Professional Genres from an Interpersonal Perspective [1 ed.] 1443886971, 9781443886970

Table of contents :
Contents
Introduction • Renáta Tomášková
I. Genres in Mass Media
1 Voices in Hard News: Generic and Dialogic Perspectives • Zuzana Nádraská
2 Self-Reference in Political Speeches from Above • Lenka Kopečková
II. Genres in Academic Settings
3 “I have to admit that my position will be more difficult…”: A Genre Analysis of Introducing the Conference Paper Move • Gabriela Zapletalová
4 The Integrative Approach to Metadiscourse Revisited: Hedging in Academic Writing • Tereza Guziurová
5 Interaction and Intersubjective Positioning in Book Reviews • Olga Dontcheva-Navratilova
III. Genres in Institutional and Promotional Discourse
6 The Customer Isn’t Always Right… Aggressive and Defensive Responses to Negative Customer Reviews on Tripadvisor • Christopher Hopkinson
7 The Polyphony of a Super-Genre: Blog as a Heteroglossic Element in University Websites • Renáta Tomášková
8 Discursive Legitimation of Major World Oil Companies on their Official Websites • Dita Trčková
9 A Study of the Im/Personal Reality in the Advertising Leaflets on Non-Prescriptive Pharmaceutical Products • Ivana Řezníčková

Citation preview

Professional Genres from an Interpersonal Perspective

Professional Genres from an Interpersonal Perspective Edited by

Renáta Tomášková, Christopher Hopkinson and Gabriela Zapletalová

Professional Genres from an Interpersonal Perspective Edited by Renáta Tomášková, Christopher Hopkinson and Gabriela Zapletalová Reviewers: Prof. Jarmila Tárnyiková, CSc. Doc. PhDr. Renata Povolná, Ph.D. Mgr. Jan Chovanec, Ph.D. This book first published 2016 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 © 2016 by Renáta Tomášková, Christopher Hopkinson, Gabriela Zapletalová 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): 1-4438-8697-1 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-8697-0 Acknowledgement: The research presented in the monograph – with the exception of Chapter I – is supported by the research project CZ.1.07/2.3.00/20.0222, ‘Posílení rozvoje Centra výzkumu odborného jazyka angličtiny a němčiny na FF OU’ [Centre for the Research of Professional Language], funded by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic.

CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Renáta Tomášková I. Genres in Mass Media Chapter One ................................................................................................. 8 Voices in Hard News: Generic and Dialogic Perspectives Zuzana Nádraská Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 49 Self-Reference in Political Speeches from Above Lenka Kopeþková II. Genres in Academic Settings Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 76 “I have to admit that my position will be more difficult…”: A Genre Analysis of Introducing the Conference Paper Move Gabriela Zapletalová Chapter Four ............................................................................................ 112 The Integrative Approach to Metadiscourse Revisited: Hedging in Academic Writing Tereza Guziurová Chapter Five ............................................................................................ 140 Interaction and Intersubjective Positioning in Book Reviews Olga Dontcheva-Navratilova III. Genres in Institutional and Promotional Discourse Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 158 The Customer Isn’t Always Right… Aggressive and Defensive Responses to Negative Customer Reviews on Tripadvisor Christopher Hopkinson

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Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 198 The Polyphony of a Super-Genre: Blog as a Heteroglossic Element in University Websites Renáta Tomášková Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 226 Discursive Legitimation of Major World Oil Companies on their Official Websites Dita Trþková Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 249 A Study of the Im/Personal Reality in the Advertising Leaflets on Non-Prescriptive Pharmaceutical Products Ivana ěezníþková

INTRODUCTION RENÁTA TOMÁŠKOVÁ

As the title implies, the present monograph is focused on and shaped by two areas of linguistic research: genre analysis and the interpersonal component of language and discourse. The general, unifying objective of the monograph is to explore the interplay and interaction of genre and the interpersonal component – in other words, to reveal potential connections or interdependencies between genre conventions and the realization of interpersonal meanings, viewed from the perspective of the systemic functional approach to language and discourse analysis. Language is thus viewed as social semiotic – a socially and culturally grounded tool of communication (Halliday 1978) incorporating the interpersonal meaningcomponent as one of its simultaneously co-operating metafunctions. Genre is understood, in accordance with Martin’s approach, as representing “staged goal-oriented social processes through which social subjects in a given culture live their lives” (1997: 13). The interpersonal metafunction – the capability of language to reflect and build social relationships – is closely related to the concept of intersubjective positioning, viewed by Widdowson as an interaction between the participants’ conceptual spaces, in which each participant seeks to have an effect on the other (Widdowson 2012: 11-12). Widdowson in fact uses the terms ‘intersubjective positioning’ and ‘interpersonal positioning’ interchangeably with reference to this concept (Widdowson 2012). The interpersonal component and intersubjective positioning are also viewed as inseparable concepts by systemic functional linguists, who relate intersubjective positioning to speakers’/writers’ intersubjective stance/stancing. In such accounts, “the interpersonal in language” (Martin and White 2005: 1) and intersubjective positioning merge together, and are interpreted as “the subjective presence of writers/speakers in texts as they adopt stances towards both the material they present and those with whom they communicate. It is concerned with how writers/speakers approve and disapprove, enthuse and abhor, applaud and criticise, and with how they position their readers/listeners to do likewise” (Martin and White 2005: 1).

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Introduction

Intersubjective positioning in discourse appears to operate on two levels. “One is conventional and social and sets the recognized purpose and direction of discourse” (Widdowson 2012: 20), while “the other is the individual level, which is a matter of participants negotiating their positions on line, [...] exercising whatever room for manoeuvre they can find” (ibid). It is social conventions that represent the scene of the interaction between intersubjective positioning and genre. Conventions, combined with a communicative purpose recognized by a community, are constitutive of a genre, ensuring its stability and functionality in communication. At the same time, however, genres are not states but processes (cf. Martin 1997 above), which flexibly reflect the changing requirements of current contexts, including the personalities of the participants, and allow the generic prototype to be shaped accordingly. Thus an analysis of the “individual level” is equally relevant for the exploration of genres, revealing the individualizing elements as a source of the dynamics of generic development. In the present volume the focus is on analyzing a variety of aspects of the interpersonal in selected genres of professional discourse. The concept of professional discourse as applied here includes not only communication among professionals but also genres produced by professionals to address non-specialists (cf. Gunnarsson 2009); the goal realized in these genres is obviously related to the professional activity of their producers. The monograph consists of nine chapters grouped into three sections, guiding readers through four major discourse domains: media discourse, academic discourse, institutional discourse and promotional discourse. Institutional and promotional discourses are combined in a single section, reflecting the hybridism of the majority of the genres under investigation here: genres of institutional discourse typically exhibit features akin to advertising, not only presenting the institutions in terms of the scope of their activities and services, but also serving a clear promotional purpose. In the first chapter Zuzana Nádraská investigates the generic structure of hard news. Acknowledging the model of the satellite organization of news reports developed by Iedema, she draws attention to phenomena which work counter to the orbital structure and thus enrich the coherence mechanism of paragraphing. Analyzing mutually related concessive, concurring or concessive-concurring sequences of paragraphs, she demonstrates that their use appears to be primarily motivated by interpersonal objectives: the juxtaposition of alternative (or at least multiple) points of view elaborates the internal dialogicity of the text and enhances the acceptability as well as the perceived objectivity of the report.

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Lenka Kopeþková explores the genre of the political speech from a cross-cultural perspective, contrasting features of intersubjective positioning in the public presentations of British and Czech prime ministers. The comparison indicates certain distinctions result from significant differences between the British and Czech political systems and the positions assigned within them to the prime ministers. Differences can also be traced to certain dissimilarities in the conventions underlying the genre: while the British sub-corpus indicates that UK prime ministers’ speeches can afford a lower level of formality yet follow a rather rigid structure, the Czech political speeches manifest a higher level of formality, though featuring more noticeable individualizing elements. The second section, Genres in academic settings, provides insights into three genres which occupy a stable position within academia: conference papers, undergraduate textbooks and book reviews. In the third chapter Gabriela Zapletalová offers a survey of the move structure in the genre of a conference paper, focusing her attention on those stages which are distinctively dominant in conference talks and differentiating them from other closely related genres, particularly from research articles – which follow on from conference presentations in a typical academic genre chain. Her analysis demonstrates that the dominant strategies pursue interpersonal aims, reflecting the interactional character of the genre; the interpersonal thus has a substantial effect on the way in which the genre is composed. The generic structure also proves to be sensitive to the speaker’s individual characteristics, particularly their age and academic experience, exhibiting differences in the preferences for certain moves between graduate students and senior researchers. Tereza Guziurová, examining a selection of undergraduate textbooks in comparison with research articles from corresponding fields, discusses the forms and functions of metadiscourse, originally related to the realization of Jakobson’s metalinguistic function but recently often viewed as carrying mainly interpersonal meanings. The study not only explores the metadiscourse devices used in the corpus, providing both quantitative and – even more importantly – qualitative data demonstrating the genrespecific nature of both the functions and the types of these expressions; it also analyzes the concept of metadiscourse itself, considering a variety of contemporary approaches as well as the author’s own findings. Olga Dontcheva-Navratilova explores the strategies which writers use to comply with the expectations imposed upon book reviews – a genre which is not only expected to be objective, but which at the same time enables reviewers to position themselves as experts in the field and as fellow members of the same discourse community as the authors of the

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Introduction

books under review. The analysis is innovative in revealing differences in the expression of praise and criticism dependent on the authorship of the publications being reviewed: reviewers tend to minimize criticism of single-authored monographs, though they are less cautious when evaluating multi-authored collections and handbooks. In the sixth chapter, Christopher Hopkinson introduces a relatively new genre of institutional discourse – the genre of responses to customers’ reviews published on the TripAdvisor website. The website offers hoteliers a unique opportunity to respond to the evaluative reviews of their customers in a public space visited by other potential clients. While the majority of institutional responses follow generally accepted conventions, seeking agreement and showing respect to customers, the study presented here focuses on the relatively rare cases of antagonistic and aggressive behaviour towards complainants. The analysis provides a model example of intersubjective positioning arising from a tension between the conventional and the individual (see Widdowson 2012 above), convincingly demonstrating how the unconventional may yield benefits to the respondents, helping them win favour with potential new customers. The following chapter, by Renáta Tomášková, explores the ways in which universities attempt to constructively undermine traditionally impersonal and matter-of-fact institutional discourse by embedding a fundamentally personal genre of the blog into their websites. The study focuses on student blogs, which represent alternative accounts of university presentations, running parallel to mainstream texts prepared by the university itself. Student blogs enrich the genre of an institutional website with a polyphony of voices, personalize and specify the general and generic descriptions of the university offer and student life, and conversationalize the language – also opening up the possibility of interaction. As the analysis has shown, student blogs are chiefly employed as tools of intersubjective positioning. Dita Trþková’s study explores a specific area of intersubjective positioning defined as discursive legitimation. Although institutions in general are increasingly expected to legitimate themselves (i.e. their activities, their impact, or their very existence), for certain organizations and companies the need for legitimation is even more pressing. This chapter provides a thorough analysis of an array of discursive legitimation strategies implemented by major oil companies in order to build an image of their social necessity and environmental sustainability. The interpersonal strategies strive to position the institutions as rational and moral and persuade the addressees to accept them as such.

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In the ninth chapter, Ivana ěezníþková seeks to reveal relevant aspects of the establishment of relationships between producers and receivers of leaflets promoting non-prescription pharmaceutical products. The multifaceted analysis covers both verbal and non-verbal modes and adds a cross-cultural comparison of British and Czech corpora. The research results indicate that the realization of the genre reflects distinctions in the social conventions related to these products and their sale in the two environments: whereas British leaflets largely exhibit features typical of advertisements, offering goods to customers and backgrounding the elements of professional discourse, the Czech materials manifest features of professional medical texts, positioning the addressees as patients rather than clients. The studies of the interpersonal in a variety of genres produced by professionals (either for their peers or to address lay audiences) document how omnipresent, varied and plentiful the strategies of intersubjective positioning are, and how significant – or indeed central – their position in genres and discourses invariably is. The social and cultural grounding of genres requires them to be conventional, yet it also ensures their flexibility, continuous development and change – and these are qualities which make genres a permanent challenge and inspiration for research and discussion. This volume hopefully contributes a meaningful piece to this never-ending mosaic.

Bibliography Gunnarsson, Britt-Louise (2009) Professional Discourse. London/New York: Continuum. Halliday, Michael A. K. (1978) Language as Social Semiotic. The Social Interpretation of Language and Meaning. London: Edward Arnold. Martin, James R. (1997) Analysing genre: functional parameters. In F. Christie & J. R. Martin (eds.) Genre and Institutions. Social Processes in the Workplace and School (3–39). London and New York: Continuum. Martin James R. and White Peter R. R. (2005) Language of Evaluation. Appraisal in English. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Widdowson, Henry G. (2012) Interpersonal Positioning and Genre Conventions. In C. Hopkinson, R. Tomášková & G. Zapletalová (eds.) The Interpersonal Language Function Across Genres and Discourse Domains (9–25). Ostrava: University of Ostrava.

I. GENRES IN MASS MEDIA

CHAPTER ONE VOICES IN HARD NEWS: GENERIC AND DIALOGIC PERSPECTIVES ZUZANA NÁDRASKÁ

Abstract This chapter raises the issue of the generic ‘orbital’ structure of hard news, characterized by the ad hoc, non-linear and non-chronological presentation of information (Iedema, Feez & White; White 1998). Alongside the generic point of view, the study also adopts a complementary, dialogic approach (Bakhtin 1981; Martin & White 2005) and considers the orbital structure in terms of so-called concurring and concessive sequences. Concurring and concessive sequences are heteroglossic concepts based on the presence of voices expressing agreement and disagreement respectively. In addition, concessive/concurring sequences are established only when dis/agreement is expressed by voices in adjacent position, a situation which accentuates contrast or similarity in point of view and highlights dialogic interaction. The presence of concessive/concurring sequences does not obliterate the orbital structure, but when the dialogic and generic perspectives are combined and mapped onto each other, the dialogic interaction between adjacent voices in sequences may to some extent be interpreted as linearizing news content and structure. The study attempts to synthesize the generic perspective with the perspective of dialogue and heteroglossia, and it examines a number of relevant aspects of this synthesis. First, it explores the elements of the orbital structure and their participation in the creation of sequences. Second, it discusses whether the interaction between different voices may cause a departure from the orbital structure, shifting the primary communicative aim of hard news and, as a result, influencing the prototypicality of news items and their generic affiliation. Third, since voices participating in the creation of concessive and concurring sequences are primarily external to the voice of the reporter and much of

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the presented material belongs to the realm of reported language and thought, the chapter touches upon the ways in which forms of presentation contribute to the formation of sequences.

1. Introduction The genre of news reports has received a considerable amount of attention by researchers. The structure of news reports has been approached from a number of perspectives. For instance, van Dijk (1988) and Ungerer (2000) adopt a cognitive point of view and examine the conceptual structure of news reports; Barnhurst (2002), and Barnhurst and Mutz (1997) perform content analysis; Bell (1991) compares hard news to a narrative; Iedema, Feez and White (1994), van Leeuwen (1987), White (1998), and White and Thompson (2008) apply a generic perspective; White (2003) searches for similarities in the generic structure between hard news and a type of casual conversation, namely gossip; White (1998: 353-356) and Smirnova (2009) examine hard news for the presence of argumentative patterns. In this chapter I focus on the structure of hard news and examine it from two complementary perspectives – generic and dialogic (Bakhtin 1981; Iedema et al. 1994; Martin & White 2005; Thompson & White 2008; White 1998, 2000). Moreover, I pursue two further objectives: to consider the role of forms of presentation (Semino & Short 2004) and to explain their occurrence especially within the framework of the dialogic perspective; and to discuss hard news in terms of the degree of likeness to the type (e.g. Martin & Rose 2008). In the approach to genre I follow the Sydney School, which draws on Systemic Functional Linguistics and defines genre as a staged, goaloriented social process (Iedema et al. 1994; Martin, Christie & Rothery 1987). Hard news is characterized as a genre whose aim is to identify the aspects of the extra-linguistic reality which represent a disruption to the status quo, a threat to the established norms and values, and which are perceived as physically, morally or socially destabilizing or consolidating (Iedema et al. 1994; White 1997). Hard news is defined by its generic structure, referred to as orbital, and the lack of a certain type of authorial evaluation, referred to as reporter voice (Iedema et al. 1994; Martin & White 2005; White 1998; White & Thompson 2008). The dialogic point of view is primarily based on the Bakhtinian notion of dialogue. Dialogue is viewed as “the background of other concrete utterances on the same theme, a background made up of contradictory opinions, points of view and value judgements [...] in the consciousness of the listener, [...] pregnant with responses and objections” (Bakhtin 1981:

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281). I draw on the notion of dialogue to examine the interaction of voices in the body of the text and their influence on the degree of heteroglossia. More specifically, I examine voices in so-called concessive and concurring sequences, defined as portions of text which contain voices expressing disagreement and agreement over a particular issue respectively. Example (1a) is a part of a hard news text containing voices found both in agreement and disagreement, resulting in a combined concessiveconcurring sequence. The disruption to the status quo raised in the Lead paragraph1 is a dispute over anti-social behaviour orders (asbos), defended by Labour politicians but disapproved of and consequently earmarked for abolition by the Home Secretary. The points of view of the opposing parties are elaborated in the body of the text: the section labelled as Elaboration A elaborates on the decision by the current Home Secretary, while the section labelled as Elaboration B returns to the defence by two former Labour Secretaries. (1a) Lead Senior Labour figures mounted a last-ditch defence of antisocial behaviour orders last night after the home secretary, Theresa May, indicated she is to kill off Tony Blair’s flagship measure to deal with youth crime. CONCESSIVE-CONCURRING SEQUENCE Elaboration A (the current Home Secretary) May said it was “time to move beyond the asbo”, arguing that they were never the promised silver bullet and had too often put young people on a conveyor belt to prison. XXX Elaboration B (former Labour Home Secretaries) Two former Labour home secretaries, Alan Johnson and David Blunkett, attacked May’s decision. Johnson, in a piece for the Guardian’s Comment is Free, argued that asbos had made a huge difference in cutting crime and disorder: “If the home secretary is to restrict the opportunities for the police to use asbos and other measures currently available then this will be yet another example of this government going soft on crime.” ~ ~ ~ Blunkett last night went even further and claimed May’s speech posed “a major threat to the lives of those at the very sharp end of criminality and dysfunctional communities”. (Travis 2010)

Elaboration A expresses a negative attitude towards asbos (...“time to move beyond the asbo”...,... had too often put young people on a conveyor 1

Despite the differences between them, both the Headline and the Lead play the role of selecting and emphasizing certain aspects of the reported event (Iedema et al. 1994; White 1998, 2008). If possible, only one of these parts will be reproduced. Also, for the sake of economy and clarity, portions of text which are not necessary for the discussion will be omitted.

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belt to prison.) and is thus in contrast with Elaboration B, which expresses a positive attitude towards asbos (...asbos had made a huge difference in cutting crime and disorder...) and at the same time a negative attitude towards the plan to abolish them (Two former Labour home secretaries...attacked May’s decision, ...this will be yet another example of this government going soft on crime, ... May’s speech posed “a major threat to the lives of those at the very sharp end of criminality and dysfunctional communities”.). The contrast (indicated by three crosses) forms the basis for the establishment of a concessive sequence between Elaboration A and Elaboration B. Moreover, the shared attitude towards asbos and Theresa May within Elaboration B is a source of agreement (signalled by three tildes) between the two former Home Secretaries and is the basis for the establishment of the concurring sequence. The presence of both agreement and disagreement results in a combined concessiveconcurring sequence. The generic perspective (the division into the Lead, and Elaboration A and B) and the dialogic perspective (the establishment of the concessive-concurring sequence) are complementary, and their combination can be mutually revealing since it shows which parts of the generic structure rely on (external) voices and how these voices interact with each other dialogically. In example (1a), the opposition between external voices commences in the Lead and continues in the body of the text. Given the impersonal tone of hard news, the internal voice of the journalist is, at least on the surface, comparatively backgrounded and subdued, especially in the explicitly evaluative and argumentative portions of text; on the other hand, hard news often foregrounds external voices brought into the text mainly by means of forms of presentation (see e.g. Fairclough 1992; Redeker 1996; Sanders 2010; Sanders & Redeker 1993; Semino & Short 2004; Thompson & White 2008; Urbanová 2013; Waugh 1995; White 1998). The relative disproportion in the absence of the internal journalistic voice on the one hand and the presence of external voices on the other is especially marked in concessive and concurring sequences, in which voices are found to clash or support each other and in which reported language predominates over narrated, authorial discourse. In example (1a), the interaction involves mainly external voices; the internal voice is (at least prima facie) excluded, and its main role lies in introducing and foregrounding the external voices. Since reported language is central to the occurrence of concessive and concurring sequences, the frequency and role of various forms of presentation are also briefly discussed; the classification of reported language draws on Semino and Short (2004).

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As has been mentioned, the aim of the prototypical specimen of hard news is to report, document or chronicle selected aspects of the extralinguistic reality; this is achieved by means of the orbital generic structure. Even though, generally, the interaction of voices operates alongside the orbital structure, in some cases concessive and concurring sequences may to some extent affect the essential orbital quality of hard news. For instance, even though Elaboration B in example (1a) specifies the Lead and, functionally, is not dependent on Elaboration A, the opinions expressed in Elaboration B are also relatable to the preceding Elaboration A; as explained in section 2, inter-satellite relations go against the typical Headline and Lead-oriented structure. The study analyzes two hard news items which, owing to the presence of extensive concessive/concurring sequences, may not represent ‘ideal types’; their aim may be, to some extent, altered.

2. The generic point of view: the orbital generic structure The structure of hard news has been widely described as the inverted pyramid or upside-down triangle, consisting of the Headline, Lead paragraph and the body of the text. In these Headline and Lead-dominated models, the Headline and Lead summarize the story, and the body of the text specifies it with increasing detail and decreasing importance and relevance; temporal sequence is dismantled and the content is delivered cyclically with frequent interruptions and resumptions (e.g. Bell 1991; van Dijk 1988; Östman 1999; Ungerer 2002). This study employs the orbital modal. Generally, the orbital pattern is characterized by a dependency relation between particles (Martin 1992: 550-551; Martin & Rose 2008: 24-25). Applied to the structure of hard news, the relation obtains between the nucleus, consisting of the Headline and Lead, and the body of the text, consisting of a number of satellites (Iedema et al. 1994; White 1998; White & Thompson 2008). Figure 1 illustrates a typical hard news structure. It shows a hypothetical hard news text with the nucleus and four satellites. The connecting lines indicate that the main genre-constituting relation obtains not between the individual satellites but between the satellites and the nucleus.

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Figure 1. Orbital structure (after Iedema et al. 1994: 109)

The nucleus highlights what is presented as a disruption to the established normalcy and is thus a source of counter-expectation and concession. Out of the many possible points of view the nucleus selects one, setting the angle from which the point of contention is viewed. The angle serves to provide a unifying common ground from which the story unfolds, necessary in order to accommodate diversity within an ideologically and otherwise heterogeneous mass audience (Iedema et al. 1994: 110-116; White 1997: 114-115, 1998: 266-277, 332-338). In example (1a), the potential abolishment of asbos represents a change to the established means of maintaining social order and is coated in political terms as an instance of disagreement between the Conservatives and Labour. The choice of the angle reflects and contributes to the fossilization of or change in the (preferred) norms and values. The nucleus is thus heavily interpersonally loaded, and the promotion of one point of view at the expense of others reduces the alleged objectivity of hard news (Iedema et al. 1994: 106-108; White 2000).2 Satellites specify the nucleus and perform a number of functions: Elaboration, Contextualization, Appraisal, Cause-Effect: Consequence, CauseEffect: Concession, Cause-Effect: Justification, Cause-Effect: CounterJustification. Elaboration (see example (1a)) repeats, restates in other words, provides more detail on, or exemplifies the information in the nucleus. Contextualization provides spatial-temporal and social context, specifies events which precede, follow or take place simultaneously with 2

Since the choice of the angle (as well as the reported event itself) is a result of the interaction with the established social norms and values, the nucleus is by its nature highly dialogic. Simultaneously, however, parallel to the diminishing of the desired objectivity, bias for one particular voice on the one hand and the absence of recognition of the alternative others on the other reduce the degree of heteroglossia and the openness of the nucleus to dialogue. In example (1a), the nucleus brings together two opposing voices and thus expresses at least some solidarity with alternative positions (e.g. Martin & White 2005). Despite the dialogic character of the nucleus in general, the present analysis focuses on satellites, and the role of the nucleus will be touched upon only in passing and mainly in order to prepare the ground for the discussion of the body of the text.

