Grammar and Text: Selected Papers from the 10th and 11th Fora for Linguistic Sharing 1527505685, 9781527505681

Citation preview

Grammar and Text

Grammar and Text: Selected Papers from the 10th and 11th Fora for Linguistic Sharing Edited by

Maria Antónia Coutinho, Ana Guilherme, Joana Teixeira and Beatriz Carvalho

Grammar and Text: Selected Papers from the 10th and 11th Fora for Linguistic Sharing Edited by Maria Antónia Coutinho, Ana Guilherme, Joana Teixeira and Beatriz Carvalho This book first published 2018 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2018 by Maria Antónia Coutinho, Ana Guilherme, Joana Teixeira, Beatriz Carvalho and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-0568-5 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-0568-1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Maria Antónia Coutinho, Beatriz Carvalho, Ana Guilherme and Joana Teixeira Historical Note............................................................................................. 3 The First “Shares”: The First Ten Forums for Linguistic Sharing Audria Leal, Carla Teixeira, Isabelle Simões Marques and Matilde Gonçalves Chapter One ............................................................................................... 13 Keynote Article: Towards a Text Theory (Within Text Linguistics) Matilde Gonçalves Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 28 Text Linguistics and Text Revision: An Alliance Approach Marta Fidalgo Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 42 The Discursive Pattern of Academic Texts Rute Rosa Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 58 Epilinguistic Activity in a Teaching Context: Reported Enunciation Duane Valentim Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 72 Designing a Transcription System for Spoken Discourse: A Case of Stand-Up Comedy Milana Morozova Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 89 The Attribution of Genre Tags: The Case of Graffiti Rute Rosa

vi

Table of Contents

Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 106 The Management of Voices in the News: Enunciative Staging and Enunciative “Effacement” in Television News Reports Helena Rodeiro Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 122 In-between Identities: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of the Community of Young Italians Living in London Giulia Pepe Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 141 Keynote Article: On the Notion of “Suffixal Alternation” in Wordformation Maria do Céu Caetano List of Contributors ................................................................................. 161

INTRODUCTION1 MARIA ANTÓNIA COUTINHO, JOANA TEIXEIRA, ANA GUILHERME AND BEATRIZ CARVALHO CENTRO DE LINGUÍSTICA DA UNIVERSIDADE NOVA DE LISBOA, FACULDADE DE CIÊNCIAS SOCIAIS E HUMANASíUNIVERSIDADE NOVA DE LISBOA

The present volume contains a collection of papers selected from submissions based on presentations given at the 10th and 11th Fora for Linguistic Sharing, which were organised by the Young Researchers Group of Centro de Linguística da Universidade Nova de Lisboa (CLUNL) and held at the Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Portugal, on the 27th and 28th November 2015 and on the 25th November 2016, respectively. These papers are authored by young researchers of various nationalities and present original research on grammar, text and discourse. In addition to these papers, the volume includes (i) a brief history of the Forum for Linguistic Sharing written by its founders, Audria Leal, Carla Teixeira, Isabelle Simões Marques and Matilde Gonçalves, (ii) a keynote article on text linguistics by Matilde Gonçalves, and (iii) a keynote article on word formation by Maria do Céu Caetano. A brief summary of each of the chapters of the volume is provided below. To mark the 10th anniversary of the Forum for Linguistic Sharing, in the opening chapter, Audria Leal, Carla Teixeira, Isabelle Simões Marques and Matilde Gonçalves take a trip down memory lane and tell us what inspired them to create the Forum for Linguistic Sharing and how it progressed in its first three editions from an event restricted to the walls of CLUNL to an event of (inter)national scale.

1

This work was funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia – UID/LIN/03213/2013.

2

Introduction

In her keynote article about text linguistics, Matilde Gonçalves analyses the development of this research area and brings attention to the importance of text theory. Marta Fidalgo’s paper relates principles of text and discourse linguistics (more specifically, socio-discursive interactionism) to text revision, through the analysis of two texts: an advertisement and a warning. Rute Rosa analyses the organization, emergence and articulation of two academic genres: critical reviews and scientific papers. Duane Valentim’s paper discusses the relevance of epilinguistic activity and language in the process of teaching and learning and proposes a teaching sequence on the basis of a short story by Lygia Fagundes Telles. Milana Morozova reviews existing guidelines and conventions for the transcription of spoken discourse and presents a new transcription system specially designed for the genre stand-up comedy. Rute Rosa’s paper on “The attribution of genre tags: The case of graffiti” proposes a genre tag to the texts written on exterior walls and in other public environments, following the principles of Socio-discursive Interactionism. Helena Rodeiro explores the notions of enunciative staging and enunciative effacement in an analysis of the genre television news reports. Giulia Pepe investigates language mixing and its relation to identity in a recent migrant community: the community of young Italians living in London. Three types of language mixing are discussed in her paper: (i) code-switching, (ii) loan-words, and (iii) loan-shifts. Maria do Céu Caetano closes this volume with a keynote article about word formation, which analyses a subsystem of Portuguese nominal suffixes: (i) learned suffixes and (ii) unproductive suffixes (replaced by rival suffixes). We would like to thank all the contributors to this volume for their hard work, cooperation and patience. We also wish to express our deepest gratitude to the following linguists, who reviewed the manuscripts submitted for consideration to this volume and without whose work this book would not have been possible: Alexandra Fiéis, Audria Leal, Carla Teixeira, Celeste Rodrigues, Clara Nunes Correia, Helena Topa Valentim, Isabel Roboredo Seara, Isabelle Simões Marques, Maria do Céu Caetano, Matilde Gonçalves, Nóemia Jorge, Raquel Amaro, Rosalice Pinto and Teresa Brocardo. We hope you enjoy reading this volume as much as we enjoyed putting it together!

HISTORICAL NOTE THE FIRST “SHARES”: THE FIRST TEN FORUMS FOR LINGUISTIC SHARING1 AUDRIA LEAL,*# CARLA TEIXEIRA,* ISABELLE SIMÕES MARQUES*^ AND MATILDE GONÇALVES*#

CENTRO DE LINGUÍSTICA DA UNIVERSIDADE NOVA DE LISBOA* / FUNDAÇÃO PARA A CIÊNCIA E A TECNOLOGIA# / UNIVERSIDADE ABERTA^

This text is based on a collective memory about the foundation of the Young Researchers Group of the Centro de Linguística da Universidade Nova de Lisboa (CLUNL), which was responsible for organising the first three editions of the Forums for Linguistic Sharing in which we, the authors, were involved.

1. How it all began The Young Researchers Group of the Centro de Linguística da Universidade Nova de Lisboa (CLUNL) came about because of the need to bring together PhD and master’s students. The initiative was started by two of us, Isabelle Simões Marques and Matilde Gonçalves, as PhD students of a joint PhD programme between the Université Paris 8 (France) and the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of the Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (NOVA-FCSH). Isabelle and Matilde were supervised by Prof. Maria Helena Araújo Carreira at Université Paris 8, and by Prof. Fernanda Miranda Menéndez and Prof. Maria Antónia 1 This work was funded by the National Fund of FCT-Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (Portugal), project UID/LIN/03213/2013.

4

Historical Note

Coutinho, respectively, at NOVA-FCSH. They were in Lisbon as part of their joint-PhD programmes, thanks to subsequent research grants they were awarded from a range of institutions (Instituto Camões, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian and Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia), and the PhD programme was an intense process. As a result, they both felt the need to share their experiences and doubts with other students. They took part in conferences, first in Paris (in December 2005) and then in Quebec (in March 2006), which made them aware of the need to be connected to the academic community, disseminate their work and research, and get to know their colleagues’ work. The conferences they participated in had both been organised by strong teams with a clearly defined path. The Quebec conference, entitled Les journées de la linguistique, was particularly curious because it had been organised by an association of linguistics students at the University of Laval and was celebrating its 20th birthday that year. These experiences at conferences abroad encouraged them to form a linguistics students’ group at NOVA-FCSH. Isabelle Simões Marques and Matilde Gonçalves, therefore, decided to hold the first meeting for PhD and master’s students on 22 February 2006 at CLUNL. Ten students attended the meeting and came up with several ideas to be put into practice, such as: creating a mailing list, setting up a webpage attached to the CLUNL website, and organising a roundtable/forum to present the work being carried out by the young researchers and later publishing the presentations made. One of the points raised was the need and wish to include all language sciences students, not just students at NOVA-FCSH. The group’s main goals were, therefore, to share and exchange information and gather information on methods and theory within the scope of ongoing research projects. After several other meetings, the decision was made to organise the first Forum for Linguistic Sharing on 11th July 2006, which would be free to participate in and open to the entire scientific community.

2. 1st Forum for Linguistic Sharing At the 1st Forum, eleven studies were presented, representing the different fields covered by CLUNL: discourse, semantics, syntax, text and a presentation on philosophy, all from NOVA-FCSH. Prof. Maria de Lourdes Crispim, the director of CLUNL at the time, chaired the opening session. In addition to the young researchers who were presenting their work, some lecturers of the linguistics department were also present. A short description of the projects presented can be found below, in alphabetical order of the presenters’ names. Ana Castro gave a presentation

The First “Shares”: The First Ten Forums for Linguistic Sharing

5

called “Possessives in Portuguese “, in which she demonstrated that simple possessives in Portuguese have two homophonous series: prenominal possessives and postnominal possessives. With a study called “Text composition as a factor in building genre”, Ana Caldes focused on the types of linguistic units and/or processes that may be used to compose texts involved in advertising. Armindo Morais aimed to contribute to studies on vagueness in “And all that–some considerations on the use of vague language in oral narrative utterances”. Audria Leal demonstrated “The infrastructure of cartoons” using an analysis of the global architecture of the cartoon text genre, observing textualisation mechanisms and utterance mechanisms and following the theoretical framework of Socio-Discursive Interactionism to ascertain the presence or absence of certain linguistic elements in the organisation of the text. Carla Teixeira’s presentation, “Argumentative discourse in some of Manuel TeixeiraGomes’s novels”, showed how more elaborate argumentation could be expressed in literary texts. She showed that in the work studied, Novelas Eróticas, the narrator used argumentation to wash his hands of responsibility for the events recounted. Carmen de Jesus Santos, with the presentation “From discourse competence to Interactive Discourse Analysis”, discussed the importance of an Interactive Discourse Analysis (IDA) perspective in the analysis of children’s discourse and in the development of child education perspectives/theories, taking into consideration the development of each child’s discourse competence. Fernanda Pratas presented certain specific phenomena in Cape Verdean in “Grammatical aspects of Cape Verdean”, such as the absence of referential null subjects, the compulsory nature of null expletive subjects and tense, mood and aspect marking, using the theoretical assumptions of generative grammar. Florencia Miranda focused the discussion on relationships between the language system, its social functioning and text genres in “Say what you have to say/But in proper Portuguese–a reflection on relationships between language and text genre”. In it, she questioned the assumed existence of valid, universal “rules for proper text formation”. Isabelle Simões Marques presented the state of the art of the thesis on plurilingualism in the Portuguese 20th-century novel, concentrating on the forms, functions and effects of using plurilingualism in literary works published before and after 25 April 1974. She demonstrated that plurilingualism can be expressed in at least two ways–loanwords and bilingual or plurilingual discourse–in “Some plurilingual markers in the contemporary Portuguese novel”. In “Linguistic-textual perspectives of fragmentary writing in contemporary Portuguese literature”, Matilde Gonçalves highlighted some aspects that would be addressed in her PhD

6

Historical Note

thesis, including the enunciation of a “fragmented cognitive self”, the textual parameters of fragmentary writing and the paths of interpretation that the type of writing calls for. Paulo Alexandre e Castro, a PhD student at NOVA-FCSH, with “Consciousness, mind and cognition: perversions in the subjectivity of the self”, reflected on the possibility for crossovers between different areas of knowledge (neurobiology, linguistics, philosophy of the mind, phenomenology, etc.) and the challenge of establishing valid definitions because of the inherent difficulty of defining the Portuguese pronoun “eu” (I or self). Finally, Teresa Oliveira presented “Some questions about translation of verb tenses” and analysed subjectivity markers in language, discussing the way in which language categories (nominal determination, modality, tense, aspect, diathesis...) interact in the construction of subjects and intersubjective relationships. The exchanges and discussion among the different participants and teachers were so enriching personally for each young researcher and for the Young Researchers Group and CLUNL as a whole that the 2nd Forum for Linguistic Sharing was proposed for the following year, with participation open to students from the whole country.

3. 2nd Forum for Linguistic Sharing The 2nd Forum for Linguistic Sharing took place the following year on 12 and 13 July 2007 (see table 0.1). The initiative was supported by CLUNL which, besides paying for posters, the volume of abstracts and coffee breaks, was represented at the opening session by Prof. Maria de Lourdes Crispim (see fig. 0.1), the director of CLUNL at the time. The closing session included Prof. João Costa (see fig. 0.2) from NOVA-FCSH. At the time, he was the chairman of the Portuguese Linguistics Association, which also supported the event that year. The final session was particularly memorable because Prof. Costa spoke about a young researchers’ group in Spain that had begun regularly organising a conference that ran for some years. In his view, the Forum for Linguistic Sharing could go down a similar route and, in a few years’ time, the same people would be reminiscing about the beginning. It also meant a lot having representatives of these institutions, since it reflected the academic community’s recognition of the initiative.

The First “Shares”: The First Ten Forums for Linguistic Sharing

7

Table 0.1. Presentations at the 2nd Forum for Linguistic Sharing Participant Mirian Santos de Cerqueira (Universidade Federal de Alagoas|CLUNL) Marco António Martins (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina|CLUNL) Graça Fernandes (Universidade do Algarve) Ana Caldes (CLUNL) Matilde Gonçalves (Université Paris 8| CLUNL) Audria Leal (CLUNL) Rosalice Pinto (CLUNL) Carla Teixeira (CLUNL) Andreea Teletin (Université Paris 8|Universitatea din Bucuresti) Carmen de Jesus Santos (CLUNL) Isabel Roboredo Seara (Universidade Aberta) Sónia Valente Rodrigues (CLUP) Presentation of a poster by Teresa Rei (CLUNL) Marina Rocha (CLUP) Isabelle Simões Marques (Université Paris 8|CLUNL)

Title of Presentation 12 July 2007 Subject-verb agreement in partitive constructions in Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese Proclisis, SV(O) order and V2 constructions: Brazilian Portuguese in the 20th century Lexicogrammar of fixed expressions in European Portuguese, intransitive constructions From genres to textual practices: some considerations according to the compositional dimension of texts Blank space as a semiographic element and its role in text construction The presence of interactive discourse in the cartoon text genre The role of the generator platform in text organisation in persuasive genres Notes on citation as an element of genre and argumentation in union posters Some functions of negation in Portuguese, French and Romanian advertising discourse The epistolary woman–discourse analysis of letters by mid-20th-century women writers The nomad word. Contributions to studying the epistolary genre Arguments: configuration aspects of the dialogue structure 13 July 2007 Hiccupping words–Stammering Between syntax and discourse: contributions to an analysis of fragmentation in António Lobo Antunes’ Ontem não te vi em Babilónia Plurilingualism in Portuguese literature: some examples of heteroglossia

8

Historical Note

Maria do Rosário Luís (CLUNL)

Heterogeneity of discourse and utterance in Miguel Torga’s tale Vicente

Mónica Lourenço (Universidade de Coimbra) Maria Cândida Martins (Instituto Politécnico do Porto–Escola Superior de Tecnologias da Saúde) Paula Órfão (Instituto Politécnico do Porto– Escola Superior de Tecnologia e Gestão) Armindo de Morais (Universidade Aberta)

“Does younger really equal better? “ Assessing vocabulary learning strategies in English as a foreign language in basic education Associative anaphora–a lexico-discursive approach

Rosinda de Carvalho Rodrigues (Escola Secundária Francisco Franco, Madeira) Michel Binet (ISSSL|CLUNL) and Tiago Freitas (ILTECFLUL) Marcos Garcia (CLUL) Vlastimil Rataj (Univerzita Karlova) Paulo Nunes da Silva (Universidade Aberta)

What conceptual metaphors tell us about business dynamics “This is how it goes “: dramatisation in oral narrative utterances as a discourse strategy to involve the listener Conversational analysis of virtual conversation

Conversation and prototypical organisation of the opening sequence: the “question-gift “ of Está(s) bom/boa? in Portuguese Discussion about rhotacism of post-nasal /S/ in Western Galician dialects Uses of the gerund in Andean Spanish Time in text

The First “Shares”: The First Ten Forums for Linguistic Sharing

9

Figure 0.1. Opening session of the 2nd Forum for Linguistic Sharing

Figure 0.2. Closing session of the 2nd Forum for Linguistic Sharing

4. 3rd Forum for Linguistic Sharing The third Forum for Linguistic Sharing took place on 14 and 15 July 2008. Like the other two Forums, it had a growing number of young researchers like us, many from other countries, as can be observed in the table below.

Historical Note

10

Table 0.2. Sharing in countries Year 2006 2007 2008

Countries Portugal Brazil, Portugal, Czech Republic, Romania Argentina, Brazil, England, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia

We could feel the enthusiasm in the numbers: the Forum for Linguistic Sharing saw a progressive increase in submissions, and the number nearly doubled from 2007 to 2008, as we can see in the table below: Table 0.3. Sharing in numbers Year Number of days Submissions Presentations

2006 1 13 13

2007 2 31 24 (1)2

2008 2 49 22

This data objectively shows the initiative’s success at the time. The 3rd Forum for Linguistic Sharing also saw a very diverse range of proposed presentations and, like in 2007, the participation of international researchers. In the table below, we can see the names of those who took part and the titles of their presentations. Table 0.4. Presentations at the 3rd Forum for Linguistic Sharing Participant Carla Teixeira (CLUNL) Carla Messias da Silva (PUCí São Paulo, Brasil) Ana Rita Remígio (Universidade de Aveiro) Maria Sofia Pimentel Biscaia (Universidade de Aveiro) Carlos Romualdo (Universidade do Algarve) Liana Sofia de Assunção (Universidade de Aveiro) 2

Title of Presentation 14 July 2008 Some issues regarding an intersemiotic text unit The radio journalism opinion genre from the point of view of Socio-Discursive Interactionism Conceptual representation of the terminology specialist field: between hyper specialisation and interdisciplinarity Post-colonial terminology: literary and sociopolitical matters e-Termite: Proposed prototype for semiautomatically forming and managing specialist corpora Different expressions of carpe diem: analysis of some of Horatio’s odes

This year’s event included the presentation of a poster.

The First “Shares”: The First Ten Forums for Linguistic Sharing Alejandra Portela, Agustina Sosa Revol, Gustavo E. Kofman (Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina) Katja Zakraj’ek (Universa v Ljubljani, Slovenia) Pascale Brunner (Université Paris 3|Ludwig-MaximiliansUniversität München) Catarina Vaz Warrot (Université Paris 8|CLUNL) Isabel Roboredo Seara (Universidade Aberta) 15 July 2008 Aline Saddi Chaves (USP|Université Paris 3) Andreea Teletin (Université Paris 8|Universitatea din Bucuresti) Andrew Swearingen (University of Oxford) Liliane Santana (UNESP| ILTEC) Agnieszka Latos (Università di Bologna, Italy) Ana Caldes (CLUNL) Adriana Ciama (Universitatea din Bucuresti, Université Paris 8) Elena Gorishneva (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin) Roberto Carlos de Assis (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais |Universidade de Lisboa) Márcia Regina Mendes Santos (Universidade de Lisboa|UNEB) Eliana Ferreira do Nascimento (Universidade de Lisboa)

11

Rhizomatic Contact Zone: The Literary Text as an Isomorphic Space

Literary Representation And Translation Of Linguistic Margins And Frontiers Presentation The Concept of 'Vagueness' as a Pragmadiscursive Phenomenon Não Entres Tão Depressa Nessa Noite Escura by António Lobo Antunes: from Romanesque writing to musical score Another Babel: the blog hyper-genre as a space for the intersection of multiple textual traits Intra-genre intertextuality in advertising discourse: towards the functional diversity of language Deixis and enunciative modalities in advertising discourse. Case study of some Portuguese, French and Romanian adverts Irregularity in Romance Imperatives: Suppletion and Autonomy Semantic motivations in determining types of completives in Brazilian Portuguese Concession: typology of negated causal links Layout and interpretation of text(s) Verbs of movement in English and Romance languages: a comparative analysis ‘One’: Between Numeral, Indefinite and Intensifier Translators' ideology in Two Translations of Heart of Darkness into Portuguese The study of inferences in understanding the written text Learning to write in European Portuguese by people who speak Brazilian Portuguese as their first language

12

Historical Note

5. To be continued… The experience gained by organising several Forums for Linguistic Sharing has been very important for our academic life and has allowed us to broaden our contact with other young researchers and develop the expertise to plan other events. Besides experience in organising events, the opportunity to truly share our research with colleagues was very enriching. One of the symbols of the 3rd Forum for Linguistic Sharing was actually an image of Lisbon’s 25 April Bridge. Never has the true meaning of the word “bridge “ been so salient. The Forum for Linguistic Sharing has now been held eleven times. We are proud to carry on our work and further the founders’ dream. We are still in touch with some of our fellow researchers who took part in these events. It is satisfying to see the road travelled by each and every one. And yes, we have also made friends. The sharing continues and we hope it will carry on forever!

Figure 0.3. The founders of the Forum for Linguistic Sharing (clockwise: Isabelle Simões Marques, Audria Leal, Carla Teixeira and Matilde Gonçalves)

CHAPTER ONE KEYNOTE ARTICLE: TOWARDS A TEXT THEORY (WITHIN TEXT LINGUISTICS)1 MATILDE GONÇALVES CENTRO DE LINGUÍSTICA DA UNIVERSIDADE NOVA DE LISBOA / FUNDAÇÃO PARA A CIÊNCIA E A TECNOLOGIA

Abstract: The aim of this keynote paper is to discuss some landmarks in text linguistics (TL) development and focus on one discipline in particular, in which my research work takes place: text theory. This presentation is organised into three parts, which are ordered by either time or space: (i) the initial phase of TL in the 1970s; (ii) francophone TL; (iii) the text theory being developed at NOVA-FCSH. Keywords: text theory, landmarks of text linguistics, textual genre

1. Introduction This paper is part of the commemorations of the 10th anniversary of the Forum for Linguistic Sharing, which is held every year at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences of Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (NOVAFCSH), and aims to provide reflections on and recognition of text linguistics (TL) and call attention to research possibilities. Although the term “text linguistics” is consensual, the notion of “text” is not identical for all the authors who work in the discipline, and theoretical frameworks can also vary significantly. The aim of this keynote speech is to discuss some landmarks in TL development and focus on one 1

This work was funded by the National Fund of the FCT-Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (Portugal), project UID/LIN/03213/2013 and Post-doctoral Fellowship SRH/BPD/66300/2009.

14

Chapter One

discipline in particular, in which my research work takes place: text theory. This presentation is organised into three parts, which are ordered by either time or space: (i) the initial phase of TL in the 1970s; (ii) francophone TL; (iii) the text theory being developed at NOVA-FCSH. Naturally, choosing and presenting certain authors rather than others involves the subjectivity inherent to all choices. In accordance with the theoretical and methodological paths in my research work, the authors that will be presented are all part of the Romance strand of text studies: Eugenio Co‫܈‬eriu2, Jean-Michel Adam, Jean-Paul Bronckart, François Rastier and Antónia Coutinho. Afterwards, studies in the context of a text theory being developed at the Centro de Linguística da Universidade Nova de Lisboa will be discussed.

2. Linguistics of language, linguistics of speaking and text linguistics Before dealing with the question of what is understood by text linguistics, it is important to establish where the discipline lies within the overall panorama of language sciences in order to explain the late arrival of this particular area of knowledge. Without going into detail about the emergence of linguistics as a science, it is important to note that the work of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) was undoubtedly pioneering and foundational for linguistics as an autonomous science. What is curious about de Saussure is that he never published anything during his lifetime and essentially devoted himself to studying languages and the classes he gave in Paris (1881-1891) and Geneva (1891-1913). His name is connected to two publications. The first, Course in General Linguistics (1916), was edited and published after his death by two students, Charles Bally and Albert Secheye, based on notes from his lessons at the Université de Genève.3 The second, Écrits de linguistique générale, was published in 2002 based on manuscripts found at de Saussure’s mansion in Geneva.4 Although both books are associated with Ferdinand de Saussure, there are differences in the way linguistics is 2

Eugenio Co‫܈‬eriu, a Romanian linguist, carried out most of his work in Uruguay and Germany. His scientific languages were German and Spanish and, to a lesser extent, French, Italian and Romanian. 3 Numerous studies and critiques of it have been published, of which I would highlight De Mauro (1975). 4 See the volume published by Bronckart, Bulea and Bota (2010).

Keynote Article: Towards a Text Theory (Within Text Linguistics)

15

conceived. Of these differences, there is one in particular that stays in my mind: the division between language and speaking, which created a dichotomous linguistics. To make my reflection on this point clearer, I would like to take a quotation from Course in general linguistics (CGL): The study of speech is then twofold: its basic part–having as its object language, which is purely social and independent of the individual–is exclusively psychological; its secondary part–which has as its object the individual side of speech, i.e. speaking, including phonation–is psychophysical. (CGL, 27)

This citation shows de Saussure’s project as reconstructed by the editors of the CGL. In fact, based on the distinction between language and speaking, there is a clear hierarchy for the two types of linguistics, one of language and the other of speaking, with the latter being secondary to the former. Later on, the book also states: One might if really necessary apply the term linguistics to each of the two disciplines and speak of a linguistics of speaking. But that science must not be confused with linguistics proper, whose sole object is language. (CGL, 28)

As well as the existence of a dichotomous linguistics–linguistics of language and linguistics of speaking–linguistics of speaking is denied the status of linguistics: “linguistics proper, whose sole object is language.” Furthermore, despite there arguably being a movement that incorporates speaking as belonging to linguistics, its existence is dismissed in the final section of the CGL: From the incursions we have made into the borderlands of our science, one lesson stands out. It is wholly negative but is all the more interesting because it agrees with the fundamental idea of this course: the true and unique object of linguistics is language studied in and for itself. (CGL, 271)

This famous remark, “the true and unique object of linguistics is language studied in and for itself”, has crystallised in the memory of the different generations of linguists and has undoubtedly had repercussions on linguistics as a science, namely in text linguistics and discourse linguistics, since text (and discourse) linguistics are connected to linguistics of speaking.

