They are so stupid, so stupid. Emotional affect in Estonian school-related complaints

Journal of Pragmatics 153 (2019) 20e33

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They are so stupid, so stupid. Emotional affect in Estonian school-related complaints €a €bis*, Tiit Hennoste, Andra Rumm, Kirsi Laanesoo Andriela Ra University of Tartu, Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics, Jakobi 2, Tartu, 51005, Tartumaa, Estonia

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history: Available online 15 March 2019

In this paper we study indirect complaints in Estonian everyday school-related conversations. We analysed 40 complaint sequences in 28 conversations from the Corpus of Spoken Estonian of the University of Tartu. The analysis focuses on how a complainant expresses emotions in a complaint. The analysis shows that the Estonian complainant formulates his/her complaints by using words and phrases with negative connotations, extreme case formulations, intensifiers, exaggerations, exclamations, swear words, and idiomatic expressions. Syntactically, many complaints are constructed with negative clauses. Prosodically, the most important words are presented with strong emphasis, marked rhythm, and louder voice. Rhetorical devices such as repetition, rhetorical questions, comparison, irony, and imitation are employed to express emotions and justify that the situation is worth complaining about. Estonians prefer not to name their emotions explicitly. The paper argues that emotionality and variation in the use of linguistic means in complaint sequences are related to two crucial factors: (1) the extent to which the complaint matter concerns the complainant personally and (2) the distribution of the complainant's and the recipient's roles. If one participant is a complainant and the other is a recipient who reacts, emotionality varies during a complaint sequence. If the participants construct a complaint jointly, they upgrade it constantly, using increasingly strong means. © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Indirect complaints Emotions Conversation Estonian

1. Introduction The present study investigates indirect complaints in Estonian everyday school-related conversations. No previous studies of Estonian complaints have been published. Heinemann and Traverso (2009: 2381) have defined complaining as expressing “feelings of discontent about some state of affairs, for which responsibility can be attributed to “someone” (to some person, organization or the like)”. The latter characteristic distinguishes complaints from troubles talk, the focus of which is on “the teller and his [or her] experiences” (Jefferson and Lee, 1981: 411; Haugh, 2016: 729). Several studies have highlighted that complaining has two negative elements: (1) something negative exists in the complained-of situation; (2) the speaker has a negative stance towards the complained-of situation (Drew and Holt, 1988; Drew, 1998; Traverso, 2009: 2385; Pakkanen, 2011: 384).