Chapter One

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the event in the nucleus or are presented for comparison. Appraisal evaluates the nucleus in moral, aesthetic or affective terms. Consequence explains the events in the nucleus in causal terms and specifies the reasons, causes, purpose and consequences. Concession provides information that runs contrary to or frustrates the conclusions and expectations following from the nucleus. Justification is a textual analogue to Consequence, providing evidence or reasoning for the proposition or proposal in the nucleus. Counter-Justification is also a text-internal relation challenging or undermining the assertions made in the nucleus (White 1997, 1998, 2000; White & Thompson 2008). Finally, Balance explains why a certain piece of information was not provided or why a particular news actor’s voice is not presented in the story (Urbanová 2013).3 The rhetorical functionality of hard news rests on the selection of the point of contention and its constant emphasis, achieved by repetitive nucleus-satellite links (White 1998: 300-305). As satellites return to the nucleus, there are no (or very few) formal and functional inter-satellite links. Owing to the formal and functional discontinuity between satellites, the body of the text cannot develop a linear, systematic accumulation of meaning; satellites can be omitted or reordered without hampering the text’s coherence, a possibility referred to as the radical editability of the text (Iedema et al. 1994: 121-134, 187; White 1998: 252-263, 284-294). Example (1b) illustrates a hypothetical generic structure with the Headline and Lead forming the nucleus and the body of the text consisting of seven satellites (S1-S7) whose role is to elaborate on, contextualize and evaluate the nucleus. (1b) Headline Lead S1/ Elaboration A1 S2/ Elaboration B1 S3/ Elaboration A2 S4/ Contextualization S5/ Elaboration B2 S6/ Appraisal S7/ Elaboration A3 3

Regarding a possible dialogic interaction between the voice(s) in the nucleus and specifying satellites, in some cases it may depend on the function of the latter, while in others the satellite function seems irrelevant: Elaborating voices must necessarily concur with (a part of) the nucleus, while those in Counter-Justification must oppose it; voices in, for instance, Appraisal or Contextualization may vary as to the agreement or disagreement with the nuclear voice(s).

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Example (1b) shows that the issues raised in the nucleus are not treated exhaustively in continuous sections but are instead presented gradually, in instalments, in satellites 1, 3 and 7 as Elaboration A1, A2 and A3, and in satellites 2 and 5 as Elaboration B1 and B2. The presentation of information in Elaboration A1 is interrupted by a section functioning as Elaboration B1; it is further resumed as Elaboration A2 only to be interrupted by Contextualization, Elaboration B2 and Appraisal, and it finishes as Elaboration A3 at the end of the report. Between Elaboration B1 and B2 is an intervention by the satellites of Elaboration A2 and Contextualization. Also, since the satellites work as self-contained functional units, textually there is no reason why the order of satellites could not be different; for instance, Appraisal or Contextualization could easily appear earlier in the text or as the final sections without affecting the textuality of the report. However, the presence of concessive/concurring sequences may be accompanied by closer inter-satellite relations, supported by cohesive links. For instance, the possibility to establish a cohesive link between the satellites in example (1a) (May’s decision in Elaboration B may be seen as encapsulating retrospectively the whole Elaboration A satellite) may strengthen the relation between them, reduce the degree of radical editability, and thus to some extent alter the generic structure. The interaction between orbitality and concessive/concurring sequences, and the influence of the latter on the quality and prototypicality of the former, will be discussed in section 7.

3. The dialogic point of view: concessive and concurring sequences Bakhtin (1981, 1984) understands dialogue as the interplay of invisible voices which operate in the background of all texts and reflect the social and cultural contexts in which texts originate. Retrospectively, the dialogic perspective involves considering whether and to what extent the speaker recognizes previously produced texts and what position the author takes with respect to these texts; prospectively, it involves considering the assumptions the speaker makes about the way in which their text will be received by the putative audience and how these assumptions are reflected in the way in which the text is presented (Martin & White 2005: 92-93). Monologic discourse does not recognize another consciousness and does not expect a response (Bakhtin 1984: 292-293); the author does not take into account alternative positions and presents the text as taken for granted, factual and undisputed. On the other hand, overtly dialogic

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Chapter One

discourse recognizes the existence of a diverse communicative background and presents information as open to negotiation and not entirely accepted (Martin & White 2005: 98-102). The dialogic charge of hard news is intensified by the recency and novelty of the nuclear event, which may not be discoursally processed, accepted as fact and thus constitute the source of controversy, disputability and uncertainty. The degree of acceptability may be lowered by the myriad of implicit (invisible) voices resonating in the ideologically diverse mass audience, embodying various assumptions, experience, knowledge, views, values, responses and objections. There are various means of overt authorial engagement with alternative positions (see e.g. Martin & White 2005: 92-135); in hard news one of the most common sources of overtly signalled dialogic tension is the presence of explicit external voices brought into the text by means of reported language. A reported utterance is bound only to one of the many possible external voices and is thus necessarily non-factual. The relation between implicit and explicit voices may be that of manifestation. The implicit, virtual dialogue between the invisible voices in the background becomes materialized as the explicit dialogue between the reported speakers in concessive/concurring sequences. Compared to the analysis of the generic structure based on the nucleussatellite relation, the analysis of concessive/concurring sequences depends on the explicit presence of voice, especially the external, i.e. non-authorial, voice. Concessive and concurring sequences refer to sections in the text in which voices express disagreement (example (2) below) and agreement (example (3) below) respectively. In addition, a concessive-concurring sequence was postulated if voices expressed both agreement and disagreement (example (1a) above). As discussed in section 6, external voices brought into the text in the form of reported language prevail over the internal voice of the journalist. Apart from the presence of dis/agreement, other conditions for the establishment of sequences were the distinctiveness of voices which contribute to dialogue and the adjacency of voices in the text. Even though voices in dis/agreement may also be found within the nucleus, sequences were examined only in the body of the text and were established irrespective of satellite boundaries. Although voices expressing relevant opinions on one issue appear scattered randomly across the text, the condition of adjacency was laid down since it may have the effect of highlighting contrast or similarity in points of view and thus accentuate the ideological heterogeneity (disagreement) or homogeneity (agreement) of the text. Adjacent voices may occur within a satellite (Elaboration B in

Voices in Hard News: Generic and Dialogic Perspectives

17

example (1a), example (3)) or across a satellite boundary (examples (1a) and (2)). Even though formal links between sections were not necessary in order to establish a sequence, they often occur, probably due to adjacency and the functional dialogic relation between sections in sequences. Example (2) illustrates a concessive sequence chaining two Appraisal satellites, Appraisal A and Appraisal B, which evaluate the nucleus. The nucleus raises the issue of the British Army’s involvement in too many military operations. Appraisal A brings the voice of General Dannatt, who evaluates the situation in Iraq and reports the Army’s reluctance to take part in the Iraqi mission. Appraisal B brings the voice of Dannatt’s predecessor, General Jackson, who maintains that the Army welcomed the involvement. (2) Lead BRITAIN’S WAR machine came close to seizing up when it was conducting simultaneous operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, the former head of the Army told the Iraq war inquiry yesterday. CONCESSIVE SEQUENCE Appraisal A He [Dannatt] added that the Army had “no desire” to go to war in Iraq in 2003 because it was already stretched by operations in Kosovo, Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Cyprus and Northern Ireland. “There may have been a little bit of professional feeling that we should be doing this. But there was no desire to do it, there was no ‘we would be happy to do it’, and there was certainly a large element of ‘we are very busy anyway so this will be difficult if we have to do it’.” XXX Appraisal B But General Dannatt’s predecessor as Chief of General Staff, General Sir Mike Jackson, suggested that, on the contrary, the Army would not have wanted to be excluded from the Iraq operation if the Navy and RAF had been involved. He told the inquiry: “... I think the Army would have been, to put it mildly, rather disappointed.” (McSmith 2010)

In (2) the occurrence of voices coincides with a satellite boundary, i.e. there is one voice in each satellite. The disagreement is over the Army’s positive or negative attitude towards their presence in Iraq. The contrast is supported lexically by the employment of items expressing the attitude of affect (see e.g. Martin & White 2005: 45-52) communicating feelings and emotions (“no desire”, no ‘we would be happy...’ in Appraisal A; would not have wanted to be excluded ...; would have been... rather disappointed in Appraisal B) and by adversative conjuncts (but, on the contrary in Appraisal B). The presence of conjuncts precludes the reordering of the

18

Chapter One

satellites or the omission of the first satellite, reducing the degree of radical editability and lowering the prototypicality of the orbital structure. Compared to example (2), example (3) contains three adjacent voices which are all found within the Appraisal satellite and form a concurring sequence. The point of disruption in the nucleus is the contentious issue of the ban on bullfighting in one part of Spain. (3) Lead IN A TENSE, historic vote, Catalonia’s regional parliament yesterday banned Spain’s “national fiesta” – bullfighting, handing a victory to animal rights activist, who predicted the start of a bloodless era across the country. CONCURRING SEQUENCE Appraisal The nation’s bullfighters reacted to the denial, they eventually joined a last-minute lobby to save Catatonia’s fiesta from what seemed increasingly like the inevitable death in the ring. ... “They should have respected the rights of people who freely decide to go to a bullring to see a spectacle that is so much a part of our heritage,” said bullfighter Juan José Padilla after the vote. ~ ~ ~ “It seems like we are back in the time of the dictatorship,” added the popular matador Curro Romero. ~ ~ ~ Matador Manuel Jesus - known as El Cid - said he felt “tremendous rage”. (Brooks 2010)

The Appraisal satellite evokes the voices of three matadors evaluating the ban negatively. The first and the second voice draw on the values of judgement (see e.g. Martin & White 2005: 52-56) and appraise the nucleus in moral terms, referring to freedom and democracy (“They should have respected the rights of people who freely decide to go to a bullring...”, “It seems like we are back in the time of the dictatorship.”); the third voice evaluates the nucleus in affective terms, referring to feelings (...he felt “tremendous rage”.). Thus, even though the voices refer to different aspects of the event and evaluate it from different perspectives, they agree on the negative attitude and form a concurring sequence. In comparison to example (2), despite the fact that the three voices appear within one satellite, i.e. within the boundaries of a functionally unified and homogenous portion of text, there are no referential ties between the sections attributed to the three voices, nor are there any conjuncts suggesting agreement or similarity. The functional affinity between the voices is indicated only by the expressions in the first sentence (The nation’s bullfighters..., they ...) referring prospectively to the three voices.

Voices in Hard News: Generic and Dialogic Perspectives

19

The notion of dis/agreement is, admittedly, rather vague. However, the under-specification of the concept enables it to encompass situations in which voices are heterogeneous, representing different points of view and different sides of the argument; in other cases, a broadly defined dis/agreement connects voices that are alike but express points of view relating to different aspects of the issue. As a result, the degree of overlap between the aspects discussed may vary. For instance, in example (2) there is a close overlap between the evaluations as both voices/satellites comment on the nucleus in affective terms, whereas in example (3) the evaluations comment on different aspects and agreement can be established only on the basis of the general negative attitude. The significance of concessive/concurring sequences is that their presence affects the degree of dialogism in the text and solidarity with different positions, defined as “tolerance for alternative viewpoints” (Martin & White 2005: 96). Since a great portion of discourse in sequences is attributed to others, it is by default dialogic: the presented views are individualized, subjective and non-factual propositions or proposals valid only within the discourse world of the text-external reported speaker and have the status of mere possibilities existing against other alternatives (Martin & White 2005: 111-117; Sanders & Redeker 1993: 69).4 However, the organization of voices in sequences may further underline or weaken the already established heteroglossic backdrop either by inviting or by dismissing alternative positions. Inviting or challenging alternatives by dint of the purposeful juxtaposition of voices is comparable to Martin and White’s (2005: 102-135) concepts of dialogic expansion and contraction: dialogic expansion opens dialogic space by accepting alternative positions, while dialogic contraction closes it by challenging alternatives. The disagreement between points of view in concessive and concessive-concurring sequences renders explicit the implicit ideological 4

Even though the alignment between the internal (authorial, reporting) voice and the external (reported) voice may be left unstated or undetermined in some contexts, often the reporting signal, the (evaluative) co-text and the overall communicative aim betray a positive or negative stance towards the external voice and the reported content; this may affect the ultimate degree of solidarity with alternative positions and the degree of dialogism in the text. For instance, despite the default dialogic nature of reporting, in expressing dis/alignment with the reported content/speaker the author may propagate one position over the others, more or less directly encourage the reader to take a stance, and, consequently, increase the monoglossia and decrease the heteroglossia of the text (Martin & White 2005: 114-117, 126-127; White 1998: 390-396). The literature on reported speech that attends to this line of enquiry is vast; see e.g. Bednarek (2009), Floyd (2000), Gruber (1993) or Hunston (1995).

20

Chapter One

variety and thus maintains or even increases the degree of dialogism and expands the dialogic space. On the other hand, the views expressing agreement in concurring and concessive-concurring sequences propagate a single point of view and thus, albeit implicitly, push aside alternatives, decrease the degree of dialogism and contract the dialogic space.

4. Data description The corpus contains 175 hard news texts excerpted from the main British broadsheets (The Times, The Guardian, The Independent and The Daily Telegraph) in 2010 and 2011. The corpus contains 76,945 words. Table 1 compares the total number of reports in each newspaper with those containing at least one instance of a concessive/concurring sequence. Table 1. Sequences in hard news

No. of news texts with sequences/ Total %

DT 18/50

GU 19/40

IN 17/40

TI 17/45

Total 71/175

36.0

47.5

42.5

37.8

40.6

As Table 1 shows, the percentage of texts containing sequences ranges from 36% in the Daily Telegraph to 47.5% in the Guardian; the occurrence of sequences in broadsheets disregarding the distinction between concrete newspapers is 40.6%. This suggests that even though dialogic tension between adjacent voices is by no means a necessary feature, it is not infrequent. Table 2 compares the occurrence of concurring, concessive and concessive-concurring sequences. It shows that concessive sequences (56.3%) outnumber significantly concurring (28.8%) and concessiveconcurring sequences (14.9%). Table 2. Concessive, concurring and concessive-concurring sequences No. of sequences

%

Concurring

25

28.8

Concessive

49

56.3

Concessive-concurring

13

14.9

Total

87

100

Voices in Hard News: Generic and Dialogic Perspectives

21

The high frequency of concessive sequences, i.e. those which recognize alternatives and open dialogic space, indicates that voices tend to be put together to accentuate contrast; concessive sequences can be a vehicle for balanced and unbiased reporting and bear directly on the alleged objectivity and impartiality of hard news. On the other hand, concurring sequences, which promote one opinion at the expense of others and close the dialogic space, are less frequent since they fail to comply with the objective of balanced and unbiased reporting. Concessiveconcurring sequences are infrequent because – as they are a combination of agreement and disagreement – they are mostly more extensive and thus less frequent (see Table 3 in section 5).

5. Generic and dialogic perspectives: the occurrence of satellites in sequences The occurrence of concessive/concurring sequences was mapped onto the generic structure. Thus, it is possible to see the number and type of satellites forming sequences. Table 3 shows the number of satellites (Sats) chained in concessive/concurring sequences. Table 3. Sequence length No. of Sats in sequences Total %

1 Sat

2 Sats

3 Sats

4 Sats

5 Sats

6 Sats

7 Sats

8 Sats

Total

17 19.5

47 54.0

13 14.9

3 3.5

2 2.3

1 1.2

2 2.3

2 2.3

87 100

As shown in Table 3, the number of satellites in sequences varies from a single satellite up to eight satellites. In one-satellite sequences, voices interact within satellite boundaries and play the same role in the generic structure, while in two- and more-satellite sequences the interaction exceeds satellite boundaries and involves voices performing different functions. Most frequently sequences span across two satellites (54%, examples (1a) and (2)); one-satellite sequences (19.5%, example (3)) and three-satellite sequences (14.9%, example (4) below) occur less frequently. Four- and more-satellite sequences are scarce. If sequences occur, they do not interlace high numbers of satellites and they do not extend across the entire generic structure. Admittedly, in order to fully assess the occurrence of sequences in hard news, it would be necessary to compare the cases of juxtaposed voices with those in which voices express themselves on the same theme, yet preference was given to the

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Chapter One

randomness of orbital presentation and non-adjacency.5 The limited length of sequences does not affect the orbital structure significantly, nor does it change the aim of the reporting. However, as discussed in section 7, longer sequences may to some extent alter the generic quality of texts and their communicative aim. Example (4) illustrates a three-satellite concessive sequence. The nucleus reports on the disappearance of Mr Wan, the head of the Chinese national news agency Xinhua, and his alleged defection. The concessive sequence contains the satellites functioning as Balance, CounterJustification and Elaboration. (4) Lead THE HEAD of Chinas domestic news service has disappeared during a trip to Britain amid speculation that he has defected. CONCESSIVE SEQUENCE Balance A spokesman for Xinhua refused to confirm or deny whether Mr Wan had defected. “We do not know the situation clearly,” he said. “You should keep an eye on the news.” XXX Cause and effect: Counter-Justification But a Chinese official based in Britain rejected suggestions that Mr Wan had disappeared. “This is totally wrong. It is a rumour,” said Hei Dalong, the Xinhua bureau chief in London. “Mr Wan is at my home....” XXX Elaboration But another reporter close to the situation claimed that Mr Wan had tried to flee China. (Malcolm 2010)

The role of Balance is related to the expectation of balanced and unbiased reporting in that it aims to explain why a certain piece of information or a party’s point of view cannot be provided. In example (4), the spokesman for the newspaper in question refuses to take a stance on the situation and, observing the maxim of quality, opts out and explains their refusal on the basis of their alleged lack of knowledge (Grice 1975; Thomas 1995: 74-76); nevertheless, their reaction is presented. Balance is in contrast with the point of view of a London-based Xinhua official, who clearly denies the allegation of defection. Since the voice states the opposite of what is presented in the nucleus, the whole section works as Counter-Justification. Finally, the third point of view which continues the 5

Also, in order to obtain a complete picture of the interaction between voices, not only forms of presentation but all means capable of evoking voice should be taken into account (e.g. Martin & White 2005: 92-135).

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23

concessive sequence is given by another Xinhua reporter who advances the idea of defection; the satellite restates the nuclear statement and thus works as Elaboration. The sequence evokes three different voices which represent three different sides: the voice that avoids commenting on the nucleus (Balance), denies the statement in the nucleus (CounterJustification) and elaborates on it (Elaboration). Interestingly, only the side of the argument advocating the idea of defection has been chosen for primary emphasis in the nucleus, and the voices expressing it work as Elaboration satellites in the body of the text; altogether there are five Elaboration satellites and only one appears in a concessive sequence – the one discussed in example (4). On the other hand, the alternative points of view are presented solely in the body of the text and the satellites of Counter-Justification and Balance appear only once each. The previous examples illustrated concessive and concurring sequences chaining up to three satellites with different functions. More extensive sequences will be dealt with in section 7. Table 4 lists the occurrence of all satellite types in concurring, concessive and concessiveconcurring sequences. Table 4. Generic function of satellites in sequences

Elaboration Appraisal Contextualization Consequence CounterJustification Concession Balance Others Ambiguity Total

Concurring

Concessive

Total

%

34 20 17 4 18

Concessiveconcurring 24 9 1 7 3

23 21 5 2 0

81 50 23 13 21

38.9 24.0 11.1 6.3 10.1

0 0 0 3 54

4 1 0 7 105

1 0 0 4 49

5 1 0 14 208

2.4 0.5 0.0 6.7 100

Out of a total number (208) of satellites in sequences, 38.9% are Elaboration satellites (examples (1) and (4)). Since Elaboration restates the nucleus and adds further detail, the voice in Elaboration is either identical to the nuclear voice or at least provides content overlapping propositionally with the nucleus. The voice and the aspects of the event covered in the Headline/Lead are highlighted by their nuclear position, maintained in the foreground by constant links with the specifying

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Chapter One

satellites and, moreover, if Elaboration forms sequences, the elaborating/nuclear voice is also supported or confronted in the body of the text. As shown in Table 4, Elaboration appears slightly more frequently in concessive (34) than in concurring (23) sequences; this means that the main nuclear angle re-appearing in Elaboration is contradicted in concessive sequences more often than it is supported in concurring ones. The occurrence of Appraisal (examples (2) and (3)) accounts for 24% of satellites in sequences. Appraisal is likely to enter into sequences because the evaluation of the nucleus almost invariably takes the form of reported language presenting a subjective opinion confined to an individual external voice, creating the need to offer alternative points of view in concessive sequences (20). However, Appraisal is the only satellite which favours concurring sequences (21) to concessive ones, and consequently, by expressing agreement, provides support for one point of view and thus reduces ideological diversity and closes the evaluating dialogic space. The heteroglossia of the text may be further intensified in the case of negative evaluation (Appraisal A in example (2), and example (3)) or weakened in the case of positive evaluation (Appraisal B in example (2), and example (9b)) since the former may express a point of view which clashes with the nuclear view while the latter may be more in line with the nuclear view. The point of view in Counter-Justification (10.1%) directly challenges, opposes and undermines the view voiced in the nucleus, and thus CounterJustification often expresses contrast, especially with Elaboration. Consequently, Counter-Justification (e.g. example (4)) tends to appear in concessive sequences (18) rather than in concurring sequences (0). Contextualization satellites forming sequences (11.1%) present statements/voices which occur in situations other than the nuclear communicative situation, complete the dialogic picture, provide a wider context and thus help readers to understand and interpret the nuclear proposition or proposal. In the majority of cases, contextualizing statements/voices are used to confront other statements in concessive (17) sequences rather than to support them in concurring (5) ones. In example (5) the voices in Contextualization clash with the voice in Elaboration (and thus also in the nucleus), while in example (6) alternative points of view are found in a one-satellite sequence within a satellite boundary. Example (5) illustrates a Contextualization satellite forming a concessive sequence with Elaboration.

Voices in Hard News: Generic and Dialogic Perspectives

25

(5) Lead Global temperatures in the first half of this year were the hottest since records began more than a century ago, according to two leading climate research centres.... CONCESSIVE SEQUENCE Elaboration Currently, 1998 is the hottest year on record. Two combined land and sea surface temperature records, from Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the US National Climatic Data Centre, both calculate that the first six months of 2010 were the hottest on record. According to the Goddard institute, four of the six months also showed record highs. XXX Contextualization A third leading monitoring programme, by the Met Office, shows this period was the second hottest on record, after 1998. It showed two months this year - January and March - were warmer than their equivalents 12 years ago. The Met Office said the variations between the figures published by the different organisations are because the Met Office uses only temperature observations, while Nasa makes estimates for gaps in recorded data such as the polar regions, and the NCDC uses a mixture of the two approaches. (Jowit 2010)

The nucleus in example (5) identifies the first half of 2010 as the hottest recorded period. This view is restated in Elaboration and enters into a concessive sequence with Contextualization, which determines the discussed period as the second hottest. Contextualization thus provides an alternative point of view to the nuclear one and tries to explain the difference between the results by reference to different research methods employed by the mentioned organizations. Also, the choice of the nucleus seems to reflect news values, especially recency and superlativeness (Bednarek 2006: 16-18; Bell 1991): the nucleus refers to the current year, not 1998, as the hottest on record, not merely as the second hottest. The less newsworthy view, i.e. 1998 being the hottest on record while 2010 the second hottest, is relegated to Contextualization. Example (6) shows a one-satellite concessive sequence involving voices confined to the Contextualization satellite. The nucleus announces the Home Secretary’s decision to abolish asbos (anti-social behaviour orders); Contextualization provides information about the history of asbos and how they were accepted by different political parties. (6) Lead THE HOME Secretary yesterday read the last rites for Tony Blair’s flagship policy for dealing with noisy neighbours, drunk teenagers, flytippers, graffiti artists and vandals.