16

Chapter One

3. The 3 “moments” of text linguistics To understand the different landmarks in TL, I will highlight two articles that reflect how TL developed in Germany and Holland in the 1960s, one by Maria-Elisabeth Conte (1989) and the other by Ingedore Koch (1997). The former identifies three types of linguistics: (i) transphrastic analyses, (ii) text grammars and (iii) text theories. One of the differences between these two works, other than the dates on which they were published, is the choice of the word “moment” by Maria-Elisabeth Conte, who does not assign a criterion of time or evolutionary sequence to the classification she established. In her article, Ingedore Koch presents a state of the art of what has been done in TL and alludes to future developments in the field, highlighting the existence of temporal succession between the three types as if they were three stages in the evolution of text linguistics. Moving on to the characterisation of each type, the starting point for transphrastic analyses is unquestionably connected to the need to go beyond the sentence to cover all the different linguistic phenomena, such as referentiation, tense agreement, selection of articles, etc. (Koch 1997: 68). Linguists such as Harweg (1968) and Isenberg (1970) considered the difference between text and sentence only in quantitative terms because the text was seen as the extension of the sentence. Since this perspective is lacking–because it does not make it possible to answer problems that the text raises such as semantic relationships between non-explicit sentences, prosody phenomena–it was then abandoned. In the case of text grammars, the aim was to analyse phenomena that could not be resolved using sentence grammar. In this type, the text is not considered as an extension of the sentence because the criteria were henceforth qualitative (Koch, 1997: 68). Authors like Weinrich, van Dijk at the start of the 1960s and Petöfi (1972, 1974) are also part of the field of text grammars. While transphrastic analyses started with the sentence to reach the text, this bottom-up approach was abandoned in text grammars. Viewing the text as a whole, a “primary linguistic sign” (Hardmann 1968), text grammars’ goal was to reach micro units based on segmentation and respective characterisation and classification. The text is viewed, then, as a larger linguistic unit, an entity of the language system based on which the structure of each language can be studied, in accordance with the rules of a text grammar (see Petöfi, 1974). The third and final type deals with text theories. The use of the plural “theories” reflects the different areas that converge around the concept of text, as well as the various interdisciplinary relationships that are established

Keynote Article: Towards a Text Theory (Within Text Linguistics)

17

among them. Another element that brings these theories together, as well as the term text, is the importance placed on what is external and influences the text, i.e. the context. It is worth noting that text theories have not come about necessarily to take precedence over text grammars, nor to dispute them. The goal of text theories or text linguistics, as Koch (1997) mentions, is to analyse the production, workings and comprehension of texts–the internal part of the text–but also to analyse external factors that interfere in the formation, reception and interpretation of texts. Within this type, I would highlight authors such as Weinrich, who in 1993 fulfilled a long-standing goal to publish Text grammar of the German language (he is, however, interested in the text taking into account contextual elements), or Schmidt (1973), the first to use the term text theory. Schmidt views the text in a broader sense and his research is located within a more sociological context. Gülich’s (1977) work particularly includes studies that connect text to reformulation procedures or even face-to-face interaction. Finally, Beaugrande and Dressler established seven standards of textuality: two linguistic–cohesion and coherence–and five extralinguistic–informativity, situationality, intertextuality, intentionality and acceptability (1981). Finally, van Dijk also contributed to the development of TL. At the beginning of the 1970s he dedicated himself to drafting a text grammar, but he quickly left this field to devote his time to the study of macrostructures (which intervene when drawing up summaries) and superstructures or text schemas that deal with the classification of text types (1977, 1978, 1979, 1980).

4. Eugenio Co‫܈‬eriu Eugenio Co‫܈‬eriu published Textlinguistik in 1980, in which he focused fully on the text with the goal of presenting fundamental differences that text linguistics should accept in comparison with linguistics. He thereby underlined text linguistics’ autonomy while at the same time pointing out that the text is not an isolated level but rather another level of linguistics. So, according to Co‫܈‬eriu, text linguistics would be another discipline that fits into “integral linguistics”, Co‫܈‬eriu’s term which seeks to go further than structuralism. The concept of “integral linguistics” was explored in a course at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (1975) called “Towards an integral linguistics” and in the chapters “The Situation in Linguistics” and “On the Development of Linguistics” in El hombre y su lenguaje, published in Madrid, 1977 (translated into French as L’homme et son langage, 2001).

18

Chapter One

If I persist with this author, it is because, from 1980 onwards, text linguistics reached a new scale with the publication of Textlinguistik. In fact, and as rightly pointed out by Óscar Loureda Lamas, editor of Lingüística del texto. Introducción a la hermenéutica del sentido by Eugenio Co‫܈‬eriu (2007), most publications in the 1980s in the text field were introductions,5 which shows that work on TL was, at the time, hesitant. Co‫܈‬eriu’s work marked the text studies landscape because, while he was developing text linguistics, he integrated it into general linguistics.6 The book was written, to a large extent, because of the fact that the term “text” related to several points of view and different scientific disciplines. One of the work’s main goals was, therefore, to establish distinctions regarding the confusion about text linguistics. For Co‫܈‬eriu, language is a universal human activity that is exercised individually and follows historical rules and standards (2007: 86). Based on this overall definition of language, the linguist establishes three levels of linguistics: the universal, which deals with speaking and language in general, the historical, which involves historical languages, and, finally, text linguistics, which corresponds to individual written and oral linguistic acts. Co‫܈‬eriu’s proposal is to formulate three levels for linguistics in accordance with the three levels of the linguistic: (i) linguistics of speaking in general, (ii) linguistics of languages, (iii) text linguistics. The linguist justifies the autonomy of the text level (and therefore text linguistics) with the existence of a “class of content” that coincides with the content of the text or given through texts (2007: 156). In short, for Co‫܈‬eriu, the text was a macro sign produced by a double semiotic relationship between “designation” and “meaning” to together form a higher and more complex content unit, sense (2007: 63, 233 and following). 5 See Wolfang Ulrich Dressler, Einführung in die Textlinguistik (1972), Tamara Silman, Probleme der Textlinguistik: Einführung und exemplarische Analyse (1974), Dieter Breuer, Einführung in die pragmatische Texttheorie (1974), RobertAlain de Beaugrande and Wolfang Ulrich Dressler, Einführung in die Textlinguistik, 1981, Enrique Bernárdez, Introducción a la lingüística del texto, 1982. 6 Another account from that transitory phase is found in van Dijk’s The Science of the Text (1978), in which the text is the central object of analysis for a variety of disciplines: linguistics, literary studies, cognitive psychology, social psychology, sociology, political sciences, history and anthropology. However, van Dijk did not carry on developing the science of the text and did not mention the work completed in the retrospective he produced in 1995 (“De la gramática del texto al análises del discurso” in Boletín de Estudions Linguísticos Argentinos) 6. Available at www.discourses.org

Keynote Article: Towards a Text Theory (Within Text Linguistics)

19

5. Studies on text in the francophone line of studies Within the framework of francophone studies about texts, which unquestionably contributed to the field’s development, I would highlight (although this is by no means exhaustive) the work of Jean-Michel Adam (1999, 2005), Jean-Paul Bronckart (1997, 2008) and François Rastier (1989, 2001). Jean-Michel Adam is a fundamental name in the text linguistics field. In his view, text linguistics has the aim of “within discourse analysis, theorising and describing the sequencing of basic utterances within a highly complex unit that is the text” (2005: 29). To establish the boundaries of his area of research, the linguist postulates a “separation and complementarity of the tasks and objects of text linguistics and discourse analysis” and, within that context, he defines text linguistics as being a subdomain in a wider field of analysis of discursive practices. His 2005 publication and its re-editions correspond to a redefinition of the disciplinary field proposed by Adam, specifically regarding certain principles adopted in previous writings, such as the decontextualisation and dissociation of “text” and “discourse” as they had been envisaged in Eléments de linguistique textuelle (1990): “The most important theoretical and methodological evolution comes from rejecting the decontextualisation and dissociation of text and discourse”. In fact, text studies traditionally focused on the object itself lead to a consideration of the context in which it is inserted, as advocated by discourse analysis. The two fields of research are no longer parallel, but entangled and hierarchical, as the subheading of the work, “textual analysis of discourses”, indicates. According to the author, the text is built on a balance between “repetition and progression” and also on movements of going and returning between micro, meso and macro textual phenomena and contextual aspects that deal with socio-discursive formations and determine the text organisation. Let us now look at another author who has significantly marked text linguistics: Jean-Paul Bronckart. He has created a broad theoretical and methodological framework, Socio-Discursive Interactionism (SDI), which calls upon linguistics, psychology, sociology and philosophy to understand the complexity of human phenomena (1997, 2008). The distinctive feature of SDI resides in its acceptance that language plays a fundamental role both in terms of mental development and functioning and in the development of collective activities; such activities form the space for organising and mediating relationships between human beings and their surroundings. For Bronckart, language comprehension should be achieved based on actual verbal productions, which have varying aspects due to

20

Chapter One

their dependence on the communication setting. Bronckart calls these verbal productions texts, and they form empirical outputs of the language (2008: 10). Bronckart begins his reflection in his 1997 work about the text, considering text to be a “situated verbal production”; this term corresponds to the idea of text as a product built from the use of language, and may be oral or written. The term “situated” refers to the context in which the text was produced, i.e. the socio-spatial-temporal parameters that interfere with the text and have a relationship of interdependence with it. Continuing his reflection, he goes further, mentioning that the text is a “unit of verbal production carrying a linguistically organised message and tending to produce in the receiver an effect of coherence”. The text, composed of a strictly linguistic part, with sentences linked together in accordance with rules of varying strictness regarding composition, also reflects a certain way of organising referential content in harmony with the setting in which it is produced, thereby reflecting the extra-linguistic part, which is social and psychological. Combining the two parts, the text is no longer a purely linguistic unit and becomes a “communicational unit” since it functions as a medium for speakers to communicate, establish relationships and organise the collective actions that form a society. Alongside the reflection on the status and nature of the text, Bronckart developed an instrument of analysis, text architecture, thought of as three layers placed on top of each other: overall infrastructure, textualisation mechanisms and responsibility for utterances, the three of which interact among each other. The model proposed in 1997 underwent some amendments in 2008, particularly regarding the overall infrastructure. In his book Arts et science du texte (2001), François Rastier highlights that since the 1970s the number of text linguistics has multiplied and that, nonetheless, some remain at sentence level because they follow grammar in a linear way (2001). To overcome that problem, Rastier suggests shifting from the text as the theoretical threshold of complexity–as in text grammars–to texts as empirical units, taken as concrete objects of greater length (in comparison with the sentence) (2001: 14). To present his proposed definition, Rastier starts with three definitions of the term text according to different perspectives before presenting his definition, bearing in mind the influence that artificial intelligence and cognitive linguistics may have (2001: 14). In a perspective based on negation, Rastier then posits what the text is not: (i) it is not a sequence of characters, as might be thought in computational linguistics, (ii) it is not a sequence of algorithmic instructions, as considered in process psychology, and (iii) it is not a sequence of mental schemas. For Rastier, the text is an “attested, empirical language sequence produced in a certain social

Keynote Article: Towards a Text Theory (Within Text Linguistics)

21

practice and attached to a medium” (2001: 21). From this definition, Rastier develops certain aspects, specifically the text as an attested object, created within a certain community and circulating in society, which contrasts with the idea that the text is an object forged by linguists for scientific purposes; the text is “produced in a certain social practice”, which matches the previous point; it is “attached to a medium”, which may take different oral, written and digital forms (2001: 22). Rastier has developed text or interpretative semantics, using texts as its research object, as an empirical object and object of knowledge. The linguist does not seek, by definition, to emphasize structural features of textuality or universals of texts. Rastier identifies four semantic component–dialectics, dialogics, tactics and thematics–which play a determining role in the construction and interpretation of texts and are defined as “systematic instances that, when interacting with other instances of the same type, regulate the production and interpretation of linguistic sequences. (2001: 298). Dialectics articulates the succession of intervals in textual time, such as the states and processes that are developed in the text. Dialogics brings together the modal relationships between universes and worlds, and the description thereof handles the utterance. Tactics reflect the sequential arrangement of meaning, according to which the semantic units are produced and interpreted. Finally, thematics shows the content vested in a text, i.e. the semantic universe. It is described by way of units: semes, semic molecules, isotopy. Of the four components, two–thematics and tactics–play a fundamental role in any text. In fact, a text with a minimum semantic structure (listing or repetition of a word) results from the interaction between these two components (Rastier, 1989: 103).

6. Text theory Text theory as a course discipline at NOVA-FCSH was created in 1990-1991 by Luísa Optiz, and it has developed significantly both nationally and internationally. That development has particularly been thanks to Maria Antónia Coutinho, who took on the discipline in 2001, taking care of it and reconfiguring it. While initially text theory was thought of as a course discipline, after 27 years it is possible to firmly state that it has gone further than a university course subject to become a highly relevant area of knowledge and research for both linguistics and fields that study language and/or the use and functioning of language. Several aspects are clear from Maria Antónia Coutinho’s work, and they largely correspond to the different facets of the text object: (i) the text as an empirical, complex object (2002a, 2002d, 2003, 2004, 2006); (ii) text

22

Chapter One

organisation (2004d, 2008, 2011, 2012a 2014, 2015); (iii) the text/text genre relationship (2004a, 2004b, 2005a, 2005b, 2007, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2012b). This final aspect also coincides with the growing interest in text/discourse genres (Adam, 1997, 1999, Bronckart, 1997, 2008, Maingueneau, 2004, Malrieu, Rastier, 2002, Rastier, 2001a, 2001b) which emerged in the 1970s and 1980s in the francophone context, with the spread of the texts of Voloshinov/Bakhtine7. As previously explained in the presentation of different moments in text linguistics, the “text” covers several diverging concepts, which I will mention briefly in the order in which they were presented: “macro sign”, “highly complex unit”, “situated verbal production”, “communicational unit”, “empirical unit”, “empirical outputs of the language”, “attested, empirical sequence of language”. In 2012, in a report on the course module (as part of a recruitment process in the Linguistics–Text and Discourse Linguistics field at NOVA-FCSH), Maria Antónia Coutinho produced a reflection on what a text is and the inherent characteristics of text theory as a discipline, among other aspects. Until that time, Coutinho had taken the text as a communicational, empirical, complex object; however, since that report, the text has gained a new dimension, in her opinion, as can be seen in the following definition of text: “[texts] are not merely empirical, communicational objects, but are social objects–if we can put it like that–using which people perform their (personal, professional, social) lives, through which social praxis takes form and through which knowledge is (re)composed (and that knowledge is itself social). Although produced in one language (at least), texts are far from being strictly linguistic objects” (2012: 21). The term social, which may appear to be implied in the previous notion (empirical, communication and complex object), leads the text category to achieve innovative potential. The text is not only an object of analysis for the different areas of knowledge (linguistics, sociology, communication, psychology, anthropology); as it is social, the text is fundamentally human, since it builds and organises life in society and personal lives. As a linguistic practice, it contributes to one of the two sides of human beings, which is language, the other being work. Through language, mankind builds a world appropriate to his spiritual side, that is, a world that can be thought 7

The publication of two works – the translation of Marxisme et philosophie du langage by Patrick Sériot and Inna Tylkowski-Ageeva published in 2010 by Éditions Lambert-Lucas (Limoges) and the work of Jean-Paul Bronckart & Cristian Bota (2011), Bakhtine démasqué. Histoire d’un menteur, d’une escroquerie et d’un délire collectif, published in 2011 by Librairie Droz (Geneva) – called into question the true authorship of certain works by Bakhtine.

Keynote Article: Towards a Text Theory (Within Text Linguistics)

23

about (Co‫܈‬eriu 2001). Bronckart (2010: 348), on the other hand, based on Spinoza’s comments on language, states that natural forms carry with them a clear, visible physical dimension and an underlying mental dimension. With human beings (and the language that is characteristic of them), a “second order of mental processes” emerged that takes precedence over the inherited mind. In fact, these processes are embodied in language and can, therefore, be observed in texts. Human beings can, therefore, become aware of these second-order processes and then (re)think their being to organise and guide it. Faced with this new dimension that the text makes tangible, it is appropriate to give the name text theory to the area being shaped and cared for at NOVA-FCSH in order to distinguish it from text linguistics, or the “true and proper text linguistics” as envisaged by Co‫܈‬eriu (2007), or even the textual analysis of discourse (Adam 2005, 2011).

7. Some notes to open the path to future studies in the text theory field by way of conclusion Maria Antónia Coutinho’s work has been carried out alongside discussions in master’s/PhD seminars and group research meetings, as she has mentioned at several times and places. These discussions and texts have borne fruit to feed text theory. I cannot, then, fail to mention some colleagues’ work that has been making a significant contribution to recognition of the text as a social (and human) process and product in its various different forms: textual practices (completed PhD theses: David Rodrigues, 2003, Matilde Gonçalves, 2008, Carla Teixeira, 2014, Noémia Jorge, 2014; Sara Pita, 2016, Maria Clara Torres, 2016; ongoing PhD theses: Korapat Pruekchaikul, Mariana Silva, Isabel Castilho, Helena Rodeiro, Marta Fidalgo, Milana Morozova); text genres (completed PhD theses: Rosalice Pinto, 2006, Florencia Miranda, 2007, Audria Leal, 2011); language teaching (completed PhD theses: Naseema Sayad, 2016, Selena Ruiz, 2016; ongoing PhD theses: Camile Tanto, Filipe Luzonzo, Inês Ribeiros, Natalia Viti, Xu Yixing). I shall end this presentation with some of Maria Antónia Coutinho’s words, which reflect the core of what text theory aims to be: as a space open to epistemological choices that end up being (quickly) summarised [Adam, 2008, 2011, Bronckart, 1997, 2008, Co‫܈‬eriu, 2007, Saussure, 2002, Voloshinov, 1929/1977]; also inserted into the hermeneuticrhetorical paradigm (Rastier, 2001), it is also a viable space for developing an approach to texts that is not limited to or dispenses with language processing; an approach that considers social and psychological,

24

Chapter One praxeological and gnosiological dimensions, through a deep understanding of the different planes of language; an approach that rethinks (the conception of) language through texts themselves and that, also through texts, rediscovers the decisive role of language in people’s experiences and collective and social experiences (Coutinho 2012: 23).

References Adam, Jean-Michel. 1990. Éléments de linguistique textuelle. BruxellesLiège: Mardaga. —. 1997. Genres, textes, discours: Pour une reconception linguistique du concept de genre. Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire 75 (3): 665681. —. 1999. Linguistique textuelle: Des genres de discours aux textes. Paris: Nathan. —. 2005. Analyse de linguistique textuelle íIntroduction à l'analyse textuelle des discours. Paris: Armand Colin. Beaugrande, Robert de, and Wolfgang Ulrich Dressler. 1981. Introducción a la lingüística del texto. Barcelona: Ariel. Bronckart, Jean-Paul, and Cristian Bota. 2011. Bakhtine démasqué. Histoire d'un menteur, d'une escroquerie et d'un délire collectif. Genève: Librairie Droz. Bronckart, Jean-Paul, Ecaterina Bulea, and Cristian Bota. 2010. Le projet de Ferdinand de Saussure. Geneva: Droz. Bronckart, Jean-Paul. 1997. Activité langagière, textes et discours. Pour un interactionisme socio-discursif. Lausanne: Delachaux et Niestlé (portuguese trad. (1999). Atividade de linguagem, textos e discursos: por um interacionismo sócio-discursivo (A. R. Machado Trad.). São Paulo: EDUC). Bronckart, Jean-Paul. 2008. Genre de textes, types de discours, et “degrés” de langue. Texto!, XIII. Online at http://www.revue-texto.net/index. php?id=86 [Accessed in December 2016]. Charaudeau, Patrick, and Dominique Maingueneau. 2002. Dictionnaire d'analyse du discours. Paris: Seuil. Conte, Maria Elisabeth. 1989. La linguística testuale. Milano: Campi del sapere/Feltrinelli. Coseriu, Eugenio. 2007. Lingüística del texto. Introducción a la hermenêutica del sentido. Madrid: Arco Libros. Coutinho, Maria Antónia, Camille Tanto, and Rosário Luís. 2015. O conhecimento explícito dos textos e da língua. In Formação docente. Textos, teorias e práticas, 133–164. Campinas, SP: Mercado de Letras.

Keynote Article: Towards a Text Theory (Within Text Linguistics)

25

Coutinho, Maria Antónia. 2002. Textos exemplares–ou os desastres da teoria. In Actas do XVII Encontro da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística, 139-148. Lisboa: APL. —. 2003. Texto(s) e competência textual. Lisboa: FCT-FCG. —. 2004a. A ordem do expor em géneros académicos do português europeu contemporâneo. Calidoscópio, 2: 9-15. —. 2004b. Organizadores textuais–entre língua, discurso e género. In Da língua e do discurso, edited by Fátima Oliveira and Isabel Margarida Duarte, 283- 298. Porto: Campo das Letras. —. 2004c. Le rôle des discours rapportés dans l’organisation textuelle: le cas des comptes rendus de lecture. In Dans la jungle du discours rapporté: Genres de discours et discours rapport, edited by Juan Manuel López-Muñoz, Sophie Marnette, and Laurence Rosier, 227236. Cádiz: Publicaciones de la Universidad de Cádiz. —. 2005. Para uma linguística dos géneros de texto. Diacrítica, 19/1: 7388. —. 2007. Textos e géneros de texto: problemas (d)e descrição. In O interacionismo sociodiscursivo: questões epistemológicas e metodológicas, edited by Ana Maria Guimarães, Anna Rachel Machado, and Maria Antónia Coutinho, 101-110. Campinas: Mercado de Letras. —. 2008. Marcadores discursivos e tipos de discurso. Estudos Linguísticos/Linguistic Studies, 2: 193-210. —. 2011. Macroestruturas e microestruturas textuais. In Português, língua e ensino, edited by Isabel Margarida Duarte and Olívia Figueiredo, 189-220. Porto: U. Porto Editorial. —. 2012a. Dos géneros de texto à gramática. In DELTA–Documentação de Estudos em Linguística Teórica e Aplicada. —. 2012b. Para um modelo didático do conto policial. Calidoscópio. —. 2012c. Teoria do texto. Relatório de unidade curricular no âmbito do concurso para Professor Associado na área disciplinar de Linguística do Texto e do Discurso) da Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Edital nº 164/2012). (unpublished) —. 2014. Les liages textuels au défi d’une approche descendante. In Genres et textes. Déterminations, évolutions et confrontations. Études offertes à Jean-Michel Adam, edited by Michèle Monte, and Gilles Philippe, 269–286. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon. De Mauro, Tullio. 1975. Notes. In Cours de linguistique générale, written by Ferdinand de Saussure, 405-477. Paris: Payot. Gülich, Elisabeth, and Wolfgang Raible. 1977. Linguistische Textmodelle. Münch: W Fink.

26

Chapter One

Halliday Michael A. K., and Ruqaiya Hasan. 1976. Cohesion in English. London: Longman. Hartmann, Peter. 1968. Zum Begriff des sprachlichen Zeichens Zertschnft fur Phoneuc, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung, v 21. Harweg, Roland. 1968. Pronomina und Textkonstitution. Münch: W Fink. Isenberg, Horst. 1970. Der Begriff “Text” in der Sprachtheorie Deutsche Akademie zur Wissenschaften zu Berlin, Arbeitsgruppe Strukturelle Grammatik, Bencht,n 8. Koch, Ingedore. 1997. Lingüística textual: Tetrospecto e perspectivas. Alfa: Revista de Linguística, 4: 67-78. Maingueneau, Dominique. 2004. Retour sur une catégorie: Le genre. In Texte et discours: catégories pour l’analyse, edited by Jean-Michel Adam et al, 107-118. Dijon: Editions Universitaires de Dijon. Malrieu, Denise, and François Rastier. 2001. Genres et variations morphosyntaxiques. In Traitement Automatique des langues 42(2): 548-577. Online at http://www.revue-texto.net/Inedits/Malrieu_Rastier /Malrieu-Rastier_Genres.html [accessed on December 2016] Rastier, François. 1989. Sens et textualité. Paris: Hachette. —. 2001a. Arts et sciences du texte. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. —. 2001b. Éléments de théorie des genres. Texto ! Online at http://www.revue-texto.net/Inedits/Rastier/Rastier_Elements.html. [accessed in December 2016]. Saussure, Ferdinand de. 2002. Écrits de linguistique générale. Paris: Gallimard. Van Dijk, Teun A. 1972. Some aspects of text grammars. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter. —. 1977. Text and context. London: Longman. —. 1978. Tekstweteschap een interdisciplinaire inleidig. Utrecht: Het Spectrum. —. 1979. Recalling and summarizing complex discourse. In Text processing, edited by Wolfgang Burghardt and Klaus Hölker, 49-118. Berlin: de Gruyter. —. 1980. Macrostructures. London: Hillsdale Lawrence Erlbaum. Voloshinov, Valentin N. [1929]1977. Le marxisme et la philosophie du langage, translated by M. Yaguello. Paris: Minuit (original: (1929), Marksizm i filosofija jazyka. Leningrad: Proboj.) —. 1981. La structure de l'énoncé. In Mikhaïl Bakhtine, le principe dialogique. Suivi des Écrits du Cercle de Bakhtine, edited by Tzvetan Todorov, 287-316. Paris: Seuil.

Keynote Article: Towards a Text Theory (Within Text Linguistics)

27

Weinrich, Harald. 1993. Textgrammatik der Deutschen Sprache. Mannheim: Dudenverlag.

CHAPTER TWO TEXT LINGUISTICS AND TEXT REVISION: AN ALLIANCE APPROACH1 MARTA FIDALGO CENTRO DE LINGUÍSTICA DA UNIVERSIDADE NOVA DE LISBOA / FUNDAÇÃO PARA A CIÊNCIA E A TECNOLOGIA

Abstract: This paper focuses on the usefulness of relating some of the principles concerning text and discourse linguistics (TDL) to the activity known as text revision (TR). Based on a harmonising perspective, the article starts by showing that these two fields do in fact have more in common than one would suppose at first since both disciplines still lack acknowledgement and consolidation as far as the academic world is concerned. A change of focus is required, so that revision may be considered as a social activity as well as part of a professional context, where the individual language actions of each participant in the text production process are represented and combined in the final text. Such an approach of TR can, therefore, be associated with several theoretical principles related to the Socio-Discursive Interactionism (SDI) framework (cf. Bronckart 1997). This perspective enables a broader view of revision, by regarding it as a mediation process concerning the multiple senses derived from the different voices that may intervene in text production. Following this theoretical contextualization, the paper reflects upon two examples of empirical texts, based on this alliance approach. Starting from a top-down perspective (cf. Voloshinov [1929]1986) in order to 1

The present paper was written in the context of a research project, which is being carried out within the scope of the KRUse Doctoral Programme in text and discourse linguistics at the Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (NOVA-FCSH). The research is supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (the Portuguese national funding agency for science, research and technology) since October 2014 (PhD scholarship reference: PD/BD/105764/2014).