* Corresponding author. €a €bis), [email protected] (T. Hennoste), [email protected] (A. Rumm), [email protected] (K. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (A. Ra Laanesoo). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2019.02.016 0378-2166/© 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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Complaints appear both in everyday and in institutional interaction. Everyday complaining has been studied in different languages: English (Dersley, 1998; Drew, 1998; Dersley and Wootton, 2000; Edwards, 2005; Drew and Walker, 2009), French (Laforest, 2002, 2009; Traverso, 2009), Polish (Wyrwas, 2002), and others. Complaining has also been analysed in some institutional contexts, such as in Italian calls to the ambulance (Monzoni, 2009), Danish home help visits (Heinemann, 2009), Finnish health care settings (Ruusuvuori and Lindfors, 2009) and learning group discussions (Pakkanen, 2011). Complaining is a dialogical interaction which requires a minimum of two participants: a complainant and a recipient. The research literature has mostly treated a complaint as the first part of an adjacency pair which makes relevant a specific type of paired action. It has been shown that the preferred response to complaints is affiliation, alignment, and/or sympathy (Drew, 1998; Drew and Walker, 2009; Traverso, 2009: 2386). The term ‘affiliation’ is used “to describe actions with which a recipient €m and Sorjonen, 2012: 351). Affiliation is displays that s/he supports the affective stance expressed by the speaker” (Lindstro tightly related to affectivity and emotion. Alternative reactions to a complaint include requesting more information, giving advice (Boxer, 1993; Pakkanen, 2011), commiseration (Boxer, 1993), explaining the complained-of situation, complaining further (Pakkanen, 2011), or dissociating him/herself from the complainant (Laforest, 2009: 2453). Research has shown that complaints have several intra- and interpersonal functions in interaction. It has been claimed that the purpose of complaining is to get affiliation or sympathy from the recipient, to seek solidarity (Drew and Walker, 2009; Traverso, 2009). Expressing subjective evaluation serves the interpersonal metafunction (see Vainik and Brzozowska, 2019) and a complaint may be expressed simply to vent the speaker's feelings (Wolfe and Powell, 2006: 14). In family conversations, regulation of behaviours of the recipient is the ultimate goal of direct complaining (Laforest, 2009). Kowalski (1996) describes how complaints are used for self-presentation; for example, speakers may complain about the traffic to excuse their lateness. A complaint may serve multiple functions at the same time, for example “I'm tired” “might both perform an intrapersonal catharsis and serve as an attempt to excuse the speaker's behavior” (Wolfe and Powell, 2006: 14). Two kinds of complaints can be distinguished: direct and indirect. A direct complaint is addressed to the recipient who is the person held accountable for the trouble (Pomerantz, 1978; Dersley and Wootton, 2000; Monzoni, 2009). In indirect complaints, a speaker complains about some absent party or external circumstances (Jefferson, 1984; Drew, 1998; Edwards, 2005; Drew and Walker, 2009; Ruusuvuori and Lindfors, 2009; Traverso, 2009; Pakkanen, 2011). Mostly, complaining has been approached as an activity that involves the complainant as the sufferer (e.g. Drew and Holt, 1988; Dersley, 1998; Drew, 1998; Ruusuvuori and Lindfors, 2009; Traverso, 2009). Drew and Walker (2009) have dealt with cases in which the recipient develops the complaint and complains on the other's (the complainant's) behalf, taking his/her side in some matter. Besides, complaint sequences are different in terms of the distribution of the complainant's and the recipient's roles. Most researchers have dealt with cases where one participant is a complainant and the others are recipients. Some studies (Edwards, 2005; Heinemann, 2009; Laforest, 2009) have focused on the joint production of the complaint. It is important for the complainant to show that the situation is worth complaining about. By complaining, a speaker expresses a negative attitude towards the target. A complainant displays his/her emotive involvement in deploying a combination of means which can be divided into two groups. On the one hand, the complainant employs rhetorical, lexicosemantic, syntactic, prosodic and visual devices (see e.g. Pomerantz, 1986; Drew and Holt, 1988; Drew, 1998; Wyrwas, 2002; Edwards, 2005; Monzoni, 2009; Traverso, 2009; Selting, 2012). In this regard, various “complaint-specific” means are described in studies on different languages: (a) lexico-semantic means: lexical items with negative connotations, evaluative words, exclamatory expressions, extreme case formulations, swear words, intensifiers, exaggerations, idiomatic expressions; (b) prosodic means: extra-strong emphasis, higher pitch register, marked rhythm, louder voice, laughters, smiley voice; (c) syntactic means: negative clauses, abandoning units in progress, marked syntactic constructions as dense constructions, left dislocations, verb-first constructions; (d) rhetorical means: repetition, rhetorical questions, comparison, irony, imitation; (e) visual means: raised eyebrows, frowning, smirking, smiling vs unsmiling, gaze, head nods, head shakes, head postures, knocking or pointing with finger, slashing with arm, conventionalized postures to suggest ‘helplessness’, ‘no understanding’. On the other hand, for some languages, it has been shown that the complainant names the concrete emotion that the situation caused him/her to feel (e.g. and I was so angry), usually right in the beginning or in terminal position of the complaint sequence (Drew, 1998: 309e311; Edwards, 2005 e in English; Traverso, 2009 e in French; Wyrwas, 2002: 36 e in Polish). Drew (1998) has even pointed out that formulating the complainant's sense of grievance is a canonical component in English complaints. Edwards (2005) has observed that its important function is to signal to the recipient what kind of stance or attitude is being proposed. In our paper we will use the term ‘deliberateness’, presented by Steen (2008) with reference to metaphors. By his definition, “a metaphor is used deliberately when it is expressly meant to change the addressee's perspective on the referent or topic... ”. As the main function of complaining is to seek solidarity, high deliberateness of complaints can be assumed. Our research question is: What are the linguistic indicators of negative affect in everyday conversations? After the presentation of the data, we will demonstrate which syntactic, lexico-semantic, prosodic and rhetorical resources are used to