26

Chapter One CONCESSIVE SEQUENCE Contextualization Opinion has been divided over the merits of Asbos since their introduction 11 years ago. Labour ministers trumpeted the civil orders as an invaluable tool for nipping bad behaviour in the bud before.... They also argued that the Asbo regime helped to improve the quality of everyday life across the country. XXX But critics protested that the numbers of orders handed out varied hugely between different councils and that young people who breached them found themselves caught up in the criminal court system. .... (Morris 2010)

The concessive sequence juxtaposes approving and disapproving views on asbos. The contrast is co-expressed by the prospective topic sentence (Opinion has been divided over the merits of Asbos...), a conjunct (but), the choice of the referring expressions (critics) and speech act verbs (trumpeted, protested). Let us now compare example (6) with example (1a), which also deals with the decision to abolish asbos. In (1a) the nucleus refers to the decision to abolish asbos as well as to the efforts by Labour to defend them; consequently, both themes are given equal weight in the nucleus and re-appear in the body of the text as Elaboration A and B. In example (6) the nucleus concerns only the abolition of asbos, and the reference to the positive view of asbos appears only later in the text as a part of Contextualization; moreover, the satellite refers to the Labour voice in general and omits the reference to the recent Labour attempts at intervention mentioned in example (1a) (Senior Labour figures mounted a last-ditch defence of antisocial behaviour orders last night...). Example (1a) is thus more balanced, and the explicit dialogic tension starts already in the nucleus.6 The occurrence of Consequence (6.3%) and Concession (2.4%) is less frequent. Consequence provides events or statements which specify various relations, including causes, reasons, consequences and explanations. Concession frustrates the conclusions or expectations following from the nucleus and, given that the nucleus draws on the generally accepted norms and values, Concession serves to challenge what is expected and taken for granted. Example (7) illustrates a concessive sequence linking the satellites of Consequence and Concession. The disrupting event identified in the nucleus is the admission that the French company PIP supplying breast implants knowingly used industrial silicone.

6

In discussing the selection of the angle one may also consider the individual papers’ political leaning.

Voices in Hard News: Generic and Dialogic Perspectives

27

(7) Lead The breast implant tycoon at the centre of a health scare affecting hundreds of thousands of women has admitted that his company knowingly used inferior silicone gel. CONCESSIVE SEQUENCE Cause and effect: Consequence The French Government has advised that the 30,000 women in France who had PIP’s implants should have them removed. Authorities have said there is evidence of a link to cancer, and warned of higher rates of rupture.... XXX Cause and effect: Concession In Britain, Dame Sally Davies, the Chief Medical Officer, has said that women with PIP implants “should not be unduly worried”. The Department of Health has advised against their routine removal because of the health risks associated with the procedure. (Barrow 2011)

The Consequence satellite specifies the consequence of the nucleus – the recommendation by the French Government that PIP implants should be removed. Given the danger identified in the nucleus (... used inferior silicone gel), and its scale (hundreds of thousands of women) and impact (a health scare), alarm and some form of medical action may be the reactions expected on the part of the non-expert readership. However, the voice of the British medical authorities in the Concession satellite reacts (unexpectedly) more moderately and advises against unreasonable concern and routine removal.7 The occurrence of Balance (0.5%), illustrated in example (4), is very negligible; as it explains the absence of information or comment by a certain news actor, it does not provide much opportunity for dis/agreement. A number of satellites in sequences have ambiguous functions (6.7%), which is caused primarily by the unclear nucleus-satellite relation; an ambiguous satellite is shown in example (9b) in section 7. Let us now consider the propensity of the individual satellites to occur in sequences. In contrast to Table 4, which offers an inter-satellite perspective comparing the occurrence of the individual satellite types in sequences, Table 5 offers an intra-satellite view comparing the total occurrence of satellite types (disregarding their occurrence in sequences) 7

The identification of a satellite as Concession (or a piece of discourse as running against what is generally accepted) may be influenced by the reading position of the analyst (reader). On the other hand, the concessive interpretation in example (7) is supported by the fact that the satellite trivializes an event whose significance was already clearly signalled by its appearance in the nucleus, itself based on the disruption to the shared norms and values.

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Chapter One

and the proportion of those creating concessive/concurring sequences. The comparison shows that the tendency of a satellite type to appear in sequences in general (Table 5) may not be a reflection of its frequency of occurrence relative to other satellite types (Table 4).8 For instance, despite Elaboration being the most frequent satellite type in sequences, its tendency to appear in sequences is relatively low when compared to its total occurrence; on the other hand, Counter-Justification, showing the strongest tendency, is only the fourth most frequently occurring satellite in sequences. Table 5. Tendency of satellite types to form sequences Satellites Elaboration Contextualization Appraisal Consequence Counter-Justification Concession Balance Others Ambiguity Total

Total 629 380 161 89 37 20 10 28 68 1422

In sequences 81 12.9% 23 6.1% 50 31.1% 13 14.6% 21 56.8% 5 25.0% 1 10.0% 0 0.0% 14 20.6% 208

In general, Elaboration (629) and Contextualization (380) are the most frequent satellites, yet only comparatively small proportions occur in sequences: 12.9% in the case of Elaboration and 6.1% in the case of Contextualization. The low occurrence of sequenced Elaboration relative to the total frequency is surprising; on account of the close thematic overlap between Elaboration and the nucleus, and the importance of the latter for the rhetorical functionality of hard news, one might expect that the elaborating voice would show a greater tendency to engage in dialogic 8

Admittedly, when explaining the potential involvement of satellite types in dialogic interaction (as well as the total frequency of occurrence) by reference to their conceptual delimitation and relation to the nucleus, one should bear in mind that the role played by a particular kind of information in the text (e.g. elaborating, evaluative, contextual) is highly influenced by the angle established in the nucleus. Consequently, an event appearing in the nucleus and subsequent Elaboration in one report may be excluded from the nucleus and work as Contextualization, Appraisal etc. in others (see examples (1a) and (6)). This to some extent blurs the distinction between satellite types.

Voices in Hard News: Generic and Dialogic Perspectives

29

interaction. Although Contextualization may provide statements which support or refute (example (5)) the nucleus, compared to other satellites, in many cases the rhetorical relation is more tenuous, covert, indirect and supplied by the reader rather than explicitly expressed, which may also affect its readiness to enter into sequences. On the other hand, Appraisal (161), and especially CounterJustification (37) and Concession (20), appear much less frequently, but if they do occur, they are likely to form sequences; 56.8% of CounterJustification, 31.1% of Appraisal and 25.0% of Concession satellites take part in sequences. Not a negligible proportion (20.0%) of ambiguous satellites (68) appears in sequences; this is due to the fact that the majority of ambiguities involve the Appraisal function. Consequence and Balance are significant neither in terms of the total occurrence (89 and 10 respectively) nor the occurrence in sequences (14.6% and 10.0% respectively). On the whole, the proclivity of satellites to appear in sequences and the role of the invoked voices are to some extent determined by the generic function of satellites (but see note 8). The distribution of voices across the generic structure and in sequences affects the degree of openness to dialogue and solidarity with alternative positions.

6. Reported language The significance of reported language for the discussion of concessive/concurring sequences lies in the fact that, in hard news, forms of presentation are the most common source of heteroglossia. The basic distinction is thus between the occurrence of narration, i.e. the source of the authorial, internal voice, and the occurrence of forms of presentation, the source of external voices (Hunston 1999; Sinclair 1988). Drawing primarily on Semino and Short (2004), the corpus was tagged for the occurrence of narration and forms of presentation (re-)producing speech, writing and thought events. For the purpose of the present discussion only a rough distinction between (free) direct forms, various non-direct forms and partially quoted forms will be made. In (free) direct forms the reported element retains the deictic, syntactic and speech functional autonomy from the reporting element (if present). Various non-direct forms differ in the degree of deictic orientation either to the reported or reporting speaker, the syntactic relation between the reported and reporting part, and the form of the reported element (Semino & Short 2004; Semino, Short & Culpeper

30

Chapter One

1997).9 Partially quoted forms combine a partial direct quote with nondirect forms or, less frequently, narration; the deictic centres of each section are strictly separated. To illustrate some of the forms of presentation, a part of example (1a) will be reproduced as example (8). (8) Two former Labour home secretaries, Alan Johnson and David Blunkett, attacked May’s decision. Johnson, in a piece for the Guardian’s Comment is Free, argued that asbos had made a huge difference in cutting crime and disorder: “If the home secretary is to restrict the opportunities for the police to use asbos and other measures currently available then this will be yet another example of this government going soft on crime.” ~ ~ ~ Blunkett last night went even further and claimed May’s speech posed “a major threat to the lives of those at the very sharp end of criminality and dysfunctional communities”. (Travis 2010)

Example (8) contains an instance of direct discourse (“If the home secretary is ...on crime.”) and indirect discourse with a partial direct quote (Blunkett ...claimed May’s speech posed “a major threat ... dysfunctional communities”.). Also, the section employs different types of non-direct forms: a typical indirect discourse with a reported element in the form of a subordinated reported clause (Johnson...argued that asbos ... disorder), a form which reports content in phrasal, not clausal, form (Two former Labour home secretaries...attacked May’s decision), a form which makes no reference to the reported content and indicates only the speech act value (May’s decision), and minimal forms which merely mention that a communicative act has occurred (Blunkett last night went even further, May’s speech). Purely direct forms have the potential to represent faithfully form, content and speech act value10, and the responsibility and control are to a greater extent than in non-direct forms attributed to the reporting speaker. Non-direct forms vary in their potential to comply with the three faithfulness claims, allow to different degrees summary and paraphrase of the reported event, and the control and responsibility are shared by the reporting and reported speaker. Non-direct forms with a partial direct quote are a frequent and convenient device since they combine the brevity of a summary and the impact of the direct quote (Semino et al. 1997; Semino & Short 2004). 9

Regarding non-direct forms, Semino and Short (2004) distinguish free indirect discourse, indirect discourse, narrator’s representation of speech act with and without topic, and minimal forms of presentation. 10 Faithfulness claims are widely discussed (see e.g. Short, Semino & Wynne 2002; Sternberg 1982, 1991).

Voices in Hard News: Generic and Dialogic Perspectives

31

Table 6 summarizes the occurrence of unambiguous narration, (free)direct, non-direct and partially quoted forms, and ambiguities including both ambiguous narration and forms of presentation. Table 6. Narration and forms of presentation in sequences (Non-)reported forms (Free)direct Non-direct Partially quoted Narration Ambiguity Total

158 486 62 100 66 872

% 18.1 55.7 7.1 11.5 7.6 100

Unambiguous forms of presentation (80.9%) greatly outnumber unambiguous narration (11.5%). Even though generally the occurrence and function of narration are affected by the role of satellites in the generic structure (e.g. Urbanová 2013), in the satellites forming sequences the pure authorial journalistic voice is to a great degree excluded. The occurrence of narration is frequently reduced to phrasal form, including conjunctions (and in Consequence example (7)), conjuncts (but in Appraisal B example (2); see also examples (4) and (6)) or adverbials (in Britain in Concession example (7); In July this year, Two days later, Last month, again in front of MPs in example (10b) below); complete propositions, sentences or even whole satellites solely in the form of narration are much less common (The nation’s bullfighters reacted to the denial ...in the ring in Appraisal example (3); Currently, 1998... on record. in Elaboration example (5); Opinion has been ... ago. in Contextualization example (6); see also Elaboration A external to the sequence in example (9b) below). The low frequency of narration11 in sequences is in line with the required impersonal style of reporter voice: the journalist remains 11

The category of narration does not cover reporting frames, such as reporting clauses or adverbials, which were given special tags signalling their function in the reporting structure. In most cases, however, reporting frames are produced by the journalist, i.e. by the internal authorial voice, and as such correspond to narration. Even though reporting frames do not serve to express dis/agreement and thus do not participate in concessive/concurring sequences, they may be the source of the reporting speaker’s attitude towards the reported speaker or the attitude of both speakers towards the reported content (see note 4). Consequently, the choice of the reporting frame can contribute to the way in which the reported speaker is

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backgrounded and does not enter into discussion with external voices. In comparison with forms of presentation, narration may be relatively more monoglossic and likely to present content as something already given, agreed upon and thus not questioned and disputed (Martin & White 2005: 98-102). The presentation of known and taken-for-granted content represents a lower risk for the authorial voice; however, such information has much lower news value and is less likely to appear in hard news in general – and especially in those portions of discourse presenting content whose validity may be at stake, including concessive/concurring sequences. The high frequency of forms of presentation is not surprising since the presence of voices in dialogic interaction (and thus most probably reported language) was a precondition for the establishment of sequences. Contrary to narration, proposals or propositions in the form of reported language are by definition heteroglossic: being attributed to the reported speaker, they are valid only within the reported speaker’s discourse world and thus not generally accepted and more open to be negotiated, questioned or disputed (Martin & White 2005: 111-117; Sanders & Redeker 1993: 69). Depending on the form of presentation, the reported and the reporting speaker assert themselves to different extents and share responsibility for the form, content and speech act value. Both direct and non-direct forms create a double structure with overt and covert rhetorical aims – the overt aim is to report, while the covert aim may be to explain, evaluate, argue etc. (van Leeuwen 1987). Owing to their non-factual nature, reported propositions and proposals are more likely to appear in the context of sequences, characterized by uncertainty and a lower degree of acceptability of the presented content. Non-direct forms (55.7%) substantially outnumber (free) direct forms (18.1%) and forms combined with a partial direct quote (7.1%). Even though the reported element in all forms of presentation is a montage of the internal and external voice(s) (e.g. Sternberg 1991), only (free) direct forms have a maximum potential to exclude the reporting internal voice from the dialogic interaction in sequences. Owing to the predominance of non-direct forms, the internal voice is at least partially able to access and contribute to the dialogic interaction, and the extent to which they assert themselves depends on the degree of the reporting speaker’s control in the given non-direct form. Regarding partial quotes, the reporting voice is

portrayed, co-determine the reported speaker’s role in a concessive/concurring sequence, and affect the reader’s perception of various aspects of the reported situation.

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involved in the non-direct section as well as the selection of the direct quotation. However, to avoid simplification and to assess more fully the role of the internal and external voice in sequences, a closer look would have to be taken at the occurrence of the individual types of non-direct forms and the interaction between voices/forms of presentation. For instance, the external voice in direct forms can be used to support the internal voice involved in non-direct forms providing summary, interpretation or paraphrase. In example (8) the external voice of Alan Johnson in the direct form (“If the home secretary ... crime.”) provides rhetorical support for the internal voice responsible for the summary in the previous non-direct forms (...attacked May’s decision; Johnson... argued that...). In example (2), the voice of General Jackson in the direct speech (“... I think ... disappointed.”) proves the correctness of the interpretation provided by the internal voice in the previous indirect speech (...Jackson... suggested that...involved.); similarly, the direct speech (“There may have been...do it.”) increases the reliability of the preceding partial direct quote (He [Dannatt] added that...). Simultaneously, however, the speech act verbs in the non-direct forms guide the reader on how the ensuing direct forms are to be interpreted, i.e. as an attack or argument in (8) or suggestion in (2). Alternatively, non-direct forms can appear embedded (Semino & Short 2004: 33-35) inside direct forms, a situation which excludes the internal voice from the non-direct form altogether. For instance, in example (2) the non-direct forms reporting on thoughts and feelings (...a little bit of professional feeling that we should..., I think the Army would have been...rather disappointed) involve no trace of the reporting internal voice. As is the case with narration, the choice and function of forms of presentation depend on various aspects of the recontextualizing text, among others the type of satellite, the deictic and grammatical properties of each form and the potential to perform a certain role. For instance, regardless of the presence of sequences, Appraisal (examples (2) and (3)) contains in comparison to other satellite types a relatively high proportion of direct forms – since, owing to their deictic orientation, the reported speaker is considered in control of the form and can be held responsible for it. By contrast, Contextualization (examples (5) and (6)) provides less evaluative and hence potentially less risky content, and it prefers nondirect forms or narration to direct forms; Elaboration (examples (1a), (4) and (5)) is characterized by a more balanced distribution of direct and nondirect forms (Urbanová 2013). Consequently, the occurrence of forms of presentation in sequences can also be affected by the frequency of the individual satellite types.

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7. Generic and dialogic perspectives: sample discussion This section discusses two samples of extensive concessive/concurring sequences and considers the presence of sequences in more general terms of genre affiliation. Examples (9a-b) illustrate a concessive-concurring sequence which, with the exception of one satellite, spans over the whole body of the text. The report complies with all the criteria defining hard news: it introduces a contentious issue in the nucleus, exhibits the orbital structure, and contains no authorial evaluation. For the ease of discussion, the nucleus (example (9a)) was separated from the body of the text (example (9b)). The report deals with the introduction of badger culling as a way to tackle bovine tuberculosis and the disagreement over the effectiveness and propriety of the method. Already in the nucleus there are two opposing parties – those who approve of badger culling (the Environment Secretary) and those who oppose it (the animal welfare groups). They appear juxtaposed in the Headline as well as the Lead. Thus in terms of voice the nucleus is relatively open to alternative positions. The presence of underlining signals a negative attitude towards badger culling, whereas, except the attitude-neutral Elaboration A (example (9b)), the absence of underlining signals a positive attitude.12 (9a) Headline Anger as badger culling given go-ahead for next year Lead Animal welfare campaigners say they will challenge badger culling in England after trials were given the go-ahead by the Environment Secretary, Caroline Spelman. (Churcher & Usherwood 2011)

The body of the text contains two kinds of Elaboration (Elaboration A and B), Appraisal, Consequence and one ambiguous satellite. Elaboration A restates that culling will take place and the three instances of Elaboration B (B1-B3) specify the disapproving reaction of the animal welfare groups, namely the Humane Society International in B1, the 12

Since the nucleus expresses a negative stance towards badger culling as well as raising this contentious issue, only those sections with the former function are underlined. In the body of the text complete satellites (Elaboration B1-B3 and Consequence B/Appraisal B) are marked, since it is not only the inherently evaluative lexical items which engage in dialogic interaction but the entire satellites. The negative evaluation in the unmarked satellites (e.g. ... too long to develop... difficult to administer... in Consequence A; ...devastating disease... in Appraisal A2) was left unsignalled since it does not relate to badger culling.

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RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) in B2, and the Badger Trust in B3. On the other hand, culling is evaluated positively by farmers and veterinary doctors in Appraisal A1 and A2, and a positive attitude is also expressed by the Environment Secretary in Consequence A, which explains why culling is a suitable method. The ambiguous Consequence B/Appraisal B brings the voice of the Shadow Environment Secretary, who states the negative consequences of culling (Consequence B) and thus indirectly evaluates (Appraisal B) the process and the decision to employ it (see e.g. Bednarek 2009).13 (9b) Elaboration A The six-week trials will take place in two areas next year and could lead to a wider cull across the country as part of efforts to tackle TB in cattle. CONCESSIVE-CONCURRING SEQUENCE Appraisal A1 Farmers and veterinary leaders welcomed the move, saying it was an “undisputed science” that killing badgers was effective, although controlled shooting had yet to be tested. XXX Elaboration B1 But several animal welfare groups reacted angrily to yesterday’s announcement, with one considering legal action. The Humane Society International (HSI) said it would submit a formal complaint to the 1979 Bern Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats. It said the cull lacked “legitimate purpose” and posed a significant threat to badger populations, and that ministers had failed to examine alternatives. XXX Cause and effect: Consequence A Mrs Spelman told the Commons a vaccine for the disease would take too long to develop and it was difficult to administer to wild badgers. Culling could reduce the incidence of bovine TB by 10 per cent, she suggested. ~ ~ ~ Appraisal A2 Carl Padgett, president of the British Veterinary Association, hailed the trial as “a major step on the long road to tackling this devastating disease”. XXX Elaboration B2 But the RSPCA accused the Government of being “more interested in killing badgers than vaccinating them”. ~ ~ ~

13

Even though Elaboration B3 does not play an Appraisal role in the generic structure, it provides evaluative context (The Badger Trust said it was “clearly very disappointed”...), which could, together with the dialogic interaction with the ambiguous satellite, support the Appraisal interpretation of the latter.

36

Chapter One Elaboration B3 The Badger Trust said it was “clearly very disappointed” and would consult lawyers to decide what action could be taken. ~ ~ ~ Cause and effect: Consequence B/Appraisal B The Shadow Environment Secretary, Mary Creagh, said: “The cull will cost farmers more than it saves them and will spread bovine TB in the short term as badgers move out of cull areas.” (Churcher & Usherwood 2011)

As mentioned, the disagreement between the voices appears already in the nucleus. In the body of the text the alternation of satellites expressing pro- and anti-culling stances commences with the second satellite and finishes with the last one, creating an extensive concessive-concurring sequence. The pro-culling satellites include Appraisal A1 and A2, and Consequence A; the anti-culling satellites include Elaboration B1-B3 and the ambiguous Consequence B/Appraisal B. The satellites are organized so that the pro- and anti-culling stances alternate: disagreement appears between Appraisal A1 and Elaboration B1, Elaboration B1 and Consequence A, Appraisal A2 and Elaboration B2; agreement is established between Consequence A and Appraisal A2, Elaboration B2 and B3, and finally between Elaboration B3 and Consequence B/Appraisal B. The first Elaboration A satellite merely states that culling will take place, seems neutral in attitude, and therefore stands outside the sequence. In terms of voice, the report is highly charged heteroglossically. The presence of different voices in the text creates a dialogic environment in which different opinions interact, and the text as a whole acknowledges alternative positions and shows openness to negotiation and solidarity with these alternatives. The voices can be seen as representing three different groups. There is the voice of political authority (the Environment Secretary in the nucleus and Consequence A, and the Shadow Environment Secretary in Consequence B/Appraisal B), the voice of farmers and veterinary doctors (Appraisal A1 and A2), and the voice of animal welfare groups (the nucleus and Elaboration B1-B3). With the exception of Appraisal A2, which relies on subjective appreciation (a major step..., see e.g. Martin & White 2005: 56-58), the voice of the politicians, farmers and veterinary doctors develops a more objective and reason-based argumentation and evaluation, referring to science (an “undisputed science”, tests, development and administration of the vaccine, statistical effectiveness in Appraisal A1 and Consequence A) and practical consequences (higher cost to farmers, ultimate spread of TB in Consequence B/Appraisal B). By contrast, the voice of campaigners seems directed more towards subjective evaluation expressing affect (anger,

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disappointment in Elaboration B1 and B3), appreciation of the cull (...lacked “legitimate purpose” and posed a significant threat... in Elaboration B1) and judgement of those responsible for the approval of culling (ministers’ failure to examine alternatives in Elaboration B1 and the Government’s interest in killing badgers rather than vaccinating them in Elaboration B2). The voices are not distributed equally across the generic structure. The voice of the Environment Secretary, i.e. the authority behind the move, is highlighted in the nucleus and plays the angle-setting role; it is given further space in a single Consequence A. Even though in terms of content Elaboration A restates the introduction of culling first mentioned in the nucleus, the satellite takes the form of narration, and in terms of attribution is thus presented as monoglossic. Another political authority, the Shadow Environment Secretary, appears only in the final satellite. The opposing animal welfare campaigners are the most consistently represented voice throughout the whole text. It creates a strong thread starting in the nucleus and finishing in the last-but-one satellite. The appearance in the nucleus puts the anti-culling voice textually and interpersonally on a par with the political voice. In the body of the text the voice of campaigners appears in three satellites, significantly contributes to the concessive-concurring sequence, and leads a dialogue with the pro-culling side. The voice of farmers and veterinary surgeons in favour of the culling has not been selected for the nucleus, and in comparison to the voice of the politician and animal welfare campaigners it is not kept in focus; it recurs twice in the body of the text. Despite a substantial heteroglossic basis, the voices are treated differently in terms of the selection for prominence in the nucleus, the recurrence of satellites in the body of the text and the kind of argumentation or promoted point of view, which may be reflected in the way in which the audience with different reading positions are inclined to accept or reject the dialogic alternatives introduced in text. Examples (10a-b) illustrate a concessive sequence chaining seven out of a total of nine satellites. The report deals with a media affair in which James Murdoch, the chairman of News International, is accused of being aware that the company’s reporters employed illegal practices, including phone-hacking. The information was revealed by Tom Crone, one of the company’s former lawyers, during the Leveson Inquiry. In (10a) the entire nucleus is built upon one single voice of the accusing company lawyer. (10a) Headline 1 I showed Murdoch crucial email, insists former company lawyer