Text Linguistics and Text Revision: An Alliance Approach

29

reach the analysis of the linguistic forms, the article will try to demonstrate that the sample texts do need to be revised when taking into account the importance of evaluating their textual functioning. The aim is to prove how advantageous some of the theoretical principles of TDL can be, when it comes to an integrated approach of TR, that is, when considering texts as complex communication objects as well as representatives of social activities. Keywords: linguistic analysis, Socio-discursive interactionism, text revision, textual analysis

1. General introduction The present paper intends to promote an articulation of two theoretical fields that, despite being different, can also be convergent when it comes to the analysis of empirical texts as they circulate in society. Thus, this proposal will start by focusing on the characterisation of the SocioDiscursive Interactionism (SDI) programme. It is assumed that this epistemological framework within text and discourse linguistics (TDL) is the one that best suits the study of text revision (TR) as a language and social activity. The article then goes on to present a brief contextualisation of TR, bearing in mind the importance that it has been gradually gaining in the linguistic services industry. Section 3 explains some of the possible parallels that can be drawn between the previously mentioned domains, with the aim of demonstrating the usefulness and pertinence of associating TDL and TR. For this purpose, Section 4 presents an analysis of two texts based on this intersection perspective. Such an approach enables to consider TR from a viewpoint that goes beyond the boundaries of traditional linguistic analysis and questions the textual functioning of the selected examples. In this sense, one of the main aims of this paper is to show how this proposal might promote knowledge building in the field of TDL and even enrich it by articulating it with other theoretical and practical domains. At the same time, the article also aims to contribute to a more comprehensive and integrated view of TR.

2. Theoretical framework TDL is a specialised field in which it is possible to distinguish several trends–some are more rooted in linguistics, others more focused on social, historical, and cultural aspects. Nevertheless, the various disciplinary domains that TDL comprises, such as pragmatics, conversation analysis,

30

Chapter Two

discourse analysis (French approach and Anglo-Saxon approach) or text linguistics (German tradition and French tradition), share a common focus: the communication dimension. This is a relevant notion for TDL because what is at stake is a linguistics concerned with the use and functioning of language. Thus, TDL postulates a broader analysis of linguistic and textual phenomena and aims to describe and understand how the dimension mentioned above functions within the texts themselves (macro-linguistic analysis), without neglecting grammatical aspects (micro-linguistic analysis) at the same time.

2.1. The Socio-Discursive Interactionism programme Socio-Discursive Interactionism (SDI) is one of the theoretical frameworks that most contributed to TDL’s development over the last years. Following the principles formulated by Jean-Paul Bronckart (1997), this perspective derives from profound work at the epistemological level, with many inputs influencing its origin. Anchored in an integrated perspective (instead of a compartmentalised one) of several scientific domains (such as psychology, philosophy of language, sociology, and linguistics), SDI has driven its focus to training issues, mediation, and human development. It is in this sense that SDI may be considered an epistemological framework and a work programme rather than a linguistic theory. As opposed to the innatist paradigm postulated by the Chomskyan perspective (cf. Bronckart 2010), SDI aims to pursue the principles of social interactionism–expressed in Voloshinov’s ([1929]1986) and Vygostky’s ([1934]2007) texts –, by considering interaction as a key factor and simultaneously ascribing a major role to language and communication. By placing these dimensions first, the interactionist model advocates a top-down approach in relation to language functioning and follows a methodological path that starts by looking at the social factors and moves on to the textual ones until it reaches the linguistic phenomena, as Coutinho (2014a: 227; my translation) highlights in the following passage: (…) social interaction is a determining factor, and furthermore, it implies that one should take into consideration the specificities of this same interaction: the context or, more accurately, the social activity where it takes place and the specific genre (among the genres in use, in the activity in question). Analysing linguistic forms where they occur only makes sense when you take into account these specificities, as they are the technical resource for the pursuance of social purposes (related to the

Text Linguistics and Text Revision: An Alliance Approach

31

activity in question and shaped within the selected and required text genre) and of the objectives of the persons involved (who specifically perform the action of language).

The perspective described above was also influenced by the thought of Ferdinand de Saussure, namely through his posthumous work entitled Écrits de linguistique générale (2002). In it, a socio-historical view of language stands outs, one that is linked with a praxeological dimension of language (cf. Bronckart 2010) as well. In this regard, language is materialised through discourse, since individuals perform actions through language, that is, by interacting socially and verbally. Therefore, discourse is language in use and consequently language in action (cf. Saussure 2002) and not an abstract structure or system, completely autonomous in relation to speech, as it has been assumed for many decades. According to the SDI perspective, the notions of text and genre are also closely related since “every new empirical text (…) is necessarily constructed on the basis of the model of a genre, that is, it belongs to a genre” (Bronckart 1999: 138; my translation). Hence, individuals communicate among themselves through specific text genres, which vary according to time, the social context where language actions take place, and their socio-communicative needs. For its part, discourses constitute the linguistic dimension of texts as ways of organising enunciation. Consequently, the various types of discourse reveal different enunciation modes, which can be found in genres and which, in turn, materialise in texts. This allows establishing an interdependent relationship between text genres and human activities because the diversity of the latter reflects the variety of the former. It is a "social conception of language [that] is directly related to the notion of textual genres" (Coutinho 2014a: 226). This relationship between activities, genres and texts is crucial to understand the practice of TR in a broader sense, as it will be clarified in the following sections.

2.2. Text revision as an integrated textual practice Traditionally, TR is perceived as a prescriptive practice in which the reviser is a kind of a language authority and his/her choices override the linguistic usages of others. According to this view, revision may be a synonym for correction, because what matters is to impose a norm, often without considering other relevant aspects (contextual, discursive, etc.) that also influence text production. Such a perspective reduces revision to a superficial intervention, where the main goal is essentially to correct

32

Chapter Two

spelling and grammar errors. It is not questioned whether the texts are adequate nor whether they function in relation to the genre or the social activity to which they pertain; it is not considered that an apparent deviation from the linguistic norm may actually have a specific communicative purpose. In fact, the aspects discussed previously go further beyond the issues of spelling and grammar. Indeed, it might be more adequate to consider empirical texts as complex objects (cf. Coutinho 2006). Therefore, it is more effective to analyse texts without overlooking their production, circulation, and reception conditions. So, just like it is possible to revise a text without making any changes to it, there are also texts that do not present any spelling or grammar problems but still need to be revised for other reasons, as it will be shown further on2. Nowadays, the activity of text revision, though not very well acknowledged, is present in many sectors of society (media, advertising, subtitling, specialised translation, among others) and it has faced deep transformations over the last years, mainly due to the development of information technologies. Moreover, the growing importance that the revisory practice has been gaining in the linguistic services industry (cf. Mossop 2014; Parra Galiano 2006) requires to rethink this activity in a wider logic and to postulate a more up-to-date approach of it.

3. The alliance approach–Exploratory connections TDL and TR have more in common than one might consider at first glance. To begin with, both fields still need to assert themselves in the academic world, since the two lack recognition and consolidation. The fact that TDL is a multidisciplinary domain, as stated above, may, on the one hand, be fruitful as far as its epistemological enrichment is concerned. However, on the other hand, it implies a constant need for affirmation and struggle for an equal recognition in relation to other linguistic domains. In turn, TR is still greatly undervalued, both socially and professionally (cf. Fidalgo 2014), and it was only recently (since the late 90’s) that it acquired a sub-discipline status within, for example, translation studies (cf. Robert and Van Waes 2014). Furthermore, the publication of European and international norms3, aiming to regulate the provision of quality linguistic 2

For this reason, the approach reflected in this paper favours the use of the term text revision rather than linguistic revision. 3 For more information on the subject, please see the normative documents EN 15038:2006 and ISO 17100:2015 made available by the competent standardisation bodies.

Text Linguistics and Text Revision: An Alliance Approach

33

services, has also given more visibility to TR by including revision as a mandatory stage in the text production circuit within this language industry. In this sense, one could almost compare the link between TDL and traditional linguistics to the relationship between TR and translation, which means ranking TDL and TR as less important. Thus, just like linguistics has progressively expanded its study object from isolated sentences to texts as communicative units, it is necessary for TR to evolve from a partial intervention based on spelling and/or grammar to a global intervention at the textual level. Achieving this goal requires a change of focus, one that considers revision as a social activity as well as part of a professional context, where the individual language actions from each participant in the text production process (i.e. authors, editors, translators, revisers, etc.) are represented and combined in the final text. Such an approach of TR can, therefore, be associated with several theoretical principles related to the SDI framework. With this perspective in mind, it is possible to characterise revision as a mediation process as well, when the aim is to conciliate the multiple senses derived from the different voices (cf. Voloshinov [1929]1986) that may intervene in written text production. Thus, concepts like mediation (cf. Bota 2009; Bronckart 2004) and dialogism (cf. Voloshinov [1929]1986]; Benveniste 1966), as they are taken up within the SDI scope, are fundamental aspects which should be considered when the goal is to set up a possible integrated theory of text revision. Lastly, on the methodological level, the combination of the SDI analytical instruments with the TR practice may also confirm the usefulness of articulating the textual competence with the revisory competence and even deepen the still incipient definition of the latter.

4. Intersecting TDL with TR–A practical application In order to show that TDL and TR can indeed be reconciled and, above all, to justify the usefulness (and even the need) of applying the TDL principles to the field of TR, this section presents an analysis of two texts based on this conciliatory perspective. The main goal is to assess the need for revising the texts in question by taking into account a perspective that goes beyond the boundaries of traditional analysis and questions the functioning of the texts themselves. The selected examples pertain to two textual genres which one comes across every day: an advertisement and a warning. Both genres are characterised by the use of concise language, but while advertisements fulfil a commercial purpose, warnings essentially have an informative

34

Chapter Two

function. In both cases, for the message to be sent effectively, the linguistic forms should be sufficiently clear to avoid interpretation problems, but without being exhaustive–at least ideally, since sometimes this might create ambiguities, as it will be shown next. In fact, the challenge is to strike a balance between conveying the intended message adequately and using as few resources as possible, including the absence of punctuation marks. To this end, it is common for advertisements and warnings to have figurative elements since this favours linguistic economy. The two texts analysed here are displayed in different mediums–the first (cf. text 1) concerns an outdoor advertisement for a Portuguese wine brand, regarding a 2012 ad campaign; the second (cf. text 3) is a reproduction of a warning, printed on paper, which was found in a print shop in the city of Lisbon. In both cases, it is possible to identify problems that would normally not be addressed during a superficial revision process within a more traditional linguistic approach. This is to say that without considering the textual genre and the context (of the activity, as well as time-space context) in which both texts occur, there are inconsistencies to be found that would probably not be questioned.

4.1. The wine advertisement Between 2012 and 2013, it was common to find the outdoor ad reproduced as Text 1 in several Portuguese cities (for instance, at bus stops). At first sight, the advertisement seems to be written in perfect Portuguese since the text does not present any major problem–that is, if one understands linguistic analysis from a narrowly focused perspective. However, a closer look at the slogan chosen by the wine brand Aveleda–Brancos com Saber (‘Whites with Knowledge’)–may lead to a change of opinion. Based on an approach that considers textual functioning as a whole, it is possible to find reasons for stating that the slogan does not attain the desired effect because it allows at least two distinct readings. In fact, a few months after the initial launch of the campaign, the brand released a new outdoor ad, this time with a different slogan. This means the advertisement was actually revised and the new slogan read Vinhos Brancos com saber (‘White Wines with knowledge’), as shown in Text 2.

Text Linguistics and Text Revision: An Alliance Approach

Figure 2.1. Text 1

Figure 2.2. Text 2

35

36

Chapter Two

First, on the surface level, it is easy to notice that the first letter of the word saber (‘knowledge’) was changed from uppercase to lowercase, unlike the term Brancos (‘Whites’) that, in the second version of slogan, clearly functions as an adjective qualifying the type of wines in question. The criteria used for the uppercase selection are unknown, but the differences are not merely graphic. Nevertheless, if the slogan was changed, it was because the previous version did not serve the communicative purposes of the brand; hence it did not work. The structure Brancos com Saber (‘Whites with Knowledge’) is unexpected for two reasons. First, as far as the wine context is concerned (that is, within the oenological activity), it would be more likely to find a construction like Brancos com Sabor4 (‘Whites with Flavour’), e.g. something that would more easily recall the taste of wine. However, the advertisement focuses on the experience and tradition of the Aveleda brand, whose first sells date from 1870, as it is proudly mentioned on the company’s website5. Such an exaltation is understandable, but a second problem arises from combining the idea of tradition with the term brancos (‘whites’) when no other explicit referent is available. In fact, it is the image of the bottles that allows to recover the referent. In this regard, the following statement by Miranda (2014: 145; my translation) clearly highlights this aspect: In the case of advertisements, there is always the presence of a photograph of the bottle of wine or even of the label as a mechanism to introduce the theme-referent. This is explained by the advertising purpose of the advertisement, which aims to install a product on the market, which should be immediately recognizable to consumers.

In the advertisement under consideration, the form brancos (‘whites’) assumes, nonetheless, an ambiguous status because it is not entirely clear whether it is a noun resulting from the adjective re-categorisation or an adjective used in the context of a nominal ellipsis. The second option is most likely to correspond to the intended interpretation. However, in Portuguese, it is also possible to interpret brancos (‘whites’) as a noun, which enables a more generic reading. In this case, brancos (‘whites’) does not refer to the feature of a noun anymore, but rather to the identification of a social group, in the sense that ‘The white people hold the knowledge’. 4

It is important to note that the forms ‘saber’ and ‘sabor’ sound quite similar in Portuguese and in the example at hand the first one easily evokes the second. 5 The company’s website is also available in English at http://www.aveledaportugal.pt/.

Text Linguistics and Text Revision: An Alliance Approach

37

Therefore, it is probable that some potential consumers may associate this slogan with racist ideals, insofar as it appears to praise a kind of superiority, not only related to an exclusive knowledge, passed on through generations, but also to a particular ethnicity. In fact, what is visible in the picture, displayed at the top of Text 1, is a family or friends’ reunion, where everyone is gathered around a table. Interestingly, they all seem to be Caucasian and to belong to the upper middle class. In the light of an analysis that contemplates both the semiolinguistic dimension and the psycho-cognitive dimension of the text, the relationship between the verbal component and the image gives rise to a conflict, that is, an unsuccessful interaction. Certainly, this kind of representation was not foreseen when the advertisement was first designed, but such an interpretation is nonetheless possible and valid, which highlights the importance of considering language and texts from a social and praxeological perspective. Therefore, a reviser should ask himself/herself what the author aims to achieve and whom he/she wishes to address through his/her text, so that he/she is able to implement the revisory actions that best suit that purpose. Revision is thus a mediation activity in which the reviser builds the necessary bridges in order to contribute to the construction of meaning within the text itself. In the text under analysis, changing the slogan to Vinhos Brancos com saber (‘White Wines with knowledge’) does not seem to be very relevant, but it actually eliminates the possibility of associating the wine brand with racist values. The inclusion of the noun vinhos (‘wines’) generates a more easily identifiable Noun Phrase (NP), where the adjective brancos (‘whites’), in post-nominal position, has an attributive function and acts as a modifier of the noun. Simultaneously, the Prepositional Phrase (PP) com saber (‘with knowledge’) is interpreted as an apposition to the noun, since it works as an additional comment about the wines (they embody the wine tradition and knowledge), but at the same time it does not allow to identify that same referent in an unequivocal way, hence appearing in a peripheral position within the NP. As far as the dispositional dimension is concerned, the text suits the genre to which it belongs (advertisement). However, the thematic dimension is not appropriate for an activity where the aim is to seduce as many consumers as possible and not to produce the opposite effect.

4.2. The print shop warning The second example under analysis, presented as Text 3, poses slightly different problems. If, in the first case, the combination of the slogan with

38

Chapter Two

the non-verbal elements collides with the communicative purpose of the advertisement, here it essentially is the scarcity of linguistic forms that restrains the interpretation of the global meaning of the text.

Figure 2.3. Text 3 In this warning, the linguistic elements are, indeed, meagre and were partially replaced by an image of a USB flash drive. This compositional option naturally creates a relationship of dependence between the first elements and the second one. The information that one may read is something like “Opening a USB flash drive costs 12 cents” if one considers a literal transposition of the content, following the reading sequence used in the Portuguese language (from left to right and from top to bottom). Being a shop that also provides computer services, the message seems easy to grasp. However, this is not exactly the information the warning intends to convey, even because no one would pay 12 cents just to have a USB flash drive opened in the first place. The interpretation problem is mostly due to the selection of the image included in the warning: the choice of using an image of a USB flash drive that is already ‘opened’ confuses the recipient even more, who reads and interprets the text as a whole–that is, the unit comprising the linguistic forms and the figurative element. In fact, what is at stake is the charge of a handling fee associated with inserting the client’s flash drive into the shop’s computer and then opening the documents he/she wishes to print. This is similar to what already happens in photography shops, for instance. In short, in the first case, the combination of the verbal components with the non-verbal ones may cause interpretation problems, which collide with the commercial goal of the wine brand. In the second example, the

Text Linguistics and Text Revision: An Alliance Approach

39

verbal elements alone do not work. They are insufficient and therefore need the non-linguistic element–that is, the reproduction of the USB flash drive –, although the chosen image was probably not the best choice for the warning at issue. Hence, in this case, the “interpretation only possible by taking the text in its entirety, that is, taking into account verbal and non-verbal elements” (Teixeira and Gonçalves 2014: 171; my translation). However, once again, it is not possible to neglect the contextual factors (related to the commercial activity of the shop), because these are the ones that ultimately enable the interpretation of the text, even though it may not be immediately obvious at first. In the previous sections, we proposed a top-down approach for analysing the two texts in question. In both cases, we started by considering the social context in which each text occurs in order to reach the analysis of the linguistic forms. By following this methodology, it became clear that both examples do need to be revised, given the relationship between the language choices found in the texts and the respective communicative purpose. Nonetheless, without performing a comprehensive analysis within the TDL scope, the identified problems would probably not be questioned and consequently would not be revised. Thus, this reflection aims to emphasize that the activity of text revision is necessary and useful for many areas of daily life and therefore it should be more valued and considered in a more global and less narrow view.

4. Conclusion Based on an alliance approach, this paper sought to present a convergence proposal of different but clearly compatible disciplinary domains–TDL and TR –, by trying to point out the advantages of adopting a top-down methodological path, when the aim is to analyse empirical texts as singular objects and global communicative units and to highlight the importance of “the fundamental and definitive role of the environment or historical and sociocultural context of texts production and, therefore, for the use of language” (Miranda 2014: 151; my translation). In accordance with this perspective, it is essential to understand texts not just as linguistic objects, especially when what is at issue is the textuallinguistic analysis of objects which are communication units as well. The two texts presented in Section 3 are an example of this, and both also reflect the multimodal nature of many of the texts one comes across with every day. Thus, the ultimate goal of this article was to prove how advantageous some of the theoretical principles of TDL can be when it comes to an

40

Chapter Two

integrated approach of TR, that is, when considering texts as complex objects, as well as representatives of social activities (cf. Coutinho 2014a; Coutinho 2008). In short, this paper aimed to emphasize and hopefully shall have allowed to conclude that (i) many of the epistemological and methodological principles concerning the SDI framework may constitute a valuable contribution to TR as a social and language activity; (ii) TR must be considered from a broader viewpoint in order to establish itself as an academic domain of expertise; and (iii) it is increasingly adequate and necessary to articulate linguistic analysis with textual analysis, especially when there are so many texts today that reveal a multisemiotic nature like the ones mentioned in this article.

References Benveniste, Émile. 1966. Problèmes de Linguistique Générale. Paris: Gallimard. Bota, Cristian. 2009. “La médiation langagière: praxeologie et gnoseologie.” Estudos Linguísticos/Linguistic Studies 3:119-133. Bronckart, Jean-Paul. 2010. “La vie des signes en questions: des textes aux langues, et retour.” In Textos Selecionados do XXV Encontro Nacional da APL, edited by A. M. Brito, F. Silva, J. Veloso, and A. Fiéis, 11-40. Porto: APL. —. 2004. “La médiation langagière: Son statut et ses niveaux de réalisation.” In Les médiations langagières. Des discours aux acteurs sociaux, edited by R. Delamotte-Legrand, 11-32. Rouen: PUR. —. 1999. “Atividade de linguagem, textos e discursos: Por um interacionismo sociodiscursivo”. Translated by A. R. Machado & P. Cunha. São Paulo: EDUC. —. 1997. Activité langagière, textes et discours. Pour un interactionisme socio-discursif. Paris: Delachaux et Niestlé. Coutinho, Maria Antónia. 2014a. “Language in Action: Epistemological and Methodological Issues.” In From Language to Discourse, edited by C. N. Correia, C. Tanto, L. Shotropa, L. Cunha, and N. Jorge, 224235. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. —. 2014b. “Uma noção, duas análises, algumas comparações.” In O Universal e o Particular–uma vida a comparar. Homenagem a Maria Francisca Xavier, edited by A. Fiéis, M. Lobo, and A. Madeira, 125141. Lisboa: Edições Colibri. —. 2008. “Marcadores discursivos e tipos de discurso.” Estudos Linguísticos/Linguistic Studies 2:193-210.

Text Linguistics and Text Revision: An Alliance Approach

41

—. 2006. “O texto como objecto empírico: consequências e desafios para a linguística.” Veredas 10 (1-2):1-13. Fidalgo, Marta. 2014. “Guia para revisores de texto: uma proposta para o exercício de uma profissão pouco (re)conhecida.” Master’s thesis, Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Mossop, Brian. 20143. Revising and Editing for Translators. London/New York: Routledge. Miranda, Florencia. 2014. “Exploração sobre géneros textuais e mecanismos da organização temática em perspetiva comparada.” Estudos Linguísticos/Linguistic Studies 9:141-153. Parra Galiano, Silvia, 2006. “La revisión y otros procedimientos para el aseguramiento de la calidad de la traducción en el ámbito profesional.” Revue Turjuman 15 (2):11-48. Robert, Isabelle, and Luc Van Waes. 2014. “Selecting a translation revision procedure: do common sense and statistics agree?” Perspectives: Studies in Translatology, 22 (3):304-320. Saussure, Ferdinand de. 2002. Écrits de linguistique générale (edited by S. Bouquet and R. Engler). Paris: Gallimard. Teixeira, Carla, and Matilde Gonçalves. 2014. “A análise temática de textos: entre o interacionismo e a semântica textual”. Estudos Linguísticos/Linguistic Studies 9:155-175. Voloshinov, Valentin Nikolaevich. [1929]1986. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. Translated by L. Matejka & I. R. Titunik. Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press. Vygotsky, Lev Semenovitch [1934]2007. Pensamento e linguagem. Lisboa: Relógio d'Água.

CHAPTER THREE THE DISCURSIVE PATTERN OF ACADEMIC TEXTS RUTE ROSA CENTRO DE LINGUÍSTICA DA UNIVERSIDADE NOVA DE LISBOA / FUNDAÇÃO PARA A CIÊNCIA E A TECNOLOGIA

Abstract: Drawn from the notions of textual genres, types of discourse and text plan–core notions within the theoretical framework of SocioDiscursive Interactionism (Bronckart 1997)–this paper contributes the notion of a discursive pattern to the characterization and description of textual genres. To illustrate the applicability of this proposal, a descriptive textual analysis is carried out at the text plan level, of the organization, emergence and articulation of types of discourse of two academic genres– the critical review and the scientific paper. From this analysis, it is noted that types of discourse tend to show a relative regularity, both in occurrence and organization; that is, a specific discursive pattern. In this sense, the form in which types of discourse organize themselves, articulate and arise, gives the perspective of a certain discursive identity and distinguishes the more stabilized genres. Keywords: Socio-discursive Interactionism, textual genres, types of discourse, text plan, discursive pattern.

1. Introduction Within the framework of Text Linguistics, this proposal is drawn on the theoretical scope of the Socio-Discursive Interactionism (SDI) and has a starting point the research of the possibility of characterising and describing textual genres from the occurrence of types of discourse at the level of the text plan. Hence, the work’s objective is to determine that the

The Discursive Pattern of Academic Texts

43

notion of discursive pattern1 is an applicable analytical device to describe and characterize textual genres. To that end, in a first stage, we present the notion of textual genres, types of discourse and text plan. In a second stage, we will present a textual analysis, after examining the theoretical principles underlying that analysis device.

2. Textual genres and types of discourse Within the theoretical framework of SDI, text is ‘a production unit of situational language’, forming a concrete performance of the linguistic system in a certain communicative situation (Bronckart [1997] 1999: 75). However, a text itself is not a linguistic unit, but rather a communicative unit because its opening and closing conditions are determined, not by linguistic units, but by the underpinning action that generated the text (cf. Bronckart 2010, 28). In this respect, a text’s production implies the existence of a speaker/author that is in a situation of action of language, of a hearer/addressee and of a context (Bronckart [1997] 1999: 93). Further, the speaker chooses the genre model that he/she finds more suitable and adapts it to the communicative situation (Bronckart 1996: 12). This selection occurs because the speaker is in a specific situation of action of language, and from the knowledge that he/she has of genres (arquitextually available) and from the way that he/she assesses and views the situation of the action (in view of the physical and social context). From this perspective, on the one hand, genres are influenced by contextual parameters and, on the other hand, they regulate textual production through an identity principle (repetition) and through a difference principle (variation) (Adam 2001: 38). From an SDI perspective, any text pertains to a genre and this is constituted by different segments that we can identify through the regularity of linguistic units, which articulate themselves in their structure. These different types of segments formed by specific linguistic forms, Bronckart describes as discourse, which according to the linguistic regularities, may be classified into types of discourse (Bronckart [1997] 1999: 138). Types of discourse are categorised by virtue of the production/enunciation conditions, corresponding to different enunciation plans. Hence, the linguistic units (existing in a limited number) of the segments forming the types of discourse–that are a part of any genre and any text–enable the execution of an unlimited number of textual genres. 1 This notion was developed in the Master’s Thesis in Consultancy and Linguistic Review (Rosa 2015), from the analysis we present in this work.