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formulate complaints. We will discuss naming and expressing emotions in Estonian complaints. Then we will show how emotionality is related to whose problem is discussed and the distribution of participants' roles. We will highlight the specifics of Estonian complaints in comparison with previous studies and Polish complaints. 2. Data Our data come from the Corpus of Spoken Estonian of the University of Tartu, which contains spontaneous everyday and institutional interactions. The corpus consists of 3927 recordings (703 h) and about 2 207 000 transcribed words. We selected 25 everyday face-to-face and 32 telephone conversations (99 200 words in total) in which at least one topic is school. In this subcorpus, 40 complaint sequences were found in 28 conversations. The participants of the conversations are students, teachers, their family members and friends. The specific target criticized in our data is school (and university) as an institution, teachers, officials, students and their parents. The issues that people complain about are for example stupid students, a heavy school bag, strict or unfair teachers, or a lot of work to do. The problem is caused by other people (teachers, students) or by the school institution. The “complainable matter” can be a person, a fact, an object or a situation (Traverso, 2009: 2385). The crucial factor is that neither the complainant nor the recipient can solve the problem. All cases in our data are longer than just one turn, constituting sequences, which consist of complaint and response turns. Some complaints concern past circumstances and are presented as narratives. Sequences are co-constructed by the participants turn by turn. Complaint sequences are of two basic types: (1) one participant complains and the other(s) respond(s); (2) all the participants complain and add something on their behalf. 3. Syntactic, lexico-semantic, prosodic and rhetorical means used in complaint turns In this section, we will describe linguistic means used in Estonian everyday complaints, and point out the functions of these means. 3.1. Syntactic and lexico-semantic means In complaint sequences, negation is used to a considerable degree (Wyrwas, 2002; Monzoni, 2009; Kurtyka, 2019). In our data, negative verb forms are constructed with the particle ei ‘no, not’; negation is also expressed by the infinitive verb form -mata and adverb mitte ‛not’ (on negation in Estonian grammar see Erelt and Metslang, 2017: 181e195). In extract 1 from a telephone call between mother (R) and son (C), the mother complains about the poor working conditions in her research institution.1

1

The focus words or turns are boldfaced in the extracts.

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R starts her turn with a general assessment that her working conditions don't meet the European standards (lines 01e02). Thereafter she clarifies the situation (lines 03e05). The turn is constructed using negative verb forms. C initiates €a €kimata kliimaseadmest ‘not to mention air conditioning’ is ambiguous: there is repair (line 06) because the phrase ra no air conditioning e or it exists but doesn't work. R gives a short negative response e(h)i o:le:. ‘no (it) doesn't’ (line 07) and upgrades it by pole which is a synonym of ei ole (Hennoste, 2009), adding the extreme case formulation ültse ‘at all’ (line 09). In our data, with a negative sentence a complainant presents facts (esiteks see meil pole ju koolis ahju. ‘firstly, we €eva. ‘I don't want Tuesday to come’), don't have an oven at school’), expresses his/her attitude (ma¼i¼taha teisippa makes an assessment (se ei¼ole nagu teadus eksole, ‘this is not science’), identifies a failure in the conduct of a ~petaja, ta¼i uuri ka¼et kuna kellegil muusikatund * on * ‘she is a teacher, she doesn't inquire third party (ta (.) ongi o when somebody has a music lesson’), expresses hopelessness (sinna sis ei saa enam midagi teha ‘nothing can be done there’). Constructing negative assessments, words and phrases with negative connotations are used, e.g. kole ‘ugly’, mutt ‘hag’, vadistama ‘prattle’, vastik ‘nasty’. Among others, words connected to illness or mental/physical €rdjas ‘bastard’, hull ‘crazy; madman’, va €a €rakas ‘retard’, pime ‘blind’) can be disabilities (haige kuju ‘sick guy’, va highlighted. It is important for the complainant to show that the situation is worth complaining about. In order to justify a complaint, to signal its seriousness and relevance, intensifiers and exaggerations are used. Intensifiers are particles and adverbs which reinforce, upgrade or modify an utterance, e.g. negation is upgraded with adverbs and particles such as nii jube ‘so horrible’, €ga va €sinud ‘very tired’, o ~udselt vastik ‘awfully nasty’. Intensifiers make the communicative turns more emphatic (Vainik and va ~ppida ‘a thousand things to learn’ and Brzozowska, 2019). Exaggerations that occurred in our data are for example tuhat asja o €hedane ‘close to zero’. nullila Pomerantz (1986) has shown that to legitimize a complaint, a speaker may describe the offense and/or the suffering with extreme case formulations, e.g. completely innocent, forever. A problem circumstance is portrayed as undesirable and/or intolerable. Extreme case proportional formulations (e.g. everyone, all, every time) are used to indicate that responsibility for the state of affairs is to be attributed elsewhere (Pomerantz, 1986: 228). A large number of extreme case formulations as ~imalus ‘the only possibility’, ko ~ik ‘all’, mitte keegi ‘nobody’, mitte kuskil ‘nowhere’, mitte ükski ‘none’, üldse ‘at all’, mitte ainuke vo €htsust ei oma ‘it has no matter’ can be found in our data. They are also midagi ‘nothing’, absoluutselt ‘absolutely’, see mingit ta €ev ‘every day’ (ex. 2), kogu aeg ‘all the time’, pa €ev produced in order to show that the problem is recurring or long-term (iga pa otsa ‘all day’, terve aasta ‘the whole year’). Extract 2 illustrates the usage of words with negative connotations, extreme case formulations and intensifiers. The extract comes from a conversation between family members. Daughter T is talking about her university life and complains that she has long breaks between lectures.