38

Chapter One Headline 2 News International’s former legal manager tells inquiry, on oath, of sharing “hard evidence” Lead James Murdoch was given “hard evidence” that phone hacking inside the News of the World went beyond a lone rogue reporter more than three years ago, one of his closest lieutenants said on oath for the first time yesterday. (Cusick 2011)

The concessive sequence in the body of the text includes three Elaboration satellites, one Contextualization and three CounterJustifications. The voice from the nucleus reappears in Elaborations 1-3 and Contextualization. Elaborations provide further details of the nucleus, repeat and particularize the statement(s) made during the inquiry (Mr Murdoch had been informed of the phone-hacking practice and was shown an email proving it). Besides the nuclear voice, Contextualization also invokes the voice of another person acquainted with the situation, Sunday’s last editor; despite being similar in the reported content to the nucleus and Elaborations, Contextualization describes a speech event which had occurred before the statements made during the inquiry and which thus forms the background to the main nuclear statement. In contrast to example (9a), the nucleus in (10a) contains only one voice, and the voice that stands in opposition appears only in the body of the text in Counter-Justification satellites. Counter-Justifications bring to the discourse the voice of James Murdoch, who, at different occasions prior to the inquiry, denies being aware of the situation. (10b) CONCESSIVE SEQUENCE Elaboration 1 News International’s former legal manager, Tom Crone, told the Leveson Inquiry that NI’s chairman knew the illegal accessing of voicemails at the NOTW was “rife”... Elaboration 2 Mr Crone said that the crucial “for Neville” email was held up in front of Mr Murdoch at a meeting on 10 June, and may have been passed across a table to him... XXX Counter-Justification 1 In July this year, Mr Murdoch was asked by the Commons media select committee if he saw or was made aware of an email that contained a transcript of hacked voicemail messages ...Mr Murdoch replied: “No I was not aware of it at that time”. XXX Contextualization

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Two days later, Mr Crone and the Sunday tabloid’s last editor, Colin Myler, wrote to MPs insisting, “we did inform him [Mr Murdoch]” of what became known as the “for Neville” email, XXX Counter-Justification 2 prompting Mr Murdoch to say the next day that he had “answered truthfully”. Counter-Justification 3 Last month, again in front of MPs Mr Murdoch repeated his assertion that the suspicion of a “wider spread wrongdoing” or a written opinion from the company’s leading counsel were never mentioned to him ...“I want to be very clear: no documents were shown to me at that meeting or given to me at that meeting, or prior,” he said. XXX Elaboration 3 Mr Crone‘s version to the inquiry yesterday is a polar opposite account. He told Lord Leveson he had shown the NI chairman a print-out of the “for Neville” email and that he had previously discussed the issue and shown him other documents prior to the 10 June meeting. Mr Crone said: “I cannot remember that whether they were passed across the table, but I am pretty sure I held up the front page of the email…I am also pretty sure that he already knew about it…It had been described to him already.” (Cusick 2011)

As indicated in the example, Elaborations 1 and 2 form a section which contrasts with the following Counter-Justification 1; Counter-Justification 1 contrasts with Contextualization; Contextualization contrasts with a section of two satellites, Counter-Justifications 2 and 3, which themselves form the last instance of contrast with Elaboration 3. Lexically, the contrast is explicitly indicated only in the final satellite (Mr Crone’s version ...is a polar opposite account). As explained in section 2, the orbital structure is governed by different principles of organization than chronology. The nucleus and the first two satellites, Elaboration 1 and 2, present the most recent statement, which is also the most newsworthy. However, the sequence of satellites starting with Counter-Justification 1 up to Elaboration 3 does follow a chronological order, indicated also by time adverbials (In July this year in – two days later – the next day – last month – yesterday). The satellites are reminiscent of a reported conversation, especially Counter-Justification 1, Contextualization and Counter-Justification 2 reporting on speech events which occurred within a short time span. The close connection between the satellites is also reflected in the sequence of Contextualization and Counter-Justification 2, which merge into one sentence.14 14 Satellites realized by clauses and bound to other satellites on sentence level are minor exceptions. Typically, satellites in hard news span over one, two or three

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As the voices in examples (9a-b) and (10a-b) are to a great extent textexternal, let us now briefly consider forms of presentation. Forms of presentation are employed in all generic sections with the exception of Elaboration A in example (9b), which contains no explicit presence of external voice and can only be attributed to the authorial, internal voice of the journalist. Otherwise narrative sections are scattered across the generic structure in both examples but do not constitute whole satellites. In (9a-b) non-direct forms appear in the nucleus (...say they will challenge badger culling..., ... trials/badger culling given the go-ahead, anger), Appraisal A1 (...welcomed the move), Elaboration B1 (...reacted angrily, ...said it would submit a formal complaint.), Consequence A (...told the Commons a vaccine...; Culling could reduce...., she suggested) and Elaboration B3 (...would consult lawyers...). In example (10b) nondirect forms are employed e.g. in Counter-Justification 1 (...was asked by the Commons media select committee if he...), Contextualization (...wrote to MPs), Counter-Justification 3 (...repeated his assertion that..., ...were never mentioned to him... ) or Elaboration 3 (Mr Crone’s version ... polar opposite account). In example (9b) partial quotations are found in Elaboration B1 (...said the cull lacked “legitimate purpose” and...), Appraisal A1 (... saying it was an “undisputed science”...), Appraisal A2 (...hailed the trial as “a major step ...”), Elaboration B2 (...accused the Government of being “more interested in killing...”) and Elaboration B3 (...said it was “clearly very disappointed”...). In examples (10a-b) partial quotations appear in Headline 2 (...tells inquiry, on oath, of sharing “hard evidence”), Elaboration 1 (...told the Leveson Inquiry that .... was “rife”...), CounterJustification 2 (to say ... “answered truthfully”.) and Counter-Justification 3 (...the suspicion of a “wider spread wrongdoing”...). paragraphs. Even though it does not follow from the way example (10b) was reproduced, Elaboration 2 and Counter-Justification 1, and Contextualization and Counter-Justification 2 appear within paragraph boundaries. Similarly, in (9b) Elaboration A and Appraisal 1 appear in one paragraph, as well as Appraisal 2 and Elaboration B2, and Elaboration B3 and Consequence B/Appraisal B. Owing to the functional-generic diversity and autonomy, the satellites found in one paragraph feature “an overt mismatch between the (orto-)graphic and content segmentation” (Pípalová 2008: 24-25), in which ‘generic’ paragraphs do not correspond to formal or physical paragraphs. Adjacency and graphical unity may connote a connection between described events and thus potentially between satellites. The connection, possibly enhanced by cohesive or structural links, may strengthen the linear pattern of presentation on the one hand and weaken the nucleus-satellite pattern on the other. The organization into paragraphs relates to the prototypicality of satellites as well as whole texts.

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In example (9b) an instance of direct speech is found in Consequence B/Appraisal B (...“The cull will cost farmers ...”). Examples (10a-b) are richer in (free) direct discourse, including Headline 1 (I showed Murdoch crucial email), Counter-Justification 1 (...“No I was not aware of it at that time.”), Counter-Justification 3 (“I want to be ...prior,”...) and Elaboration 3 (...“I cannot remember ...already.”). In (9a-b) and (10a-b) the battle of voices and points of view pervades almost entire texts. Even though the controversy and disputability of the issues and the presence of alternative points of view create a context for argumentation (e.g. Klein 2007), neither text exhibits a consistent, systematic line of argumentation and can be described as argumentative. Nevertheless, the presence of external voices which take turns comparatively regularly may make the impression that the texts work as dialogues or conversations. This leads to the question of communicative aim and genre affiliation. As shown by examples (1-10), texts with concessive/concurring sequences may exhibit traces of linear patterning suggested by the functional relation of opposition or likeness between the voices/satellites and possibly further enhanced by cohesive links, chronological presentation or the organization of satellites into paragraphs (see note 14). These aspects may to some extent reduce radical editability and the possibility to reorder satellites – the essence of the orbital structure; on the one hand they weaken nucleus-satellite relations, and on the other hand they strengthen the relations between voices/satellites in the body of the text. The generically-determined social purpose of reporting which follows from the nucleus-satellite structure (and reporter voice) may be affected by the presence of external voices which express agreement or disagreement and which colour the text with shades of discussion or debate. Expressed metaphorically, the report with (extensive) concessive/concurring sequences can be seen as a report standing for a debate (Martin & Rose 2008: 247-250). On the surface reading, the text is a report on what the news actors believe about a particular issue, on a deeper reading it is a constructed debate on the issue. The implicit dialogue between the voices in the background manifests itself as an explicit debate between the voices in concessive/concurring sequences, each voice contributing to the sequence in a manner roughly analogous to contributions in the turn-taking process. The metaphor is consonant with van Leeuwen’s (1987) idea of forms of presentation creating a double structure serving overt and covert social purposes. The debate does not necessarily follow from manifest formal links but rather from the multiplicity of voices whose adjacency deemphasizes the orbital structure and accentuates linear patterning.

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Chapter One

Considering genre affiliation in terms of “graded, fuzzily bounded rather than absolute categories” and “degrees of membership in a classification”, the proximity of a text token to the type depends on the configurations of meaning and how the meanings are phased as the text unfolds (Martin & Rose 2008: 131-139, 240). Applied to examples (9a-b) and (10a-b), the texts show nucleus-satellite relations and reporter voice, but owing to the presence of extensive concessive/concurring sequences and the partially linearized structure, the reports may be seen as less typical instantiations of hard news. Figure 2 diagrams genre in terms of the degrees of similarity and likeness. It consists of two axes delimiting four different generic spaces. The axes represent the features of the orbital structure and reporter voice, i.e. two key properties defining the genre of hard news. The absence of these features is simply referred to as non-orbital generic structure and non-reporter voice. The figure does not aim to show the affinities of hard news with all related (media) genres, but merely to illustrate the way in which the presence of sequences is believed to affect hard news texts; only the bottom quadrants will be considered.

Figure 2. Hard news as type and token (after Martin & Rose 2008: 133, et passim)

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The prototypical hard news could be placed in the left bottom corner, symbolizing a genre referred to as type 1, characterized by the presence of the orbital structure and reporter voice; the social aim of type 1 is to report. The right hand bottom corner symbolizes a genre referred to as type 2, characterized by the absence of the orbital structure and the presence of reporter voice; the aim of type 2 is to debate rather than report. Different text tokens of type 1 (tokens 1a-1d) are found within different distances from the ideal genre type according to the extent of similarity in reporter voice and the orbital structure. Texts with concessive/concurring sequences, i.e. texts characterized by reporter voice but slightly linearized generic structure and debate-like character, could be placed somewhere between the ideal types 1 and 2. For instance, text token 1c is more typical hard news than text token 1d.15

8. Conclusion Concessive/concurring sequences appear in 40.6% of hard news texts, which shows that the presence of juxtaposed voices is not uncommon. The narrative internal voice of the journalist (11.5%) contributes to the creation of sequences much less than external voices (80.9%) brought into the discourse by means of unambiguous forms of presentation. In the majority of cases the internal voice remains in the background and serves to set the scene, introduce external voices and express relations between portions of text (or individual voices). Even though such roles are significant for the ultimate perception and interpretation of the text, the internal voice is mostly excluded from the dialogic interaction per se. Reported language is, by its nature, a device with dialogue- and solidarity-creating potential. 15

In his classification of hard news, White (1997: 102-104, 1998) distinguishes between the so-called “event stories”, dealing with happenings, and “issues reports”, dealing with verbal acts, such as accusations, warnings, announcements or demands. Even though both can contain concessive/concurring sequences, issues reports (see e.g. examples (1a), (2), (6), (7), (9a-b), (10a-b)) may be more likely to involve voices engaged in explicit dialogic interaction, since the external voice(s) in the nucleus re-appear(s) in Elaboration in the body of the text and may enter into sequences. Despite issues reports being a sub-type of hard news exhibiting reporter voice and orbital structure, it may be the case that on account of their highly heteroglossic nature, issues reports are more likely to deviate from the hard news type than event stories. Indeed, White (1998: 351-356) notes the possibility to connect issues reports taxonomically with arguing genres; argumentation is, however, not systematically developed and is always confined to external voices (cf. Iedema et al. 1994: 164-165).

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The degree of dialogism in the text may be further influenced by the juxtaposition of voices in concessive and concurring sequences. Sequences tend to be short, spanning over one (19.5%), two (54.0%) or three (14.9%) satellites. Sequences spanning over four and up to eight satellites are rare. Since concessive sequences (56.3%) outnumber both concurring (28.8%) and concessive-concurring (14.9%) sequences, voices are mostly used to emphasize differences of opinion. The presence of alternative points of view may be attributed to a number of inter-related reasons. For instance, the aim of hard news is allegedly to offer a balanced and unbiased report. More importantly, hard news texts report on recent events whose significance and impact may not yet be clear; concessive sequences built upon reported language further underline the negotiability and non-factuality of the presented interpretations. Also, the recognition of and solidarity with alternative points of view may make audience(s) with different reading positions more inclined to accept the text. The presence of alternatives to some extent mirrors and/or shapes the mosaic of social values and positions. In general, sequences may be perceived as explicit discussions which materialize the implicit dialogue of voices present in the background of every text. Concessive sequences, and partly also concessive-concurring sequences, accentuate heterogeneity, enhance solidarity with alternative ideological positionings and open dialogic space. On the other hand, concurring sequences serve to enforce only one point of view and, consequently, to an extent diminish dialogic space, undermining the claim of unbiased and objective reporting. The distribution of sequences across the generic structure shows what voices are employed to do in the hard news text. Most commonly voices restate or specify the nuclear event in Elaboration (38.9%), evaluate it in Appraisal (24.0%), complete the dialogic picture by providing background utterances in Contextualization (11.1%), and directly oppose the nuclear statement in Counter-Justification (10.1%). Considering the tendency of satellite types to form sequences, voices that negate the nucleus (CounterJustification, 56.8%), evaluate it (Appraisal, 31.1%) and frustrate the expectations or conclusions (Concession, 25%) exhibit a greater proclivity to appear in sequences than voices in other functions. Apart from variable functions in the body of the text, a significant difference in the treatment of voices lies in their inclusion in or exclusion from the nucleus, a position associated with continuous emphasis and the angle-establishing role. Sequences are units which connect otherwise ad hoc organized satellites and thus to some extent linearize the orbital structure. The functional unity between satellites arising from the dialogic interaction

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between voices expressing dis/agreement may, but need not necessarily, be strengthened by chronological presentation and formal, cohesive ties. Functional and formal relations to some extent reduce radical editability and the possibility to reorder satellites, the key features of the orbital structure. The (covert) discussion between voices together with non-orbital features may affect the rhetorical goal of hard news. Consequently, hard news with more extensive sequences may acquire a debate-like character and represent less prototypical instantiations of hard news.

Corpus 1. Barrow, Martin (2011, December 29) I knew our silicone was inferior, says breast implant chief. The Times, 7. 2. Brooks, Anita (2010, July 29) Catalonia vote to ban all forms of bullfighting in nationalist move. The Independent, 16, 17. 3. Churcher, Joe and Usherwood, Theo (2011, December 15) Anger as badger culling given go-ahead for next year. The Independent, 23. 4. Cusick, James (2011, December 15) I showed Murdoch crucial email, insists former company lawyer. The Independent, 2. 5. Jowit, Juliette (2010, July 29) ‘Best evidence yet’ of a warming world shows 2010 set to be the hottest on record. The Guardian, 11. 6. McSmith, Andy (2010, July 29) General says Army nearly ‘seized up’ with too many missions. The Independent, 9. 7. Moore, Malcolm (2010, July 28) Defection rumour as Chinese news chief disappears on trip to Britain. The Daily Telegraph, 14. 8. Morris, Nigel (2010, July 29) Home Secretary announces end to ‘ludicrous’ system of Asbos. The Independent, 12. 9. Travis, Alan (2010, July 29) ‘Magic button’ asbos to be scrapped. The Guardian, 1.

Bibliography Bakhtin, Mikhail M. (1981) The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (Caryl Emmerson and Michael Holquist, Trans). Austin: University of Texas Press. —. (1984) Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (Caryl Emmerson and Michael Holquist, Trans). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Barnhurst, Kevin G. (2002) The Content of Reports on U.S. Internet Sites. Cambridge/Mass: President and Fellows of Harvard College.

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Barnhurst, Kevin G. and Mutz, Diana (1997) American journalism and the decline in event-centered reporting. Journal of Communication 47/4, 27-53. Bednarek, Monika (2006) Evaluation in Media Discourse. London: Continuum. —. (2009) Polyphony in appraisal: Typological and topological perspectives. Linguistics and Human Cognition 3/2, 107-136. Bell, Allan (1991) The Language of News Media. Oxford: Blackwell. Dijk van, Teun A. (1988) News as Discourse. Hillsdale: Lawrence Earlbaum. Fairclough, Norman (1992) Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press. Floyd, Alan (2000) The reporting verbs and bias in the press. Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses 13, 43-52. Grice, Herbert P. (1975) Logic and conversation. In Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press. 41-58. Gruber, Helmut (1993) Evaluation devices in newspaper reports. Journal of Pragmatics 19, 469-486. Hunston, Susan (1995) A corpus study of some English verbs of attribution. Functions of Language 2/2, 133-158. —. (1999) Evaluation and the planes of discourse: Status and value in persuasive texts. In Susan Hunston and Geoff Thompson (Eds.), Evaluation in Context: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 176-207. Iedema, Rick, Feez, Susan and White, Peter (1994) Media Literacy. Sydney: Disadvantaged Schools Programme, NSW Department of School Education. Klein, OndĜej (2007) Argumentace v komunikaci: PrĤzkum komunikaþního pojetí argumentu. Prague: Charles University. Leeuwen van, Theo (1987) Generic strategies in press journalism. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 10/2, 199-220. Martin, James R. (1992) English Text: System and Structure. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Martin, James R., Christie, Frances and Rothery, Joan (1987) Working Papers in Linguistics 5. Sydney: University of Sydney. Martin, James R. and Rose, David (2008) Genre Relations: Mapping Culture. London: Equinox. Martin, James R. and White, Peter R. R. (2005) The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. London: Palgrave.

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Östman, Jan-Ola (1999) Coherence through understanding through discourse patterns: Focus on news patterns. In Wolfram Bublitz, Uta Lenk and Eija Ventola (Eds.), Coherence in Spoken and Written Discourse: How to Create it and How to Describe it. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 77-100. Pípalová, Renata (2008) Thematic Organization of Paragraphs and Higher Text Units. Prague: Charles University. Redeker, Gisela (1996) Free indirect discourse in newspaper reports. In Crit Cremers and Marcel D. Dikke (Eds.), Linguistics in the Netherlands 1996. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 221-232. Sanders, José (2010) Intertwined voices: Journalists’ modes of representing source information in journalistic subgenres. English Text Construction 3/2, 226-249. Sanders, José and Redeker, Gisela (1993) Linguistic perspective in short news stories. Poetics 22, 69-87. Semino, Elena and Short, Mick (2004) Corpus Stylistics: Speech, Writing and Thought Presentation in a Corpus of English Writing. London: Routledge. Semino, Elena, Short Mick and Culpeper, Jonathan (1997) Using a corpus to test a model of speech and thought presentation. Poetics 25, 17-43. Short, Mick, Semino, Elena and Wynne, Martin (2002) Revisiting the notion of faithfulness in discourse presentation using a corpus approach. Language and Literature 11/4, 325-355. Sinclair, John McH. 1988. Mirror for the text. Journal of English and Foreign Languages 1, 15-44. Smirnova, Alla V. (2009) Reported speech as an element of argumentative newspaper discourse. Discourse and Communication 3/1, 79-103. Sternberg, Meir (1982) Point of view and the indirections of direct speech. Language and Style 15/2, 67-117. Sternberg, Meir (1991) How indirect discourse means. In Roger D. Sell (Ed.), Literary Pragmatics. London: Routledge. 62-93. Thomas, Jenny (1995) Meaning in Interaction: An Introduction to Pragmatics. London: Longman. Thompson, Elizabeth A. and White, Peter. R.R. (Eds.) (2008) Communicating Conflict: Multilingual Case Studies of the News Media. London: Continuum. Ungerer, Friedrich (2000) News stories and news events – a changing relationship. In Friedrich Ungerer (Ed.), English Media Texts Past and Present. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 177-195. —. (2002) When news stories are no longer just stories: The emergence of the top-down structure in news reports in English newspapers. In

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Andreas Fischer, Gunnel Tottie and Hans M. Lehmann (Eds.), Text Types and Corpora: Studies in Honour of Udo Fries. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. 105-122. Urbanová, Zuzana (2013) The Function of Direct Forms of Presentation in the Generic Structure of Newspaper Reports (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Charles University. Waugh, Linda R. (1995) Reported speech in journalistic discourse: The relation of function and text. Text 15(1), 129-173. White, Peter R. R. (1997) Death, disruption and the moral order: The narrative impulse in mass-media ‘hard news’ reporting.” In Frances Christie and James R. Martin (Eds.), Genre and Institutions: Social Processes in the Workplace and School. London: Continuum. 101-133. —. (1998) Telling Media Tales: The News Story as Rhetoric (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Sydney. —. (2000) Media objectivity and the rhetoric of news story structure. In Eija Ventola, (Ed.), Discourse and Community: Doing Functional Linguistics. TĦbingen: Gunter Nar Verlag. 379-397. —. (2003) News as history – your daily gossip. In Ruth Wodak and James R. Martin (Eds.), Re-Reading the Past: Critical and Functional Perspectives on Time and Value. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 61-89. White, Peter R. R. and Thompson, Elizabeth A. (2008) The news story as rhetoric: Linguistic approaches to the analysis of journalistic discourse. In Elizabeth A. Thompson and Peter R.R. White (Eds.), Communicating Conflict: Multilingual Case Studies of the News Media. London: Continuum. 1-23.

CHAPTER TWO SELF-REFERENCE IN POLITICAL SPEECHES FROM ABOVE LENKA KOPEýKOVÁ

Abstract This paper adopts a cross-cultural perspective to explore interpersonal relations in the genre of political speeches from above. The corpus, which is analyzed within a critical discourse analysis framework, contains political speeches delivered by the Czech and British prime ministers, professional politicians in power, who used this genre to present their policies to the general public as well as the media with the aim of persuading them about their future plans for government policy. The British prime ministers appear to emphasize personal involvement and express higher ambitions and greater confidence; they emphasize collective work, collective agency and unity of the government, and they are not afraid of taking political responsibility. The Czech prime ministers also often avoid impersonality, in order to come closer to the citizens. They seem to be less certain about their positions and power, and express lower confidence – which, however, might be connected with the convention of higher modesty. They sometimes depersonalize the presented actions and promises, while shifting responsibility to the institution, although this seems to signal an emphasis on collective responsibility and formality in some of the texts. Specific interpersonal features of the prime ministers’ self-presentations appear to stem from the distinctions between the institution of prime minister in the respective countries.