44

Chapter Three

Henceforth, the occurrence, in the texts, of certain linguistic units (in greater or lesser number) allows four types of discourse to be identified: at the expose level (value of time conjunction), the interactive (value of implication) and the theoretical (value of autonomy) and, at the narration level (value of time disjunction), the interactive report (value of implication) and the narration (value of autonomy) (Bronckart [1997] 1999: 155-157). In this sense, the presence of a verbalised agency in the text might have an implied value if it is possible to verify the inscription of the subject of the enunciation in the discourse, or might have an autonomous value if the subject of the enunciation is absent. On the other hand, there are types of discourse in the order of exposure, when the verbalised time coordinates express events simultaneous to the situation of enunciation, and types of discourse in the narrative order, when the verbalised time coordinates express events that are not simultaneous2. Although claiming that it is not possible to identify textual genres from the occurrence of types of discourse, Bronckart indicated that certain genres tend to be formed by specific types of discourses (cf. Bronckart 1997: 254-255). In this regard, as highlighted by Florencia Miranda, Bronckart’s declarations “(…) occur in the work to the transversality of types of discourse […], but also allow to argue in favor of the relative stability that can be observed in the occurrence of types among the diversity of genres” (Miranda 2010: 141; my translation). From this point of view, we can question, on the one hand, if the occurrence of types of discourse does not allow us, in part, to identify a genre and, on the other hand, if the investigation of this occurrence is not a way to describe textual genres. Despite genre description facing great challenges due to inherent heterogeneity and changeability, the fact that any text pertains to a genre lead us to the need “(…) of thinking, in methodological terms, the viability of the description of genres of text” (Coutinho 2007: 39; my translation). However, with Bronckart (2008: 41), where the need to analyse the inherent characteristics of textual genres is already referred to, the SDI’s focus has been on describing texts. For that, Bronckart proposes the textual architecture model ([1997] 1999: 119). In this textual model analysis, text is seen as a “fold” that has three overlapping layers. The deepest layer of this model corresponds to the general infrastructure of the text that, in turn, integrates the general text 2

The characterisation and identification of the linguistic units associated with the four types of discourse was made by Bronckart, although from a corpus made up mostly of written and oral texts in French of the conventional genres.

The Discursive Pattern of Academic Texts

45

plan, the types of discourse, the sequences and the forms of articulation between types of discourse (fitting and merge) (Bronckart [1997] 1999: 119).

3. Text plan The general text plan corresponds to the “general organisation of the thematic content; it is visible in the reading process and it can be codified in a summary”, and, “it is determined by incorporation of types of discourse, sequences and other forms of planning occurring in the text” (Bronckart [1997] 1999: 120; my translation). According to Bronckart, it is not possible to classify text plans on account of the fact that “(…) when a text presents several types of discourse, the general plan that organises it is, usually, quite complex” (Bronckart [1997] 1999: 247; my translation). On the other hand, the author states that different types of discourse have great importance in textual organisation, distinguishing homogeneous texts (composed only of one type of discourse) and heterogeneous texts (composed of different types of discourse) (cf. Bronckart [1997] 1999: 252-253). Nonetheless, the introduction of the text plan in the SDI model “(…) shows the need to identify a structuring unit (or composition) that allows to apprehend the overall text” (Miranda 2010: 136; my translation). Although the notion of text plan is used in a “weak sense” (Bronckart [1997] 1999, 248) and, for that reason, there is a need for a deepening of theory, we attest that this concept has only been worked on by JeanMichel Adam (2008). In this author’s opinion, “(…) text plans have a fundamental role in the macro-textual composition of meaning, they correspond to disposition in rhetoric (…)” (Adam 2008: 255; my translation). However, Adam also emphasizes that the rhetorical model does not allow consideration of all the possibilities of text plans and, for that, the author distinguishes conventional plans from sporadic plans, in accordance with a greater or lesser setting of genres (Adam 2008: 256). According to Matilde Gonçalves (2011: 9; my translation), “to analyse the text plan it is necessary to identify the different sections that organise text pertaining to the textual composition, to describe how they relate and how they are segmented in the textual space”. Silva (2016: 193; my translation), in turn, highlights that the text plan “consists in the distribution of the expressed content and, in the written medium, in the formal segmentation attested in a text”. Segmentation corresponds to the formal division of the text and distribution relates to the articulation and content arrangement (Silva 2016: 194). From this point of view, to describe a text plan, it is necessary to analyse, on the one hand, the

46

Chapter Three

segmentation mechanisms (title, subtitle, intertitles, among others) and, on the other hand, the thematic contents of each different segment of the plan. As previously mentioned, the text plan is very important for the organisation of types of discourse. Besides, this is “a feature susceptible to contributing, together with others, to the establishment, identification, characterization, and demarcation of genres” (Silva 2016: 118; my translation). On the other hand, the same type of discourse may occur in a potentially endless number of genres, notwithstanding a certain stability in the occurrence of types of discourse. In this respect, to identify, distinguish and characterize textual genres, it is necessary to consider types of discourse and text plan. For this purpose, we propose the notion of discursive pattern.

4. The discursive pattern of academic texts Drawn from the discursive classification within the SDI framework, the discursive pattern corresponds to the organisation, occurrence and articulation of types of discourse at the text plan level, and the following elements are considered in the analysis: the text plan; the occurrence of types of discourse; places of emergence of the types of discourse (main or secondary); modalities of articulation of the types of discourse (merging and/or fitting). For this purpose, it is necessary to identify the configuration of the text plan; the linguistic forms in interaction that allow recognizing the four types of discourse, such as, for example, personal pronouns, possessive pronouns, demonstratives, time adverbs, time arrangers, place adverbs, modal auxiliaries, verbal forms, among others. To identify where in the plan the types of discourse emerge we consider the distribution of the thematic contents. The role of the types of discourse is to identify the predominant type of discourse (main) and the secondary type(s). As far as the modalities of articulation of types of discourse are concerned, in the fitting articulation, the types emerge defined and ordered, that is, the dependent relationship is explicit among segments; and, in the merging articulation, types of discourse are incorporated in the same segment (cf. Bronckart [1997] 1999: 253-254).

The Discursive Pattern of Academic Texts

47

4.1 Corpus The corpus consists of eight texts of two academic genres3–four scientific papers and four critical reviews–from two scientific fields– linguistics and sociology.4 The linguistics papers were selected from the Revista Portuguesa de Humanidades (‘Portuguese Humanities Journal’), and from the journal Estudos Linguísticos (‘Linguistic Studies’) (journal of the Centro de Linguística da Universidade Nova de Lisboa). As for the sociology texts, these were selected from the journal Análise Social (‘Social Analysis’) (journal of the Instituto de Ciências Socias da Universidade de Lisboa) and from the journal Sociologia (‘Sociology’) (journal of the Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto). At the end of this paper, in addition to the bibliographic information regarding the texts, the scientific field the texts belong to is specified (with the initial letter), as well as the genre and an acronym to identify the reference texts (A1L, A2L, A3S, A4S, R1L, R2L, R3S, R4S).

4.2 Descriptive textual analysis As far as the text plan configuration is concerned, we have verified that it is different in the two genres and that the texts from the same genre present a fairly stable organization composition. Firstly, regarding the textual segments, which form the peritext of the texts belonging to the scientific paper genre, we confirm that the common elements in the four texts are: article’s title, author(s)’s name(s) and filiation, the abstract, keywords and bibliographic references. With respect to the texts pertaining to the critical review genre, the common elements in the four texts are: the author’s name and filiation, the title of the reviewed work and the journal responsible for the publication. As far as the body of the text goes, the Linguistics scientific papers are segmented by numbered intertitles, and the Sociology scientific papers are segmented by un-numbered intertitles. 3

Considering that the aim of this work does not deal with representativeness, we do not consider that the gathered corpus represents the two text genres, however we understand that it reveals relevant paths for future reflections. 4 Initially, it was meant to compare texts from more distinct scientific areas, as for example, texts from Linguistics and Civil Engineering. Nonetheless, there were not found texts of the genre critical review in the Civil Engineering field. Although it is not possible to draw definitive conclusions on the apparent inexistence of this genre in the field, we believe it is relevant that in a field belonging to the hard sciences, texts weren’t produced pertaining to a critical positioning and confrontation of perspectives.

48

Chapter Three

We note, in the body text of the considered critical reviews, that body is not divided and it is sequentially organised into introduction, development, and conclusion. As far as types of discourse are concerned, and stemmed from the global analysis of the eight texts, we are able to observe that the expose’s level (theoretical discourse and interactive discourse) is, clearly, dominant in both genres texts. In other words, the established relationship between time coordinates, verbalized in texts, and situation’s coordinates of the ordinary world–where the action of language occurs–expresses, chiefly, a value of time conjunction. This simultaneity value is recognizable through the existence, in the texts, of linguistic units referring to the enunciation’s situation, namely, verbal forms in the present tense (“…verifica-se...”, [‘...it is observed...’], A1L, p. 171; A2L, p. 111; “…mostra…” [‘...it shows...’], A3S, p. 375; “…baseiam-se…” [‘...are based on...’], A4S, p. 5; “…centra-se…” [‘…it focuses…’], R1L, p. 151; “…demonstra…” [‘...it proves...’], R2L, p. 3; “…faz-se…” [‘…it is done…’], R3S, p. 233; “…Trata-se…” [‘it focuses on’], R4S, p. 229), verbal forms in the past perfect and imperfect tense indicative with continuity value and relevance for the present (“…consultou-se...” [‘...it has been consulted...’], A2L, p. 102; “…identificámos…” [‘...we have identified…’], A3S, p. 367; “Neste texto tentei descrever…” [‘In this text I have tried to describe...’], A4S, p. 22); verbal forms in the perfect compound (“...têm sido …” [‘…they have been being...’] R2L, p. 143), as well as the presence of other time deictics referring to the enunciation’s time, and space deictics, which signal a proximity relationship (“…deste trabalho…” [‘…this work…’], A1L, p. 163; “Este artigo…” [‘This article…’], A2L, p. 101/A3S, p. 361; “É esta a situação…” [‘This is the situation…’], A4S, p. 6; “Hoje em dia…” [‘Nowadays…’], A4S, p. 18; “Aqui…” [‘Here…’], R1L, p. 156, “…este estudo…” [‘…this study…’], R2L, p.1; “Trata-se aqui…” [‘It is focused here…’], R3S, p. 234; “…no presente…” [‘…in the present…’], R4S, p. 234). However, by and large with the texts from the two genres, the theoretical discourse prevails, that is, it highlights the presence of a value of time conjunction without the involvement of the subject of the action. However, it also appears, in certain textual blocks of two Sociology papers and of one Linguistic paper, the narration level5 (interactive report 5

What differentiates the types of discourse of the order of exposure from the order narration is the verbalization of time coordinates. The types pertaining to the narration order, that is, the interactive report and the narration order occur when the verbalized time coordinates express events that are simultaneous with the situation of enunciation.

The Discursive Pattern of Academic Texts

49

discourse and narration discourse). In the A4S article, the time disjunction value occurs, more pronounced, in some footnotes (peritext), in the section named “As afirmações e reconfigurações históricas do catolicismo português…” [‘Historical claims and reconfiguration of the Portuguese Catholicism…’] (“…foi marcado…até ao século XV…” [‘…it was marked…until the 15th century…’], R4S, p. 9), and in the section named “Religiosidade institucional versus religiosidades populares–uma tentativa de fenomenologia” [‘Institutional religiosity versus popular religiosities–a phenomenology attempt’] (“Em 1908…deixou…” [‘In 1908…it tried…’], R4S, p. 19). Nonetheless, this observable value of time disjunction, mainly in linguistic units expressing an autonomous narrative (narration), articulates through merging (in a less limited way) and through fitting (in a more marked and defined way) with types of discourse at the expose order (theoretical and interactive). In the article A3S, the time disjunction level occurs between the first and last paragraph of the section named “O estudo” [‘Study’]. However, unlike what we have noticed in the A4S paper, the first person plural verbal forms refer to the agents of the action of language: “...selecionámos…” [‘…we have selected…’]; “…quisemos” [‘…we wanted.’], A3S, p. 366. In this respect, in the A4S paper, the autonomous narrative order occurs (narration), while, in the paper A3S paper, occurs the implicated narrative order (interactive report), but articulated through fitting with the occurrence of the interactive discourse, in this last section’s paragraph (“…neste artigo apresentamos…” [‘…In this paper we present…’], A3S, p. 367). Concerning the A2L paper, we observe–despite the narration order not emerging as significantly as in A3S and A4S papers–in some segments of the sections 1.1 and 1.2, verbal perfect forms (“…foram…” [‘…they were…’], “…foi…” [‘…(it) was…’] A2L p. 103); and time organisers (“…posteriormente…” [‘…afterwards…’], A2L p. 102). They convey an anteriority value of the verbalized actions, in relation to the time when the action of language materializes. Even though the analysis is global and not local, we consider, at the narration order, to be textual blocks only those excerpts where the disjunction time value is expressed markedly, through time deictics and adverbial time expressions referring, unequivocally, to actions that have taken place in a disjunct time segment of the time of the language’s action: “Num primeiro momento selecionámos…” (A3S, p. 366) [‘In a first moment we have selected…’]; “A partir de 1860…” [‘from 1860…’] (A4S, p. 12); “…no início do século XX…” [‘…at the beginning of the 20th century…’] (A4S, p. 13). Expressions like “…nos últimos anos…” [‘…in last years…’] (A4S, p. 5) convey a continuity value up to the enunciation’s present and, for this reason, we consider that there is not a

50

Chapter Three

time disjunction. Although existing the narration order in A2L, A3S and A4S papers, we verify that the expose order is always predominant. Apart from this, narration order segments occur in specific points, mainly in passages referring to historical facts relevant to the enunciation and research time (A4S), as well as in the contextualization of the research process itself (A2L and A3S). On the other hand, we note that the implicated expose (interactive discourse) occurs in all texts of both genres. The implication value is identifiable in the texts through the following characteristics: occurrence of personal deictics (“…nos parece…” [‘…it seem to us…’], “…nossa hipótese…” [‘…our hypothesis…’], A1L p. 168; “…nossa…” [‘…our…’], “…nós…” [‘…we…], R2L p. 1; “…para quem como eu…” [‘for someone as I’], R3S, p. 235); existence of first person singular and plural verbal forms (“...desenvolvemos…” [‘…(we) develop…’], “…consideramos…” [‘…(we) consider…’], A1L p. 174; “…caracterizamos…” [‘…(we) caracterize…’], “…podemos…” [‘…(we) can…’], A2L p. 104; “Partilhamos…” [‘…(we) share…’], A3S p. 363, “…olharei em seguida…” (‘…(I) will observe next…’], A3S p.364; “…proponho…” [‘…(I) propose…’], p. 22, “…quero sublinhar…” [‘…(I) wish to highlight…’], A4S, p. 7; “…diremos…” [‘…(we) will say…’], p. 162, R1L; “…estou a lembrar-me…” [‘…(I) remembre…’], p. 235, R3S); the presence of non-declarative sentences (“…como poderá…enunciados?” [‘…how could it be…mentioned?’], R1L p. 161; “…e eles existem!” [‘…and they exist!’], R3S p. 232, “A partir de que identidades?” [‘From which identities?’], R3S p. 235). Concerning the autonomy value of the agent, who produces the action of language, this is recognizable through the absence of first person deictics markers that refer to the agent(s) of the action; through the existence of impersonal verbal forms and through third person plural and singular (“…manifesta-se…” [‘…it is expressed’], A1L p. 164, “…a autora apresenta…” [‘...the author presents…’], A1L p. 165; “…decidiu-se…” [‘…it has been decided…’], A2L, p. 103; “…constrói-se…” [‘…it is built…’], A3S, p. 370; “…baseiam-se…” ‘…it is based on…’], A4S, p. 5; “…a autora toma…” [‘…the author takes…’], p. 151, R1L; “…propõe-se…” [‘…it is proposed…’], R2L, p. 1; “Trata-se…” [‘…it deals with…’], R4S, p. 229); and through the absence of non-declarative sentences, among others. Regarding the plan passages, where types of discourse are found, in the scientific paper genre texts, and although the theoretical discourse is prevailing, we confirm that this aspect is linked to the parts of the plan where the subject describes the matter under study and the research process. On the other hand, we have determined that interactive discourse

The Discursive Pattern of Academic Texts

51

emerges in specific textual segments, namely, at the beginning and end of points and sections, which divide the text’s body. Some examples of this are: in the A1L paper, between the second and last paragraph of the introduction, at the end of point 1; at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of point 3; at the beginning and at the end of point 4; at the beginning of point 4.2; at the end of point 4.3; and in all paragraphs of the last point; in the A2L paper, in the last paragraph of point 1.1, at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of 2.1, in the next-to-last paragraph of 2.2.2.; in the last paragraph of point 2.3.2; at the beginning of point 2.3.4; at the beginning and at the end of point 4; in the A3S paper, in the first and last paragraphs of the section named “Introdução” [‘Introduction’], in the first and second paragraph of the section called “Background”, in the last paragraph of the “Study” section, in the first paragraph of the section named “Tópicos, fontes, ações e papéis” [‘Topics, sources, actions and roles’], and at the end of section called “Notas finais” [‘Final remarks’]; in the A4S paper, from the first to the third paragraph of the section named “As ambivalências na tese de secularização” [‘Ambivalences of the secularisation thesis’], at the beginning and end of the section “A moldura metodológica” [‘Methodological frame’], at the beginning and in the middle of the section “As afirmações e reconfigurações…” [‘Claims and reconfigurations…’], in the first and third paragraph of the section “Religiosidade institucional…” [‘Institutional religiosity…’] and, at last, in the first, third and last paragraph of the section “A sociedade portuguesa…” [‘The portuguese society’] (cf. Rosa 2015). From these examples, we can observe that the emergence of the interactive discourse in the texts of scientific paper genre presents a significant regularity. Although they are texts from different fields and display particularities stemming from the style of each author, we note that the occurrence of the interactive discourse is not random. This happens in those passages of the text where the implication of the agent–of the language’s action–in the actions is marked, verbalized in the text, which, in turn, integrates the research process itself. Hence, the manifestation of types of discourse in the texts of the scientific paper genre is regulated by the text plan associated to the genre. In relation to the texts of the critical review genre, the manifestation of the theoretical discourse is linked to two specific instants of the text plan of the four reviews: the presentation of the reviewed work (introduction) and the description of the reviewed work (development). Even though interactive discourse within critical reviews is less regular than in scientific paper genre texts, we observed that this occurrence is not totally random, in other words, it is linked to specific moments. In the R1L

52

Chapter Three

and R3S texts, the interactive discourse is most accentuated at the end of the text’s body, that is, in those instants of the plan where the author presents his/her perspective and appraises the reviewed work. In those texts, the implication value is associated with the moments where the author presents his/her value judgements and takes a critical positioning, this being verbalized through first-person and third verbal forms, personal pronouns, possessive pronouns and non-declarative sentences: “On the whole, we have no doubts stating that this work amounts to a contribution of undeniable relevance…” (R1L, p. 160); “…this work has allowed to have a fresh view…” (R1L, 160); “Como conclusão, diremos …” [‘As a conclusion, we would say…’] (R1L, p. 162); “… o elemento que me parece mais expressivo…” [‘…the most expressive element…’] (R3S, p. 234); “Para quem, como eu, tem tentado refletir…” [‘To whom, as I, have been trying to reflect upon…’] (R3S, p.135). As well as this, we can confirm the sporadic occurrence of interactive discourse, in a lesser, limited way (merging) in the introduction and development. This occasional and less marked manifestation is connected to the moments of the plan where the review’s author attempts to lead and situate the addressee (receiver) in the work’s description: “Thus, we are firstly presented…” (R1L, p.153;“…como acabámos de ver…” [‘…as we just saw…’] (R1L, p. 154); “… estou a lembrar-me, por exemplo, de Giddens e mesmo de Beck …” [‘…I am remembering, for exemple, Giddens and even Beck…’ (R3S, p. 235). However, in the R4S text, the interactive discourse occurs only at the review’s beginning (“…para referirmos duas das últimas distinções…” [‘…for (us) to refer two of the last differences…’] p. 229) and at the end (“…facto que nos remete para a citação… [‘…fact that it send us to the quotation…’] p. 233; that is, this absence matches the fact that the review’s author does not wish to involve and situate the addressee in the description of the reviewed work. On the other hand, in R2L texts and R4S, the occurrence of interactive discourse in the part of the plan regarding conclusion does not exist in text R2L and is less marked in the R4S text. This way, these two reviews are, of the four, those in which the author’s perspective and critical appraisal are less visible. In the R2L text, the author only mentions that it is a work of “…maior relevância…” [‘…great relevance…’] and “…um importante contributo…” [‘…an important contribution…’] (R2L, p. 3). As for the R4S text, the author qualifies the work as “…um ensaio muito denso…” [‘…a very dense essay…’] (R4S, p. 233). In this way, the fact that interactive discourse does not occur in a marked way at the final stage of the plan makes the authors’ perspectives

The Discursive Pattern of Academic Texts

53

and their critical appreciation less relevant than it would be expected in texts of this genre. From this point of view, the RS4 text does not display a suitable discursive pattern for the critical review genre, coming closer to the discursive pattern of the texts of the reading notes6 genre. On the other hand, in the R2L text, the interactive discourse manifestation, at the final stage of the text plan, would lead the author’s perspective and the critical appreciation to be more explicit–which, from our point of view, seems to suit the genre7. In the following table, we present the characteristics of the discursive pattern of the studied genres. Table 3.1. The discursive pattern of the scientific paper and critical review genres Discursive pattern of scientific paper genre Conventional text plan Thematic content organisation: text’s body divided into numbered points or sections Predominace of exposing order Main Type: Theoretical Discourse Secundary Types: Interactive Discourse Irregular manifestation of narration order Occurrence of Theoretical Discourse: state of the art, problem’s description or study object description Interactive Discourse manifestation: occurrence, at key moments of the text plan, (mainly at the beginning and end of points/sections that divide the text’s body); at the beginning, in the hypothesis formulation and in the presentation of problems or examples and, at the end, in the ideas summary Occurrence of Interactive and 6

Discursive pattern of critical review genre Conventional text plan Thematic content organisation: text’s body not divided, sequentially organised into introduction, development and conclusion Predominace of exposing order Main Type: Theoretical Discourse Secundary Types: Interactive Discourse

Occurrence of Theoretical Discourse: presentation and description of the work under review Interactive Discourse manifestation: sporadic occurrence and not limited in the introduction and in development (occasional guiding strategy and addressee’s involvement in the description); more marked occurrence and more limited in the last paragraphs of the texts (review author’s perspective and his/her critical appreciation of the reviewed work)

Generally, as in R4S text, in the reading notes genres, the critical appraisal and the author’s perspective are not that relevant as in the critical review genre. 7 In Rosa (2015), we also argue the applicability of this proposal concerning proofreading.

54

Chapter Three

Narrative Discourse: methodological frame (Linguistics), historical frame (Sociology) Articulation modalities of types of discourse Fitting: predominant

Articulation modalities of types of discourse Merging: introduction and development Fitting: conclusion

5. Final remarks In this work, we have attempted to show that the notion of discursive pattern is a valid analytic device for the characterization, description and distinction of discursive genres. From this analysis, we may note that, although in the texts of the genres studied mainly occur the theoretical and interactive discourse, the manifestation, organisation and articulation of types of discourse are different, and regulated by different conventional text plan. Hence, we could note, in these textual genres, that the manifestation, articulation and organisation of types of discourse, at the textual level, tend to obey a certain regularity and tend to show a specific discursive pattern. Thus, in conclusion, even if types of discourse do not allow complete identification of the generic identification of a text, the analysis of a discursive pattern permits a glimpse of some discursive identity and distinguishes the more stable genres. Although the number of texts analysed for this work does not allow us to draw generalisations nor achieve unequivocal conclusions, we believe that the results obtained present pertinent cues for future reflections and a new perspective on the analysis of texts and genres.