The complaint begins with a rather neutral description of the situation (line 01), but it is formulated as an €ev ‘every day’ shows that the problem is recurrent. The pronoun mingi ‘some kind of’ has a extreme case: iga pa somewhat pejorative connotation. The second part of the turn (line 02) expresses the negative attitude of the €-, which is likely the beginning of the word va €ga ‘very’, then initiates repair speaker. She starts the word va ~udselt ‘awfully’, and finishes her evaluative sentence by the adjective vastik and replaces it with a stronger adverb o ‘nasty’. The next type of lexico-semantic means is idiomatic expression e a formulaic construction with a figurative meaning. Drew and Holt (1988: 405) argue that similar to extreme formulations, “idioms may be designed to strengthen a complainant's case by portraying the egregious character of the complainable circumstances”. Many of the idioms used by complainants manage “to represent the speaker as a quite “innocent victim” in an impossible position and not responsible” (Drew and Holt 1988: 411). Extract 3 is from a telephone conversation between relatives. The caller (C) is a 30 year old man who has called his aunt (R) to invite her family to his birthday party. Thereafter the aunt starts a new topic, complaining that her son doesn't understand music lessons.

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R tells that her son has got a three, which is a below average grade, in the music class (lines 01e03). After C's continuer €l ~rva¼pa mhmh ‘uhuh’ she justifies why she cannot teach her son (lines 07e10), employing the idiomatic expressions karu ko €rit ‘simple-minded’, lit. ‘from the country’. ‘tone-deaf’, lit. ‘a bear on the ear’ and maalt pa Exclamations and swear words are used in order to express emotional attitude towards the topic (Wyrwas, 2002; €igu kuu peale ‘(s)he can go Traverso, 2009; Selting, 2012) (e.g. oi ‘oh’, oh sa taevakene ‘my goodness’, lit. ‘oh you heaven’, ka to hell’, lit. ‘(s)he can go to the moon’, sitale ‘to go shit’, junn ‘turd’, kuradi kurat ‘damn devil’). Extract 4 is from a phone call between friends.

The extract begins with V's question mis `muidu teed sis ‘what else are you up to’, which initiates small talk. H responds with a complaint about having a lot of work to do, employing the swearwords kurat ‘damn’ and junn ‘turd’ (lines 02e03). After a long gap he refers to the external obligations by employing the verb pean ‘have to’ (line 05). 3.2. Prosodic means In addition to vocabulary, prosody plays an important role in signalling attitudes in complaint sequences. Prosodically, the crucial words are presented with extra-strong emphasis, marked rhythm, and/or louder voice. Laughter and smiley voice are

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deployed to modulate complaints (Selting, 2012). Extract 5 is a part of a longer complaint sequence from a conversation between family members and their friend. The stepfather (M) complains about children having to do their homework using a computer.

In this turn, a modified repeat construction is used. The most important word, extreme case formulation pime ‘blind’ is €e ‘see’ in the negative conpresented with a loud voice and strong emphasis. Repeating the same idea, the verb form na €e ‘you won't be able to see’ is emphasized. After the word pime ‘blind’ the tone is changed, and the smiley struction sa¼i na voice highlights the escalation of the problem.

3.3. Rhetorical means Rhetorical devices are employed in order to enhance the complainability of the issue (Traverso, 2009: 2393). In our data, the most common rhetorical means is repetition. The repetition may be a full repeat, i.e. the same words and the same model of rhythm, a partial repeat, a modified repeat, or a paraphrase, i.e. the same idea is expressed in other words. The patterns of rhythm may be repeated in enumeration: the words are different, but the pattern of syntax or rhythm is the same (Tannen, 2007: 63). In Polish, repetition and enumeration are found to be frequent features of indirect complaints (Wyrwas, 2002: 60e69; Kurtyka, 2019); repetition is common in declarative questions as well (Chłopicki, 2019). Extract 6 is from a telephone conversation between relatives and illustrates using a repetition in enumeration. R is a teacher who complains about the lack of dishes in the cooking classroom.