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1. Introduction This paper explores the construction of interpersonal relations in one genre of political discourse – political speeches from above. In the introduction I describe the political contexts of the respective countries, which need to be taken into account when analyzing the institution of prime minister. I then outline the characteristics of this genre and present the theoretical and methodological framework for the study, which is based on a corpus consisting of fifteen political speeches, in Czech and in English, delivered by the Czech and British prime ministers. I describe the analyzed corpus of speeches, and then I present the results of the analysis. First I analyze referential expressions, examining their distinct forms occurring in the texts. Then I investigate the intersubjective positioning of the prime ministers towards their audiences, taking into account the cooccurrence of the referential expressions and particular communicative purposes as well as the modality of the verbs. The analysis applies the approach of critical discourse analysis as proposed by Norman Fairclough (1989, 2012). In view of Fairclough’s attitude, the question addressed by this paper is this: what relational value do grammatical features, particularly pronouns and other referential expressions and modality, have? At the same time, the political speeches from above are investigated as a specific communicative genre with conventionalized patterns. The present paper examines the conventions of the genre focusing on the speakers’ self-reference and its patterns of use throughout the text. In the first half of the twentieth century the citizens of Western and Central European democracies chose their political representatives according to their political programmes. The mass parties (in pre-war Czechoslovakia these included the left-wing social democrats, the rightwing Christian democrats and several others) drew on the natural social differences between people and targeted citizens’ private needs when organizing social and leisure activities for them, providing a social support system by means of health care insurance, etc. so that the electorate had close social links with their party. As Western people’s living standards have improved after the Second World War, the socio-economic roles of the mass parties have been taken over by the modern state. More particularly, Kirchheimer argues that the loosening of the the connection between the mass parties and their electorate has been caused by the development of social security systems and the secularization of Western societies, which resulted in the disappearance of class and religious differences between people (Kirchheimer 1966). Klíma also argues that

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with the proliferation of the mass media and education, people have gained easy access to information, which has also been a cause of their personal disassociation from mass parties (Klíma 1998: 24-25). Over the decades the situation has thus changed fundamentally. Although there still exist parties which present themselves in terms of clear ideologies, such as the Christian and Democratic Union – Czechoslovak People’s Party in the Czech Republic or Green parties in various countries, most voters choose catch-all parties (the Czech political movement ANO [“ano” means “yes” in Czech], without any clear preelection programme or ideology, is a typical example) which seek immediate electoral success and use persuasive strategies to gain votes regardless of the social status of their voters. The parties seem to use different manipulative strategies, which can be traced in the political speeches, to address individual voters. Edelmann claims that politicians attempt to manipulate the electorate in order that the citizens believe that a) the electorate can decisively influence political activities, b) there are enemies who can endanger this process, c) the politicians act in favour of the citizen and have their own individual concerns and needs which are identical with those of the citizen, d) the politicians and the citizens hold identical opinions which unite them (Edelmann 1990: 98 in Kraus 2003: 21). This study focuses particularly on the manipulations listed as c) and d), as they are frequently manifested in the use of the inclusive “we” form in the language of political speeches, conveying the impression of solidarity and unity between the politician and the electorate. I will now describe and compare the political systems of the United Kingdom1 and the Czech Republic2 in order to draw on a knowledge of this context in the critical discourse analysis of the institutions of the prime minister in the respective countries. Although both countries have parliamentary democracies, it is the British prime minister who holds a much stronger political position than his/her Czech counterpart. The reason for this is that there are certain differences between the political systems of the countries. The distinctions in the prime ministers’ power seem to be reflected in their choice of linguistic means used for selfpresentation. The British system is termed premier parliamentarism. It took a very long time to develop, gradually transferring the executive power from the monarch to the prime minister, who represents the parliamentary majority. 1 2

For more details on the British political system see Leach 2011, Watts 2012. For more details on the Czech political system see Bureš 2012, Kubát 2013.

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The traditional British first-past-the-post electoral system usually produces a clear majority in the House of Commons, which is then relatively easily controlled by the prime minister, who is the leader of the winning political party. The majority of the government is closely connected with the majority in the House of Commons as the ministers are always members of parliament. The uncodified British constitution enables the government “to act in any way it pleases as long as it maintains majority control of the House of Commons” (Heywood 2002: 295). The House of Commons does not give a vote of confidence to the new prime minister; it can only give a vote of no-confidence to the PM. The Czech political system has been created relatively recently according to a rigidly codified constitution with a complex system of checks and balances and hardly any space for unwritten constitutional conventions. The constitution does not define who can hold the post of prime minister. The Czech prime minister is appointed by the president on the basis of constitutional convention; the PM is usually the leader of the party which won the election, which is held according to the proportional electoral system, or he/she is the head of the coalition which holds a majority in the Chamber of Deputies. There are exceptions to such appointments of the prime minister. An unwritten constitutional convention allows the appointment of a caretaker prime minister, who can be either selected on the basis of negotiation and agreement between the parties (e.g. the caretaker prime minister Fischer), or who can be simply appointed by the president according to the president’s will (e.g. the caretaker prime ministers Tošovský or Rusnok). The designated prime minister forms a government, which is then formally appointed by the president; the PM then addresses the Deputies (Members of Parliament) in order to ask them to give the new government a vote of confidence. This is usually prenegotiated, and the result is often known before the vote takes place. The Czech prime minister’s power is thus limited by several factors stemming from the Czech political system: frequent coalition or even minority governments; the prominent role of the president in the formation of the government; the Senate, which due to the different electoral system often has a different majority party; the constitution, which is not easy to amend; and the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic, which “has jurisdiction to annul statutes or individual provisions thereof if they are in conflict with the constitutional order;…” (Ústavní soud). Political speeches are one monologic genre of “political discourse from above” (Fetzer, Lauerbach 2007: 9), which belongs to institutional discourse, media discourse and mediated discourse (Fetzer, Lauerbach 2007: 14). Here I focus on the first speeches delivered by professional

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politicians at the beginning of their terms as prime ministers. The communicative purpose of the speeches is to introduce the government’s policy and the strategies which are to be pursued by the government coming into office. Taking into account this specific communicative purpose, I have regarded this type of political speech from above as a subgenre with its own specific conventions. In the Czech context, this subgenre is connected with the genre of “Programové prohlášení vlády” [policy statement from the government of the Czech Republic], which is usually read out during the third step leading to the formation of the government – known as “Žádost vlády o vyslovení dĤvČry” [the government’s request of the Chamber of Deputies for a vote of confidence]; the name of this step in the process gives its name to the speech delivered by the prime minister before the vote of confidence takes place. The social context in which the political speeches from above were delivered determines the speakers’ choice of linguistic means, involving both the conventions of the genre as well as the individual strategies of respective prime ministers. Some aspects of the context concerning the institution of the prime minister within the Czech and British political systems have already been described in the preceding paragraphs. The technical conditions for the delivery of the speeches can be described as follows: the political speeches from above take place within institutional settings with their own rules and constraints, and they are delivered by one person, to a diverse audience, and multimodally. They are primarily intended to be delivered orally, but they are written before and transcribed after their delivery. The settings of the speeches are as follows: the Czech political speeches were delivered by the Czech prime ministers at the Chamber of Deputies in the Parliament of the Czech Republic. They address the Deputies and persuade them to vote for the government and give it a vote of confidence, as has already been mentioned above. Moreover, the Czech speeches are broadcast by the media, so they also reach the general public. The analyzed English speeches are delivered in the House of Commons, but also in other settings which seem to have been carefully selected by the politicians in order to reinforce their persuasive communicative purposes. The properties that are typical of written communication reflected in this genre are: tight organization of the text, more complex syntactic structures, less spontaneity, less immediacy, a certain distance from the receiver of the text, availability in an online transcript. The orality of the political speeches is reflected in their linear character; the speeches take place within a certain time span, and the hearers can only refer to the

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recorded or written form of the original delivered speech. Rhetorical devices are used. The mode of the political speeches only allows the communication in one direction, from the speaker to the receiver at the moment of their delivery. The speeches are delivered to the physically present audience in a faceto-face mode as well as being transmitted to viewers and hearers via the media, television and the internet, where its video recordings and transcripts of the speeches are available for repeated watching and reading. They are thus transmitted in a multimodal way, and are able to reach wide and physically distant audiences. All the selected speeches attracted media attention and were broadcast on television or published in major national newspapers or online, on the official websites of the respective institutions. The political speeches presuppose the existence of politics, the phenomenon of the state and the institution of prime minister and the electorate. At the same time, Chilton claims that “the doing of politics is predominantly constituted in language” (Chilton 2004: 6). Political speeches thus do not only exist to present professional politicians’ opinions, policies, strategies and ideas; they are primarily delivered to make an impression on the audience and to influence them. All the selected speeches were major speeches delivered by the respective prime ministers of the two countries to introduce new policies and strategies. In addition to the presentation of policies, the Czech prime ministers address the Members of Parliament in order to ask them to give the new government a vote of confidence. This step is required by the Constitution of the Czech Republic. In reality the necessary votes are often negotiated between the political parties before the speech is delivered, so its persuasive character with the aim of influencing the vote is formal. The receivers of the message form two types of audience: first-frame participants and second-frame participants (Fetzer, Lauerbach 2007: 16). Both the types are reflected in the speeches linguistically. They are referred to in the texts by means of referential expressions, including personal pronouns. The interpersonal relationships concerning the representation of the receivers in the speeches will not be the object of this study. However, the receivers must be taken into account if the representation of the speakers and their intersubjective positioning is to be examined. Firstly, there are the first-frame participants (Fetzer, Lauerbach 2007: 16) in the communicative situation: the politicians or other professionals, such as representatives of organizations, etc., who are physically present in the room when the speech is delivered. Secondly, there are citizens of the

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country, who are the second-frame participants, i.e. people who watch the speeches on television, watch them as videos or read them transcribed online or in the newspapers, who form the majority of the electorate and who remain anonymous. Despite the anonymity of most of the hearers, it is the institution of the government that implies the relationship between them and the senders of the message. The politicians are only elected for a particular term, and need the electorate’s support if they intend to continue their work in office. This places them in an inferior position to the electorate, while at the same time they have a certain degree of political power. Unlike the speakers, the producers of the texts often remain more or less anonymous. The prime ministers may not be the direct authors of the speeches, even though they speak on behalf of the government and present the ideas in the speeches as representing both themselves and their cabinets. JiĜí Kraus describes the typical features of the genre of Czech political speeches before and after the Velvet Revolution of 1989 (Kraus 2003: 1321). While the political speeches of the Communist era were carefully prepared, and their style was typical of written communication and thus highly formal, the post-revolution speeches displayed a more rhetorical style; they were pervaded by non-standard language, as their ambition was often to create an impression of familiarity between the speaker and the audience. Different professionals from all walks of life entered Czech politics in the early 1990s, and they brought along their own unique communication styles, e.g. that of Václav Havel. Kraus writes about the introduction of the rhetorical-persuasive style into political speeches in this era (Kraus 2003: 13-14). At the same time he adds that this trend faced criticism and provoked negative responses from the audience, as the tradition of Czech political discourse had been anti-rhetorical since the era of T. G. Masaryk, the first Czechoslovak president, who was a Professor of Philosophy and used an academic style when writing his speeches (Kraus 2003: 16). Nevertheless, the great variety of the individual styles in Czech political discourse is still obvious even in the political speeches which were the subject of the present study. M. A. K. Halliday argues that one of the functions of all human languages is to express the roles of the participants in the communication and to impose these roles on others. This forms a foundation of his theory which holds that there exist three situational determinants of text: field or “what is going on”, tenor or “who are taking part”, and mode or “how are the meanings exchanged” (Halliday 1978: 189). These situational determinants are actually social factors which influence the speaker’s choice of language. This study focuses on the tenor. I attempt to explore

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the interpersonal relations among the participants, more particularly the roles which the prime ministers assume and impose on the audience. Social deixis “encodes the social identities of participants,… or the social relationship between them or between one of them and persons and entities referred to.” (Levinson 1983: 89). I have analyzed the way in which politicians use certain referential expressions, including social deixis, to express distinct social meanings – meanings which sociolinguists view in terms of social dimensions. The social dimensions include the solidarity–social distance scale, status scale, formality scale and referential and affective functional scales (Holmes 2001: 9). As the present paper examines self-referential expressions in political speeches, the status scale is only relevant to this study through the formality with which it is often linked (Holmes 2001: 10). The political speeches of the analyzed genre perform mainly referential functions; they convey facts (Holmes 2001: 10). More relevant here are the solidarity–social distance scale and the formality scale. The solidarity–social distance scale is used when we need to express “how well we know someone” (Holmes 2001: 9). Politicians might want to manipulate their audiences through the appropriate choice of language, e.g. by the use of inclusive “we” expressing solidarity, as has been mentioned above, towards the feeling that they and their electorate are in a close relationship, that they belong to one community and face identical problems, etc. On the other hand, the prime minister may want to maintain a social distance between himself/herself and the institutional body over which he/she presides, and may therefore use the expression “government”, which includes him/her only implicitly. The formality scale reflects the social setting, but also social relationships between the participants. While certain prime ministers frequently refer to themselves by means of the first person singular, creating and emphasizing their image as an individual person, others strictly use the impersonal reference “government” and hardly mention themselves as individuals at all. The formality of the text is often intertwined with solidarity and status (Holmes 2001: 10); high solidarity and equal status frequently correlate with informality. The choice of informal language may thus produce an impression of solidarity with the audience as well as blurring differences in status, and this in turn may appeal to certain audiences. The concept of face has frequently been used in studies of political discourse. Goffman defined face as “… the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact. Face is an image of self delineated in terms of

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approved social attributes – albeit an image that others may share, as when a person makes a good showing for his profession or religion by making a good showing for himself.” (Goffman 1967: 5). However, Goffman analyzed face and facework mainly in direct social interaction. The facework present in the genre of political speeches analyzed in the present article concerns both the individual face of the prime minister and the collective face of the government. As the genre has a monologic character, both types of facework require references to the prime minister and his government. The prime ministers give the speech in order to maintain and defend positive face, and also to protect negative face (for definitions of the faces see Brown and Levinson 1987: 60-63). Bull and Fetzer’s analysis of political speeches has revealed that “Self references may be performed throughout a speech either explicitly or implicitly, to celebrate a speaker’s actions, intentions, thoughts and/or feelings… However, they may also protect negative face by avoiding awkward commitments, and take the opportunity for face aggravation, by attacking their political opponents.” (Bull and Fetzer 2010: 29-30). The specific genre analyzed here prioritizes the defence of positive face, as the aim of the prime ministers is to gain the trust of the general public (and, in the case of the Czech prime ministers, to win votes).

2. Analysis of the self-referential expressions The sub-genre of political speeches from above serves certain specific communicative purposes and thus consists of several moves, which will be described in the following section alongside the analysis of the interpersonal relations. Before the presentation of the analysis itself, I will introduce the self-referential forms and their referential functions that occur in the English and Czech texts. First I will describe the material that has been explored. The analyzed corpus of political speeches from above contains fifteen speeches delivered by the Czech and British prime ministers between 1991 and 2014. The Czech texts of the corpus contain altogether 42,318 words in eleven speeches delivered by eleven Czech prime ministers, listed chronologically as follows: Václav Klaus (7,709 words), Josef Tošovský (2,250 words), Miloš Zeman (2,806 words), Vladimír Špidla (13,317 words), Stanislav Gross (7,025 words), JiĜí Paroubek (2,989 words), Mirek Topolánek (1,132 words), Jan Fischer (1,233 words), Petr Neþas (1,842 words), JiĜí Rusnok (4,696 words) and Bohuslav Sobotka (5,028 words). The English texts of the corpus consist of 10,755 words in four speeches delivered by four British prime ministers, listed chronologically as

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follows: John Major (2,447 words), Tony Blair (2,457 words), Gordon Brown (2656 words) and David Cameron (3,205 words). It must be added that Klaus and Topolánek have each served in two electoral terms as prime ministers, and Blair has served in three. I decided to incorporate only one speech by each of them, though I am aware that observations made about more speeches of this specific genre delivered by one person may reveal interesting results. The speakers, the prime ministers, refer to themselves in the speeches by means of several referential expressions. The present paper focuses on the personal and possessive pronouns, more particularly on the first person singular and plural forms of personal pronouns and the first person plural possessive pronoun. These belong among social deictic words, with the function of identifying reality by referring to it. Further, the study also takes into account the third person reference expressed by the nouns “government” or “vláda”, referring to the prime minister and his cabinet of ministers. These forms differ in the two languages due to the distinct types of language system; however, in the texts the distinct forms seem to perform identical functions. While the more analytical English language uses the personal pronoun I to indicate that the action spoken about is related to the speaker, the more inflected Czech language employs multifunctional verb suffixes, which differ in verbs belonging to different verb conjugation patterns and for distinct genders (compare e.g. English I turn to… and its Czech equivalent Obracím se na…) (Štícha 2013: 392). At the same time, the Czech personal pronoun must be present in the sentence a) if it refers to Rheme (Firbas 1992: 14-16) (e.g. To jsem byl já.= It was me.), b) if the referent is contrasted with another (Já tohleto neþtu. = I don’t read this.), or c) if the past tense of the first person singular is expressed by means of ellipsis of the auxiliary být (e.g. Já to udČlal. = I did it.); further, it may be used for emphasis d) of the person as Theme (Firbas 1992: 14-16) of the sentence (Já nevím, kam se podČl. = I don’t know where he disappeared.), or e) of the verb at the end of the sentence with the function of Rheme (Firbas 1992: 14-16) (Poþkejte, já to udČlám. = Wait, I will do it.). The additional use of the first person singular pronoun may convey expressivity or colloquial character (Štícha 2013: 392-393). Although all the above-listed examples contain the first person singular pronoun I, the same also applies for the first person plural we. The English and Czech forms expressing reference presented under (1) indicate reference to the prime minister as the speaker who is present on the spot and who carries out the act of delivering the speech:

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(1a) Fifthly, I turn to local authorities. Many of the measures that I have already outlined will help to improve their performance. (Major, 22 July 1991) (1b) ChtČl bych v tuto chvíli hovoĜit pouze o nČkterých hlavních rysech a chtČl bych se také zamČĜit na nČkteré prĤĜezové priority, které… (Gross, 24 August 2004) [I would like to speak about only several main features, and I would like to focus on certain priorities that…] (my translation)

Further, the prime ministers frequently represent themselves in the text as members of a group. In general, in the speeches of the analyzed corpus such groups are of two types: the first involves the government or the cabinet, including the prime minister as its head, and the second group consists of the citizens of the country including the prime minister as one of the citizens. The form with the first function is the exclusive “we”, as it excludes the hearers of the message. It is illustrated in (2a) and (2b). The form with the second function is the inclusive “we”, as it includes the hearers. It is illustrated in (2c) and (2d), where the linguistic forms, possessive pronouns, refer to the abstract but also concrete ownership of the 1st person plural referents. Again, an identical function is expressed in both languages with different forms; compare examples (2a) and (2b). The more analytical English language expresses the person of the verb with a 1st person plural pronoun, while the more inflected Czech language uses verb suffixes. x 1st person non-singular self-reference with the function of referring to the prime minister as a member of a larger group (2a) For road users, we will tackle the nuisance caused by road repairs.” (Major, 22 July, 1991) (2b) Považujeme za nutné hloubČji diverzifikovat vztahy k našim budoucím partnerĤm v Evropské unii…” (Zeman, 18 August 1998) [We regard deeper diversification of our relations with future EU partners as necessary.] (my translation) (2c) our economy, our unique potential in science, our infrastructure, our skills, our education and welfare systems, our benefit, our economic cycle, our interest rates, our public finances, our children, our friends round the world, our other partners in the IMF, our EU partners, our Presidency, our friends outside Europe, our country, … (Corpus) (2d) naše spoleþnost, naše veĜejnost, naše integrace, naše krajany, naši sousedé, naše zájmy, naše ekonomika, naše zemČ, naše ztráty, náš

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Chapter Two prĤmysl, naše firmy, naše podniky, naše exporty, naše zemČdČlství, naše pracovnČprávní zákonodárství, naše ekologické problémy, naše politické a kulturní vyspČlost, naše základní zájmy, náš vznik, naše integraþní snahy, naše pĜistoupení do NATO, naše zaþlenČní do evropských struktur, … [our society, our public, our integration, our compatriots, our neighbours, our interests, our economy, our country, our losses, our industry, our firms, our enterprises, our exports, our agriculture, our labour legislature, our ecological problems, our political and cultural maturity, our fundamental interests, our origination, our attempts to integrate, our access to NATO, our integration into European structures, … ] (Corpus) (my translation)

The prime ministers speak for and present the policy and strategies of their government. In addition to using exclusive “we”, they frequently refer to themselves as members of the government, using the expression government in English or vláda in Czech. Such reference is used with an obvious shift in intersubjective positioning, which will be commented upon below. x 3rd person government self-reference with the function of referring to the prime minister as a member of the government (3a) Have no doubt: this Government will not be deflected by short-term considerations. (Blair, 9 January 1998) (3b) Vláda bude podporovat vytváĜení komunitních center a na nČ navazujících sociálních programĤ… (Špidla, 6 August 2002) [the government will support community centres and related social programmes…] (my translation)

3. Interpersonal relations in political speeches from above The personal and possessive pronouns, nouns and verb suffixes referring to the prime ministers were analyzed both in qualitative and quantitative terms. At the same time, the co-occurrence of the particular referential expressions and specific verbs and modality was observed and interpreted. The communicative purposes associated with these linguistic means have also been taken into account.

3.1 The first person singular reference The first person singular self-referential expressions, the pronoun I in the English texts and the pronoun já and (more frequently) verb suffixes indicating the first person singular in the Czech texts, have revealed the

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following results. This type of reference basically co-occurred in both the English and Czech texts with three distinct functions: 1) establishing the contact between the speaker and the first-frame audience 2) speaker positions himself as expert 3) speaker positions himself as a doer of politics taking responsibility 3.1.1 Establishing the contact between the speaker and first-frame audience The first function appeared when the speakers used the first person singular reference to deal with formalities at the beginning – see (4a) and (4b), or at the end – see (6a) and (6b), of their speeches, and at certain points when structuring the speeches – see (5a) and (5b). Such utterances contained discourse (metadiscourse) verbs, primarily served to create coherence in the texts, and often occurred as formal phrases, conventionalized within this genre of institutional discourse. When occurring at the beginning of the speeches, their communicative purpose was to explain what sort of speech the speaker intended to deliver, and what the aim or topic of the speech was – see (4a), (4b) or (4c). The verbs co-occurring with the respective referential expressions then usually supported the structure of the text and/or explicitly indicated the illocutionary force of the particular speech act, thus expressing the speaker’s intention, e.g. I am going to address, I wish to make a statement, I am introducing, I shall deal with, what I propose today, abych pĜednesl, abych pĜed vás pĜedstoupil s návrhem, abyste mi dovolili soustĜedit se, nehodlám zde detailnČ þíst, pĜejdu rovnou k tomu nejdĤležitČjšímu, nejprve zopakuji, dnes pĜicházím požádat o dĤvČru, První vČcí, kterou chci jasnČ definovat, … (Corpus) [to present, to present a proposal here, let me focus on, I do not intend to read in detail, I move on to the crucial point, I first repeat, today I come to ask you for a vote of confidence, the first point I would like to define clearly, …] (my translation). The use of the first person singular helped to establish the direct personal contact between the speaker and the audience. This type of reference was used by most of the prime ministers apart from the Czech caretaker prime minister Josef Tošovský, who obviously avoids using the first person singular in an attempt to sound impersonal and formal, as well as to deny his responsibility – due to his role as a caretaker prime minister entrusted with ensuring the continuity of government and maintaining the stability of the country before a new government is elected.