References Adam, Jean-Michel. 2001. “En finir avec les types de textes”. In Analyse des discours. Types et genres: Communication et Interprétation, edited by M. Ballabriga, 25Ǧ43. Toulouse, France: EUS. —. 2008. A linguística textual. Introdução à análise textual dos discursos. São Paulo: Cortez Editora. Bronckart, Jean-Paul. 1997. Activité langagière, textes et discours. Pour un interactionisme socio-discursif. Lausanne: Delachaux et Niestlé. —. [1997] 1999. Atividade de linguagem, textos e discursos: por um interacionismo sócio-discursivo. (Trans. Anna Raquel Machado). São Paulo: EDUC. —. 2006. “Os gêneros de textos e os tipos de discurso como formatos das interações propiciadoras de desenvolvimento”. In Atividade de

The Discursive Pattern of Academic Texts

55

linguagem, discurso e desenvolvimento humano, 121-160. (Trans. Rosalvo Gonçalves Pinto). Campinas: Mercado de Letras. —. 2008. “A atividade de linguagem frente à LÍNGUA: Homenagem a Ferdinand de Saussure”. In Guimarães, A., M. de Matos, Machado, A. R. & Coutinho A. (Eds.), O interaccionismo sociodiscursivo. Questões epistemológicas e metodológicas, edited by A. Guimarães, M. de Matos, A. R. Machado and M.A.Coutinho, 19-42. Campinas: Mercado de Letras. —. 2010. “La vie des signes en questions: des textes aux langues et retour”. In Textos Seleccionados, XXV Encontro Nacional da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística, edited by A. M. Brito, F. Silva, J. Veloso and A. Fiéis, 11-40. Porto: APL. Coutinho, Maria Antónia. 2007. “Descrever géneros de texto: resistências e estratégias”. Actas do IV SIGET–Simpósio Internacional de Estudos de Géneros Textuais. Tubarão, Santa Catarina, 9:639-647. Online at http://linguagem.unisul.br/paginas/ensino/pos/linguagem/eventos/cd/P ort/20.pdf Gonçalves, Matilde. 2011. “Espécie de texto: contributo para a caraterização do sítio web”. Hipertextus, 12:1-12. Online at http://www.hipertextus.net/volume7/02-Hipertextus-Vol7-MatildeGoncalves.pdf Miranda, Florencia. 2010. Textos e géneros em diálogo: uma abordagem linguística da intertextualização. Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. Rosa, Rute. 2015. “Proposta Interacionista para a Prática de Revisão de Texto: o padrão discursivo dos textos académicos.” Master’s Thesis in Consultancy and Linguistic Review. Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal. Silva, Paulo Nunes da. 2016. “Género, conteúdos e segmentação: em busca do plano de texto”. Diacrítica 30 (1):181-224. Online at http://ceh.ilch.uminho.pt/publicacoes/Diacritica_30-1.pdf

Chapter Three

56

Appendix: Corpus (i) Linguistics Papers A1L: Cunha, Luís Filipe, Ferreira, Idalina, and Leal, António. 2010. “A distinção massivo/contável em diferentes categorias gramaticais”. Estudos Linguísticos/ Linguistic Studies, n.º 5, Edições Colibri/CLUNL, Lisboa, 13: 163-175. http://www.clunl.edu.pt/resources/docs/revista/n5_fulltexts/5l%20luis%20cunha% 20et%20al.pdf A2L: Graça, Fernandes. 2008. “Expressões Idiomáticas: Frases Fixas Intransitivas do Português Europeu”. Estudos Linguísticos/Linguistic Studies, n.º 1, Edições Colibri/CLUNL, Lisboa, 19:101-119. http://www.clunl.edu.pt/resources/docs/revista/n1_fulltexts/1f%20graca%20fernan des.pdf (ii) Sociology Papers A3S: Coelho, Zara Pinto. 2009. “Jovens no discurso da imprensa portuguesa: um estudo exploratório”. Análise Social, vol. XLIV, n.º 191, Lisboa, 17:361-377. http://analisesocial.ics.ul.pt/documentos/1244540575S0cYP5zm7Oh73TO4.pdf A4S: Dix, Steffen. 2010. “As esferas seculares e religiosas na sociedade portuguesa”. Análise Social, vol. XLV, n.º 194, Lisboa, 23:5-27. http://analisesocial.ics.ul.pt/documentos/1268306960Y6kEE8vd8Li59CA4.pdf (iii) Linguistics Critical Reviews R1L: Cunha, Luís Filipe. 2009. Review of A Semântica do Objecto: Aspecto e Determinação Nominal, by Susana Pereira. 2009. Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian / Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia. Estudos Linguísticos/ Linguistic Studies, n.º 4, Edições Colibri/CLUNL, Lisboa, 12:151-162. http://www.clunl.edu.pt/resources/docs/revista/n4_fulltexts/4i%20susana%20perei ra%20et%20al.pdf R2L: Silva, Augusto Soares da. 2002. Review of Expressão do Espaço no Português Europeu. Contributo Psicolinguístico para o Estudo da Linguagem e Cognição, by Hanna Jakubowicz Batoreo. 2000. Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian / Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia. Revista Portuguesa de Humanidades, vol. VI, Braga, 5:506-510. http://hanna-batoreo.planetaclix.pt/rec1.html (iv) Sociology Critical Reviews R3S: Soeiro, José. 2012. “A precariedade como modo de vida?” Review of Jovens em Transições Precárias. Trabalho, Quotidiano e Futuro, by Nuno de Almeida et al. 2011. Lisboa: Mundos. Sociologia, Revista da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto, vol. XXIV, Porto, 6:231-236. http://ler.letras.up.pt/uploads/ficheiros/10766.pdf

The Discursive Pattern of Academic Texts

57

R4S: Brandão, Miguel Quaresma. 2013. Review of Portugal nas Transições–O Calendário Português desde 1950, by Mário Murteira. 2011. Lisboa: Sítio do Livro / CESO CI Portugal, com o apoio do INDEG/ ISCTE Business School. Coletânea “Economia e Sociedade”, n.º 1. Sociologia, Revista da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto, vol. XXVI, Porto, 6:229-234. http://ler.letras.up.pt/uploads/ficheiros/11873.pdf

CHAPTER FOUR EPILINGUISTIC ACTIVITY IN A TEACHING CONTEXT: REPORTED ENUNCIATION DUANE VALENTIM UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE SÃO CARLOSíUFSCAR

Abstract: In this article, we aim to discuss the relevance of the operation of epilinguistic activity in the process of teaching and learning. The epilinguistic activity is an unconscious metalinguistic activity that, when employed in teaching, allows and leads the students to “think their own thinking” (Rezende, 2008: 96). We will cover the concepts of epilinguistic activity and language in order to relate them to the school context based on the National Curriculum Standards (1998). Then we will illustrate briefly how reported enunciationífocusing on the so-called free indirect speechíis typically presented in textbooks. Afterwards, we will present a teaching/learning activity on the basis of a short story by Lygia Fagundes Telles (1999). Through this story, we prepared a suggestion of a teaching sequence about the content of reported enunciation which appeals to epilinguistic activity in order to lead students to analyse the process of meaning construction via the use of free indirect speech. By observing, redesigning and comparing statements, we believe we can contribute to the linguistic and cognitive development of students, leading them to enrich the discursive relations in their texts, which is the main goal of mother tongue teaching, according to Travaglia (2009). The proposed objectives have as a theoretical framework the Theory of Predicative and Enunciative Operations, initiated by Culioli (1976; 1999; 2005), and the reflections of Rezende (2003; 2006; 2008; 2011). Keywords: Enunciation, reported speech, epilinguistic activity, teaching and learning context.

Epilinguistic Activity in a Teaching Context: Reported Enunciation

59

1. Introduction In the present article, we will approach the concepts of epilinguistic activity and language from the theoretical framework of the Theory of Predicative and Enunciative Operations, hereafter TOPE, to later relate them to the teaching context. In order to present a suggestion of a teaching sequence on reported enunciation, with a focus on what is called free indirect discourse in grammar and textbooks, we provide an overview of how reported enunciation is taught through educational materials, and then we propose an activity on this topic which makes use of epilinguistic activity and considers the objectives of mother tongue teaching. We call reported enunciation to what has diverse nomenclatures, such as reported speech, quotation or dialogue, in grammars and textbooks. Our decision to use the term “enunciation” instead of speech to refer to the phenomenon of quoting or reporting propositional contents of the responsibility of another entity is due to the recognition that enunciative operations are concerned here, and the subjective entities themselves are considered as enunciators with different theoretical statutes. The activity we propose for teaching is based on the short story “Bird Story” by Lygia Fagundes Telles (1999). In this story, there are several passages of reported enunciation in which the narrator's and characters' speeches identify themselves, generating a construction of reporting rarely worked on in teaching contexts. In this way, we seek to contribute to the teaching of free indirect speech and, consequently, to the development of students' discourse competence, one of the main objectives of mother tongue teaching according to the National Curriculum Standards (1998),[1] hereafter PCNs, and according to Travaglia (2009).

2. About a teaching method that considers epilinguistic activity Sylvain Auroux (1989) attributes the concept of epilinguistic activity to the linguist Antoine Culioli, the precursor of TOPE. The term was originated by this linguist’s need to define the silent reasoning that every speaker goes through during the construction and identification of signification. According to Culioli, epilinguistic “designates the unconscious metalinguistic activity of every subject and distinguishes itself from deliberate metalinguistic activity” (Culioli 1999: 74; my translation). It is, therefore, “a permanent activity of which we are not aware and which provides us with representations that intersect, clash, etc.” (Culioli; Normand 2005: 111; my translation).

60

Chapter Four

When we say that epilinguistic activity is a permanent activity, we are saying that our mental activity is continuous, so that it supposes a relentless work that is not restricted to our position of enunciator and coenunciator, that is, it does not occur only when there is verbal interaction “perceptible through language exchanges allowed by speech/writing and listening / reading” (Auroux 1989: 94; my translation), but, because it is immaterial, it represents the work of representation of the subjects in a “dynamic of symbolic and interpretative regulation that is also found on the individual level” (Filippi-Deswelle 2012: 320; my translation). The epilinguistic activity is the result of the adjustments between levels 1 and 2. Level 1, notional level, is inaccessible to the linguist. However, it is possible to intuit it by the traces left by the linguistic representation in level 2, textual level. At Level 1, “the abstract representations and the mechanisms that make up the language activity” (Correia 2006: 80; my translation) are situated, comprising the cognitive organization of the mental representations of the subjects constructed from the extralinguistic and linguistic symbolic universe. Level 2 consists of the “textualization of the enunciative operations undertaken on the notions at Level 1” (Zavaglia 2016: 48; my translation), thus being the level of “representations of mental representations or level of languages” (Zavaglia 2016: 48- 49; my translation). There is also Level 3, level of metalinguistic representations, which refers to the linguist's work of simulating, constructing theoretical hypotheses, in order to understand the operations of Level 1 through the organization of Level 2 textual representations. It is noted, therefore, how complex it is to apprehend the epilinguistic activity since it is something constituted of relations without materiality. However, from an internal activity, an external activity is carried out by means of verbalization, thus allowing its study, although this externalization does not correspond absolutely to the internal activity. It is necessary to look for vestiges of the internal operations in the stabilization at a linguistic level in the enunciations of the language. According to Romero (2011): The notion of vestiges or tracesí of ‘trace’ in Frenchí associates with an intrinsic opacity because they never explain anything. Due to the greater concern of the culiolian approach to go beyond the visible structure, reconstructing the cognitive operations of which the statements are the traces, there is a need, from these traces, to show how the language works by means of ‘glosses’, a particular type of reformulation, not assimilable to

Epilinguistic Activity in a Teaching Context: Reported Enunciation

61

a definition, nor to a resumption with the purpose of better clarifying something previously said (Romero 2011: 156; my translation).

Through manipulations, it is possible to imprison the gloss in search of the proliferation of phenomena that tell us how language works. The gloss is this attempt to make conscious the silent rationality that passes “on the one hand, by comments, explanations and perceptions about the role played by the linguistic unit that is wanted to analyze in the interactions that take place, on the other, by a formalization of that role by means of a metalanguage” (Romero 2011: 156; my translation). It can be understood in this way that a gloss is a set of close statements linked to an act of language and resulting from an uncontrolled activity that reflects the linguistic practice of the enunciate subject, therefore, spontaneous, what differs it from the paraphrase, is that being defined as a set of close statements, but resulting from an activity controlled by the observer. At the metalinguistic level, there is an “attempt to formalize what is, by nature, not formulable, inaccessible” (Romero 2011: 155; my translation). Thus, it is understood that the epilinguistic activity, together with the linguistic activity, are related to the gloss and, the metalinguistic activity places in relation to the paraphrastic families. It is equally important to comprehend the place of language in the theoretical framework of TOPE, since this concept is fundamental for establishing relationships with teaching. Language, for Culioli (1999: 19), is “an activity that assumes itself a perpetual epilinguistic activity (defined as “unconscious metalinguistic activity”).[2] For this linguist, language is understood as an activity, a work. It is the cognitive ability to represent, refer and regulate. Being indeterminate, it is up to the interlocutors to determine it by means of a constant work of constructing determinations at the level of the grammatical categories. This constant work demonstrates the effort of the subjects to invest the language of signification in order to “approach diverse experiences and form of expression” (Rezende, 2006: 16). According to Rezende (2006), it is postulated that: […] language is fundamentally ambiguous; that expressions and representations in languages are never definitively ready and constructed; which is the very moment of verbal interaction that determines or closes certain significations for the subject, but simultaneously opens and indeterminates others; that to interact verbally is to get lost in a labyrinth or in a profusion of possible meanings, but it is precisely in this egarement that we can eventually situate ourselves, find ourselves, succeed “ (Rezende 2006: 16; my translation).

62

Chapter Four

Language, conceived in this way in the context of teaching, can contribute to the work of understanding that each student makes to construct his singular experience through a knowledge of oneself that necessarily brings the knowledge of the other. As Rezende (2011: 707) explains, a conception of language as work “inserts the speaking subject, listener, reader, scribe / writer / author, teacher, student at the center of the process of assigning significations to oral and written texts of languages”,[3] it being incumbent on the interlocutors to assign meanings to the utterances through a constant work of constructing determinations at the level of grammatical categories, which is directly related to what the National Curriculum (PCNs) postulate on the work that must be done with the students: [...] Although the reflection is constitutive of the discursive activity, in the school space is has more importance, because it is in the practice of reflection on the language and the speech that can be given the construction of instruments that will allow the subject in the development of discursive competence to speak, listen, read and write in the various situations of interaction (Brazil, 1998: 34: my translation).

In addition to the emphasis on working with language, PCNs emphasize the importance of epilinguistic activity in the context of teaching: The most important activity [...] is to create situations in which students can operate their own language, building little by little, during the course of the several years of schooling, paradigms proper to the speech of their community, paying attention to the conditions and differences of forms and linguistic uses, raising hypotheses about the contextual and structural conditions in which they occur. From then on that the students can intuit in this epilinguistic work, both on the texts they produce and on the texts they listen and read, that will enable them to speak about the language, registering and organizing these intuitions (Brasil 1998: 28; my translation).

In the above section, the relevance of work with language related to epilinguistic activity is emphasized. This activity in a school context can teach the student to reflect on his or her own reasoning and, thus, to arrive at a knowledge of himself and the other through a process of identification and alterity, relating to the assumptions in the PCNs when approached the objectives of mother tongue teaching, explaining the need to “develop self-knowledge” (Brasil 1998: 7) and the interpersonal relationships. This relationship between what the Standards propose and our theoretical framework is possible due to the TOPE language conception. The understanding of language as a “way of constructing experiences, which

Epilinguistic Activity in a Teaching Context: Reported Enunciation

63

precedes the very expression of form and content in a given language” (Rezende, 2008: 102; my translation), when it comes to teaching, allows an emersion of the work that each student does during the process of constructing signification in order to “construct his or her unique experience and which may even result in the interpretative void for lack of correspondence between the experiences involved (for example, life and reading experiences, teacher and student or students between each other)” (Rezende, 2008: 102; my translation). According to Rezende (2008), during this “interpretative void”, at the moment of silence, we can notice, more intensely, the work of the epilinguistic activity, in which the student exerts an effort in search of expression that corresponds with his “singular experience”. This is because epilinguistic activity operates on language, which implies choices of the subject to elaborate the desired expression among the linguistic forms of a given language. In order for this epilinguistic level, internal work of the student, to be explicit for the student, one must seek teaching approaches that explore their intuitions as speakers of the studied language, which can be done, for example, through exercises that work with a “mount” and “disassemble” of statements, to make comparisons to each reformulation by going, in a pendular movement, from the form to the text and from the text to the form. With this type of exercise, the learners are taken to an analysis of another level, the metalinguistic level and, therefore, to be observed and studied. By means of teaching/learning exercises that allow a metalinguistic analysis, the teacher in the classroom can, according to Rezende (2003: 26): […] externally repeat the student's internal work; discuss values with him, significations and different expressions; but close; judge, appreciate, evaluate, differentiate, approximate, reassemble significations, look for differences and points in common. In short, to bring forth the preconscious epilinguistic activity used in the inner journey that each one made to arrive at their particular meaning. From a preconscious process, it would pass into the conscious process. From epilinguistic activity to metalinguistic activity. (Rezende 2003: 26; my translation)

This way, the student himself passes from a passive apprentice (who only responds to what is requested, both by the exercises and by the teacher) to the active learner, being encouraged to work on the language, to reflect on it and on the paths covered during the construction of its own expression, and thus refining their perception during the work of understanding the other. It is based on this understanding of teaching linked to the objectives of the teaching of mother tongue according to the

Chapter Four

64

postulates in the PCNs (1998), that we propose a teaching sequence on the content of reported enunciation.

3. Contribution to the teaching of reported enunciation When analyzing teaching materials of Elementary School in Brazil, it is noticed that the teaching of the reported enunciation concentrates in the 6th and in the 9th school year. It is also possible to observe that the teaching of this content occurs through the identification of characteristics attributed to each type of reporting, in general, about the punctuation to be used, about the necessity or not of a reporting verbs, on the attribution of the voice to the character or the narrator and on rules of transposition, in which, in the passage from the so-called direct speech to the indirect speech, attention must be paid to pronominal, verbal and adverbial accommodations. We think these activities are relevant to teaching and necessary. However, it is important to question whether a work focused solely on the recognition of structures would not impoverish a whole linguistic work that can be done with the students when discussing the different senses that could be generated by choosing one or another form of reporting. With regard to the so-called free indirect speech, there are rarely activities devoted to its teaching in textbooks. Often there is a theorization about what is involved, but it is only present in large literary works, which leads to the idea that it is a difficult language construction to reach students. However, when analyzing texts by students of elementary school, it is possible to find several occurrences with this type of enunciation, as in the following example: (1) [...] I arrived home and I thought I will never underestimate old people because of their age and physical size, because they gave me a little “smiley”.1

Who says “I will never underestimate old people”, the narrator or the character? It can be said that there is an unfolding of the enunciator (“I thought”) from the speaker ( “I arrived and I thought”) and that, as an effect, generate two voices that mix, being the speech crossed by the discourse of the other, abstractly disjoined. When we investigated a collection of books2 the 6th to the 9th year of a public school in the interior of São Pauloí Brazil, we found only one

1

My translation.

Epilinguistic Activity in a Teaching Context: Reported Enunciation

65

activity on free indirect speech in the book of the 9th grade. This is a classic exercise that appears after a succinct explanation of what would be free indirect speech, an explanation that is exemplified with a short passage from the great literary work Vidas Secas by the Brazilian writer Graciliano Ramos. Following the explanation, there is a learning activity with three small fragments of literary works requesting that the students identify what kind of speechí direct, indirect or free indirectí is present in each section and justify its classification according to its structure. Again, it is a typical activity that, although opportune, ends up not exploring with the students the subtleties of significations that can be constructed when unfolding enunciator and announcer. Considering that one of the main objectives of mother tongue teaching is to “develop the communicative competence of the users of the language (speaker, writer / listener, reader), through linguistic explanation and, that is, the capacity of the subject to use properly the language at different situations of communication” (Travaglia 2009: 17; my translation), we propose a teaching/learning activity on the reported content, with an emphasis on free indirect discourse and with an appeal to the epilinguilistic activity. The exercise we propose represents just an illustration of how the activities can be developed, considering the student's knowledge about his own language, instigating him to think about the elaboration and reelaboration of the statements and conducting his reflection on the enunciative mechanisms involved in the linguistic phenomenon of reported enunciation. The choice of this theme, reported enunciation, was due to familiarity with the subject, however, epilinguistic activity is present in all language utterances, which, therefore, allows the assumptions of this work to be applied in view of other linguistic content. We selected the short story “Bird Story” by the Brazilian writer Lygia Fagundes Telles. In this story, there are several constructions with indirect free speech that can be worked with the students and it is suitable for students in the 9th year of school education. We intend to guide students to a reflection on the language and understanding of free indirect speech through an intuitive path, that is, through an epilinguistic work that allows students to think about language by organizing their intuitions regarding the proposed content. The tale portrays the story of a redhead man, completely hushed by the family (wife and son) and who finds a bird and puts it in a cage. The two 2 Alves, Rosemeire, and Brugnertto, Tatiane. 2012. Vontade de Saber Português. São Paulo: FTD.

Chapter Four

66

begin to have some complicity and the redhead man recognizes in the bird his own life until the bird flees and is eaten by a cat. In the sequence, the man also disappears and the reason appears implicitly by the desire to also be free. There are then two characters (a redhead man and a bird) who needs to gain a voice and this is the moment that the narrator intercedes and mediates between narrating the story and the words and/or the thoughts of the characters. After discussions have been made about the text that the teacher considers pertinent, one can start the exercise by asking about the redhead man character. In the text as a whole, this character presents a behaviour silenced by the family itself. In what way, then, if the character is muted by his wife and son, can we recognize his speech in the text? A discussion may be initiated with the students about the existence (or not) of punctuation marks that delimit or make explicit the father's voice, or whether it is crossed by the voice of the narrator, discussing which marks, or in what form, it is possible to identify that in certain statements, it is the redhead man speaking and not the narrator. For this discussion, we separate the following sections: (2) a. The redhead man inserted his finger between the bars of the cage and kept caressing the head of the bird, which at that time was an all-chilled baby bird, scarce the plumage of a pale yellow with a few little feathers of a pale grey. I do not know, son, it must have fallen from some nest, I caught him in the street, I do not know what kind of bird this is. The boy chewed gum3. b. Sometimes the man witnessed these attempts that made the bird so tired, the throbbing chest, the wounded beak. I know, you want to leave, you want to leave but you cannot go, outside is different and now it's too late. The woman then began to speak and spoke at about fifty minutes of the things she had wanted to have and which the redhead man had not given her.4

The first part deals with a response to the questioning of the child, a response given after the description of the scene. Although there is no punctuation that explains the speech of the character, how can we identify that is the character who speaks and not the narrator? Or does the narrator cross the character's speech and respond to the child instead of the character? The second part concerns a supposed dialogue (in thought?) between the redheaded man and the little bird, or can it be a possible reflection of the character portrayed by the narrator? Does the man talk 3 4

My translation. My translation.

Epilinguistic Activity in a Teaching Context: Reported Enunciation

67

about the bird's desire or does he recognize the will of the bird at his own will? When choosing to put the narrator to speak in the place of the character, what effect does the writer reach? Through these (and as many as possible) questions, we deviate from structure identification exercises and discuss with students, from their own perceptions and intuitions about the language, the possible values generated in the text when there is enunciation reported, in addition, one can arrive at a metalinguistic explanation (although not with the terms given by grammars and teaching books) for his own knowledge about the language. Moving on to another passage of the story, students may be asked if they can identify a passage in the text that portrays the bird's thought. The following statement should be made: (3) As the man walked away, the little bird flings itself blindly against the bars, flee, flee. Sometimes the man watched these attempts that made the bird so tired, the throbbing chest, the wounded beak5.

In this statement, is there a narrator who describes the bird's action or, more than that, besides describing the action, reproduces the bird's possible thought (speech?)? What about repeating “flee, flee"? What effect can this repetition bring to the text? In addition to presenting these questions (and others), one can request the rewriting of the same passage so that with the manipulation of the statement it is made explicit that the bird's thought emerges from the voice of the narrator. Some possibilities of manipulation of the statement could be: (4) a. [...] the little bird fling itself blindly against the bars as if it says, “Flee! Flee!”; b. [...] the little bird fling itself blindly against the bars trying to escape; c. [...] the little bird would fling itself blindly against the bars and think: “Flee! Flee!”; d. [...]–Flee! Flee!í Thought the little bird, flinging itself blindly against the bars; e. [...] the little bird would fling itself blindly against the bars thinking that it wanted to escape6.

Through the manipulation of the statement, which could generate, for example, the above paraphrases, it is possible to discuss with the students about the changes of perspectives of the narrator, from the emphasis given 5 6

My translation. My translation.

Chapter Four

68

sometimes to the character sometimes to the narrated scene. With a change in punctuation, for example, the interpretation is altered and the intonation of the utterance as a whole is influenced. Students should compare statements by thinking about which form would fit more or less into the text and for what reasons. So, we believe we contribute to the refinement of linguistic choices (which are not unreasonable) in the production and interpretation of texts. We separate the following excerpt to reflect on the use of reporting verbs: (5) She was pulling him by the sleeve, affectionate, Go, Old man, the coffee is getting cold [...]7.

In this statement, what would be the reporting verb that introduces the wife's speech? The verb “pull” plays the role of introducing the character's speech. “She was pulling it by the sleeve” describes the act and in sequence, the introduction of the speech (“Go, Old man, coffee is cooling”). This pull affectionately (“affectionate”) implies a saying that can be worked on with the students in order to show the focus given by the narrator to the gesture of the wife. So it is possible to lead them to a reflection on what changes would be necessary in the statement if we opted for a verb other than “pull” in order to introduce the wife's speech. Different possibilities of reformulation will arise among the students, which must be discussed in order to understand the path taken by each one during the re-elaboration of the utterance and to realize that among the possibilities, there is always the one closest or farther from the utterance text. It is also possible to request that the students find in the story other speeches of the characters that are introduced from a description of an action, which, among other effects, brings a pause in the narration itself, for example: (6) I don’t know, son, it must have fallen from some nest, I caught him in the street, I do not know what kind of bird this is. The boy chewed gum. You don’t know anything at all, Dad, neither a car brand nor a cigarette brand [...].8

If with the description “the boy chewed gum” there is a pause between the father's response and the son's comment, in what other ways could the same statement be rewritten without any pause? When reading the passage 7 8

My translation. My translation.

Epilinguistic Activity in a Teaching Context: Reported Enunciation

69

aloud, would we have the feeling that, besides the description “The boy chewed gum”, is every statement said by the narrator? Why do we have (or not) this feeling? In order to answer such questions, students would seek information in their experiences as a speaker and thus be inserting it in the middle of the process of meaning construction. There are other passages in the tale that can be worked out didactically for the purpose of teaching reported enunciation, which we will not address due to a matter of space. However, we believe we have succeeded in illustrating our main idea of a work that looks at the text and forms in a pendular manner, in an exercise of assembling and disassembling statements in order to lead the students to a reflection and comparison about each alteration made by them. This process of discussing values and meanings with students allows the emergence of traces of the paths they have travelled in the internal search “that each one has made to arrive at its particular meaning” (Rezende 2003: 26; my translation), that is, the traces of epilinguistic activity. As a result, the student himself moves from a passive place of learning to an active place when he is stimulated by the teacher to work on the language and on his own reasoning during the construction of his expression, thus being able to refine his perception and the other one’s understanding.

4. Some concluding remarks Considering that one of the main objectives of mother tongue teaching is to develop students' discourse competence, as presented in the PCNs, in this article, we seek to discuss the concepts of epilinguistic activity and language in the framework of the TOPE in order to relate them to the teaching context. Subsequently, we present a proposal for a teaching/learning exercise on the topic of reported enunciation which appeals to the epilinguistic activity. Based on Lygia Fagundes Telles’s story “Bird Story”, we elaborate exercises that ask for the manipulation of the sentences thinking in the significations generated in the text and, thus, operating directly on the language. In this way, we seek to lead the student to reflect on how the language activity occurs, showing that the choices made regarding reported enunciation are not random, but they occur according to the constructed meaning, a fact that highlights one of the prime presuppositions of this proposal: students, as speakers, are active subjects of their linguistic productions and, therefore, make their choices, first and foremost, through epilinguistic activity, that is, their intrinsic capacity to reflect their own linguistic production.

