the speech acts in the immediately preceding discourse: in CK topics, speakers respond to their colleagues’ negative expressions about themselves and the course, by empathising, consoling, encouraging and occasionally advising and warning. When speakers do not show a positive attitude to interlocutors, the latter feel uncomfortable. When students find themselves expressing a positive attitude to the course or themselves, they add a negative expression; otherwise their positive attitude is met with an embarrassing ‘congratulations’, open disagreement or a minimal reaction. The more frequent reaction to the unwanted expression of positive attitude is light-hearted irony or banter. This article has suggested that the common room dictates rules about the expression of attitudes. The question is finally, why do the in-group members follow the rules? The overall function of common room conversations is interactional; students talk to show solidarity. If one accepts that ‘individuals shift their speech styles to become more like that of those with whom they are interacting’ (Giles, 1979: 46), that the speech acts express strategies of rapport and involvement (Tannen, 1984), that a show of feeling is a marker of intimacy (Goffman, 1971; Taylor, 1973), and that using irony and banter stressing the shared background and values constitutes a positive politeness technique (Brown and Levinson, 1987: 124), one could conclude that the students follow the rules in order to cohere with the rest of the group and feel its support. Although these conclusions are most likely true, they remain at the level of conjecture. In the triangulation questionnaire, the recordees were asked ‘Why do you talk?’ but not ‘Why do you follow the social rules?‘, because the rules only emerged once the data had been analysed, and therefore after the triangulation and after the students had finished the course and had taken up their EFL teaching posts around the world. It may also be the case that not all the conversations are about solidarity. The recordees indicated that they talked to ‘see how they fared compared to others’. They may be testing the normality of their attitudes against those of the group, and although ‘checking opinions against those of others’ can be seen as affiliative behaviour (Schachter, 1959: 84), they might be checking their peers’ progress in order to compete better. If there were power struggles going on under the surface, it could be that the rule-breakers who show themselves in a positive light and deny solidarity to their colleagues are in fact asserting superiority in order to intimidate. As explained in Section 2.2 of this article, the coding system did not include perlocutionary effects, because the interpretation of overall intention is even more subjective than the interpretation of speech acts. It might be fruitful, however, to attempt to re-examine the data from the point of view of ‘power’, to see if the relations are as harmonious as this article has suggested. It might lead to a better understanding of what goes on in the common room. The findings described here are generalisable to the group as a whole because the tendencies exist independently of which of the six recordees predominates at a given time, and because the six claim to have interacted with other members of the MSc group as much as they did with each other. Whether the findings are generalisable to all academic discourse communities is another matter; this article refers to a case study and as such the generalisability is limited. It may be that all student groups

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function the same way; it may be that work centre common rooms have similar rules. Further studies need to be done with other discourse communities that are united by a common goal, and that have a place to converse socially and informally about the common goal and general issues as well, in order to see if the same rules apply. It would be interesting to discover whether units with speech acts expressing a positive attitude to interlocutors increase over time in all groups, and whether the negative attitude is reserved for the topic area of the goal that unites the in-group members.

References Altman, Irwin and Dalmas Arnold Taylor, 1973. Social penetration: The development of interpersonal relationships. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Austin, John, 1962. How to do things with words. London: Oxford University Press. Bell, David, 1994. Negotiation in the workplace: The view from a political linguist. In: Alan Firth, ed., The discourse of negotiation: Studies of language in the workplace, 41-58. Oxford: Elsevier Science. Berry, Margaret, 1981. Systemic linguistics and discourse analysis: A multi-layered approach to exchange structure. In: Malcolm Coulthard and Martin Montgomery. eds., Studies in discourse analysis, 120-145. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Brown, Penelope and Levinson, Stephen, 1987. Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brown, Gillian and George Yule, 1983. Discourse analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carlson, Lauri, 1983. Dialogue games. Dordrecht: Reidel. Cook, Guy, 1989. Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cutting, Joan, 1996. MSc common room casual conversations: A lexico-grammatical longitudinal study of a discourse community in formation. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Edinburgh. Cutting, Joan, 1999. The implicit grammar of the in-group code. Applied Linguistics 20(l): 179-202. Duranti, Alessandro and Goodwin, Charles, eds., 1992. Rethinking context: Language as an interactive phenomenon. (Studies in the Social and Cultural Foundations of Language 11.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eggins, Suzanne and Diana Slade, 1997. Analysing casual conversation. London: Cassell. Firth, Alan, ed., 1994. The discourse of negotiation: Studies of language in the workplace. Oxford: Elsevier Science. Giles, Howard and Robert St. Clair, 1979. Language and social psychology. Oxford: Blackwell. Goffman, Erving, 1971. Relations in public. London: Penguin. Goodwin, Charles and Marjorie Harness Goodwin, 1992. Assessments and the construction of context. In: Alessandro Duranti and Charles Goodwin, eds., 147-190. Labov, William 1972. Introduction. In: William Labov, Sociolinguistic patterns, xiii-xviii. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Leech, Geoffrey, 1983. Principles of pragmatics. New York: Longman. McCarthy, Michael, 1991. Discourse analysis for language teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ochs, Elinor, Emanuel Schegloff and Sandra Thompson, eds., 1996. Interaction and grammar. (Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics 13.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schachter, Stanley, 1959. The psychology of affiliation: Experimental studies of the sources of gregariousness. Stanford, CA: Stanford University. Searle, John Rogers, 1969. Speech acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Searle, John Rogers, 1979. Expression and meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Swales, John, 1990. Genre analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tannen, Deborah, 1984. Conversational style: Analyzing talk among friends. New Jersey: Ablex. Tannen, Deborah, 1989. Talking voices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Appendix A: Triangulation questionnaire Function of talk Why do you talk? 1 to pass the time 3 to see how you fare compared with others

5 to have a laugh

2 because you enjoy the company 4 to relieve your anxieties 6 other reasons

III Topics What do you talk about? 1 the world 3 everyday life 5 the course 7 other students 9 your feelings

2 Edinburgh 4 linguistics 6 the staff 8 your personal life 10 other

IV Language Which do you use? 1 informal language 3 emotional language

2 slang and obscenities 4 specialised AL terms and names

V Conversation flow

Which three of the following characteristics do you like best in people? Those who 2 switch from topic to topic 1 speak for a long time on one topic 4 speak slowly with pauses 3 speak fast without pauses 6 speak only when you’ve finished 5 sometimes speak along with you VI Recording

Did my recording affect your speech? If so, how?

Joan Cutting (BA French, Birmingham, 1977; Ph.D. Applied Linguistics Edinburgh, 1996) taught English in Havana from 1977-1990, lecturing on Cuba’s Masters Programme of EFL and Applied Linguistics. From 1990-1995, she taught medical English and EAP in the University of Edinburgh. Since 1995, she has been Senior Lecturer in EAP in The University of Sunderland, also teaching on linguistics modules. She has presented papers in Sociolinguistics, BAAL, and BALEAP conferences, on spoken discourse analysis, written assessments of English native speaker students, and opening lines of questions from the floor, and has published articles on coding systems and written assessments.