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The examples (5a) and (5b) illustrate the use of the first person singular, which frequently co-occurs with text connectors and discourse verbs, thus maintaining coherence in the texts. From an interpersonal perspective, the prime minister emphasizes his personal involvement as a speaker and maintains personal contact with the audience, making the speech sound less formal. All the British prime ministers seem to be using the first person singular reference in this type of function, while Rusnok, Neþas, Paroubek, Topolánek and Klaus do not use it at all in the Czech speeches – making them sound less personal and more formal. It is not surprising if we consider their original professions, which include two economists (Rusnok, Klaus), two technicians (Neþas, Topolánek) and one professional manager (Paroubek). (5a) Fourthly, I move on to transport. (Major, 22 July 1991) (5b) Když jsem hovoĜil o investicích, chci také krátce mluvit o exportu. (Sobotka, 18 February 2014) [After I spoke about investments, I would like to comment on export too.] (my translation)

The examples (6a), (6b) and (6c) illustrate the use of the first person singular which concludes the speeches. They contain conventional phrases which most of the speakers use to conclude the speeches belonging to the analyzed sub-genre. In the Czech texts, which belong to a culturally specific genre within institutional discourse, different versions of the phrase asking the MPs for a vote of confidence are repeated in all but one speech – see (6c), the speech delivered by JiĜí Paroubek, who seems to present himself informally already at the beginning of the speech, and who

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obviously regards sticking to this convention as unnecessary. Again, the first person singular forms in connection with particular verbs reinforce the coherence of the texts, making the speech easier for the audience to follow while at the same time expressing the prime ministers’ personal involvement. The English speeches in the corpus have been carefully selected with particular attention paid to their communicative functions in order to make it possible to compare them cross-culturally. Therefore, as has been stated above, all the British speeches present the government’s policy and the strategies after the government took office. However, they still do not belong to an identical sub-genre as that of the Czech speeches, because of the distinction between the Czech and British institutions of government and prime ministers. This institutional distinction is reflected in the genre; the British prime ministers do not have to ask the MPs for a vote of confidence, although they also conclude the speeches with a conventional phrase, “I commend the proposals to the House” when they deliver it in the House of Commons – see (6b). At the same time all the British prime ministers use the first person singular in a concluding utterance expressing their personal will and involvement with the policy they are trying to “sell” to the audience – see (6a) and the first sentence in (6b). Example (6a) illustrates the self-presentation of the politician as a person in power who is capable of changing the country and is clearly aware of this. (6a) I want Britain to be a model others turn to. Not just in a competitive sense. But in partnership. Working with our friends round the world, with you in Japan, to make us all more prosperous, more secure and better able to face the challenges in front of us. (Blair, 9 January 1998) (6b) I want the people of this country to have services in which they as citizens can be confident and in which public servants themselves can take pride. I commend the proposals to the House. (Major, 22 July 1991) (6c) Vážené poslankynČ, vážení poslanci, dovolte mi, abych vás jménem vlády požádal o dĤvČru této koaliþní vládČ vzniklé z voleb v roce 2002. DČkuji vám. (Špidla, 6 August 2002) [Dear MPs, let me ask you on behalf of the government for a vote of confidence in this coalition government which emerged from the 2002 election. Thank you.] (my translation)

3.1.2 Speaker positions himself as expert The first person singular form was also occasionally used in the texts of the speeches of the corpus when the speaker intended to position himself as expert – see (7a) and (7b). In the Czech texts such sentences

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contain the personal pronoun já, or even the adverb osobnČ [personally], which place emphasis on the speaker’s opinion and expert authority. In both the parts of the corpus such reference was connected with mental process verbs, e.g. I passionately believe…, I do not believe…, I want us to be an historic government…, I want to explain…, I hope…, I am confident…, I think it right…, I am glad to see…, I am determined…, já si nemyslím, že…, já chci Ĝíci, že… já si myslím, že…, já jsem pĜesvČdþen, že…, já osobnČ považuji za mnohem zásadnČjší…, já vČĜím… (Corpus) [I do not think that…, I want to say…, I think…, I am convinced that…, I personally regard as crucial…, I believe…] (my translation). The first person singular form was used with the expert positioning function in the speeches by Blair, Brown and Cameron in the British part of the corpus, while it was used only by Zeman, Neþas and Sobotka in the Czech part. The validity of the quantitative results is limited because of the size of the corpus. Nevertheless, they show that this expert positioning was present in 75% of the British speeches and only 27% of the Czech speeches. The higher occurrence of expert positioning in the British speeches might be interpreted as an expression of self-confidence and ambition, as well as a demonstration of power, while the Czech prime ministers obviously realize their weaker positions and appear more modest. The cross-cultural distinctions appear to stem from the differences in the institutions of the prime minister in the respective countries (outlined above). (7a) … I believe a big part of the previous Government’s economic failure was their endless interference. (Cameron, 28 May 2010) (7b) Já osobnČ považuji za mnohem zásadnČjší strukturální reformy. (Neþas, 10 August 2010) [I personally regard structural reforms as crucial.] (my translation)

3.1.3 Speaker positions himself as a doer of politics taking responsibility The first person singular form also occurs in the body of the texts of the speeches, when the speakers explain their governments’ strategies, usually making promises using direct expressions for promising, such as will (8a) or promising indirectly with modal verbs, e.g. I want, chci, [I want] see (8b) and (8c), or declarative sentences. These forms co-occur with promises, therefore the use of the first person singular seems to contribute to expressing the politicians’ will to take personal responsibility for the actions of their governments – see examples (8a) and (8b). This

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form of promising occurs in all the British speeches except John Major’s, and in the speeches by Klaus, Tošovský, Špidla, Rusnok, and Neþas. Making political promises directly in the first person singular indicates taking responsibility. The reverse may signal an attempt to shift responsibility, but at the same time it may signal a degree of formality and a lack of a familiarity which may be regarded as inappropriate by the speaker. Tošovský and Rusnok, the caretaker prime ministers, thus probably avoid expressing direct personal responsibility and involvement and display a formality that is typical of their profession (as economists), while Klaus, Špidla and Neþas express formality rather than shifting responsibility. This may also be due to their original professions (Klaus was an economist, Špidla was a historian and Neþas was a plasma physicist) as well as their personal communicative styles. The British politicians obviously display more power and self-confidence by means of these forms. The Czech politicians also more frequently make less direct promises; this might be regarded as shifting responsibility, and it makes them look weak, but at the same time modest. They would look “too ambitious” in the Czech context if they used direct, self-confident promises (comment by Petr Kopecký), so this appears to be something linked with the conventions of the genre itself. Nevertheless, the distinctions between the Czech and British use of the first person singular seem again to stem from the display of the power the respective prime ministers hold. (8a) I will work with my European partners to push forwards with Free Trade Agreements between the EU and its key trading partners. (Cameron, 28 May 2010) (8b) I want to enhance the essential features of our potential for the future: better standards in education; better opportunities for training and lifelong learning; exploiting our unique potential in science; improving our infrastructure. (Blair, 9 January 1998) (8c) Chci, aby v ýeské republice – a vČĜím, že to je cílem nás všech – bylo stále ménČ lidí, kteĜí jsou v sociální tísni, aby se ze zamČstnancĤ a živnostníkĤ mohla vytváĜet poþetná stĜední tĜída… (Gross, 24 August 2004) [I want there to be fewer socially vulnerable people in the Czech Republic and I hope it is a wish of all of us, and I want employees and entrepreneurs to make up a sizeable middle class…] (my translation)

3.2 The first person non-singular reference The first person non-singular reference occurs as pronominal “we” forms in the English speeches, whose function is comparable to the first

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person plural verb suffixes in the Czech part of the corpus. I decided to use the term “we” in this paper even for the Czech forms with the abovementioned referential function, despite the fact that the function is expressed in the Czech system by verb suffixes. These grammatical forms have two frequent referential functions in both the parts of the corpus: 1) 2)

Exclusive “we” Inclusive “we”.

As Fetzer claims: “…politicians use personal pronouns to good effect: for example, to accept, deny or distance themselves from responsibility for political action; to encourage solidarity; to designate and identify both supporters and enemies…” (Fetzer 2014: 332). The following paragraphs attempt to explore some of these interpersonal meanings in the Czech and British speeches. 3.2.1 Exclusive “we” Essentially, exclusive “we” forms refer to the speaker and the government. Such reference may imply several interpersonal meanings. The prime minister positions himself as someone who is the head of the government – a group of ministers pursuing the government’s policy unanimously. In this way, emphasis is placed on collective agency and the work of the government rather than on the individual responsibility of the prime minister. At the same time, this type of reference may imply shifting the prime minister’s individual responsibility and hiding it in the group identity. From the speech act perspective, this type of reference frequently cooccurs with the communicative function of commissives. In both parts of the corpus it expresses the communicative purpose of promising the electorate that the government will pursue a certain policy and strategies to the advantage of the citizens. The promises obviously should enhance the politicians’ positive face. The promises appear with verbs implying distinct degrees of indirectness of the promise. The more direct a speech act the promise is, the stronger an impression it makes on the audience, and the politicians thus look more self-confident, ambitious and determined as well as trustworthy, which may win them votes, but also aware of the power which is derived from their position – see (9a) and (9b). At the same time, indirect promises might be interpreted as signals of modesty, an absence of undue ambition, but also a lack of institutional power to carry out reforms – see (10a) and (10b). The British speeches in

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the corpus contain more direct promises than the Czech speeches, though all of them also contain examples of less direct promising. This implies a more direct attitude among the British politicians, a stronger will to take responsibility, while the Czech prime ministers seem to imply more modesty and a possible shifting of responsibility. The forms expressing distinct degrees of directness of promises are the following: 1) Strong, direct promise expressed by means of future tenses: English – “will+bare infinitive” expressing promise, such as we will ensure…, we will promote…, we will also extend…, we will also set up…, etc. (Major, 22 July 1991), Czech – “budeme+infinitive” or future tense of perfective verbs, e.g. nenecháme se zaskoþit…, vytvoĜíme…, zajistíme, budeme vyhodnocovat…, podpoĜíme…, nebudeme se smiĜovat…, etc. (Corpus) [we will not be surprised…, we will create…, we will ensure…, we will evaluate…, we will support…, we will not come to terms with…] (my translation) 2) Strong but less direct promise expressed with modals of necessity: English – we want to ensure (Corpus), Czech – chceme vstoupit…, budeme schopni spolupracovat…, (Corpus) [we want to access…, we will be able to cooperate…] (my translation) 3) Relatively vague promises expressed with cognitive verbs: English – we believe…, we are particularly concerned at…, we are determined that…, we expect to set out…, (Corpus) Czech – považujeme…, víme…, jsme si vČdomi…, vycházíme… (Corpus) [we consider…, we know…, we are aware…, our opinion results from…] (my translation) (9a) For road users, we will tackle the nuisance caused by road repairs. (Major, 22 July, 1991) (9b) Nebudeme se však podílet na socializujících praktikách státních intervencí, které by … (Klaus, 13 July 1992) [We will not participate in the socialistic practices of state interventions that…] (my translation) (10a) Here, too, we believe that further competition would benefit the public. (Major, 22 July 1991) (10b) Za hlavní úkoly vlády považujeme tato opatĜení: reformovat veĜejné finance…. (Neþas, 10 August 2010) [We regard these measures as the main tasks: public finance reforms…] (my translation)

Concerning the communicative purpose of promising, the exclusive “we” form competes with the third person expressions government (11a)

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and vláda (11b), where the “we” form makes the text sound more personal, and emphasizes the agency of a group of individual ministers including the prime minister, and their assumption of direct responsibility for the actions of the government. For more comments on the occurrences of the third person forms see section 3.3. (11a) Unlike its predecessor, this Government has made it clear there is no insuperable constitutional barrier to our joining. (Blair, 9 January 1998) (11b) Vláda zpĜehlední svou dotaþní politiku ochrany životního prostĜedí a bude podporovat rozvoj perspektivních ekologických technologií. (Špidla, 6 August 2002) [The government will make transparent its subsidy policy of environmental protection and will support the development of promising ecological technologies.] (my translation)

Exclusive “we” forms hardly occur in the speeches by Špidla, Tošovský and Fischer, which implies a high degree of formality possibly linked to their original professions. Moreover, Tošovský and Fischer were caretaker prime ministers, who had been given formal responsibility for controlling and running the affairs of the state (meaning that it is natural that they distance themselves from direct responsibility and promising). 3.2.2. Inclusive “we” The inclusive “we” form refers to the prime minister and the electorate/citizens of the country. It appears almost only as a possessive pronominal form “our” and various case forms of its Czech equivalent “náš”. I have decided to refer to the possessive pronominal form as a “we” form, as it coincides in its reference. It has two distinct interpersonal implications: 1) the prime ministers’ solidarity with the electorate, which should, however, manipulate the audience into believing they all have similar interests and obviously win votes – see (12a) and (12b) 2) the unity of the country, shared identity of the prime minister and the citizens, particularly in the context of international relations – see (13a) and (13b), which again emphasizes agreement and solidarity among the citizens of the country, so again it is a type of manipulative technique aiming to enhance the prime minister’s face.

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(12a) our economy, our unique potential in science, our infrastructure, our skills, education and welfare systems, our benefit, our economic cycle, our interest rates, our public finances, our children (Corpus) (12b) naše zemČ, naši spoluobþané, naše souþasné problémy s nezamČstnaností (Corpus) [our country, our co-citizens, our current problems with unemployment] (my translation) (13a) our friends round the world, our other partners in the IMF, our EU partners, our Presidency, our friends outside Europe, our country (Corpus) (13b) našim budoucím partnerĤm, naším úsilím o vstup, svými nejbližšími sousedy, naší zemi (Corpus) [to our future partners, our effort to access, our closest neighbours, our country] (my translation)

The inclusive “we” forms occur more frequently in the speeches by Klaus, Zeman, Gross, Paroubek, Neþas, Sobotka, Blair and Cameron, while they hardly occur in the speeches delivered by Tošovský, Špidla, Topolánek, Fischer and Major. If we again consider their original professions, these results seem to reveal a higher level of formality in the speeches of the latter group.

3.3 Third person positioning The third person referential expressions “government” and “vláda” frequently occur in the political speeches from above to indicate reference to the speaker and his ministers – see (11a) and (11b). The communicative purpose of utterances containing such reference is similar to that of exclusive “we” forms, i.e. it involves promising to do things which will benefit the citizens. The prime minister presents and defends his government’s policy and strategies by means of promising changes. The nouns “government” and “vláda” are thus frequent agents in the speeches. They compete with agentless passive sentences – see example (14) – which are occasionally used in the sentences with an identical communicative purpose. The interpersonal meaning associated with these forms involves a depersonalization of the ministers, including the prime minister; the politicians thus lose their individuality and become an institution. In this way the prime ministers also distance themselves from direct responsibility for their promises, with the responsibility shifted onto an impersonal institution. However, the use of the third person referential expressions seems also to be a matter of high formality. There are speeches where this form prevails, while some speeches have zero occurrence of exclusive “we” forms, as has been commented upon in the previous section. Considering the individual prime ministers who

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frequently avoid using exclusive “we” and replace it with the third person “government” reference, I can conclude that at least in the cases of Špidla and Major this is a matter of formality, while in the cases of Tošovský and Fischer it is, in addition to their highly formal personal communicative style, connected with their caretaker role, in which they do not have to persuade the electorate, and thus do not intend to position themselves closer to the citizen and sound personal. In general, the third person “government” reference occurs much more frequently in the Czech speeches, while the British speakers avoid it. This may be a result of the higher formality in the tradition of the Czech political speeches as well as the higher persuasiveness developed over decades in the British ones. (14) Tím neodkladnČji se proto jeví potĜeba urychlenČ zvýraznit podporu rozvoje malého a stĜedního soukromého podnikání, které… (Klaus, 13 July 1992) [therefore it is urgent to emphasise support for the development of small and medium enterprises, which…] (my translation)

4. Conclusion The present paper has analyzed referential expressions and their association with the modality of verbs and communicative purposes of utterances in political speeches from above delivered by the Czech and British prime ministers. The analysis has revealed the following results. First person singular forms are used to establish contact with the firstframe audience at the beginnings and at the ends of the speeches, and to maintain coherence throughout the text. There are some Czech prime ministers who avoid using it, which makes them sound less personal and more formal; this seems to be part of their personal style. There are also conventional phrases used with the first person singular at the ends of the texts in the Czech sub-genre, which are connected with the fact that the speech fulfils the function of a formal request for a vote of confidence. On the other hand, the English texts are always concluded with an utterance which expresses the prime minister’s will to implement the presented policy successfully. At the same time, the speeches presented in the House of Commons also contain a conventional phrase at the very end, which is invariant in all the speeches. This discrepancy between the Czech and English genre conventions is obviously the result of the difference in the institutions of the government and the prime minister in these countries. First person singular forms are also used with the communicative purpose of presenting policy. In some speeches, they are used by the prime ministers to position themselves as experts. The occurrences of expert

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positioning prevail in the British part of the corpus, which implies the speakers’ power, higher self-confidence, ambition, and lack of modesty. An identical communicative purpose is connected with the interpersonal function, when the politicians also position themselves as active doers or agents of politics who are not afraid of taking responsibility. This function occurs more frequently in the British speeches, while its avoidance by the Czech prime ministers seems to signal formality and/or modesty – though it might also be interpreted as a lack of self-confidence, lower power or even an attempt at shifting responsibility. As has been explained in the Introduction, this seems to be a result of the differences between the two political systems, including the much stronger position of the British prime minister compared to his/her Czech counterpart. Exclusive “we” forms occur in the utterances with the communicative purpose of promising. Promising is carried out with different degrees of directness; at one extreme, this is used to imply power, self-confidence, high ambitions, and taking responsibility for promises, while at the other extreme it implies modesty and a possible shifting of responsibility for future actions. The use of exclusive “we” forms places emphasis on the unity of the government, its members’ common agency and collectivity, but it may also imply hiding the prime minister’s responsibility within the collective responsibility. While exclusive “we” is frequent in almost all the speeches by the British politicians, it is avoided by three Czech prime ministers, who this way position themselves as formal and/or shift personal responsibility (this is the case of the caretaker prime ministers). Promising is also expressed with the third person expressions “government” and “vláda”, which compete with the previously mentioned exclusive “we” form. Politicians distance themselves from direct responsibility, shifting it onto an institution. The speeches sound less personal and less ambitious, but also more formal. In general, the third person “government” reference occurs much more frequently in the Czech speeches, while the British speakers avoid it. It may be too formal and impersonal for their persuasive style. Inclusive “we” forms are realized as possessive pronouns in connection with nouns associating two meanings: solidarity and unity, collectivity or shared identity of the prime minister and the citizens of the country. They hardly occur at all in the speeches delivered by Tošovský, Špidla, Topolánek, Fischer and Major, which implies a higher degree of formality, but also a distancing of the self from the citizens, a lack of familiarity. This may be caused by the fact that Tošovský and Fischer are caretaker

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prime ministers, and Špidla and Major have a very formal personal style, attempting to maintain a high status. To sum up the specific features of the genre in either culture, the speeches perform the following communicative purposes: 1) establishing contact with first-frame participants, which is always associated with the first person singular reference, making the contact personal, 2) presentation of promises, which can be carried out with different degrees of directness implying different attitudes to responsibility, but also modesty or lack of power within the institution, and with distinct degrees of distancing from the role of the person making the promise, 3) concluding the speeches with a formal phrase, 4) the British speeches are concluded with an expression of the prime minister’s personal will concerning the future success ensuing from the promises, which makes them sound very personal and which emphasizes the assumption of direct responsibility by the prime ministers. Considering the results of the analysis, I conclude that prime ministers use distinct types of intersubjective positioning in the genre of political speeches from above in the Czech Republic and in the United Kingdom. While the Czech speeches are frequently less direct, the Czech prime ministers often shift direct responsibility and place it on an institution of the government, or prefer to “hide” within collectivity. By contrast, the British prime ministers prefer to take individual responsibility and thus present themselves as the bearers of more power and stronger ambition. The British tendency to appear more self-confident and the Czech tendency to display modesty and indirectness certainly stem from the stronger position of the British prime minister and the more limited powers of the Czech one, which is a result of the different political system. However, the indirectness and distancing from being personal when promising may be also associated with a higher degree of formality and the convention of indirectness and modesty in expressing ambitions within Czech society. It is also a matter of interpretation. Considering the Czech tradition of political discourse and the wide variety of original professions of the prime ministers, I am inclined to conclude that the Czech style of political speeches displays higher formality, but at the same time more variety in personal styles than British political speeches.

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In spite of the fact that the Czech speeches present the prime ministers as less personal than the British prime ministers (which may be the result of the Czech anti-rhetorical and more formal tradition of political speeches), there is a strong tendency towards being personal and persuasive in both parts of the corpus.

Corpus “Žádost vlády o vyslovení dĤvČry” by Václav Klaus 1992, Josef Tošovský 1997, Miloš Zeman 1998, Vladimír Špidla 2002, Stanislav Gross 2004, JiĜí Paroubek 2005, Mirek Topolánek 2006, Jan Fischer 2009, Petr Neþas 2010, JiĜí Rusnok 2013, Bohuslav Sobotka 1014, John Major, 22 July 1991 – “Commons Statement on the Citizens’ Charter” Tony Blair, 9 January 1998 – “New Britain in the Modern World” Gordon Brown, 3 July 2007 – “Constitutional Reform” David Cameron, 28 May 2010 – “Transforming the British economy: Coalition strategy for economic growth”

Bibliography Bull, Peter and Fetzer, Anita (2010) Face, Facework and Political Discourse in International Review of Social Psychology 2010, 23(2/3), 155-185. Brown, Penelope and Levinson, Stephen (1987) Politeness: Some Universals in Language Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bureš, Jan, Charvát, Jakub, Just, Petr and Štefek, Martin (2012) ýeská demokracie po roce1989. Institucionální základy þeského politického systému. Praha: Grada. Chilton, Paul (2004) Analysing Political Discourse. Theory and practice. New York: Routledge. Dušková, Libuše (2012) Elekronická mluvnice souþasné angliþtiny. http://emsa.ff.cuni.cz/ Fairclough, Norman (1989) Language and power. London and New York: Longman. —. (1992) Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press. —. (1995) Critical Discourse Analysis. Boston: Addison Wesley. Fairclough, Isabela and Fairclough, Norman (2012) Political Discourse Analysis. A method for advanced students. London and New York: Routledge.

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Fetzer, Anita and Eva Lauerbach (2007) Political Discourse in the Media. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Fetzer, Anita (2013) The multilayered and multifaceted nature of political discourse in The Pragmatics of Political Discourse Explorations across cultures. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. —. (2014) “Judge us on what we do”: The strategic use of collective we in British political discourse. Constructing Collectivity ‘We’ across languages and contexts. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Firbas, Jan (1992) Functional sentence perspective in written and spoken communication. Cambridge University Press. Goffman, Erving (1967) Interaction Ritual: Essays in Face-to-Face Behaviour. London: Penguin Books. Halliday, M. A. K. (1978) Language as Social Semiotic. Edward Arnold. Heywood, Andrew (2002) Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillan. Holmes, Janet (2001) An introduction to sociolinguistics. Longman. Kirchheimer, Otto (1966) ‘The Transformation of Western European Party Systems’, in J. LaPalombara and M. Weiner (eds.), Political Parties and Political Development. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 177–200. Klíma, Michal (1998) Volby a politické strany v moderních demokraciích. Praha: Radix. Kraus, JiĜí (2003) VyjadĜování polemiþnosti a významových opozic v politickém diskurzu from ýmejrková, SvČtla, Hoffmannová, Jana Jazyk, média, politika. Praha: Academia, 13-37. Kraus, JiĜí (2008) Jazyk v promČnách komunikaþních médií. Univerzita Karlova v Praze Nakladatelství Karolinum. Kubát, Michal (2013) Souþasná þeská politika. Co s neefektivním režimem? Brno: Barrister & Principal. Leach, Robert, Coxall, Bill, Ronins, Lynton (2011) British Politics. London: PalgraveMacmillan. Levinson, Stephen (1983) Pragmatics. Cambridge University Press. Štícha, František (2013) Akademická gramatika spisovné þeštiny. Praha: Academia. Ústavní soud. Available at http://www.usoud.cz/en/competences/ Watts, Duncan (2012) British Government and Politics. A Comparative Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

II. GENRES IN ACADEMIC SETTINGS

CHAPTER THREE “I HAVE TO ADMIT THAT MY POSITION WILL BE MORE DIFFICULT…”: A GENRE ANALYSIS OF INTRODUCING THE CONFERENCE PAPER MOVE GABRIELA ZAPLETALOVÁ

Abstract The oral presentation of research papers at academic conferences is one of the seminal means of spreading knowledge in the academic discourse community. Looked upon from a generic and interpersonal perspective, presenters set themselves up in a pivotal position which enables them to present their claims and then negotiate the validity of those claims in a highly reflective and – concurrently – interactive environment. Although the shared purpose of all forms of academic discourse is to contribute to the establishment and dissemination of scientific knowledge, the seminal characteristics of science also include sharing information and co-operative effort. Processing ‘objective’ information in terms of conveying ideational meaning in conference papers is robustly balanced by the interpersonal aspect of the genre, which is realized as a continual, two-way exchange or communication ‘trafficking’ between the speaker and the audience. Drawing on the interactive nature of the discourse, which has found its materialization in genre-based interpersonally-oriented typologies and frameworks (Hood & Forey, Polo, Rowley-Jolivet & Carter-Thomas, Ventola), the study examines the influence of on-line context on generic structure in the introductory stage of conference papers. The main hypothesis is that the introductory stage is a critical rhetorical move with a number of inherent traits. This move, which stands outside the main content of the talk, turns out to have a multi-purpose communicative function by incorporating promotional input for introductory purposes.