70

Chapter Four

References Alves, Rosemeire, and Tatiane Brugnertto. 2012. Vontade de Saber Português. São Paulo: FTD. Auroux, Sylvain. 1989. Histoire des idées linguistiques. Bruxelles: Pierre Mardaga. Brasil, (Secretaria de Educação Fundamental). 1998. Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais: terceiro e quarto ciclos do Ensino Fundamental. Brasília: MEC/SEF. Filippi-Deswelle, Catherine. 2012. “Pour (ne pas) conclure. “ In L’ajustement dans la TOE d’Antoine Culioli, Collection linguistique Épilogos, 303-358. Rouen: Publications Électroniques de l’ERIAC. Correia, Clara Nunes. 2006. “Estabilidade e deformabilidade das formas linguísticas.” Veredas 10: 77-88. Culioli, Antoine. 1999. Pour une linguistique de l’énonciation tome 2. Formalisation et opérations de repérage. Paris: Ophrys. —. 1976. “Recherche en linguistique: theorie des operations enonciatives.” Transcription du séminaire de D.E.A. de M. A. Culioli, Université Paris VII, Paris, France. Culioli, Antoine, and Claudine Normand. 2005. Onze rencontres sur le langage et les langues. Paris: Ophrys. Ramos, Graciliano. 2010. Vidas secas. Rio de Janeiro: Record. Rezende, Letícia Marcondes. 2006. “Diversidade experiencial e linguística e o trabalho do professor de língua portuguesa em sala de aula.” In Linguagem e Línguas Naturais. Diversidade Experiencial e Linguística, 11-21. São Carlos: Pedro e João Editores. —. (2008). Atividade Epilinguística e o Ensino de Língua Portuguesa. Revista do Gel 5(1):195-108. —. 2011. “A indeterminação da linguagem e o conceito de atividade no ensino de língua materna.” Estudos Linguísticos: 707-714. —. 2003. “Produção de texto no ensino superior: a identidade cobrada.” Associação Nacional de Pesquisa na Graduação em Letras–ANPGL: 21-31. Romero, Márcia. 2011. “Epilinguismo: considerações acerca de sua conceitualização em Antoine Culioli e Carlos Franchi.” Revista Virtual de Estudos da Linguagem-ReVEL: 152-162. Telles, Lygia Fagundes. 1999. “História de Passarinho.” In Pomba Enamorada ou uma história de amor e outros contos escolhidos, 146149. Porto Alegre, RS: L&PM. Travaglia, Luiz Carlos. 2009. Gramática e interação: uma proposta para o ensino de gramática. São Paulo: Editora Cortez.

Epilinguistic Activity in a Teaching Context: Reported Enunciation

71

Zavaglia, Adriana. 2016. Pequena introdução à teoria das operações enunciativas. São Paulo: Humanitas.

CHAPTER FIVE DESIGNING A TRANSCRIPTION SYSTEM FOR SPOKEN DISCOURSE: A CASE OF STAND-UP COMEDY1 MILANA A. MOROZOVA CENTRO DE LINGUÍSTICA DA UNIVERSIDADE NOVA DE LISBOA / FACULDADE DE CIÊNCIAS SOCIAIS E HUMANASí UNIVERSIDADE NOVA DE LISBOA

Abstract: This paper pursues several objectives. Firstly, based on previous studies on transcription (Ochs 1999, Bucholtz 2000, Gibbon 1998, Edwards 2001), it aims at providing a description of general guidelines, which are necessary to take into account when designing a transcript for spoken discourse, such as the purpose of the transcription, the theory we work with, the selectivity of the researcher, and the accuracy and readability of the transcript. Secondly, taking into consideration the specificity of the genre of stand-up comedy, the paper explains why some of the existing transcription conventions (namely, Discourse Transcription, Dubois 1991, 2004; C-ORAL-ROM Project and CHAT Transcription Format, MacWhinney 2000) are not suitable for the analysis of stand-up interactions. Finally, and more importantly, it presents a new system of transcript conventions especially designed for the analysis of stand-up interactions within the selected theoretical framework and the objectives of the research. Keywords: transcription, stand-up comedy, discourse markers, text linguistics. 1

This work was supported by the main funding agency for research in Portugal – the Foundation of Science and Technology (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia), [grant number PD/BD/105766/2014] and is part of the KRUse Doctoral Programme in Text and Discourse in the Centro de Linguística da Universidade Nova de Lisboa.

Designing a Transcription System for Spoken Discourse

73

1. Introduction Transcription, defined as “the process of creating representation in writing of a speech event so as to make it accessible to discourse research” (DuBois 1991: 72), is a necessary tool for the analysis of oral data. Words and other relevant features of oral interaction have to be put down on paper, so that multiple oral discourse features can be analysed. However, no matter how necessary and useful transcriptions may be, they inevitably come under blistering criticism for a number of reasons. The first reason has to do with the fact that transcription models can be biased. There is a great degree of influence of the transcriber over what and how something is transcribed. This “classic” concern on transcriptions has been manifested and problematized in previous studies by Ochs (1999), Bucholtz (2000), Gibbon (1998), and Edwards (2001), just to name a few. A significant contribution by Ochs (1999), for instance, emphasized the importance of the selection process and the decisions a researcher makes while organizing the data. The case of Ochs, which focused on transcription for child language behaviour, demonstrated that the decisions on how to transcribe the data between adults and children are crucial and may even mislead the readers if they are not carefully made. The transcriber should be extremely cautious about the decisions he/she makes regarding the organization of the data. Thus, transcriptions are clearly subjective and highly selective representations of data. Apart from bias, transcriptions are criticized for their inconsistency. Bucholtz (2007) faced the issue by trying to understand the reasons for such “inconsistency”, rather than problematize it. Instead of “inconsistency”, she takes “variation” as a fundamental principle of the variationist sociolinguistics approach, which is inherent in all language use, and defends the idea that each type of variation in transcripts is the result of different reasons that the researchers come up with while developing their transcripts and the different uses to which they put them. She suggests that variability in transcription practice has analytic, social, and political meanings and emphasizes that discourse analysts must recognise differences in transcripts of the same material as variation, rather than labelling such differences as inconsistencies (Bucholtz 2007: 802). Last but not least, transcription is a time-consuming process. According to the quantitative data presented by Edwards (2001), the amount of time needed for the production of a transcript depends on the type of speech involved (if there is overlapping speech, self-repair or other interruptions) and the degree of detail of the transcription (prosody, nonverbal communication). Estimates for a basic word-level transcription with

74

Chapter Five

no or little extra information range between 10 to 11 minutes of transcribing for every 1 minute of speech (Edwards 2001: 336-337). Strictly speaking, if we consider a transcript containing various types of extra information (pauses, overlaps, prosody), the time increases to 20 minutes of transcribing for every 1 minute of speech (Ibid.). All in all, transcriptions are rather problematic but fundamental models of linguistic representation. The process of transcription implies making both interpretative and representational decisions. Interpretative decisions are made in relation to what is transcribed, while representational decisions occur when we think of how to transcribe the data. The following section will identify the principal and most necessary decisions to be made in order to design a suitable and reliable transcript for discourse analysis.

2. Designing a transcript: Important aspects to consider Based on previous research on transcription (Ochs 1999, Bucholtz 2000, Gibbon 1998, Edwards 2001), this section provides a description of general guidelines2, which are necessary to take into account when designing a transcript for spoken discourse. They include the purpose of the transcription, the theory we work with, the selectivity, the accuracy and readability of future transcription.

2.1. The purpose and the theory we work with We believe that the first step to consider before getting down to designing a new model for transcription is to reflect on its purpose. In other words, it is the purpose that determines the degree of detail that is required (Gibbon 1998: 146). For instance, if a corpus has been constituted to analyse the total time of overlapping speech of the interlocutors in an oral interaction, a very global transcription will be sufficient. However, if a corpus has been collected to investigate the regional differences in pronunciation, a detailed transcription with precise prosodic and phonetic features is needed. The next thing to consider at the beginning of the design is the theoretical framework we work with. As stated in Ochs (1999: 167), 2

It is also important to state here that this is only a theoretical part of the paper, designed to present the aspects already considered by other researchers. The actual proposal for transcription of stand-up comedy is presented and discussed in the next chapters.

Designing a Transcription System for Spoken Discourse

75

transcription is a selective process reflecting theoretical goals and definitions. In other words, transcription is a representation of oral speech based on the researcher’s theoretical orientation. The same piece of data can be interpreted in different ways depending on the particular theory involved. Thus, it is extremely important that out transcription accords to the theory we deal with.

2.3. Selectivity When the purpose of the transcription and the theory we work with has been clearly defined, it is time to start questioning practical issues. Like, what do we want our transcription to be? Global transcription with only words and turn-taking or a detailed elaborated transcription with prosodic features and non-verbal communication? We define transcription as a particularly selective process and follow Ochs’s idea that a more useful transcript is a more selective one (Ochs 1999: 167). In the author’s view, a transcript should not have too much information (Ibid.). A transcript that is too detailed is difficult to follow and access. Based on the previous decisions on purpose and theory, the researcher himself chooses what type of information to keep, which descriptive categories to use and how to organise the information in the written and spatial medium of a transcript (Edwards 2001: 321). According to Edwards (2001: 326-328), there are two types of decisions that affect the organization of information in transcripts: formatbased decisions and content-based decisions. Format-based decisions include the main layouts: vertical arrangement of speaker turns, columnbased and partiture formats. The vertical arrangement of speaker turns implies symmetry and equal dominance of speakers. Due to the left-right reading bias, the column-based format gives the impression that the speaker whose utterances are in the left column is more dominant in the interaction. And finally, partiture formats where turns of speakers are put on different lines in a manner similar to instruments on a musical score. Moreover, format-based decisions determine the way in which researcher’s comments relative to discourse are placed. The comments can have multilinear, column-based and interspersed formats. The multilinear format is the most widespread format. It involves placing comments or annotations on separate lines beneath the data they clarify. The columnbased format is very similar, though. The only difference is that rather than arranging the additional information vertically in separate lines below the data, comments may be placed in separate columns. Interspersed formats

76

Chapter Five

imply short comments that are easily distinguished from words and they may be placed right next to the item they refer to, on the same line. Content-based decisions include words, units of analysis, pauses, turntaking, non-verbal communication, prosody, rhythm and coordination. It is content-based aspects, which distinguish different transcription systems. They relate to the sorts of information, which are encoded, and the descriptive categories used Edwards (2001: 330). We will briefly describe each of them below: (i) Words There are two principal options to choose from. We need to decide whether standard orthography is sufficient or whether we are going to keep variations of pronunciation (regional accents or idiolects). (ii) Units of analysis This decision is primarily based on the purpose of transcription and relates to the way the text is subdivided. There are a number of possibilities for subdivision. The unit of analysis can be a speaker turn, a unit containing a predicate, a unit delimited by pauses, i.e. completed intonational contour, etc. Depending on the selected option, the boundaries in the text may vary. The decision on the units is quite important, for it marks the dimensions for the analysis (if it is syntax, prosody, grammar, etc.). (iii) Pauses There are various ways of quantifying pauses in transcripts. The pauses in conversational analysis are measured to the tenth of a second, for instance. Other researchers quantify them as the number of beats of silence. A decision on this aspect is more than subjective and has to deal with, above all, the purpose of the analysis. (iv) Turn-taking The delimitation of turns usually coincides either with the occurrence of pauses between the speakers, or with interruption of one of the speakers, or overlapping speech. These are the most widely used conventions developed by Gail Jefferson (2004) for conversational analysis. (v) Non-verbal communication Similar to other decisions, this aspect raises already discussed issues, such as how detailed and elaborated the transcription system should be, so that it reflects the goals of the study without overburdening the reader. In order to do so, a researcher must pay special attention to design of information display.

Designing a Transcription System for Spoken Discourse

77

2.4. Accuracy and readability No matter what is the nature of spoken interaction, in the predominant majority, it is a multimodal activity, i.e. there is a large number of prosodic and paralinguistic features (intonation, rhythm, pitch of voice, nonverbal aspects like laughs, sign, coughs, turn-taking) that are present in oral interaction and that may influence or play an essential role in data analysis. Trying to integrate all these elements in a transcript is not wise, for a transcript can become too complex and puzzling to the reader. Or, even if the reader does manage to read it, it will take him quite a while to figure out the correspondence of signs with the descriptive categories. This is one of the situations one definitely wants to avoid while designing transcription. Thus, it is all a matter of balance: it should be complex enough to reflect the relevant features for discourse analysis; at the same time, it must be easy to read. The choice of symbols is mainly dictated by the principles of readability, efficiency and compactness (Edwards 2001: 326, 329). According to these principles, descriptive categories should be coded with as few symbols as possible and the meaning should be easily recoverable. This is also important to minimize non-essential and distracting elements. Typically, a top-to-bottom organization of sentences is adopted in many cultures. Utterances, which appear below are treated as occurring later in time and reflect expectations of turn-by-turn relevance (Ochs 1999: 168). In the western culture, the left-right reading is practiced. It helps the reader read easily through the utterances and to get a real perception of the data. This type of organization allows adding annotations of various types and visually the data and the author’s comments are separated in a clear way. Irrespective of whether we deal with read or spontaneous speech (Gibbon 1998), utterance boundary is another important aspect to consider to facilitate readability. Lack of orthographical standard punctuation in oral speech sometimes impedes our understanding of where the utterance begins and where it finishes. A common mistake occurs when transcribers tend to write down spoken language with the punctuation conventions of written language. Organisation of written language involves sentences and clauses delimited by commas, semicolons and other punctuation marks. Spoken language, on the contrary, is organised into tone units that cluster around a nucleus and are delimited by pauses and tonal contours (MacWhinney 2000: 18). According to Ochs (1999: 177), standard orthography should be avoided. Instead, a modified orthography should be used (for instance, “gonna”, “wanna” and the like). It shows the way the lexical item is

78

Chapter Five

pronounced versus the way in which it is written. It should be mentioned here that in order to represent non-standard varieties accurately, only the most widely spread forms in American English have been adopted. By adding other forms into the transcript, the researcher runs the risk of confusing the reader, for sound perception of every individual differs significantly. The grammatical form “would have been” is a simple example of such a case. Some transcribers may keep the standard orthography of “have”, others as schwa. In order to avoid justification of this or that selected form, the choice should be limited only to most common nonstandard varieties. The present section has provided an overview of aspects, which are relevant whenever transcripts are designed. Any transcript is a timeconsuming and highly selective process strongly related to its purpose, and it is never theory-neutral. The next chapter will adapt these aspects, taking into account to the specificity of the genre stand-up comedy.

3. Designing a transcript for stand-up comedy Stand-up comedy may seem to be unprepared, spontaneous, sometimes even improvised. In fact, it is a well-prepared and thoroughly rehearsed activity. However, almost any stand-up interaction runs the risk of integrating the features of spontaneous speech due to the unexpectedness of the activity. It is therefore quite important to make a distinction between read versus spontaneous speech. In the case of read speech we deal with the written text prepared by the comedian before the performance and then presented to the audience on the day of the show. This can make this type of transcription slightly easier to perform than transcriptions of spontaneous speech. There are no processes of thinking, planning or word seeking. Spontaneous speech, on the contrary, is not fluent. There are filled pauses, overlapping speech, reductions, omissions, repetitions, false starts, colloquial speech, nonstandard pronunciation, etc. These features of spontaneous speech make transcriptions more difficult to perform (Gibbon 1998: 147). Stand-up interaction, being a combination of these two types of speeches, can be quite challenging to transcribe. As for the objectives of the current research, which the transcript has been designed for, the study gives a special attention to a set of discourse markers and analyses their frequency, distribution, textual and interpersonal functions, as well as their role in the macro-structural organization of the genre stand-up comedy. The focus of the research is thus twofold: on the one hand, the study analyses micro-elements (discourse markers) and, on the other hand, it emphasises their interrelationship with the macro-

Designing a Transcription System for Spoken Discourse

79

elements of text plan (including textual sequences). With these objectives in mind, a more general type of transcription will be required, with the analysis to be carried out on a textual level. The current research is situated within Text Linguistics, namely, we apply Text and Discourse Analysis (TAD)–a theoretical framework based on the analysis of concrete texts, developed by French linguist J.-M. Adam. In addition, we adopted Brinton’s (1996) functional classification of discourse markers based on the principles of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) by Halliday (2014). Moreover, a number of authors (Aijmer 2004, 2005, 2013; Blakemore 2002; Degand 2003, 2015; Fischer 1998, 2000; Fraser 1999, 2009, 2015; Tabot & Traugott 1998), whose expertise in the field of discourse markers is remarkable, serve as a complementary theoretical basis for carrying out the analysis. As for the transcription properties related to the theoretical frameworks described, as it has been mentioned, our transcription will be quite global with words and turn-taking. The preference is towards precision, simplicity, and easiness of reading. Concerning the layout of information in stand-up comedy (i.e. formatbased decisions), a few words must be said about the importance of laughter. Although technically there is no verbal explicit “response” of the audience, it performs a major role in stand-up performances. Rutter (1997) and Greenbaum (1999) believe that stand-up is similar to a conversation between the audience and the comedian and has a dialogic nature. According to Ross (1998: 101), “laughter establishes a bond between teller and tellee”. Norrick (2003: 1344) believes that laughter “ratifies and evaluates the performance”. Laughter is a response of the audience towards discourse, an important interactional feature of stand-up comedy and must be reflected in the transcription. In this respect, a vertical arrangement of speaker turns will be adopted in order to provide the symmetry and equal dominance of parties involved (the comedian and the audience, in this case). Next, a number of content-based aspects are taken into consideration regarding the specificity of the genre stand-up comedy. Following the principle of simplicity, standard orthography will be sufficient (only most common non-standard varieties, e.g.“gonna”, will be provided). Based on the objectives of the research, a speaker turn is determined to be the main unit of analysis, for we are interested in the global macro-structure of the genre, as well as in micro-elements (discourse markers) occurring within the speaker´s turn. The analysis to be carried out thus refers to textual dimension.

80

Chapter Five

Pauses are related to timing–an important feature of stand-up interaction. In most general terms, timing frequently refers to pauses before punch lines of a joke. Norrick (2001: 260-261)provides a broader meaning of timing: “… a composite buildup of hesitations, false starts, repetitions and formulaicity in the build-up along with a more rapid, fluid delivery of the punch-line, often involving a switch in perspective and usually highlighted by a shift in voice quality”. According to the author, the importance of figuring out the best moment of punch line and the passage to the next joke is crucial. A successful comedian must recognise well the right moment for introducing the punch line in order to reach the desired effect, i.e. to make his audience laugh. However, the punch line is not always followed by laughter due to a number of reasons. A joke can merely seem banal or trivial. In this case, a comedian faces a moment of silence, and he needs to know how to adapt his further interaction in order to regain the adherence of the crowd. As for the layout of the transcript, there are two types of pauses to be used: short pauses and long pauses. This would be enough to demonstrate the punch lines and to highlight the flow of the interaction. In stand-up comedy, non-verbal behaviour is of great importance, for it provides the visual support of the performance. The transcript, therefore, must necessarily reflect this important aspect. As the data for this study showed, gestures, and voice change, etc. can serve as independent nonverbal punch lines, i.e. there are no verbally uttered jokes, and the meaning is merely rendered by mimics or gestures, immediately followed by bursts of the audience’s laughter. Thus, non-verbal behaviour is complementary to verbal behaviour of the comedians. In order to clarify the meaning of such cases for the reader, it is necessary to provide comments throughout the transcript. To do so, a multilinear format, which involves placing comments or annotations on separate lines beneath the data they clarify, will be applied. Now that the features of the genre have been considered, it is time to look at the elaborated conventions.

4. Transcription conventions for stand-up comedy Transcription conventions for stand-up comedy have been designed taking into account all the above-mentioned theoretical recommendations and specific interactional features of stand-up performances. Still, designing a brand new transcript would be impossible without considering some of the widely used already existing systems. The following transcript systems have been analysed in order to determine their (in)suitability for

Designing a Transcription System for Spoken Discourse

81

the current study: glossary of transcript symbols in Conversational Analysis by Jefferson (2004), Discourse Transcription, or DT (later developed into DT2 by John Dubois (1991, 2004), as well as the transcription norms used in C-ORAL-ROM Project (Integrated Reference Corpora for Spoken Roman Languages) presented in partial collaboration with CLUL, Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa) and CHAT Transcription Format (Codes for the Human Analysis of Transcripts) by MacWhinney (2000), whose goals, standards and conventions will be described in more details below. It is noteworthy that, among these systems, MacWhinney’s CHAT Transcription Format was partially adopted as a transcription model for the multilingual C-ORAL-ROM Project. The classic transcription system developed by Gail Jefferson used in Conversational Analysis has been one of the most influential in discourse analysis (Ochs 1999). Some features can be certainly borrowed from Conversational Analysis like pauses, overlap, unclear words, hesitation marks, laughter and so on. However, the use of intonation, sound stretching and some other prosodic features is not justified in the present study, so they will be generally omitted unless their presence is crucial for understanding the joke. Discourse Transcription (or DT, later developed into DT2 by John Dubois (1991, 2004) is a detailed transcription that comprises four levels of analysis: Preliminary, Basic, Boundary and Interaction). The preliminary level includes basic conversational notions relevant to any type of transcript (words, word sequence, speaker change, turn sequence, intonation unit). The basic level includes more global textual units like sequences and comments framed by time pauses, extralinguistic information like laugh or uncertainty. The boundary level presents a more developed chart of symbols with their corresponding meanings. Finally, the “interaction” level is about code-switching, highlight group or multiple speakers, noninteractive agents or recipients, etc. At this stage of the paper, it is quite apparent that, due to the fact that the 3rd and the 4th level of transcription are too over-detailed, only a partial applicability of DT2 is possible. MacWhinney’s CHAT Transcription Format (2000) is a tool for analysing children´s speech, which provides “options for basic discourse transcription as well as detailed phonological and morphological analysis” (MacWhinney 2000: 14). The analysed interactions involve children and parents, doctors and patients, or teachers and second-language learners. CHAT is the standard transcription system for the CHILDES (Child Language Data Exchange System) Project.

82

Chapter Five

According to its developer, what makes CHAT particularly powerful is the fact that the CLAN programs can also analyse the files transcribed in CHAT. This computerized transcription aims at achieving the following goals: clarity, readability, ease of data entry (MacWhinney 2000: 21). In practice, a transcription that is designed to be recognised by a computer program appears to be much more technical and over-detailed, which contradicts the principles of brevity and simplicity discussed above. Due to the fact that CHAT is meant to provide transcripts for face-toface talk, each transcript has some additional information on interactional context. There are, for instance, initial headers: @Begin, @Languages, @Participants, @Options, @ID, and @Media, which appear as the first lines of the file. @End appears at the end of the file as the last line (MacWhinney 2000: 25). In a transcript for stand-up comedy, initial headers can prove to be handy, but only when partially applied (for instance, in Morais, 2010: 22). Since CHAT transcription is a child-oriented approach, it is obvious that there are special cases of child language in the transcription system, like extra symbol @c for child-invented forms that do not exist in dictionaries (for instance, “bingbing” to refer to a toy does not exist in the dictionaries, so it is transcribed as bingbing@c) or an extra symbol @f for family-specific forms (i.e. child-invented forms that have been taken over by the whole family), etc. Some of the elements, however, proved to be very useful and were eventually adopted for the transcript for stand-up comedy. These are dependent tiers or lines typed below the main line that contain codes, comments, events, and descriptions of interest to the researcher (MacWhinney 2000: 79). All dependent tiers should begin with the percentage symbol (%) followed by three lower-case letters. For instance, “%act” describes the actions of the speaker or the listener; “%add” describes who talks to whom; “%com” is a general-purpose comment tier; “%fac” codes facial actions, etc. These tiers are also highly present in the transcription norms of C-ORAL-ROM Project.

4. Transcript design All the recorded texts from stand-up performances have been grouped into samples, which correspond to comedians and their individual complete performances. Each of the transcribed samples begins with initial headers providing information on the language of the interaction (@Language) and indicating the beginning of the transcript (@Begin). The final line of each sample ends with the “@End” header.

Designing a Transcription System for Spoken Discourse

83

The standard orthography is applied only in representing words (space before and after). The first word in a word sequence is capitalized (standard capitalized initial). Also, standard left-right reading is applied. Taking into consideration the role of the audience, the text of stand-up performance is organised into turns between the interlocutors: the comedian, on the one hand, and the audience, on the other. Every turn is introduced by a new line and the speakers are identified by the three initial capitalized letters, followed by a semicolon: “COM:”, “AUD:” or “PRE” (stand for “presenter” and occurs either in the beginning of the performance or during the show to present the comedians coming to the stage). Unintelligible words are presented by [XXX], where “X” corresponds to each word. Interjections, i.e. words like uh, um, ah, mm, hmm, ha, huh are presented according to the rules of the standard orthography. [Beep], which is similar to the actual sound “beep”, represents profanity (whether it is censored on the recordings or not). In terms of prosody, the utterances are delimited by short (/) or long (//) pauses, appeal intonation or high rise (?) or exclamatory utterance (!). Some of these elements can be found in bold in the example below: (1)

@Language: English @Begin PRE: Let’s hear for Carina Livoti // [%com: the audience is applauding] COM: Ahm / Before I tell any jokes / I would like to give a shout out to my grandma who is in the audience // Ahm // Nana / I´m sorry when I invited you / I didn´t think you´d say yes // AUD: hhh

Proper names, toponyms, acronyms and official entities are capitalized. Incomplete words are presented as words followed by gap and hyphen (wor-). Repeated words, on the other hand, are presented by a word between less-than sign and greater-than sign separated by gaps ( ). As for discourse markers–the principal elements of analysis in the current research–and their representation in transcription, it is presented in bold type within the body of the text: (2)

COM: That’s my living situation OK / it´s an- / I I had to get a loft bed right you know what that is / That´s when you like have to climb up to get into bed right / When I got this loft bed on the box / it said it could only hold 250 pounds / all right / So now I have to find a guy that weighs a hundred and ten pounds //

Chapter Five

84

The following dependent tiers have been adopted: action tier (%act:) to reflect actions of the speaker or listener; gesture tier (%ges:) to denote gestures of the speaker; paralinguistic tier (%par:) to introduce paralinguistic information; comment tier (%com) to provide general comments of the researcher. In addition, there are two types of laughter identified in the present transcription: “hhh”, which stands for weak laughter, or “HHH”, which denotes a burst of laughter. In both cases, each symbol corresponds to one pulse or particle of laughter. (3)

COM: Childish behavior / people / All of my behavior is childish / like am I the only one at 31 that still balances the light switch halfway between off and on / [%com: imitates switching the lights off and on] // AUD: HHHH COM: Just to see when the circuit breaks / right? // AUD: HHH COM: Sometimes I still close the refrigerator door slowly / and peak inside and see when the light goes off // [%ges: closes the refrigerator door, then peaks inside] AUD: hhhh

5. Conclusion This paper, first of all, can be quite helpful for those who begin their journey into the world of oral data representation, for it provides a description of useful guidelines, which are necessary to take into account when designing a transcript for spoken discourse. No matter how hardworking, monotonous and time-consuming transcribing data may be, it requires the researcher’s full attention to its multiple aspects that may have a certain influence over the interpretation of the data. It is important to keep such aspects as the purpose of the transcription, the theory we work with, the selectivity of the researcher, and the accuracy and readability of the transcript in mind, if one determines to design a new transcription system for any type of linguistic research. Secondly, taking into consideration the specificity of the genre standup comedy, the paper demonstrated non-applicability of certain existing transcription conventions to the type of interaction under analysis (standup comedy) due to a number of special features of this interaction (i.e. timing, paralanguage, laughter, etc.). Thus the innovation of this paper is in the adaptation of the existing models to the genre in question. Finally, and more importantly, the paper presented a new system of transcript conventions, specially designed for stand-up interactions within the adopted theoretical framework and the objectives of the research.