The list starts with the notification that there is no oven at school (line 01). In line 07 enumeration continues with naming different dishes by repetition of the syntactic structure (ei ole ‘are not’ þ the subject): ei ole ei supitaldrekuid, (.) ei ole praetaldrekuid ‘there are no soup plates, no dinner plates’. In line 08 a summary is made using extreme case formulation with the similar structure and reversed word order mitte midagi ei ole ‘there is nothing’. The most frequent variant of repetition in our data is modified repeat, where the social action, words or grammatical means are modified. Usually something is added or the utterance is intensified, e.g. ma¼i maksa ma¼i akkagi maksma üldse. ‘I won't pay I'm not going to pay at all’. There occur some instances of a paraphrase in our data, e.g. oled sa PIME $ juba peast¼ju, €e enam¼ju noh? ‘you will be completely blind already, you won't be able to see anymore’ (ex. 5). A full repeat is rare, sa¼i na e.g. ah, nad on ni¼lollid ni¼lollid. ‘oh, they are so stupid, so stupid’ (ex. 11).

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Rhetorical questions are interrogatives that do not call for an informative answer. They perform a wide variety of actions, e.g. challenges, noticings, reproaches, directives, assertions, suggestions, complaints (Koshik, 2005; Laanesoo, 2017; Laanesoo and Keevallik, 2017; Chłopicki, 2019). It has been argued that in complaints, rhetorical questions are probably one of the most common structures used to express emotions (Wyrwas, 2002: 56). In our data, rhetorical questions function as assertions that €ra toob sealt ¼ keegi ei too neid sealt a €ra ‘who will bring them have the opposite grammatical polarity of the question (kes nad a from there ¼ nobody will bring them from there’). Koshik (2005) has defined such utterances as reversed polarity questions. Extract 7 is from the same conversation between family members (mother E, children's stepfather M) and their friend (A) as extract 5. This is the beginning of the complaint sequence. M expresses an opinion that children should not do their homework on a computer.

At the beginning of the extract M presents the issue as a fact: small children must do all their homework on a computer ~ik asjad ‘all things’ is an obvious exaggeration because mostly the children use (lines 01e03). The extreme case formulation ko exercise books and the problem is raised from one homework task only. The subject lapsed ‘children’ is intensified with the €iksed ‘small’. The friend A affiliates by the particle jaa ‘yes’. After that M utters an interrogative no kas on seda veel adjective va vaja ‘well, is it really necessary’ (line 06). He does not wait for an answer, but continues his turn presenting the fact that his stepson has glasses already, referring to the fact that the use of the computer is harmful to the eyes. He replaces the previous general subject lapsed ‘children’ (line 02) to a specific one tal ‘he’ (line 07). In this complaint sequence, the interrogative is not an information-seeking question, but is used to express an opinion and an expectation of an affiliative response. The comparison is a consideration of similarities or differences between two phenomena. Extract 8 is from the same conversation as extracts 5 and 7. The parents complain that their son Joosua has a lot of homework. Mother E compares his progress at school to the progress of her co-worker's child, who does not do as many exercises.

The comparison may be done with somebody who is doing badly too, indicating that other people have the same problem. €pselt¼samamoodi ega ma üksi a €das ei¼ole Peep on ka ju Peep teeb ka ju aint to €o €d praegu kogu¼aeg ‘Peep has e.g. Peebul on ta exactly the same, I'm not the only one who's in trouble, Peep is too, Peep is just working all the time now too’. In our data, comparisons are mostly expressed by longer descriptions, not by comparative clauses as in Polish data (Wyrwas, 2002: ~ik o ~ppejo ~ud seni kokku 69e72; Kurtyka, 2019). Only one comparison is formulated as a comparative clause: ta on hullem kui ko ‘he is worse than the sum of all lecturers so far’. Edwards (2005) argues that irony and humour are methods for displaying and managing the complainant's stance or attitude. Ironic utterances are used in the Estonian complaints data as well. Extract 9 is again from the same conversation as extracts 5, 7 and 8. In this extract, the heavy school bag is a source of trouble. As is typical in the case of irony, the opposite is claimed.

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Mother (E) and Joosua (J) demonstrate the school bag to their family's friend (lines 01e02). Mother lets her friend lift the bag and says noo katsu kui kerge se¼on. ‘Well, lift it and see how lightweight it is’ (line 03). The main point of this utterance is to claim the opposite, namely that the school bag is in fact heavy. Imitation of the person who is criticized is often used in complaint sequences (Günthner, 1997; Drew, 1998; Holt, 2000; Haakana, 2007; Ruusuvuori and Lindfors, 2009). Extract 10 is from a conversation between three girls. B cites the teacher who wanted to send her to a poetry competition, imitating a teacher's voice. The most important parts of the citation are highlighted by using slower talk and strong emphasis (lines 02, 04).