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1. Introduction Recently, growing interest in spoken genres (not only in academic discourse) and in multimodal genres having speech as a key component can be understood as one consequence of changes involving the shifting boundaries of social worlds and the impact of new technologies (Myers 2000). The new social worlds around us are increasingly visualized; they are largely formed by social networking sites that rely on various networked language practices. Language practices draw on strategies such as ‘instant’ interaction and ‘sharing’ in terms of communication via social media and the distribution of digital content. All these strategies then form the basis of entextualization, a complex and multifaceted phenomenon subsuming various processes – ranging from the transformation of speeches to writings, “semiotic representations of social reality […] produced by means of digital technologies” (Androutsopoulos 2014: 5), and reflecting the driving force behind social media – their intense participatory character. In academia there is one additional aspect that motivates research into the community’s oral genres: Mauranen (2001) observes that much academic communication simply rests solely on spoken interaction and discourse. There exists a broad spectrum of speech events which are primarily oral and which form the ‘explicit’ agenda of academic communication. On one hand, many such events encourage participation by academics of various levels of expertise – including conferences, lectures, seminars, consultation periods, or grant (proposal) defences. On the other hand, there are also speech events in which students and novice academics take on the central role and are active participants rather than passive observers – such as oral exams, colloquia and thesis/dissertation defences. However, a considerable amount of academic oral interaction involves an ‘implicit’ agenda; though it resists any stable classification, it “clearly exists to sustain and perpetuate the culture of the [academy]” (to paraphrase Feak 2013: 99). This ‘implicit’ agenda spans a number of formal and informal genres, including (at the formal end) consultation periods, as well as other (less formal) meetings of professors and students. These social genres are important not only for establishing ‘professional’ rapport between the two seemingly opposing parties in the discourse community. One additional factor which has kindled a wave of research interest in spoken academic genres, according to Myers (2000: 181), is “the transformation of institutions” and, concurrently, “changing ideas of the knowledge that is to be gained”. Myers’s research1 1

The main aim of Myers’ (2000) discussion of lectures is to outline the change in the genre brought about by PowerPoint lectures. Here I draw mainly on the author’s comments on lecturing discourse in general.

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into lectures and multimedia equipment reveals that (with respect to the US and UK contexts) differences in lecturing practices are highly culturespecific. Interestingly, he also notes that the transformation of traditional lectures to media-driven lecture formats is a result not only of developments in multimedia and technology, but also of a number of other variables that have contributed to a paradigm shift: (i) increasingly commercially-oriented universities enrol candidates/clients, not all of whom are prepared for the lecture system (cf. Cheng 2012); (ii) there has been a complete reversal of traditional expectations in literacy – electronic ‘language’ disrupts (but also complements) the traditional ‘easy’ spoken/written paradigm, as today’s students have never experienced a world without electronic media, which have become such a core part of their lives that the screen is central for them, while books are marginal; (iii) it is necessary to understand the nature of the new media in order to anticipate what they are doing to the students – visually-oriented and media-oriented students are not willing (or sometimes even able) to ‘consume’ the mere spoken word; (iv) finally, students’ attitudes to and evaluation of education – courses and teachers – have acted as an external force to make educational institutions ‘truly’ democratic. Conference presentations, together with lectures, are two academic spoken genres that have inspired extensive research interest. Both these genres can be approached as parallel discourses, as they share an academic audience, the spoken mode and intellectual content. While lectures are a pedagogical process genre (Thompson 1994, 2003) oriented towards introducing, instructing and explaining concepts as well as offering the lecturer’s critical views on theories (Lee 2009), conference presentations are a prototypical research-process genre, helping to disseminate knowledge and persuade an audience of the validity and relevance of the speaker’s research claims. Several studies have examined various aspects of conference presentations – such as their overall rhetorical organization (Rowley-Jolivet & Carter-Thomas 2003; Ventola 1999), the use of narratives (Mauranen 2012), and the interplay of the spoken part and the visuals of the PowerPoint slide show (Degano 2012, Morell 2015; Rowley-Jolivet & Carter-Thomas 2002; Ventola & Charles 2002). However, the rhetorical/generic staging of individual moves/steps has not yet received adequate attention in academic discourse studies. RowleyJolivet & Carter-Thomas’ (2005) analysis of the introductions of conference papers in hard sciences is a pioneering analysis based on Swales’ (1990) move framework, applied to native-speaker spoken academic discourse. Hood & Forey (2005) have identified the sub-moves or stages which foreground interpersonal meanings, suggested how

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attitude is encoded in the various stages, and examined ways in which gestures cooperate and interact with language and attitude. Introductory sections of conference presentations are also addressed by Polo (2012), who examined the (sub)move which speakers use when announcing the topic of presentation. The results reveal that topic identification is a distinct rhetorical step, realized as the re-tuning of the topic.

1.1 Academic introductions as an autonomous genre Research into academic introductions has been closely connected with the rise of genre studies. Motivated by a massive upsurge of interest among ESP and Applied Linguistics scholars in the information patterning/structures found in journals, Swales (1981) developed a fourmove schema reflecting the rhetorical structure of research article introductions. His work emphasizes the importance of communicative purposes in a particular communicative situation; it clearly shows that at a very general level, introductions have a strong potential to create and offer a specific textual space which is highly flexible in terms of content structure. It turns out that what is meant by ‘scientific objectivity’ is to a large extent a matter of selective stance: the limited space available in an introduction forces the author to be highly selective “in the reference to previous research; there may be promotion of the work of colleagues and congenial co-workers” (Swales 1981: 11). The author’s choices then can be interpreted as evaluative attempts to persuade readers by highlighting particular research frameworks, studies and researchers. Swales’ (1990) elaborated and revised account of introductions – Create a Research Space (CARS) – consists of three dominant moves (‘Establishing a territory’, ‘Establishing a niche’ and ‘Occupying a niche’), each being realized by up to four associated steps. In this model it becomes even more obvious that looking for an audience and indirectly promoting the research is an inevitable (though subtly realized) strategy in many conventional introductions. One of the most salient steps, with the strongest potential to attract readers, is ‘claiming centrality’, whose aim is both to narrow down the topic and appeal to “the discourse community whereby members are asked to accept that the research about to be reported is part of a lively, significant or well-established research area” (Swales 1990: 144). The linguistic resources that support persuasive and promotional claims include a number of devices, the most prominent of which are adjectival and adverb phrases usually projecting ‘topicality’ and ‘stance’ (e.g. recently, in recent years, the increasing interest, considerable interest, such systems), nominal phrases that express ‘theory

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concepts’ (the study of, the theory that, the effect of, a central issue in), and a high frequency of present perfect tenses (followed by present tenses) that help evoke future expectations (has been studied by, has been wide interest, have become increasingly interested; is the relevance, have the effect of). A systemic-functional approach to genre as represented in the British ESP context by Swales (1981, 1990) found a follower in Bhatia (1993, 2004). A seminal work is Bhatia’s (2004) study which focuses on institutionalized and conventionalized genres to reveal whether there exist any specific disciplinary and institutional practices, and how these practices are employed by members of discourse communities. Bhatia’s (2004) interesting observations on academic introductions allow us to understand the genre as a multifaceted and versatile concept with respect to its discourse realization, distribution and function. Versatility here refers to the fact that academic introductions are viewed both as part of a broad colony of introductory genres, and, at a more specific (domain/discipline) level, as part of a colony of closely related genres including introductions to research articles, essays, books, lectures or conference papers. The mutual relations between these interconnected genres can be interpreted with the help of the Hallidayan functionalsemantic components of language use (ideational, interpersonal and textual metafunctions) and their counterparts in the contextual categories of field, tenor and mode (1978, 2004), whose interplay results in the semantic variety of the register of academic introductions. In terms of the field of discourse, the genres share the communicative purpose of introducing a piece of academic work which, according to Bhatia (2004: 66), contains “in a limited sense […] academic knowledge.” The tenor of discourse, concerning the attitudes between the speaker and the audience, varies considerably due to the different power relations among participants. In the genre studied here – conference presentations – power relations among participants are rather symmetrical, which means that they are based on equal interaction between the speaker/expert and the secondparty expert audience. The mode of discourse in conference presentations subsumes the speaker’s way of materializing meanings into a special class of ‘text’ whose texture is based on combining verbal and visual modes, both of which make the interaction highly multimodal. One essential aspect of academic introductions is what Bhatia (2004: 73) calls “the hidden agenda”; this refers to the fact that many introductions to academic works are built on blending “‘private intentions’ with ‘socially recognized communicative purposes’”. This strategy, which was recognized by Swales in his 1981 exploratory study into the rhetoric

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of academic texts, takes the form of a subtle promotional input; it serves not only to introduce the work but also to promote it to the potential audience. This “dual communicative purpose” (Bhatia 2004: 73) in academic introductions is becoming an established part of the discourse. The strategy of ‘mixing’ genres by ‘implanting’ features of promotional and advertising genres into academic genres is very common in professional communication (Bhatia 2004). The communicative style of academic introductions thus seems to be shaped by two ostensibly opposing forces/pressures: there is a tension between intellectual, scientific information and “marketizing pressures” (Fairclough 1995: 149), i.e. the quest for ‘commercial’ academic success in terms of being accepted and read.

1.2 Introductions in oral academic genres Globally, oral academic genres have so far been the object of research in relatively few studies when compared to the attention paid to written academic genres. The research into oral genres in academia has been dominated by a focus on two of the most widespread and traditional genres in the field: academic lectures and conference presentations. A significant body of research is connected with Thompson’s exploration of lecturing discourse, which focuses both on its overall organization (2003) and on lecture introductions (1994). Thompson’s (1994) genre-based research shows that academic lecture introductions in her data indicate “no typical sequencing pattern, but [reveal] rather a largely unpredictable mix of a small set of Functions and Sub-Functions” (1994: 181). These results suggest that Swales’ (1990: 58) idea of genre, which is tied together by a set of common unifying communicative purposes and driven by a common rhetorical pattern, is substantially challenged. The potential rationale behind the “greater freedom of rhetorical movement in lecture introductions” (Thompson 1994: 181) is twofold. Firstly, it represents an opportunity for the speaker to tailor the academic performance according to the fluid and changeable situation and the online, real-time nature of a traditional lecture. This reason for this is rooted in the qualities that are traditionally associated with and flow from the difference between the written and spoken mode. Introductions in written academic genres such as research articles require an enormous “amount of rhetorical work” (Swales 1990: 142) in terms of establishing the significance of the research field, situating the actual research and showing how the niche is occupied (the CARS model). Moreover, the interaction in this genre also inevitably includes the reviewer and then the ‘distant’ academic audience,

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which may ‘enter’ the text repeatedly. Secondly, the highly conventional formality of research articles and the relative spontaneity of academic lecture introductions (and academic lectures in general) rests in the research article being a research-process genre (Swales 1990: 93), while academic lectures are primarily a pedagogic process genre aimed at students: in a lecture, there is no stiff competition from the author’s ‘rivals’, i.e. reviewers and peers. In contrast to Thompson’s (1994) rather general genre-based analysis, Lee (2009) offers an exploratory study taking into account one research variable – class size – in order to reveal whether the size of the audience influences the lecturer’s discursive choices. Introductions to largeaudience lectures employ rhetorical and lexico-grammatical features that help lecturers to establish positive learning environments, i.e. announcing the topic repeatedly, using I and you less frequently than in small classes in order to suppress the distancing effect associated by the pronouns, and making students regularly aware of class-related issues. In contrast, smallaudience classes tend to include “digressions to reinforce teacher – learner rapport” (Lee 2009: 53); frequent occurrences of I and you in more intimate settings, most probably due to the fact that the lecturer is physically in close contact with students, do not seem to have a distancing effect of excluding either party in interaction.

2. Aims and methods The aim of this study is to explore the potential of the research framework of functional grammar (Systemic Functional Linguistics) and genre analysis by focusing on the introductory segments of conference paper presentations and by investigating their functions in the genre and context. The present study therefore attempts to explore the rhetorical structure and its impact on lexico-grammatical features of conference paper introductions. To achieve this aim, I draw on the results of previous research into the rhetorical structure of the genre (Zapletalová 2011), which focused on the interplay of direct speaker-audience devices within the sequenced moves. Examining the corpus, I will search for parallels between the existing move-structure models, and then, based on the rhetorical patterns in the introductions, I will attempt to offer a working model reflecting the constellation of the move classes in the genre. Since previous research has focused on native-speaker data, the present research sets out to investigate possible realizations and variants in generic structure in conference papers by non-native or ELF speakers.

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2.1 The data This study employs a corpus-based approach to the introductions of authentic conference presentations. The data form part of a larger specialized corpus of contemporary conference presentations recorded at various international conferences between 2010 and 2014. All the presentations were delivered as conventional section papers, accompanied by a PowerPoint slide show, and lasted between 18 and 25 minutes. In one presentation the speaker was also the convenor of the session. The presentations were recorded in authentic conference environments and transcribed according to the ELFA Transcription Guide developed for the ELFA corpus (English as a Lingua Franca in Academic Settings, www.helsinki.fi/elfa) (URL 1). The data for the present study consist of a sub-corpus of 35 conference presentations by non-native speakers using English in the field of applied linguistics, making up almost 18 hours in total. The domain of applied linguistics includes cognitive linguistics, discourse analysis, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and translation studies. All the introductions are categorized according to only one contextual variable, informing us about the academic status or ‘maturity’ of the participants: whether the presenter is a senior researcher, a junior researcher (i.e. holding a PhD for at least five years), or a PhD researcher (i.e. s/he is in their final stages of research before graduating, has substantial experience with presenting research at conferences, and/or has just earned the degree; there are no novice researchers, i.e. students at the beginning of their studies). Since several studies have already focused on typical features of English native-speaker styles of presentation, the present study attempts to reveal some characteristics of non-native speakers. Only the introductory sections or set-up stages were manually analyzed in order to reveal their rhetorical structure.

2.2 Methods of analysis The identification of the introductory section posed some analytical problems. In the majority of cases the scope of the introduction spanned over 60 seconds, and in a few cases it lasted up to three minutes. The scope was determined largely on functional grounds, reflecting the type of the presentation – either theoretical or applicational. One more aspect that plays an important role in constructing an introduction is the degree to which the research has been completed: whether it is still work in progress and the author is presenting as-yet untested claims to the audience, or whether it is at the stage of a post-publication overview, the results of

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which have already undergone a full review process (cf. Hyland 2009, Swales 2004). Methodologically, the transition between the introductory section and the main body of the presentation was signalled by a number of interrelated strategies, and can be interpreted with the help of phonological and linguistic criteria. Thompson (1994) suggests drawing the boundary between the two by means of a phonological paragraph: phonological criteria are based on the existence of a “lengthy pause usually followed by a boundary marker [e.g. okay, right, well] delivered with a falling tone” (175). Apart from these primarily linguistic devices, which were used as establishing criteria, the multimodal character of the corpus also makes it possible to refine the analysis by incorporating nonverbal elements such as gestures (usually pointing to the slide show), the speaker’s posture and gaze, or the speaker’s positioning in front of the audience (Hood & Forey 2005).

3. Analysis and discussion This section begins by presenting the move framework for the subsequent corpus-based analysis, according to which the data were segmented into individual moves and steps (sub-moves). The results from the frequency analyses of moves and steps are accompanied by a subsequent qualitative interpretation which takes into account semanticpragmatic and rhetorical aspects of the influence of on-line context on the generic structure in the introductory stage of the conference paper.

3.1 Move analysis of conference paper introductions As I have suggested above, genre approaches to discourse (Swales 1981, 1990; Bhatia 1993, 2004) offer a robust framework for studying a genre’s rhetorical organization and internal structure. The multifaceted complexity of the genre as a whole lies in its sequence-like nature, realized as a real-time or on-line chain performance: the first stage of the conference presentation opens with an audiovisual presentation based on a prepared text written to be presented orally, and subsequently the genreevent closes with a discussion controlled by the session chair. More specifically, move-based analysis, which has been a key application tool in genre analysis, enables one to approach conference presentations within the concept of the subgenre chain. In line with this approach, Swales (1981) suggests that when trying to uncover how language is related to building up the overall structure of the genre, or “to reveal something of the internal logic and external language of a standardized communicative

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event” (10-11), it is possible to approach the genre as consisting of macrospeech acts. These are categories which emphasize the genre’s rhetorical configuration as ‘persuasion’, rather than offering a mere description of linguistic means employed. Swales’ (1990) concept of macro-speech acts as specific sequenced moves, stages or schemas, embedded within the genre as a whole or in its individual parts, has steadily gained acceptance among genre linguists, and it has initiated a number of research responses focusing on or emphasizing various aspects of this type of generic structuring. Drawing on the Swalesian concept of moves and elaborating it further, Ventola’s (2002: 29) observation regarding “the way discourse is seen to unfold situationally appropriately and in an expected way” gives rise to a synoptic view of the generic structure of the conference presentation. She sees it as a process rooted in the wider context of the conference section and having the following phases, realized as mutually successive and interconnected moves:

CONFERENCE PAPER Chair – introducing the Speaker Speaker – THANKING FOR INTRODUCTION Speaker – CONTEXTUALIZING THE PAPER Speaker – the paper and its generic structure Speaker – thanking the audience Audience – thanking the Speaker Chair – thanking the Speaker Figure 1 A generic structure of a conference paper (adapted after Ventola 2002: 29)

Ventola’s scheme is an attempt at describing every minute detail of what really happens in the course of the event, and it supports the idea of text as a dynamic process rather than as a product. It also implies that the moves can be identified at various levels of generalization, i.e. either in terms of the traditional IMRD structure, or in a broader perspective within which each line in Figure 1 may represent one particular move. It is interesting that the scheme takes into consideration such steps as ‘speaker thanking for the introduction’ and ‘speaker contextualizing the paper’ and sees them as separate moves, standing outside the context of the paper itself. In this respect both these steps are encoded as acts with independent realizations, and from the semiotic point of view they can therefore be

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interpreted as having a special, multi-purpose communicative function. Although Ventola’s (2002) focus is on the genre as a whole rather than on introductory sections of conference papers (which the author views as a rather additional phenomenon, questioning their status as relevant and stable elements of the genre), the generic structure described by her testifies to the existence of inherent traits of both steps, which sets them apart from the paper itself. With respect to the aim of the present study, the two steps seem to approximately realize the ‘introducing the conference paper’ move. Based on her data, Ventola (2002) suggests that the occurrence of the two moves in the sequence depends on situational as well as cultural circumstances, and notes that it often happens that the speaker simply omits them (no matter whether intentionally, or due to less experience and/or the speaker’s nervousness). This ephemeral character of the moves is strongly supported not only by the genre’s on-line realization (since the whole paper works on the same real-time, unfolding principle), but mainly by the ‘negotiating-like’ quality of the moves: their function is very much one of interpersonal spanning between various semiotic modalities – the spanning between the previous and forthcoming talk, between the present talk and the talks of other speakers, between the speaker and the audience (cf. Ventola 1999: 102). Ventola’s (2002) research played a pioneering role, focusing on identifying basic generic traits of conferencing discourse as a whole (cf. Fig. 1). For the present study it is the ‘contextualizing the paper’ move which is the key concept, though it is defined very broadly. In contrast to this macro-approach, Rowley-Jolivet & Carter-Thomas (2005) adopt a more micro-level approach to conference presentations, which they understand as part of the subgenre chain, thus emphasizing the chronological ordering of individual moves/steps/stages in the genre’s introductory sections and focusing on typical and/or recurrent features that reflect the speaker’s discursive choices (interpersonal, ideational and textual). The rationale behind the focus on CP introductions is twofold: it is an area which is very different, both linguistically and rhetorically, from the research article, and it is also a place where speakers use specific strategies when introducing their research (Polo 2012). As Rowley-Jolivet & Carter-Thomas (2005: 65) note, “the role of the introduction in setting up a rhetorically appropriate framework in response to the contextual and epistemological requirements of the genre is thus crucial.” The move model for CP introductions in Figure 2, introduced by Rowley-Jolivet & Carter-Thomas (2005), draws on the existing and relatively established genre models by Dubois (1980), Swales (1990) and

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Thompson (1994). The model was originally designed by Rowley-Jolivet & Carter-Thomas (2005) in order to study the specifics of scientific conference presentations using a corpus including disciplines such as geology, medicine and physics. The model was adopted for the present research because it incorporates the rhetorical variables that play a substantial role in the oral academic genre studied here. Specifically, it incorporates the distinction between the Interpersonal framework and the Discourse framework, a distinction that is missing in Swales’s (1990) model due to his focus on written discourse. The two frameworks are then treated within an ‘umbrella’ move of Setting up the framework, suggesting that much space in the CP is devoted not only to establishing contact with the audience, but also to indicating a research territory. Although the model draws strongly on Swales’s (1990) CARS model, it anticipates this model’s weakness for the analysis of CP introductions by blending the original moves Establishing a niche and Occupying the niche into the Research rationale move. The rationale for this decision lies in the fact that due to the rapid “funnel effect, or rhetorical narrowing characteristic of both [RAs and CPs] research-process genres [it] is much more rapid and straight to the point in the CP” (Rowley-Jolivet & Carter-Thomas 2005: 56), it is difficult to separate Swales’s two moves, which can usually be separated in RAs. Moreover, it is important to realize that the ordering of the moves and steps in the model in Figure 2 is not a hard and fast rule or binding in any way: the model has a strong research potential, offering a great degree of flexibility and changeability.

3.2 Distribution of moves and steps across the corpus MOVE A: SETTING UP THE FRAMEWORK Interpersonal Framework 1a and/or 1b

Listener orientation Acknowledgement

Discourse Framework 2a and/or 2b

Announce topic Outline structure / Indicate scope

MOVE B: CONTEXTUALIZING THE TOPIC 1a and/or 1b

Conference context

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MOVE C: RESEARCHING RATIONALE Motivation

1a and/or 1b and/or 1c

Problems / Gaps / Counter claims Relevance / Centrality / Need Continuation of previous work

Response

2a and/or 2b

Question raising / Hypotheses Preview results or solutions

3

Outline research goal

Figure 2 A move model for conference paper introductions in sciences (after Rowley-Jolivet & Carter-Thomas 2005: 51)

The 35 conference paper introductions contained a total of 133 occurrences of all types of moves and steps identified according to the move model shown in Figure 2, with a mean of 3.80 occurrences per CP introduction. An examination of the occurrences of the moves and steps and their frequency across the whole corpus (Table 1) revealed that the Announce topic step has the highest occurrence (27), closely followed by Listener orientation (26), and Outline structure/Indicate scope (25), while the Preview results or solutions step has the lowest occurrence (2). It is interesting to note that all three of the most frequent steps (A2a, A1a, A2b) account for Move A, Setting up the framework: this move has a strong interpersonal bias, reflecting qualities that are typical of spoken discourse. Table 1 also shows the ordering of steps in the corpus, indicating a relatively clearly evident tendency of the Outline research goal (13) step to move towards the initial stage of CP introductions. Further, the very low frequency of three occurrences of the Question-raising/hypotheses step can be interpreted as rather surprising, indicating that not many presenters actually consider this step to be an important one; we may infer that some speakers blend it with other steps – usually with steps indicating scope and outlining research goals. To provide a sharper outline of this sub-genre, an examination of the frequencies of moves and steps across the three subcorpora (i.e. senior/junior/PhD researchers) was conducted. As shown in Table 2 (the ordering of moves/steps listed here does not indicate any sequential patterning), a noteworthy finding from this analysis is that there is a high variability in the sequencing of all moves and steps according to the type of presenter. To stress the variability, each type of presenter was colour-coded, and the results clearly show that there is hardly any stable development of rhetorical structure in CP introductions. On the one hand, as most

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researchers agree (Rowley-Jolivet & Carter-Thomas 2005, Cheng 2012, Lee 2009, Polo 2012, Swales 1990, Thompson 1994), this development testifies to the absence of a typical and predictable rhetorical structure in CP introductions. On the other hand, however, the lack of structure supports the dynamic view of genre, drawing on the concept of recurring patterns/moves. The flexibility of rhetorical structure across a spoken/written genre is due to various factors; a typical factor in research articles is disciplinary variation. As research into lectures and lecture introductions has revealed, the factors influencing variability in the genre examined here are size of class/audience, discipline, and presentation/lecture type and style (Cheng 2012). Table 1 Frequency of moves and steps in CP introductions Moves and steps A2a Announce topic A1a Listener orientation A2b Outline structure/Indicate scope C3 Outline research goal B1b General research context B1a Conference context C1a Problems/gaps/counter-claims C1b Relevance/centrality/need A1b Acknowledgements C1c Continuation of previous work C2a Question-raising/hypotheses C2b Preview results or solutions

N

% 27 26 25 13 11 9 7 4 3 3 3 2

77.14 74.29 71.43 37.14 31.43 25.71 20.00 11.43 8.57 8.51 8.51 5.71

With respect to the use of individual moves/steps in the three subcorpora, Group 1 – senior researchers – shows a strong tendency (77.78%) to clearly express Outline research goal, the step assigned the final position in the original move model (Rowley-Jolivet & CarterThomas 2005). The frequency of the same step in the following two groups is rather unsettled, especially in case of Group 2. All the junior researchers in the corpus focus on announcing the topic (100%) both verbally (either verbatim, even when the convenor has already read the title, or paraphrasing it) and non-verbally (i.e. using gestures – pointing to the slide show). The speakers in Group 2 avoid overtly mentioning the

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Table 2 Frequency of moves and steps in the three subcorpora in CP introductions Senior researchers: N=9 C3 Outline research goal A1a Listener orientation A2a Announce topic

% 77. 78 66. 67

Junior researchers: N= 9 A2a Announce topic A2b Outline structure / Indicate scope

PhD researchers: N= % 17 100. A1a Listener 00 orientation

% 88. 24 76. 47

55. A1a Listener 56 orientation

88.8 A2a Announce 9 topic A2b Outline 55.5 structure / 6 Indicate scope

C1a Problems / gaps / counter-claims A2b Outline structure/Indicate scope

55. B1a Conference 56 context

33.3 B1b General 3 research context

35. 29

44. B1b General 44 research context

22.2 C3 Outline 2 research goal

29. 41

B1a Conference context

33. C2a Question33 raising / hypotheses

22.2 B1a Conference 2 context

17. 65

B1b General research context

33. C2b Preview results 33 or solutions

17. 65

C1c Continuation of previous work

22. 22

11. 76

A1b Acknowledgements

11. 11

C1b Relevance / centrality / need

11. 11

C2a Question-raising / hypotheses

0.0 0

C2b Preview results or solutions

0.0 0

22.2 C1b Relevance / 2 centrality / need C1a Problems / A1b 11.1 gaps / counterAcknowledgements 1 claims A1b C3 Outline research 11.1 Acknowledgeme goal 1 nts C1a Problems / C1c gaps / counterContinuation of claims 0.00 previous work C2a QuestionC1b Relevance / raising / centrality / need 0.00 hypotheses C2b Preview C1c Continuation of results or previous work 0.00 solutions

76. 47

5.8 8 5.8 8 5.8 8 0.0 0

goal; they replace it with an elaborate account of the talk structure and research scope (88.89%). It was found that the speakers in Group 3 are very much aware of establishing a close rapport with the audience: the Listener orientation step (88.24%) is the most common in the subcorpus.