Designing a Transcription System for Spoken Discourse

85

To conclude, I would like to emphasize that, although transcriptions may seem to be a manual labour, a means towards the goal of getting the data to be used in the future research, it is more than that. The practice of transcribing has its own value and benefits for the transcriber (DuBois 2004: 7). With proper effort and insight into the process, transcription can also teach us about discourse.

References Adam, Jean-Michel. 2008. A Lingüística Textual. Introdução à análise textual dos discursos. Cortez: São Paulo. Aijmer, Karin. 2004. “A method and a methodology for the study of pragmatic markers: the semantic field of expectation”. Journal of Pragmatics 36: 1781-1805. —. 2005. “Approaches to Spoken Interaction”. Journal of Pragmatics: 1743-1751. —. 2013. Understanding Pragmatic Markers: A Variational Pragmatic Approach. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Blakemore, Diane. 2002. Relevance and linguistic meaning: the semantics and pragmatics of discourse markers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brinton, Laurel J. 1996. Pragmatic Markers in English: Grammatizalization and Discourse Functions. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Bucholtz, Mary. 2000. “The politics of transcription”. Journal of Pragmatics, 32: 1439–1465. —. 2007. “Variation in transcription”. Discourse Studies, 9(6): 784–808. Degand, Liesbeth, Bert Cornillie and Paola Pietrandrea. 2013. “Discourse markers and modal particles: two sides of the same coin?” In Discourse markers and modal particles. Categorization and description, edited by Liesbeth Degand, Bert Cornillie and Paola Pietrandrea, 1-18. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Degand, Liesbeth. 2015. “Grammaticalization or pragmaticalization of discourse markers? More than a terminological issue”. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 16:1: 59–85. Fischer, Kerstin. 1998. “Validating semantic analysis of discourse particles”. Journal of Pragmatics 29: 111-127. —. 2000. From Cognitive Semantics to Lexical Pragmatics: The Functional Polysemy of Discourse Particles. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Fraser, Bruce. 1999. “What are Discourse Markers?” Journal of Pragmatics 31: 931-952.

86

Chapter Five

—. 2009. “An Account of Discourse Markers”. International review of pragmatics 1: 1-28. —. 2015. “The combining of Discourse Markers–A beginning”. Journal of Pragmatics 86: 48-53. Du Bois, John W. 1991. “Transcription design principles for spoken discourse research”. Pragmatics 1(1): 71–106. —. 2004. Representing Discourse. MS, University of California, Santa Barbara. Edwards, Jane A. 2001. “The transcription of discourse”. In The handbook of discourse analysis, edited by Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen and Heidi Hamilton, 321–348. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Gibbon, Dafydd. 1998. Spoken language systems and corpus design. Mouton de Gruyter: Berlin. Greenbaum, Andrea. 1999. “Stand-up comedy as rhetorical argument: an investigation of comic culture”. Humor 12 (1): 33-46. Halliday, Michael Alexander Kirkwood. 2014. Introduction to Funcional Grammar. Routledge: London. Jefferson, Gail. 2004. “Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction”. In Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation, edited by Gene H. Lerner, 13-31. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. MacWhinney, Brian 2000. The CHILDES Project: Tools for Analyzing Talk. 3rd Edition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Morais, Armindo José Baptista. 2010. “A Introdução de Enunciados Narrativos em Situação de Interração Oral”. PhD diss., Universidade Aberta. Norrick, Neal. 2001. On the conversational performance of narrative jokes: Toward an account of timing. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 14 (3), 255–274. Ochs, Elinor. 1999. “Transcription as Theory”. In The Discourse Reader, edited by Adam Jaworski and Nikolas Coupland, 167-182. London: Routledge. Ross, Alison. 1998. The Language of Humor. London: Routledge. Rutter, Jason. 1997. “Stand-up as Interaction: Performance and Audience in Comedy Venues”. PhD diss., University of Salford. Tabot, Whitney, and Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 1998. “Structural scope expantion and grammaticalization”. In The Limits of Grammaticalization, edited by Anna Giacalone Ramat and Paul J. Hopper, 229-272. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.

Designing a Transcription System for Spoken Discourse

Appendix Meaning words

Symbol word word word

word sequence

word 1 word 2 word 3

sentence start

Sentence start

standard capitalized initial

COM: AUD: /

new line when new speaker begins speaking colon follows comedian/audience in CAPS short pause (in the middle of a phrase)

//

long pause (terminal phrase)

hm, ah, oh, etc. [XXX]

standard orthography each symbol corresponds to one word

hhh

speaker change speaker attribution pause (short), non-final boundary, more to come pause (long), final boundary or “measurable pause” interjections unintelligible words laugh (weak)

Comments standard orthography; space before & after standard conventional order (left-right)

laugh (strong)

HHH

appeal intonation or high rise exclamatory utterance repeated words incomplete words action tier

?

weak laughter; each symbols correspond to one pulse or particle of laughter burst of laugher; each symbols correspond to one pulse or particle of laughter question mark

!

exclamatory mark

word between less-than sign & greaterthan sign separated by gaps word followed by gap & hyphen

wor- words %act:

actions of the speaker or listener; percentage sign followed by the three initial letters of the word and colon

87

Chapter Five

88 gesture tier

%ges:

gestures of the speaker; percentage sign followed by the three initial letters of the word and colon

paralinguistic tier

%par:

comment tier

%com:

censure beep sound initial header

[beep] @Language: English

paralinguistic information; percentage sign followed by the three initial letters of the word and colon analyst comment on any topic; percentage sign followed by the three initial letters of the word and colon each “beep” sound corresponds to one word “at” symbol followed by the language of the transcript

initial header

@Begin

“at” symbol followed by Begin

header in the end of the file

@End

“at” symbol followed by End

CHAPTER SIX THE ATTRIBUTION OF GENRE TAGS: THE CASE OF GRAFFITI RUTE ROSA CENTRO DE LINGUÍSTICA DA UNIVERSIDADE NOVA DE LISBOA / FUNDAÇÃO PARA A CIÊNCIA E TECNOLOGIA

Abstract: In the study of genres (Adam & Heidmann 2007: 9), generic categorisation and the criteria that support it are unavoidable questions. In the present paper–having as a starting point the need to elicit the generic designation of texts that express subjectivity and are written on exterior walls and in other public environments–we propose the genre tag of personal graffiti. In order to support this methodological proposal, we follow the theoretical principles of the Socio-Discursive Interactionism framework (SDI) (Bronckart [1997] 1999, 2010, 2008), and we have made a qualitative survey of the social activities and socio-subjective parameters underlying the conditions of production of 20 European Portuguese texts. From this survey, we can see that the social framework of interaction, the social roles and the purposes of personal graffiti texts are different from those found in political graffiti texts. Besides this, we have conducted a comparative analysis of genre markers (Miranda 2010), to account for the characteristics that identify and differentiate texts. Based on this analysis, we can observe that the text plan presents voices and topics of personal graffiti texts are distinct from those of political graffiti texts. The different features of texts allow to delimit the genre and support the generic designation adopted. Keywords: Socio-discursive Interactionism, text genres, genre markers, genre tags, graffiti.

1. Introduction This paper focuses on the attribution of genre tags (Miranda 2010: 9395) to texts that do not have a consensual designation. The starting point

90

Chapter Six

for this question was the need to define the criteria to set up a corpus and to clarify the genre tags of the texts we aim to analyse in our PhD research project in Text and Discourse Linguistics. Although the majority of the selected texts are easily classifiable, due to a reasonably stable generic classification, as is the case with the texts pertaining to the genres of scientific paper and decree-law, it is clear that there is not a consensual genre tag to designate texts inscribed on exterior walls and in other public environments. To the general public, these texts are known as graffiti, along with all types of illegal writing in public places. Hence, this designation comprises texts with different natures that share a common action of transgression and misappropriation or the unexpected appropriation of public places (Campos 2009: 148). However, “(…) conventionally in graffiti culture with hip-hop origins, […] these are expressions that do not fit into their language. They would be, at best, illegitimate forms of graffiti” (Campos 2007: 259; my translation). On the other hand, it can be seen that despite the designation of political graffiti as being quite usual and consensual within the media, personal texts, such as reflections and messages, do not have any genre tag. From this point of view, the question remains how these texts could be classified and which criteria should hold the genre tag adopted in the research. In this sense, the purpose of this work is to propose a generic designation for these texts, having as criteria the social activities linked to them, the authors’ social role and communicative objectives, as well as the features that make these texts different and signal their generic identity. To this end, we will follow the theoretical framework of SocioDiscursive Interactionism (SDI) (Bronckart [1997] 1999, 2008, 2010), and, in particular, the notions of text and text genres, as well as the notions of mechanisms of textual realization, genre parameters and genre markers (Coutinho et al. 2005, Miranda 2010). To achieve this purpose, a first step will be to carry out a qualitative analysis of a corpus comprising twenty written texts of European Portuguese, making a survey of the activities and the social and subjective parameters of the conditions of texts production. Secondly, we have performed a comparative analysis of genre markers to account for the characteristics that identify and distinguish texts.

2. Texts and genres Within the theoretical framework of SDI, language is seen as a form of action in the different spheres of human interaction, and texts derive from an “action of situated language”–language thus being a concrete

The Attribution of Genre Tags: The Case of Graffiti

91

realisation of the linguistic system in a specific communicative situation (Bronckart [1997] 1999: 75). SDI follows a top-down analysis (Voloshinov [1929] 1977), from global to local–i.e. from social activities to language activities, and from these to texts and, lastly, from texts to linguistic units (Bronckart [1997] 1999: 107). In this regard, one of the aspects highlighted by Bronckart is that, despite the fact that textual production entails using the linguistic resources of a natural language, text, in itself, is not a linguistic unit but rather a communicative unit–because its opening and closing conditions are determined by the action that created it, and not by the linguistic units (Bronckart 2010: 28). From this point of view, language actions are “(…) synchronic psychological units gathering the representations of an agent about contexts of action, in their physical, social and subjective aspects” (Bronckart [1997] 1999: 107; my translation). Within an SDI framework, context corresponds to the set of parameters that influence textual production, which can be divided into two types: physical context and socio-subjective context (Bronckart [1997] 1999: 93). Physical context relates to the parameters of physical nature, namely physical subjects (sender and receiver), moment and place of production. The socio-subjective context concerns the parameters of social and subjective nature, that is, they relate to the social position of the sender/receiver, the social situation and the objectives of interaction (Bronckart [1997] 1999: 93). On the other hand, in the SDI framework, it is argued that all texts belong within a genre, that is to say, the sender who finds themself in the situation of a language-specific action, and with the knowledge that he/she has of genres (architecturally available) and from the way that he/she assesses and views the situation of the action (regarding the physical and social context), he/she selects the genre model that he/she finds most suitable and adapts it to the communicative situation (Bronckart 1996: 12). In this manner, the analysis of empirical texts can’t disregard the genres in which they are written, since the genre condition “(…) is the place where relationships of interdependence between properties of texts and properties of the social activities, in which they are produced, are seen” (Miranda 2012: 123; my translation). From this perspective, the genre selection “depends on the work that social formations of language develop, so that the texts adapted to the activities that they comment, adapted to a given communicative environment, and effective in face of a social challenge, etc.” (Bronckart 2006: 62; my translation). According to this perspective, genre tags depend on social factors just as much as texts and genres. Hence, the designation of genres stems from “a specific communicative intention–which implies that if that need does

92

Chapter Six

not arise, there will not be a tag for the genre at issue, at least until a theoretical or empirical motivation occurs putting in circulation a new designation” (Miranda 2010: 94; my translation). From this point of view, if a designation of political graffiti exists and if there is no tag for texts expressing subjectivity, this might mean that the need for creating a stable, socially shared designation hasn’t yet arisen. All the same, for research in textual genres, the clarification of the generic inclusion of texts is a fundamental and indispensable methodological concern. Following Miranda (2010: 96; my translation), if there no generic tag, “academics might become agents of creation and/or of stabilisation of a new form of designation”. Since the designation of genres arises from the need to identify texts within a social practice, from our perspective, the generic tag should have, as a starting point, the social activities and contextual parameters of socio-subjective nature. On the other hand, it is necessary to gather samples and conduct a study that allows the recognition of genre characteristics. Thus, although texts and genres are intrinsically different from each other, texts must necessarily undergo an empirical analysis in order to characterize and describe genres.

3. Describing genres and texts: Mechanisms of textual realization, parameters, and genre markers According to Adam’s proposal, in the ambit of Textual Linguistics, on the one hand, genres are influenced by contextual parameters, and, on the other, they regulate textual production through an identity principle (repetition) and a difference principle (variation) (Adam 2001: 38). Thus, it may be expected that texts exhibit unique characteristics resulting from the specific characteristics of the genre adaptation process as well as the characteristics (more or less established) of the model of the selected genre. Although one of the tools of analysis of SDI has been designed to describe texts (textual internal architecture model), Bronckart (2008: 41) emphasises the importance of analysing the characteristics of textual genres. Moreover, the fact that any text pertains to a genre leads us to the need “(…) of thinking, in methodological terms, the viability of the description of genres of text” (Coutinho 2007: 39; my translation). Nonetheless, as stated above, it is required, to describe genres, to analyse empirical texts and the manner in which these take over the characteristics of textual genres. The notions of genre parameters and mechanisms of textual realization, proposed and developed in Coutinho et. al. (2005), integrate an analysis model developed in the ambit of the GeTOC project

The Attribution of Genre Tags: The Case of Graffiti

93

(textual genres and knowledge organisation), as part of the work developed by the Centro de Linguística da Universidade Nova de Lisboa, that aims to describe, at the same time, texts and genres (cf. Coutinho 2007: 643-645). Genre parameters relate to the “likely features that form the identity of the genre” and mechanisms of textual realization relate to the “particular options of texts actively produced, before the genre parameters” (Coutinho 2006: 7; my translation). However, as Miranda observes (2010: 153), it is not possible to establish a one-to-one relationship between genre parameters and mechanisms of textual realizations because the same parameter may be up-to-date through different mechanisms, and these depend on the individual choices and uniqueness of each text. It is through the mechanisms of textual realizations that we recognise the parameters that signal the ‘generic identity’, that is to say, these mechanisms function as genre markers (Miranda 2010: 154-155). As far as types of markers are concerned, Miranda (2010) distinguishes self-referential markers from inferential markers. The first are markers that explicitly classify the generic characteristic of the text, such as, for example, generic tags found on the peritext (opinion articles, chronicles, news, recipes, and critical essays, among others), along with the nominal groups occurring in the text’s body and that, very clearly, disclose the generic class of the text (“ the present paper”, “in this essay”). The latter–inferential markers –, unlike the previous ones, signal, implicitly, the generic class of the text; in other words, to identify the genre to which the text pertains it is important to identify more than one marker. In this sense, if texts do not exhibit selfreferential markers, the inferential markers are the ones that permit verifying whether or not texts display specific characteristics and thus identifying the genre they belong to.

4. Graffiti: Activities and socio-subjective parameters In the light of the stated theoretical principles, we observe that despite texts not displaying a generic and consensual designation this does not mean that they do not ascribe to a genre. Furthermore, it is noted that genre tags stem from a need for identification within a social activity. Given that the tag political graffiti is pretty widely accepted, at this point, we propose the generic marker of personal graffiti, having as its criteria the social activities and the contextual parameters of socio-subjective nature.

94

Chapter Six

4.1. Corpus The corpus comprises 20 European Portuguese written texts collected between 2016 and 2017, in the streets of Portuguese cities1. The selection of these texts was drawn using the following criteria: i) mandatory presence (not exclusive) of linguistic signs; ii) texts of political nature (political graffiti) and texts of a mere expression of subjectivity (messages, love statements, blowing off steam, etc.). In this respect, the distinction that we propose takes as a basis, on one hand, the interactionist principle that all linguistic productions depend on the social environment and, on the other, that texts and genres are influenced by contextual parameters.

4.2. Activities and socio-subjective parameters As far as social activities are concerned, texts from GP1-GP10 are clearly linked to political activity. In the case of texts GS1-GS10, we note them as belonging to the personal activity sphere. In relation to the author, addressee and social roles, in the political graffiti, the author is, generally, collective and takes on the social role of a political entity, a militant group or a labour union. The addressee is also collective, and it might be the electorate, a social group or citizens in general (GP1-GP10). Concerning the texts of personal nature, although author and addressee might be individual (GS1, GS2, GS4, GS7, GS8, GS10) or collective (GS3, GS5, GS6, GS9) subjects, the identification of their social roles is not possible. With respect to the objectives of the interaction, in the case of the political graffiti, the purpose is to intervene, to argue, to persuade, to convince, to appeal to all–or, at least, to many–people for action (GP2, GP5, GP6, GP10) or for a change in attitudes and habits (GP1, GP7, GP9). In the GS1-GS10 texts, the author’s aim is to express himself/herself (GS5, GS8, GS9), to vent, and to appeal specifically to a person (GS1, GS2, GS4, GS7, GS8, GS10). In the following table, we have outlined the elements analysed in the corpus and presented at the end of this paper.

1

The selected corpus is presented at the end of this paper. To identify the mentioned texts, we will use an abbreviation formed with the initials of genre and a number, like, for example, GP1 (political graffiti) and GS1 (personal graffiti).

The Attribution of Genre Tags: The Case of Graffiti

95

Table 6.1. Activities and socio-subjective parameters Texts

Activity

Author (social role)

Addressee (social role)

Interaction Objectives

GP1 GP2 GP3 GP4 GP5 GP6 GP7 GP8 GP9 GP10 GS1 GS2 GS3 GS4 GS5 GS6 GS7 GS8 GS9 GS10

Politics

Collective Political party Militant’s group Labour Union

Collective

Appeal for action (strike, demonstration, vote), intervene, change in attitude and ideologies

Personal

Individual Not identifiable

Electorate Social group (…)

Individual or collective Not identifiable

To express oneself, vent, or appeal specifically to someone or all

5. Analysis of the genre markers In the previous section, and from the collected data, we verified that the texts we aim to analyse are linked to different activities and display socio-subjective parameters that are different from those found in the texts of political graffiti. In this section, we propose to determine whether texts show specific and distinct characteristics from texts of the political graffiti genre. To do this, we need to make a survey of genre markers, since, as already mentioned, it is these that allow us to determine whether texts have specific characteristics and thus to identify and define the genre to which they belong. In the comparative analysis, we will consider and describe four inferential markers: text plan (compositional marker), voices (enunciative marker), medium (material marker) and themes (thematic marker).

5.1. Text plan The text plan is, according to Silva (2016: 18), “a feature receptive to contributing along with others, to the establishment, identification, characterization and demarcation of genres” (Silva 2016: 118; my

96

Chapter Six

translation). The plan comprises the general infrastructure, that is, the deepest layer of one of the SDI analysis tool–the textual internal architecture model–and is responsible for the global organization of the text as well as for the organization of its compositional structure. Following Gonçalves (2011: 9; my translation) “to analyse the text plan, it is necessary to identify the various sections that organize texts and form the textual composition, to describe how they interrelate and how they are segmented in the textual space”. To this end, it is necessary to identify the segmentation mechanisms and textual organisation that intervene in the configuration and structure of the text plan, that is to say, mechanisms of graphic segmentation (subheadings, numbering, points, among others) and textual organizers.2 According to Coutinho (2004: 1), textual organisers are “mechanisms of global textual organisation, responsible for showing, or for highlighting, the plan of the text” (my translation). Punctuation and mechanisms of graphic segmentation also have a role in textual organisation, since they delimit, group and arrange the textual units (Coutinho 2004: 5). From the analysis of the texts of political graffiti, a recognizable text plan emerges, that tends to be organized through the co-occurrence of verbal and non-verbal sections. In addition, the non-verbal sections are not randomly arranged, as they function in the textual space as mechanisms that delimit and distinguish the thematic contents. As it is possible to observe, on the verbal sections, we identify the topics related directly to the interaction purposes: to appeal to vote (GP2), to fight for power (GP1), to fight racism (GP3), and to incite demonstration (GP5). In the non-verbal sections, covertly expressed topics concern political, social and ideological values, as is the case with an image of a carnation (GP2) and the political parties’ logos (GP1, GP2, GP8). Thus, in political graffiti, images are used to complement the information from the verbal sections. In addition to the frequently used stencil3 technique, it is noted that the use of capital letters (GP1-GP10), text boxes (GP10), alignment and colour variation (GP2) are also graphic mechanisms of textual organisation that delimit and highlight the verbal sections. In relation to personal graffiti (GS1-GS10), we note, in the majority of the samples, a text plan characterised by the almost exclusive presence of verbal sections. Hence, and unlike the texts of the political graffiti genre, in personal graffiti, there are no logos and the existence of images and symbols is rather occasional (GS7). Although some texts use the stencil 2

In Adam’s (1999) proposal, textual organisers pertain to the general class of connectors. 3 Stencil is a technique to inscribe texts or images, through the application of paint over a cast.

The Attribution of Genre Tags: The Case of Graffiti

97

technique (GS8), this technique is not as frequent as in GP1-GP10 texts, thus indicating lower aesthetical concern. Furthermore, we note that the mechanisms of textual organisation that most delimit, group and highlight sections are, on the one hand, the punctuation marks, namely, exclamation marks (GS1, GS3, GS4, GS7, GS9), question marks (GS7, GS10), ellipsis (GS6, GS7, GS10), and colon (GS4); and, on the other hand, the occurrence and variance of words using upper and lower case letters at specific sections of the text plan (GS1, GS9).

5.2. Medium The medium, that is, the material existence of linguistic production, is one of the material markers that most affects texts (Miranda 2010: 55). In some cases, the production medium coincides with the circulation medium, but in other cases, mediums are different and, consequently, texts are different, as for example, oral texts (production medium) and the transcription of those texts (circulation medium) (Miranda 2010: 55). In graffiti, the production and circulation media coincide, that is, they are produced in urban supports, such as walls, to be seen by passing people. However, due to the transgressive nature of these texts, graffiti are potentially ephemeral. In this case, technologies that allow the recording and dissemination of the image of these texts become a new means of circulation, although the production medium is visible, as noted in the images of the texts we have selected. Following Campos (2007: 252; my translation), “graffiti is a form of language intimately linked to its medium that, regardless of its quality, must be exposed in the public space and, preferably, with great visibility”. Seen this way, if any of these texts had been produced in a different medium, this would not be graffiti; in other words, the medium is, undoubtedly, one of the main characteristics of the texts. On the other hand, this marker does not allow distinguishing the genre of political graffiti (GP1-GP10) from the genre of personal graffiti (GS1-GS10), since they were all produced using the same type of medium. Nevertheless, as Miranda notes (2010: 156), it’s important to take into account that genre markers are specific but not exclusive of the genre, and, in the case of inferential markers, one marker is not sufficient to identify the genre; i.e., it is necessary to look at the way this marker relates to the other markers.

98

Chapter Six

5.3. Theme In a broader sense, a theme (or topic) concerns the subject matter of what is addressed (Mendes 2013: 1750). Hence, concerning text, the theme is its semantic unit, and its identification, according to Rastier4, depends on the conditions of interpretation (Rastier 2014: 29). Although some genres accept various themes, as for example, the scientific paper, in other genres there is not much thematic variance, as with the case of the medicine package insert. On the other hand, in some genres, the genre tag pinpoints the themes that occur in texts, such as the case of the political graffiti tag. From this point of view, as one would expect, in the GP1GP10 texts we identify topics related to politics, including the presidential elections (GP2), the struggle for power (GP1, GP8), the fight against racism (GP3), the rejection of fascism (GP4) and defence of the democratic principles established with the Revolution of April 25th (GP4, GP7, GP9), as well as for demonstrations (GP5, GP6) and striking (GP10). In this sense, political graffiti focuses on matters related to the public interests of the citizens in general or specific groups (militants, workers, voters, among others). Although, generally, the lexicon5 is not, by itself, sufficient to identify the theme of a text, in political graffiti, in some examples, we identified a specific semantic field through the occurrence of lexicon associated with political activity: poder (‘power’), povo (‘people’) (GP1); vota (‘vote’), constituição (‘constitution’), presidenciais (‘presidential’) (GP2); fascism (‘fascism’) (GP4); greve geral (‘general strike’) (GP10). As for GS1-GS10 texts, they have personal themes related to interests / individual experiences, such as longing, pain caused by absence (GS2), love and affection (GS7, GS8, GS9, GS10), messages (GS4 , GS1), reflections (GS5) and blowing off steam (SG3, SG6). With the personal graffiti, we identified a semantic field related to the subjective, intersubjective and personal experiences, suggested by the lexicon associated with feelings (ama (‘love’), sente (‘feel’), GS9; amor (‘love’), GS10; adoro-te (‘I adore you’), GS8) of pronominal verbs (custa-me (it is hard for me’) GS2), personal pronouns and first and second person verbal forms (GS1-GS10).