In this section, we have shown that justifying the situation as complainable, the complainant uses various syntactic, lexicosemantic, prosodic and rhetorical means that express his/her emotional attitude. We have demonstrated that the same devices are employed in Estonian that have been found in other languages as well. 4. Naming emotions In English (Drew, 1998: 309e311, Edwards, 2005), French (Traverso, 2009) and Polish (Wyrwas, 2002: 36), it has been shown that the complainant names the concrete emotion that the situation caused him/her to feel, mostly at the beginning or at the end of the complaint sequence (e. g. I was very aggravated). In our data, feelings and emotions are rarely named.2 There is only one example of categorized emotion in the beginning of a complaint in our data (ex. 11). Additionally, there are two €ga examples where the emotion is named in the terminal position of a complaint as a summary, for example sis ma olin va €rdinud ‘then I was very disappointed’. Expressions of annoyance are formed as first-person assessments. no Extract 11 is taken from a telephone call between a father (R) and an adult daughter (C), who is a teacher.

In line 01 the daughter introduces a new topic, not presenting a fact, but the emotion only (vihastasin ‘got angry’). The father asks for the reason of her anger with the question word miks ‘why’ (line 03). Why-interrogatives are multifunctional, and they are employed to carry out several social actions concurrently. The question form makes it possible for the recipient to interpret why-interrogatives as questions by giving a neutral answer, or as reproaches or challenges (Günthner, 1996;

2

Vainik and Brzozowska (2019) have also demonstrated that Estonians prefer not to speak about their feelings explicitly.

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Laanesoo, 2017). In this example the daughter interprets it as a question about the reason and develops the complaint sequence (line 05). She uses the word with negative connotation lollid ‘stupid’, and the intensifier nii ‘so’. These are followed by a full repeat where the daughter twice employs the same words and the same model of rhythm. 5. Variation of emotionality The “complaint devices” dealt with in section 3 above express emotionality and affective stance of different degrees. Emotionality is related to deliberateness: if the level of emotionality is high, a complaint can be more easily experienced as deliberate. Some syntactic and lexico-semantic means like negation and negative words are conventional, nondeliberate. The highest level of deliberateness can be seen by words associated with extreme situations. In our data, there occur complaint sequences which are upgraded to an injury, illness or death (see ex. 5). The following extract (12) is a continuation of extract 1. The mother (R) complains to her son that there is no air conditioning at her workplace.

The mother describes the situation in her workplace. The plastic windows do not let outside air into the room and the only possibility to get air is to keep the window open. The son does not respond and the mother strengthens her complaint by adding seda ka talveajal ‘during the winter too’ (lines 09e14). After that she employs the extreme case formulation me €mbume a €ra ‘we'll choke’ (line 16), which refers to death. la Deliberateness can also be expressed by swear words and intensifiers. Sometimes synonyms are employed, one of which is €a €rakas ‘retard’ is stronger than hull ‘madman’. Rhetorical means are deliberate as they are used stronger than the other, e.g. va to enhance the complaint and to seek solidarity. Deliberateness and stronger emotionality is signaled by co-occurring means as well, e.g. a rhetorical question þ extreme case formulations þ louder voice þ strong emphasis. Different strength of emotionality can be seen in local context, comparing pairs or sequences of words and turns, in which the same matter is discussed. Complaints vary in use of linguistic means and in emotionality. Two types of variation occur in our data. Firstly, we can distinguish very emotional complaints, where deliberate devices are used, and complaints which include mainly non-deliberate devices and weakly expressed emotions. Secondly, a complainant may use devices with various strengths in different positions of a complaint sequence or upgrade the complaint successively. We will discuss these cases below. 5.1. Emotional vs. neutral complaints Complaints are different with respect to the degree of emotionality and deliberateness. The most important factor that affects emotionality is whose issue is being discussed. Most previous studies have considered the complainant as the sufferer (e.g. Ruusuvuori and Lindfors, 2009; Traverso, 2009). Our analysis shows that the complainant may speak on behalf of himself/herself or alternatively of somebody else, e.g. a child or a friend. The issue at hand may be general, not affecting the interlocutors directly, e.g. closure of university departments. Talking about his/her own or his/her child's problem, a speaker is more emotional and uses deliberate means, as we can see in extracts 1e12. Discussing a problem of a non-present third party or some general issue, a complainant tends to be more neutral. In extract 13 the students talk about their friend who cannot study a profession she is interested in.