4

In the work developed within Textual Semantics, Rastier follows a paradigm of rhetorical-hermeneutics nature. According to this author, “(…) l’ordre herméneutique permet la médiation entre le texte d’une part, et l’histoire et la société dont le texte procède par le biais des pratiques où il est produit et interprété” (Rastier 2001, 107). 5 This perspective is supported by Rastier (2001, 2014)

The Attribution of Genre Tags: The Case of Graffiti

99

5.6. Voices Voices are mechanisms of enunciation accountability6 which may be indicative of the generic identity of the texts. According to Bronckart (1999 [1997]: 326; my translation), “voices might be defined as entities that acquire (or to which are attributed) the responsibility which is expressed”. Thus, voices can be characters, social voices, or the voice of the author. However, as Bronckart emphasizes, the text is generally polyphonic, that is, in it may be identified different voices of the same type, but it is likewise possible to hear different combinations of voices (Bronckart 1999 [1997]: 328-329). Furthermore, “voices might not be translated by specific linguistic marks, but might be also clarified by pronominal forms, noun groups, or even by sentences or phrases” (Bronckart 2006: 68; my translation). In political graffiti texts, the strong presence of verbal forms of the first person plural, logos of political and social entities (GP1, GP2, GP3, GP9, GP8), symbols that refer to collective values, such as the carnation (GP2, GP9 ), the presence of collective nouns (povo (‘people’), GP1) as well as words or phrases referring to the achieving of collective action (Somos muitos mil para fazer um novo Abril (‘We are many thousand to make a new April’), GP7; Participa. É para todos [‘Participate. t's for everyone’], GP10) allow us to identify the presence of social voices. In the personal graffiti (GS1-GS10), although social voices might appear, the voices of the empirical authors of the texts stand out, through the presence of first and second person verbal forms (Custa-me estar longe de ti [‘It costs me to be far from you’], GS2; Eu também não sei viver… Estou a improvisar [‘I too don’t know how to live ... I'm improvising’], SG6; Sabes o que é Amor? Eu sei e foste tu que me mostraste [‘You know what love is? I know and you're the one who showed it to me’], GS10) and through the use of non-declarative and exclamatory sentences (GS1, GS3, GS4, GS7) and interrogative sentences (GS9, GS10, GS7).

6. Final remarks Taking as its starting point the need to explain the generic inscription of personal texts inscribed on walls and other public environments, in this paper we proposed the genre tag of personal graffiti. To support this 6

The mechanisms of enunciation accountability integrate the superficial layer of the mentioned model of textual architecture model. This layer concerns management of voices and modalization (Bronckart 1999 [1997]).

100

Chapter Six

proposal, first, we compared texts of the political graffiti genre with texts of personal nature, with regard to social activities and the social and subjective parameters of the context of production. From this qualitative analysis, we found that (i) the social context of interaction, social roles and purposes of texts of the personal graffiti genre are different from political graffiti texts; (ii) there is no generic tag for personal texts, because the activity with which they are associated does not necessitate the creation of a shared, socially stabilized name. In a second step, we have tried to discover whether or not genre texts of personal graffiti have specific and distinct characteristics from political graffiti. To do so, we have identified and characterized four genre markers: text plan, medium, theme and voices. From this analysis, we noted that, although the 20 texts have the same kind of medium (material marker), the text plan, mobilized voices and texts themes for the personal graffiti type are distinct from texts of the political graffiti type. The different characteristics of the observed markers allow us to define the type and sustain the generic name adopted. However, we must emphasize that the tag personal graffiti is not a theoretical proposition, but rather a methodological option. From this perspective, if other criteria are considered, we could propose other genre tags. On the other hand, if we take into account the criteria adopted, this first distinction presented demonstrates the need to think about minor genre tags for the naming of the different forms of expressing subjectivity and intervention

References Adam, Jean-Michel. 1999. Linguistique Textuelle. Des genres de discours aux textes. Paris: Nathan. —. 2001. “En finir avec les types de textes”. In Analyse des discours. Types et genres: Communication et Interprétation, edited by M. Ballabriga, 25-43. Toulouse: EUS. Adam, Jean-Michel, and Ute Heidmann. 2007. “Six propositions pour l’étude de la généricité”. In La Licorne 79, 21-34. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes. Bronckart, Jean-Paul. 1996. “Genres de textes, types de discours et opérations psycholinguistiques”. Voies livres 78 : 1-20. —. [1997] 1999. Atividade de linguagem, textos e discursos: por um interacionismo sócio-discursivo. (Trans. Anna Raquel Machado). São Paulo: EDUC. —. 2003. “Géneros textuais, tipos de discurso e operações psicolinguísticas”. Revista de Estudos da Linguagem 11 (1): 49-69.

The Attribution of Genre Tags: The Case of Graffiti

101

—. 2006. “Os gêneros de textos e os tipos de discurso como formatos das interações propiciadoras de desenvolvimento”. In Atividade de linguagem, discurso e desenvolvimento humano, 121-160. (Trans. Rosalvo Gonçalves Pinto). Campinas: Mercado de Letras. —. 2008. “A atividade de linguagem frente à LÍNGUA: homenagem a Ferdinand de Saussure”. In Guimarães, A., M. de Matos, Machado, A. R. & Coutinho A. (Eds.), O interaccionismo sociodiscursivo. Questões epistemológicas e metodológicas, edited by A. Guimarães, M. de Matos, A. R. Machado, A. and M. A. Coutinho, 19-42. Campinas: Mercado de Letras. —. 2010. “La vie des signes en questions: des textes aux langues et retour”. In Textos Seleccionados, XXV Encontro Nacional da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística, edited by A. M. Brito, F. Silva, J. Veloso and A. Fiéis, 11-40. Porto:APL. Campos, Ricardo. 2007. Pintando a cidade: Uma abordagem antropológica ao graffiti urbano. PhD diss., Lisboa: Universidade Aberta. Online at http://hdl.handle.net/10400.2/765 —. 2009. “ Entre as luzes e as sombras da cidade: visibilidade e invisibilidade no graffiti “. Etnográfica, vol. 13 (1). Online at http://etnografica.revues.org/1292 Coutinho, Maria Antónia. 2004. “Sobre organizadores textuais”. In Gramática textual do português. Lisboa: Universidade Nova. Online at http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:itv9sLPiWcJ: www.fcsh.unl.pt/cadeiras/texto/Organizadores%2520textuais.pdf+&cd =1&hl=pt-PT&ct=clnk&gl=pt Coutinho, Maria Antónia et al. 2005. “Parâmetros de género e mecanismos de realização textual: aspetos teóricos”. Paper presented at O interacionismo sociodiscursivo em construção: desafios e posicionamentos, PUC-SP–São Paulo / Brasil. Coutinho, Maria Antónia. 2006. “O texto como objeto empírico: consequências e desafios para a linguística”. Veredas. Online at http://www.ufjf.br/revistaveredas/files/2009/12/artigo076.pdf —. 2007. “Descrever géneros de texto: resistências e estratégias”. Actas do IV SIGET–Simpósio Internacional de Estudos de Géneros Textuais 9:639-647. Online at http://linguagem.unisul.br/paginas/ensino/pos/linguagem/eventos/cd/P ort/20.pdf Gonçalves, Matilde. 2011. “Espécie de texto: Contributo para a caraterização do sítio web”. Hipertextus, 12:1-12. Online at http://www.hipertextus.net/volume7/02-Hipertextus-Vol7-MatildeGoncalves.pdf

102

Chapter Six

Mendes, Amália. 2013. “Organização textual e articulação de orações”. In Gramática do Português, vol. II, edited by E. Paiva Raposo, M. F. Bacelar do Nascimento, M. A. Coelho da Mota, L. Segura and A. Mendes, 1691-1755. Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. Miranda, Florencia. 2010. Textos e géneros em diálogo: uma abordagem linguística da intertextualização. Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. —. 2012. “Os géneros de texto na dinâmica das práticas da linguagem”. Cadernos Cenpec 2 (1): 121-139. Online at http://cadernos.cenpec.org.br/cadernos/index.php/cadernos/article/view File/96/119 Rastier, François. 2001. Arts et sciences du texte. Paris: PUF. —. 2014. “Temática e Tópico.” Estudos Linguísticos/Linguistic Studies 9: 27-59. Silva, Paulo Nunes da. 2016. “Género, conteúdos e segmentação: em busca do plano de texto”. Diacrítica 30 (1): 181-224. Online at http://ceh.ilch.uminho.pt/publicacoes/Diacritica_30-1.pdf Voloshinov, V. N. [1929] 1977. Le marxisme et la philosophie du langage. Paris: Minuit.

The Attribution of Genre Tags: The Case of Graffiti

Appendix: Corpus GP1

GP2

GP3

GP4

GP5

GP6

103

104

GP7

GP9

GS1

Chapter Six

GP8

GP10

GS2

The Attribution of Genre Tags: The Case of Graffiti

GS3

GS4

GS5

GS6

GS7

GS8

GS9

GS10

105

CHAPTER SEVEN THE MANAGEMENT OF VOICES IN THE NEWS: ENUNCIATIVE STAGING AND ENUNCIATIVE “EFFACEMENT” IN TELEVISION NEWS REPORTS HELENA RODEIRO CENTRO DE LINGUÍSTICA DA UNIVERSIDADE NOVA DE LISBOA / FACULDADE DE CIÊNCIAS SOCIAIS E HUMANASíUNIVERSIDADE NOVA DE LISBOA

Abstract: The notion of enunciative staging presupposes that discourse is polyphonic and, thus, an intricate network of voices that express different points of view and assume enunciative positions that can change rapidly in a conscious or unconscious way. This scenario points to the dynamic nature of discourse. The notions of modality, modalisation and “enunciative effacement” and their pragmatic effects become central to understand the positions and the unstable balance assumed by speakers and enunciators in discursive phenomena such as reported speech. Moreover, all these elements come together in the analysis of particular empirical texts as examples of a specific genre–television news reports– and their social, cultural and civilizational impact on the construction of knowledge and on the shaping of opinions. Keywords: enunciative staging, enunciative effacement, polyphony, modality, modalisation, television news reports.

1. Introduction This paper is based on the perspective that linguistic activities are complex and multidimensional because they rely on the continuous updating and evolutionary process that is built in and through communication. Besides, a multidimensional perspective takes into consideration that the

The Management of Voices in the News

107

situational constraints and the discursive strategies chosen by the subjects display two complementary competences: social and individual. This means there is a social role that is defined through discursive, situational and formal elements and through the possibilities inherent to the concrete situation (the social frame), besides the attempt to individually ensure the manifestation of a singular identity through specific discursive strategies. In fact, texts, as they occur in televised newscasts, are deeply marked by polyphony, which makes enunciative staging even more complex and makes it crucial to reflect upon the position of the speaker (anchorman/woman) in the management of voices, including his/her own. Therefore, this work intends to shed some light on the management of enunciative instances in concrete texts–television news reports–and present some of the strategies used to guarantee the relation between the speaker(s) and enunciator(s). To accomplish these aims, we will, first, focus on some of the features that characterise the text genre television news report. We will, then, discuss the concepts of modality and modalisation from an enunciative perspective of discourse that concerns the position and involvement of a subject within one’s discourse production and interpretation. Next, we will analyse the phenomenon of “enunciative effacement” and its connection with reported speech. Finally, we will analyse an example from a Portuguese televised newscast that is not meant to serve as a basis for making generalisations, but can highlight how the previous concepts can be operationalised concerning enunciative positions.

2. The text genre television news report: Some distinctive features Our conception of texts and text genres is based on the sociodiscursive interactionist theoretical and epistemological framework, according to which texts are concrete and empirical objects (Bronckart 2005: 65-66; Coutinho 2006:1) that activate the lexical and grammatical resources of a language and are an immediate result of the action that created them. Therefore, textualisation implies a selection of the structural mechanisms, cognitive operations and linguistic forms that are to be activated bearing in mind the textual genre to which it belongs: […] text genres are products of configurations of choices among all possible, which are momentarily crystallized or stabilized by use. […]

108

Chapter Seven genres necessarily change with time or with the history of their sociolinguistic bases (Bronckart 2005: 62; my translation)1

This conception of genericity clearly shows that genres possess two (only apparently) contradictory features: the capacity of crystallisation and autonomy, on the one hand, and their permanent updating in the production of texts that are socially, historically and contextually produced, on the other. Consequently, it is impossible to classify genres on a permanent basis and to establish a univocal matching between forms of action through language and text genres. According to this frame of analysis, genres are a product of social indexations: referential–the general activity the text comments on; communicative–the interaction to which that comment seems to be adequate; cultural–the supposed social value of a genre. All in all, the process of text production implies adopting and adapting. The individual who produces a text and, therefore, acts through language bears in mind the model of genre that seems to be more appropriate while performing a process of accommodation/actualisation to the concrete communicative situation. This theoretical conception implies a top-down analysis of texts, from the social activity to the micro, internal components of texts. Therefore, our study of enunciative structuration accounts for the inherent tension underlying genericity and concrete text productions. The television news report includes specific structural generic traits that undoubtedly define its means of production and circulation. One of those features is the juxtaposition between written and oral support that makes it not a prototypical example of writing or speaking. This hybridity is pointed out by Marcuschi and Dionísio (2007: 16) “it is an oralisation of writing and not an example of spoken language” and puts forward the need to develop a triangular analysis based on oral transcriptions, teleprompter and the journalist’s notes. Even the use of interviews would be a useful tool so that the journalist/speaker (but also enunciator as representative of the editorial team and the TV channel itself) would reflect upon his/her own management of voices, points of view and sources of information. Finally, we would like to stress that, in each communicative situation, each speaker should recognise the importance of four domains: its purpose, the identity of its participants, its content domain and the 1

Original version: “Os géneros de textos constituem produtos de configurações de escolhas por entre as possíveis, que são momentaneamente cristalizadas ou estabilizadas pelo uso. […] os géneros mudam necessariamente com o tempo, ou com a história das formações sociolinguísticas.”

The Management of Voices in the News

109

material circumstances that establish a “communicative contract”, in which the processes of production and interpretation are put into practice allowing the interlocutors to construct meaning (Charaudeau 2002). In the specific case of the text genre television news report, which results from the interaction between journalistic activity and a profusion of other activities ranging from social, economic, political, cultural domains, the “communicative contract” should entail three discursive features: (i) giving an account of the event to transform it into news through the use of narrative and descriptive procedures (aiming at objectivity and, therefore, credibility) and dramatization (to keep the attention of the audience); (ii) explaining the event (implying analysis and commentary), using argumentative operating procedures; (iii) producing a new event encouraging interaction (Charaudeau 2002) through the construction of knowledge and the formation of (public opinion)–two ultimate goals roles of social media.

3. Modality, modalisation and discourse dynamics Concerning the enunciative approach that we have referred to in the introductory part, we aim at shedding some light on the concepts of modality and modalisation and the core distinctions between the two based on the fundamental studies by Voloshinov (1927), Bally (1932), Ducrot (1984, 1993) and Vion (2004, 2005). In his work Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (1927), Voloshinov assumes a pioneering position by stating that language has an intersubjective dimension that is anchored to its social and contextual existence. Furthermore, the author assumes polyphonic dialogism as a universal feature, intrinsic to enunciation and, therefore, to human communication. It is an inescapable condition of belonging to a (pastpresent-future) heterogenic collective reality and, simultaneously, to a specific and unique context, where meaning is constructed and language is constantly updated and (re)invented through the tension between repeatable/ unrepeatable, as the excerpt below highlights: Orientation of the word toward the addressee has an extremely high significance. In point of fact, the word is a two-sided act. It is determined equally by whose word it is and for whom it is meant. As word, it is precisely the product of the reciprocal relationship between speaker and listener, addresser and addressee. Each and every word expresses the "one” in relation to the "other." (Voloshinov 1927: 86)

110

Chapter Seven

In this paper, we will also focus on the concept of polyphony based on the perspective presented by Ducrot (1984, 1993) and later developed by Vion (2004, 2005) considering the notion of mise en scène enónciative– enunciative staging –, which accounts for the different enunciative sources that must be taken into consideration in one’s speech, along with the concepts of modality and modalisation, the distinction between speaker and enunciator(s), the position and involvement of the speaker in his/her own speech, the management of voices (including his/her own) that superpose in enunciation. Therefore, our approach to polyphony does not only focus on Voloshinov’s notion of an endless communicational continuum that is adapted and re(accommodated) to situational and concrete contexts, but we assume, based on the author’s perspective, that enunciation is built on a constitutive dialogism (Vion 2005) and ‘populated’ with voices that might be more or less marked on the surface, which is clearly shown below: Il existe donc une hétérogénéité constitutive qui, même lorsque ces voix ne sont pas visualisées par des marques linguistiques, permet de postuler une omniprésence de voix dans la parole d’un locuteur. Face à ce dialogisme constitutif, le locuteur peut mettre en scène des opinions et des points de vue qui ne sont pas les siens. (Vion 2005: 35)

In his polyphonic theory of enunciation, Ducrot (1984:190-205), establishes the distinction between three enunciative instances: sujet parlant (the empirical agent that produces the utterance), the locuteur (the deictic anchoring discursive entity responsible for the enunciation)–and these two entities do not necessarily overlap–and the énonciateur(s) (enunciator(s) or different voice(s) expressing distinct points of view that do not necessarily match the points of views of the previously mentioned entities). The articulation between them makes enunciative staging effectively complex and unstable. The author stresses the fact that enunciators, as intradiscursive voices, may be visible and, therefore, identified through the diverse forms of reported speech, or they may not be identified and, therefore, convey their opinions, attitudes and points of view through the speaker’s enunciation without being assigned concrete words or utterances, as the definition below clarifies: J’appele “énonciateurs” ces êtres qui son censés s’exprimer à travers l’énonciation, sans que pour autant on leur attribue des mots précis; s’ils “parlent”, c’est seulement en ce sens que l’énonciation est vue comme exprimant leur point de vue, leur position, leur attitude, mais non pas, au sens materiel du terme, leurs paroles. (Ducrot 1984: 204)

The Management of Voices in the News

111

Bearing this in mind, Vion (2005) clearly establishes the connection between the two enunciative entities by assuming that the notion of enunciator is imminently related to the expression of point(s) of view. The speaker or speaker, then, by accommodating the voices of the different enunciators, interacts with them and leads a double role as locuteur and énonciateur, assuming distinct positions towards them, as shown in the following extract: Le locuteur ne pourra produire un énoncé sans exprimer un point de vue sur cet énoncé. Il sera alors simultanément locuteur et énonciateur de points de vue qui peuvent rester implicites du fait de marqueurs de distanciation donnant à entendre qu’il n’adopte pas les points de vue rapportés. (Vion 2005: 37)

It is within this polyphonic frame of analysis that we are going to focus on the speaker’s implication in the enunciative staging, bearing in mind the notions of modality and modalisation and the phenomena of enunciative distance and effacement. Bally (1932) suggests the existence of a dichotomy between modus (the expression of a judgement) and dictum (the contents of that judgement): “La représentation ainsi actualisée peut être appelée dictum et l’assertion qui l’actualise modus” (Bally 1932: 32). This bipartition of an utterance was, in fact, highly criticised by Ducrot (1993) and later by Vion (2004). Both scholars consider that the traditional opposition between modality and the propositional content of an utterance does not account for the complexity of the linguistic activities of individuals. Therefore, communication always implies positioning from the speaker, made visible in and through his/her (linguistic) choices and the dictum becomes a subjective construction that arises from a process of interpretation (concerning the speaker himself/herself, the given situational context and the discursive co-text) and is not a mere description or representation of the propositional content of an utterance, as both scholars point out: Ce qu’on appelle idée, dictum, contenu propositionel n’est constitute par rien d’autre, selon moi, que par une ou plusieurs prises de positions. (Ducrot 1993: 128) Comuniquer reviendrait donc à se positioner par rapport à une representation construite dans le discours. Il convient dès lors de se prononcer sur le statut linguistique et cognitive de cette representation qui fonctionnerait à la fois comme point de depart pour une réaction du sujet, comme élément subordonné à cette réaction (y compris sur le plan

112

Chapter Seven syntaxique) mais aussi comme facteur structurant de l’intervention du locuteur. (Vion 2004: 97)

The notion of dictum must, then, be complemented with the notion of modus (modality)–“the reaction of a speaker towards a representation he/she builds in his/her own speech” (Vion 2004: 95), implying that modality has a direct contribution to the semantic content of an utterance. Thus, the connection between dictum and modus is a dynamic process that allows communicative development and, therefore, both are necessary and complementary realities in any utterance. In this paper, we assume Vion’s perspective on modality and, therefore, we cannot consider this notion to be confined to the study of mood and modal verb systems. Therefore, any typology of modality must revolve around the speaker because modality is “l’expression de l’attitude du locuteur par rapport au contenu propositionnnel de son énoncé” (Le Querler 1996: 9). Vion (2004, 2005) clearly distinguishes between modality and modalisation and the two dimensions that characterise the speaker’s intervention are not to be confused or assimilated into one another. For the author, modalisation implies an enunciative split, which means that the same speaker produces a reflexive modalising comment in his utterance, which does not directly contribute to its semantic content. Thus, by assuming that the speaker might assume a double role concerning his/her own productions, we can understand that the existence of a modalising term ‘blurs’ and complexifies the utterance meaning and, therefore, it becomes more demanding for the interlocutor(s) to (de-) and (re)construct enunciative content. However, it also allows them more freedom for (de) and (re)construction to take place. This points out to the complexity of communicative behaviour and accounts for the inherent dynamics and instability of discourse conceived as polyphonic. Moreover, it poses important questions concerning content and the locutive position of a speaker and his/her relation towards different enunciators. Finally, it gains an important dimension when reflecting upon enunciative postures such as co-enunciation, sub-enunciation and super-enunciation resulting from “enunciative effacement” in reported speech, when used within the particular activity of journalism, whose impact and relevance in knowledge and public opinion formation is unquestionable.

The Management of Voices in the News

113

4. Enunciative “effacement” in reported speech: Co-enunciation, sub-enunciation and super-enunciation One of the scholars that has given an unquestionable contribution to the studies of enunciation within media discourse is Alain Rabatel. In his research, he suggests that enunciative effacement must be understood as a continuum of different degrees marking the presence of a speaker through lexical and indexical elements in a specific text. The author identifies gradual forms of enunciative effacement that range from enunciative effacement stricto sensu to enunciative effacement lato sensu, the enunciative disengagement. When focusing on enunciative effacement lato sensu, he explains that the notion of disengagement goes beyond the existence of deictic markers and might affect both the enunciator (locuteur cité) and/or the speaker (locuteur citant) within reported speech with evident pragmatic repercussions: […] le locuteur cité, dont l’origine énonciative est brouilée, voir omise par le locuteur citant, don’t les dires initiaux sont re-présentés (et non pas simplement rapportés) sous une forme qui efface une partie de leur context initial […] le locuteur citant, qui peut gommer, déplacer, modifier les marques du rapport citant (suppression du verb attributive, les marques d’ouverture et de fermeture des dires) ou modifier leur orientation argumentative; représenter des énoncés originellment embrayés (du moins par convention tacite) comme des énoncés non embrayés, etc. (Rabatel 2004: 8)

The effacement stricto sensu, then, refers to communicative situations in which the identification of the enunciative source is irrelevant or blurred due to the existence of (momentary) crystallizations or unconstrained use either because they are the expression of a collective conscience (proverbs, stereotypes or common places…) or prototypical/ typified enunciations inscribed in specific genres or even part of a chain of repetitions such as rumours and gossip, whose enunciative instances are not relevant. As we mentioned previously, the phenomenon of enunciative effacement must necessarily have pragmatic implications in the articulation and construction of points of view and, therefore, in the balance of different voices (reported or reporting ones) and, thus, it makes enunciative staging more opaque, also because every utterance necessarily includes one or more modal attitudes and, may or may not be modalised. All these elements conflate to a polyphonic and interactive construction of discourse, in which it is possible that (i) the coenunciators co-produce a common and shared point of view (coenunciation); (ii) an enunciator imposes a dominating point of view that is

114

Chapter Seven

recognised by the other enunciators (super-enunciation); (iii) an enunciator constructs his/ her point of view with reference to a dominant enunciator (Rabatel 2004: 9-10). In the next section, we will analyse an excerpt from a Portuguese newscast in order to provide insights into how the concepts that we have analysed so far may come together in the understanding of polyphony and enunciative staging in television news reports.

5. Text analysis: An example from the Portuguese newscast Telejornal In order to analyse and understand the discourse dynamics that underlies enunciative staging, having in mind the concepts of super- and sub-enunciation, modality, modalisation and reported speech, we propose an analysis of a transcription of an excerpt from the newscast Telejornal, broadcasted by the public Portuguese TV channel RTP1 on 27th June 2015. This excerpt reports the impasse generated around the European Union’s emergency loans to the Greek banks and the future political scenarios arising from it. This theme deserved a close attention from the Portuguese media and society since Portugal had also been through a financial rescue program by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. The transcribed excerpt belongs to a wider corpus of six newscast programs in Portuguese, English and German, recorded on the same days and collected for my PhD research project, which is currently being developed. The transcription, as well as the translation into English, are mine and the transcription symbols and their meanings are to be found at the end of this paper. Portuguese (Original Version) 1. *JORNALISTA–PIVÔ Muito boa tarde.// O destino da Grécia é//// incerto.// No fim da reunião dos Ministros das Finanças da Zona Euro,/ o líder do Euro Grupo garante que a porta está aberta mas que foram os Gregos/ que abandona////ram as negociações.// O Euro Grupo disse não//// ao pedido para estender o pedido de ajuda por mais um mês// e não é claro o que vai acontecer a partir de quarta-feira,/ último dia do programa de assistência.// O Conselho de Governadores//// reúne-se amanhã para discutir a continuidade ou não dos empréstimos de emergência aos bancos gregos.// Daqui a pouco/ vamos em direto para Atenas/ e para Bruxelas.// % sit–música do genérico em fundo com a voz do pivô em sobreposição […]

The Management of Voices in the News 2. *JORNALÍSTA–PIVÔ Como disse há pouco,// terminou a reunião do Euro Grupo.// Neste momento, fala a Ministra das Finanças Portuguesa,/ Maria Luísa Albuquerque.// Vamos ouvir.// 3. *MINISTRA DAS FINANÇAS PORTUGUESA (…) continua a ter dezanove Estados Membros// e todas as reuniões que se vão seguir do Euro Grupo/// naturalmente contarão com os dezanove Estados Membros que [hhh] que o constituem.// OK?// * JORNALISTA NO LOCAL–NÃO IDENTIFICADO [