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A is talking about her friend's problem and the choice of words is neutral, non-deliberate compared to the previous extracts (1e12). There are no specific strong semantic, prosodic nor rhetorical means used by the speaker. 5.2. Variation of emotionality during a complaint sequence Complaint sequences differ in how the complainant's and recipient's roles are distributed. As indicated above, there are two types of complaint sequences in our data: (a) all participants are complainants, they construct the complaint jointly; (b) one participant is a complainant and the other(s) are recipient(s). Our analysis shows that expressing emotions differs in these types. In the first case, the complaint is constructed in cooperation, the participants complain about their common problem. In extract 14 three schoolgirls (15e16 years old) are complaining about their teacher.

J introduces a new topic saying that she should study. H joins her, shows that she is in a similar situation and for€o € ‘I have a test tomorrow in chemistry’ (line 04). mulates the problem more precisely: mul¼on keemias homme to Thereafter the third girl R shifts the focus from studying to the teacher and makes a negative assessment about the ~ps ‘sick physics teacher’3 (line 05). The first speaker J continues criticizing the teacher using a metaphor haige füssao €ss ‘damned runt’ (line 06). R laughs briefly and teacher employing the swear words vana tebiil ‘old moron’ and kuradi na says laughing ole vait ‘shut up’. J justifies herself saying that this irritates her and changes linguistic devices, continuing

3

About illness metaphors in Polish, see Rewis-Łe˛ tkowska, 2019.

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with the ironic utterance hea klassijuhataja ‘good teacher’ (line 08). The response shows that J has interpreted R's turn as a reproach and a prohibition to use such words. H agrees with J's assessments and upgrades the complaint until the €o €ks ta maha ‘I would kill her’ (line 09). In the case of jointly constructed complaints, extreme case formulation ma lo emotionality and affective stance intensify during the sequence. All participants use deliberate means and contribute to the escalation of the complaint. Alternatively, if one participant is a complainant and the other(s) is/are recipient(s), complaint and response turns alternate during a sequence. Emotionality may vary during a complaint sequence in several ways. The complainant may upgrade his/her complaint during one turn. In extract 2, quoted above, the complaint turn begins with a rather neutral €ev on pra €egu nii¼et on mingit augut ‘there are some kind of breaks (between lectures) every description of the situation (iga pa €- o ~udselt vastik ‘but this is ve-awfully nasty’. In extract 3 (line day now’) and this is followed by strong assessment aga se¼on va €l ‘tone-deaf’, lit. ‘a bear on the ear’ and maalt pa €rit ‘simple~rva¼pa 08) the complainant uses two idiomatic expressions karu ko minded’, lit. ‘from the country’ successively. If the complainant does not get a preferred reaction (i.e. affiliation), he/she intensifies the complaint. This is not a special feature of complaints, but it is used in several types of sequences, e.g. requests, invitations (Schegloff, 2007: 162e165; Craven and Potter, 2010). Extract 15 is from the conversation of mother (E) and three children who are eating dinner. The son (P, 11 years old) is talking about his Russian lessons. Their own teacher is not at school and if she comes back they will have a test.

(15) 01 P:

PETAJA

LES ET KUI petaja kui

02

PETAJA see kooli tuleb

the real teacher if the real teacher comes to school 03

sis tuleb

. $

then 04

(0.6)

05 P: suur

The boy's first turn is semantically quite neutral, emotionality is expressed by prosodic means. The turn begins in a louder ~ ~ ~eline voice OPETAJA ÜTLES ET KUI OPETAJA ‘the teacher said that if the teacher’ and continues in a smiley voice. Key words (to ~petaja ‘teacher’, kooli ‘school’, to €o € ‘test’) are emphasized (lines 01e03). The mother does not respond to her son's turn. ‘real’, o After a gap (line 04) the boy upgrades the complaint, employing the intensifier suur ‘big’. This is followed by a long gap and €ev ‘then Doomsday will come’. Upgrading of the complaint in the mother escalates the problem ironically: sis¼tuleb viimnepa the case of non-responding can be seen in extracts 6 and 12 as well. Neutral responses as mhmh ‘uhuh’, mm bring on upgrading of the complaint as well as non-responding. In extract 3, quoted above, the recipient reacts with the particle mhmh which is used as a continuer or as a distancing particle in Estonian (Hennoste, 2000: 1787e1793). Thereafter the complainant upgrades the complaint, employing the idiomatic expressions. In the case of an affiliative response, it cannot be said that a complaint sequence is always upgraded, and emotionality may vary during the sequence. The complainant may use different types of “complaint devices”, which are difficult to assess in terms of strength. 6. Concluding discussion In this paper, we studied indirect complaints in everyday conversations about school. The target of complaints emerges out of the situation: school as an institution, teachers, officials, students and their parents, fellow students. Previous studies on other languages have shown that various syntactic, lexico-semantic, prosodic and rhetorical means are employed in complaints. In the Estonian data, the same devices are used in indirect complaints. We found 547 means used in complaints in our data. Four big groups emerge: negation, intensifiers and exaggerations, words and phrases with negative connotations, and extreme case formulations. Together they constitute 84% of all devices used, whereas all the other means constitute 16%. On the other hand, lexico-semantic means are most frequently employed (64%), while rhetorical means are quite rare (12%). We can conclude that complaints are created by word choice in particular. Table 1 gives an overview of the usage of single means, whereas in complaint turns they co-occur frequently.

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Table 1 Frequency of linguistic means used to express and name emotions in complaints. Syntactic means Lexico-semantic means

Rhetorical means

Naming emotions

negation intensifiers and exaggerations words and phrases with negative connotations extreme case formulations swear words exclamations idiomatic expressions repetition rhetorical questions enumeration comparison irony imitation

130 153 96 79 10 7 5 26 14 7 7 5 5 3

Comparing Estonian and Polish complaints we can see that in Polish complaints, similar to Estonian ones, negation, exclamatory expressions, repetition, rhetorical questions, enumeration, and comparative sentence structures are described as means used to indicate the expressive character of the complainant's utterances (Wyrwas, 2002; Kurtyka, 2019). Irony, imitation, and idiomatic expressions were not identified in the Polish corpora. In the comparative structures of Polish complaints, many comparisons between humans and animals are found (Wyrwas, 2002: 69e70), which do not occur in our data. The most important difference between Estonian and other languages we found is the lack of naming emotions (only 3 cases in our data), whereas this is usual in English, French and Polish (Drew, 1998: 309; Edwards, 2005; Traverso, 2009; Wyrwas, 2002: 36). We demonstrated that emotional affect is related to whose problem is being talked about. In previous studies the complainant has mostly been a sufferer. In our data, the sufferer may be the complainant him/herself, a co-participant or someone who is not physically present. In addition, a general problem which does not affect the speaker directly may be discussed. We found that discussing their own or their child's problem, speakers tend to be more emotional, and more deliberate means (e.g. extreme case formulations, swear words, rhetorical means) are used in order to develop the complaint. If the problem is general or a sufferer is someone else who is not involved in the situation, the description is rather neutral, non-deliberate, without expressing emotions. Variation of emotionality may occur during a complaint sequence as well. Complaint sequences are co-constructed by the participants turn by turn. There are two variants of sequences in our data: (1) one participant complains and the other participant(s) respond(s); (2) all the participants complain together. Our analysis shows that these cases are different. In the first case, the strength of the devices varies during a complaint sequence. A jointly constructed complaint is upgraded continuously, the speakers employ increasingly stronger means (e.g. intensifiers, extreme case formulations). Upgrading of the complaint shows that the complainant tries deliberately to change the perspective of his/ her co-participants. Estonians are believed to be unemotional and reserved according to the national stereotypes (Vainik and Orav, 2005). Vainik and Brzozowska (2019) demonstrate that Estonians use fewer positively loaded adjectives and adverbs than speakers of Polish, indicating Estonians' lower level of positive affect. In complaints the speakers express their negative emotions. The analysis of indirect complaints shows that Estonians strongly express their negative affect toward the target outside of the situation. Similarly, strong negative affect is expressed in Polish indirect complaints; “the norm of negativity” has been described as characteristic of Polish culture (Kurtyka, 2019). In summary, expressing negative affect is similar in Estonian and Polish, while expressing positive affect is different. We have analysed indirect complaints about some absent party. The expression of emotions in direct complaints where the recipient is held accountable for the trouble needs to be studied further. Funding The study was supported by the European Regional Development Fund (Centre of Excellence in Estonian Studies) and Estonian Research Council grant (PRG341 “Pragmatics overwrites grammar: subjectivity and intersubjectivity in different registers and genres of Estonian”) and by the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research (EKKM14-308 “A complete description of Spoken Estonian”, EKKM14-310 “Supplementation and equilibration of the University of Tartu corpus of spoken Estonian”, EKKM14-340 “Reference grammar of Estonian”). Acknowledgements We are grateful to two anonymous reviewers and the editors of the special issue for their valuable comments.

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Transcription conventions

. , ? word [] (.) (0.5) ¼ >< <> ** WORD wo::rd worw(h)ord $$ @@ .hh {-}

falling intonation slightly falling intonation rising intonation emphasis overlapping talk micropause, less than 0.2 s silence in tenths of a second latching faster talk slower talk talk softer than surrounding talk talk louder than surrounding talk lengthening cut-off word word produced through laughter smiley voice change of tone audible inbreath inaudible speech

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