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The most stable are the Announce topic and Listener orientation steps, which occur among the top three steps in all groups. These findings closely correspond with those reported by Rowley-Jolivet & CarterThomas (2005), suggesting that analyzing the data via both the Interpersonal and Discourse framework components is important for the type of spoken discourse examined here. Interestingly, when we interpret the Setting up the framework move in the whole corpus (Table 1), 25 of the 35 CP introductions (71.43%) also contain the Outline structure / Indicate scope step. Therefore, the present findings seem to support Thompson’s (1994: 176) idea of the move as a functionally metalinguistic, but essential “mental map for the audience to rely upon [giving] the audience information about the [spoken type of] discourse itself”. Since the present study aims to “account for the rhetorical movement” (Swales 1990: 140) in CP introductions, it is useful to investigate this complex sub-genre with the help of cluster analysis. This method enables one to reveal the internal relations between variables by visualizing them (Cheng 2012, Ishikawa 2015). The cluster analysis in the present study employs the twelve indices (i.e. sub-moves/steps) as variables to categorize them according to their internal affinities. Table 3 shows mutual relations and internal structuring of the twelve indices. Table 3 Frequency of internal structuring in CP introductions N

Type of sequence 2-step sequence 3-step sequence 4-step sequence

A1a – A2a A2a – A2b A1a – A2a – A2b A2a – A2b – B1b – C3 A1a – A2a – A2b – B1b A1a – A2a – A2b – C3

15 13 13 4 4 3

The cluster analysis revealed the existence of certain prevailing sequences. The frequency of the 2-step sequence is the highest, but it is statistically insignificant because two-step-only sequences occur in 80% of the data. Nevertheless, the two pairs signal that there is at least some minimal rhetorical structure involved. The sequence [Listener orientation + Announce topic] and [Announce topic + Outline structure / Indicate scope] thus forms the skeleton of the conference paper introduction. Statistically more salient are the two following sequences – the 3-step and

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4-step sequences – of which 3-step sequences are more frequent (13). So the most preferred sequence is [Listener orientation + Announce topic + Outline structure / Indicate scope], as in the following example: (1)

so hello so as as doctor said i will have a presentation about the analysis of er role playing computer games i will (xx) analyse computer games (xx) that because they seem to be er bit of (xx) schedules so i will (xx) the results and i will show you only methodology i show you just summary of the of the results (34DB11)

It is obvious that both chains draw on the 2-step sequence and are based on a combination of A1a / A2a / A2b plus an independent variable B1b or C3. With respect to the existence of a fixed rhetorical structure, the frequencies of the 3-step (37.14%) and 4-step (11.43%) sequences are, taken together, relatively low. These results seem to be in harmony with the findings by Bhatia (1993), Cheng (2012) and Thompson (1994), who claim that the speaker, when involved in oral academic communication in real time, “must continuously deal with the dynamic process of unfolding communication” (Ventola 2002: 25).

3.3 Move analysis 3.3.1 Move A: Setting up the framework When interpreting the model and keeping in mind the genre approach, the linear arrangement is not a hard and fast rule. The genre approach assumes that the research objectives and varied nature of disciplines lies behind the high flexibility and variation of particular genres and the generic constructs used in the field. This is also supported by the fact that genres themselves are inherently variable, because they “adapt in response to the evolving requirements and practices of discourse communities” (Rowley-Jolivet & Carter-Thomas 2005: 56). Though the model clearly parallels Swales’ CARS model for article introductions (1990), the composition of Move A reflects the typical features of the genre’s oral quality. The component Interpersonal framework is expected to subsume a bundle of steps in the presentations with the global function of making and establishing contact – such as introducing oneself as the presenter, introducing the co-presenter, thanking the convenor, greeting/thanking the audience, discussing the conference location, or joking. This can be illustrated with the following example:

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ok thank you very much and i would like to thank my audience for er having decided to share the space with me today er however i have to admit that my position will be more difficult than i expected having so many distinguished scholars in the audience but i will try to do my best so (22MM12)

Example (2) combines the sub-moves or steps of thanking the convenor, thanking the audience and checking its composition; this step encourages an inscribed and thus explicit evaluative interpretation which aims to establish a relationship of solidarity with the audience. Although interpersonal meanings are spread across the whole text/discourse (Halliday 1994) and are not limited solely to particular generic stages – interpersonally loaded language may occur almost anywhere (Hood & Forey 2005) – the introductory sections of conference papers represent a specific place where speakers, according to Rowley-Jolivet & CarterThomas (2005: 52), try to “create their persona for the presentation [via] jokes, personal anecdotes, and light-hearted remarks”, as in the following two examples: (3)

(xx) thank you for the introduction and congratulations on managing managing the title (xx) erm er i hope because i won’t bring much much er much sunshine (xx) there’s a little bit of western enlightenment ideology coming with er the genre of er science news so (32JH12)

(4)

yes that’s true (xx) so thank you very much for your introduction and even though actually outside is very dark i (xx) my presentation won’t be tiring so erm i would like to speak about newspaper headlines (29BB12)

Step 1b in the interpersonal framework, Acknowledgement, invites the speaker to mention co-authors/presenters and other contributors (funding projects and grant agencies, supervisors, collaborators). The inclusion of step 1b into the model seems to be highly discipline-specific. It is relatively frequent in hard sciences (cf. Rowley-Jolivet & Carter-Thomas 2005), where much research is carried out in laboratory settings and performed by large teams of collaborators. However, in the humanities and soft sciences (as in the present study – cf. the corpus data below), acknowledgements occur rather more rarely due to the discipline-specific objectives of the research and the practices of the discourse community. One such rare occurrence can be found in the following version of an acknowledgement:

94 (5)

Chapter Three hello er so the focus of my study is broadly speaking writing assessment and in particular cohesion in learners’ er writing erm this is er one part of my phd project erm i’m doing my phd at the university of reading in the uk and this is one part of it (28ZS14)

Apart from the conventional moves of greeting the audience and introducing/identifying the topic, what follows then is a combination of several sub-moves such as specifying the status of the research (this is er one part of my phd project). Mentioning the speaker’s status as a PhD student, which is information usually not included in the main body of a research article, can be understood as a strategic move endowed with a dual aim: to signal the motivation (Move C – step 1c: work in progress) and to weaken claims or rather proto-claims – ‘just being a student.’ In the very last part of example (5), the explicit mention of the affiliation to a high-ranking university (i’m doing my phd at the university of reading in the uk and this is one part of it) can be read as an instance of inscribed attitude. The speaker here appears to be attempting to convince the audience that the research (and the speaker) is part of an institutional frame and context – being supervised by a high-quality institution. This act can be interpreted as an attempt to persuade the audience by attributing responsibility for potential research failure to the university/supervisor. The other instance of the realization of this step is the acknowledgement of funding agencies, as in the following version: (6)

i need i should put my small-scale research into a sort of bigger frame whose it was part of a quite er big and er multidimensional project which is funded by the czech science er foundation (05SJ14)

While in research articles this information is usually printed at the bottom of a page as a footnote, or it occurs at the end of a text as an endnote, in the CP it occupies the initial position: it is mentioned at the opening of the talk. Funding acknowledgement can also be supported visually: the logo of a funding agency is either part of the first slide together with the name of the researcher and institution, or the logo itself forms part of a PowerPoint slide show template so that the audience is reminded incessantly of the provider of the research funding. Hood & Forey (2005) claim that the set-up stage of conference papers is the place which contains the highest frequency of evaluative language in the discourse. In example (6) the speaker is expressing an attitude which can be interpreted as representing the sub-category of Appreciation (Martin & Rose 2003) by valuing things, events or phenomena. Example (6) contains a strong attitudinal orientation and an explicit attitude expressed as

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Appreciation (in bold), and the evaluative lexis is graded up (+) or down (í) in value; the Graduation is underlined: my small-scale research (í valuation) into a sort of bigger frame (+ valuation) whose it was part (í valuation) of a quite er big and er multidimensional project (+ valuation) The words ‘small-scale, part and multidimensional’ do not carry an intrinsic positive or negative value; what makes them evaluative here is merely their choice in the context, which implies an evaluative interpretation. The speaker thus builds a certain kind of interpersonal relationship with the audience as she seems to mitigate her own contribution, and establishes a positive solidarity by backgrounding and mitigating her own research and foregrounding the funding agency. Moreover, (6) also implies a reading partly similar to that in (5), in which the institution/funding agency is taken as proof of quality. The speakers implicitly and subtly try to persuade the audience that to be awarded a grant from such a funding agency necessarily means that the speaker does excellent research: there is a lot of competition for research grants nowadays, so the best research wins. The Discourse framework sub-move in the original model aims to identify and reflect the textual semantic component. Announcing the topic seems to be a redundant step, as several researchers agree (Hood & Forey 2005, Rowley-Jolivet & Carter-Thomas 2005, Polo 2012). Nevertheless, they also claim that although the step tends to hold low or even zero information value (it is printed in the conference programme and the book of abstracts, and it is usually announced by the section convenor), it may gain the new status of a rhetorical milestone which enables the speaker to draw a clear break between the present and the previous talk, and to restate/reformulate/foreground the topic (cf. Rowley-Jolivet & CarterThomas 2005: 52). Announcing the topic is strongly supported visually as part of the title slide; Polo (2012) suggests that the title slide, together with the verbal realization of the step, is rhetorically a very strong place in the talk, and it is accompanied with interpersonal traits that complement its function of Rowley-Jolivet’s (2002) structural and textually-oriented ‘framing device’. These interpersonally-oriented traits draw strongly on the title slide’s content, which usually comprises ‘background’ information underlying and supporting the speaker’s status as a reliable researcher. The interpersonal elements include a variety of institutional logos (and also institutional emails) – of the university, funding authority or research group/team (viz Acknowledgments below). These elements cannot be read as mere technical signals of institutional affiliation; they create a positive self-image of the speaker before the audience and seem to

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help reduce the tension that may be felt by the speaker when standing in front of a scholarly audience – they explicitly state that the speaker is part of an acknowledged discourse community and has been awarded a research grant. All these aspects contribute to the speaker’s positive expert face and credibility (Polo 2012: 154). In the corpus, the step is verbally realized in two basic ways. First, the speaker repeats the title verbatim: (7)

so as er my colleague introduced already the topic of my presentation is and er i’d like to follow the idea of the dynamic approach towards the analysis of of er language corpus of data as presented in the previous paper (03SV11)

Second, some speakers opt for this step intentionally, especially when there has been a topic reformulation/rewording/modification and the speaker needs to explain the rationale behind the change, as in the following examples: (8)

er ok thank you very much (xx) for introduction also thank you er for er like having decided to spend some of your precious time in my presentation er first of all i announced the title (xx) slightly changed er the title of my presentation er the content nevertheless remains the same yeah so (21MM10)

(9)

thank you very much er (xx) my presentation er has been a bit modified and it´s a bit different it´s slightly different than er in the programme you use but the subject matter stays the same and (xx) (13KH13)

In both examples the speakers use a kind of a ‘repair’ strategy by employing graded Appreciation (‘slightly changed/different’); the underlined Graduation is difficult to interpret as either positive or negative. However, it is expected that on the part of the speaker, the intended effect is to evoke an intrinsic positive value. Such an attitudinal reading is then supported by the act of reassuring the audience that ‘the content/subject matter remains the same’. Pragmatically, both the speech events could be interpreted as a form of implied apology, but the absence of typical semantic strategies such as expressions of the speaker’s regret, asking for forgiveness or performative utterances (I apologize/beg your pardon) prevent us from reading them in this way. Since apologizing is

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face-threatening for the speaker, both of them opt for non-apology strategies: there is no self-blame element present, and they only ‘announce’ what has been done – as a type of an offer to repair the fault by assuring the audience that the fault will be corrected (cf. Leech 2014). Third, some speakers seem to avoid explicitly announcing/repeating the topic, yet still feel it necessary to refer to it in some way. One version of the step is shown in example (10), where the first clause is actually a redundant speech event because it neither repeats nor paraphrases the topic: (10)

erm so er the topic of er has been already introduced so i´ll go straight to the er [the speech segment is accompanied by a body gesture – the hand pointing to the PPT presentation – to slide 1 showing the structure of the presentation] (16LK13)

In the Outlining structure/indicating scope step the speaker attempts to preview the content of the talk. In the CARS model for article introductions (Swales 1990) this is the very last step in the Occupying the niche move. In both the written and spoken type of discourse its semantic function is purely textual: it performs an enabling and materializing function which helps build up sequences of discourse and organize discursive flow. In CPs, it is also supported visually by inserting, immediately after the title slide, a ‘content’ slide composed of bullet points offering (seemingly) explicit and comprehensive information about the structure of the presentation, frequently accompanied by an overview of the research rationale and framework. Such an instance of a brief outline can be seen in example (11). In example (12) the step is quite explicit and detailed, as it offers a considerable amount of factual information: describing the topic, introducing the object of research and data, mentioning the specific theoretical background, outlining the research structure (case studies), and promising a conclusion: (11)

erm well so here is an overview of my presentation , first i’ll start with an introduction where i’ll explain why i’m focusing on this topic introduce my research questions and some theoretical background and then i’m going to move to the empirical study (28ZS14)

(12)

i will first er show the pre (xx) collective memory this is so called hegemonic view of (xx) experience in the second world war er then i will introduce you to the er (xx) project tesknie com , then discuss the nature of the linguistic data which i have er taken from this com er show you some methodological theoretical issues on how construal connections in discourse histo historical analysis (overlap) (xx) or

98

Chapter Three (xx) one another and present two very short (cases) (xx) this will border on (xx) of charity er but er i will (xx) er motivation (xx) as well and i will end with a conclusion (02MF11)

Example (12) offers a detailed, step-by-step overview of the talk in which, apart from a strongly didactic style that is lacking in research articles, the move’s textual function overlaps with an ideational component – the speaker’s discussion of the content itself: by briefly stating the research context, describing research rationale and even outlining research goals, step 2b is in many cases difficult to separate from Move B, which is expected to have the scientific content of the talk as its core. 3.3.2 Move B: Contextualizing the topic The move is realized as two independent steps which, according to the data, seem to contribute to the realization of all three functional-semantic components – ideational, interpersonal and textual. The first sub-move, Conference context, is realized as a relatively complex speech event which overlaps with the interpersonal framework as the speaker draws attention to other participants – the audience – not only in the wider conference context (as in Move A-1a), but also in the narrower conference forum, i.e. drawing attention to other speakers and active participants in the event. Consequently, this specific environment, based on a ‘constellation’ of academic actors, gives rise to a “local epistemology” (Rowley-Jolivet & Carter-Thomas 2005: 53). Besides contextualizing the topic, the speakers are prompted to respond to the parallel contextualization, as in (13), where the speaker directly refers to a preceding talk with the aim of signalling its positioning within the immediately surrounding context and thus showing its local relevance (cf. example 5 above). Signposting how the talk complements the shared knowledge can be interpreted as an attempt to “economize on the presentation of general background information” (Rowley-Jolivet & Carter-Thomas 2005: 53). Moreover, the speaker is at the same time establishing a territory and narrowing the field, using particular grammatical and lexical devices contrastively (a much more traditional – not a new one) to signal their own stance in the research context: (13)

thank you thank you very much for this great opportunity to be there , er i will find myself repeating some of the things that has just said, i’ve actually realized during this presentation er i will be talking about a much more traditional genre not a new one (01OD14)

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A similar strategy can be found in (14), where the speaker refers to two previous contributors by their first names, although they were not previously acquainted. Interestingly, however, the second of the two previous presentations was of little relevance to the current one; it dealt with a completely different topic, had a different theoretical and methodological background, and indeed the speaker is unable to remember its precise topic (as evidenced by the repeated hesitation markers). This expressive speech act can thus be interpreted as a polite, inherently courteous speech event, through which the speaker attempts to achieve equilibrium by suggesting that the previous talks have been beneficial to each party, and to maintain respect among participants as if he were indebted to his predecessors (Leech 2014: 196-197). This step is realized by the illocutionary force indicating device (IFID, cf. Searle 1969, Leech 2014) thank, which is not accompanied by any common intensifier (a lot, very much) but is followed by again, not an intrinsically intensifying feature and rather a filler word (having no concrete substantiation), yet a word whose communicative value may convey a certain degree of intensity, lowering the vertical (= power) distance of the speaker over the previous presenters and showing appreciation and gratitude (Leech 2014): (14)

ok still as you´ve probably read the title let me er thank for the previous er presenters for again helping my (handling) my job (xx) for example introduced multimodality (xx) and also er erm er well erm . (12TE13)

In (15) the speaker offers a much wider contextualization than in (13) and (14) in terms of reminding the audience of participation at a previous conference by the same organizers, showing an unbroken continuity of the research and thus generating expectations as to how the topic will be handled now: (15)

this is something i talked about er actually here in brno in february so i won’t be doing to (xx) (20JS10)

A third instance of the sub-move that occurs in the data is marked by direct reference, as in (16) to a concrete person, usually a scholar sitting in the audience, or by an indirect, covert reference to the person, as in (17). Such speech events can be read as attempts to give a broad hint that the research presented is significant and relevant when linked to an outstanding scholar. There is quite a strong version of this contextualization in (16), where

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the speaker addresses the person, saying his name twice within the span of 35 seconds. These acts can also be interpreted as a type of politenesssensitive speech event, as compliments that instantiate the Approbation and Modesty Maxim. Since compliments are difficult to classify according to a clear-cut formula (Leech 2014), it is vital to focus on their semantics and syntax. Example (16) lacks positively-biased semantic expressions such as adjectives and intensifiers that typically contribute to the compliment’s positive semantics, nor is the utterance pattern marked for extra emotive emphasis (typically exclamative patterns). The speech act is in the form of a statement, and the speaker personalizes the compliment using the complimentee’s surname. Another instance of the complimenting strategy can be observed in the phrase: not at er the position to er to er provide er model as professor does; however, this is part of a sequence that rhetorically borders on the submove 1b General research context. The positive semantic load is carried by the words position, provide and model, which (in the academic context) are read as implicit commendatory words in favour of the person addressed. This happens against the background of the speaker’s selfmitigating acts: i think i am just at the point of naming the the difficulties but not at er the position. The speaker is downtoning and almost negating her own contribution: she is in the state of ‘just naming difficulties’ and definitely not daring to ‘provide any model’. Overall, however, it is important to bear in mind that interpreting such a speech act as a prototypical compliment has clear limits due to the fact that most compliments occur in a communicatively more interactive setting than a conference section, and are open to immediate responses: (16)

ok so i er yes er very difficult to talk about metadiscourse after professor ’s lecture i am afraid but er still erm yeah … there so i think i am just at the point of naming the the difficulties but not at er the position to er to er provide er model as professor does (24TM12)

(17)

thank you very much so er good afternoon to everybody er i’m certain (xx) difficult to speak about metadiscourse after hearing [referring to a plenary talk delivered earlier] that there is actually no metadiscourse at all but er let’s give it chance (xx) (33MS12)

The second sub-move, General research context, is meant to include verbal references to shared knowledge, and in CPs it roughly reflects Swales’ Establishing a niche move (1990: 141) from his CARS model for article introductions. In most CP introductions examined here there is a

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strong tendency for speakers to blend steps from all three CARS moves, which touch on establishing the research field, building the author’s reputation, and situating and justifying the research in terms of showing its relevance and significance by offering a review of literature. Such a complex rhetorical goal is usually achieved via two strategies – these can be viewed as a combination of the steps topic generalization and reviewing previous research (Rowley-Jolivet & Carter-Thomas 2005: 54). In example (18) there is a long generalization sub-move, and in fact it is difficult to separate it from the latter one: here both sub-moves are realized by impersonal passive structures, which makes references to potential research frameworks and publications very vague and general. However, the second structure preserves the true Agent in the form of a ‘by-’ Adjunct: by Zellig Harris, which thus occupies the rhematic position in the clause: (18)

yeah er although metadiscourse is a relatively useful concept which can shed light on the interaction between writer and reader er it has been often described as er fuzzy category so before proceeding to the analysis er i devote quite er more time to delimit the content because it is really crucial for the whole analysis er the metadiscourse er is er believes to be the term discourse is believed to be coined by Zellig Harris in 1950’s to describe text elements that comment about the main information of the text er the term was adopted in discourse studies in 1980’s (TM2311)

In (19) – (21) the strategies realizing the sub-move 1b are more varied: in addition to passives there are also constructions with impersonal subjects (it has received, has been described) and existential structures (there are many …). Moreover, many speakers opt for pronominal reference, which enables them to position themselves as social actors who, through a strategic use of the deictic functions of pronouns, can express power relations, group identity as well as psychological distance, and thus make their values, beliefs and intended actions legitimate (DontchevaNavratilova 2011). The referential domains of both personal pronouns, you and we, which are part of comment clauses having the function of content disjuncts (Quirk et al. 1985), are not straightforward, and are largely indeterminate. The use of the other-reference pronoun you, as in (19) and (20), is typically associated with rather informal and spoken discourse. In both examples the pronoun forms part of a clausal form as you know, and it invites a complex interpretation. Povolná (2010) suggests that apart from its basic function as a hedge, the pronoun in the clausal form as you know can be labelled as an ‘inform marker’, which is relatively frequent

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mainly in informal spoken discourse and which has a strong empathizing appeal: it is a “politeness means of claiming the common point of view … mostly realized by presupposing the common ground … while creating a favourable atmosphere” (ibid.: 137). The generic function of you can be interpreted as expressing subjectivity: according to Quirk et al. (1985: 1115), the semantic functions of comment clauses with you are to “claim for the hearer’s attention [and] the hearer’s agreement [and it helps] express the speaker’s informality and warmth towards the hearer”. The pronoun also enables the speaker to distance him/herself from the topic under discussion, as if to weaken his/her own claims and to shift responsibility for interpreting the particular research context onto the audience (Dontcheva-Navratilova 2011: 114). In the present data, a high rate of generic you is present in CPs by junior researchers, who are either PhD students in their final stages of research before graduating, as in (19) and (20), or are scholars who have just earned their PhD. In contrast, the stylistic choice for we occurs predominantly in talks by senior researchers, as in (21): (19)

two concepts which i will be talking about the first one as you all know is the genre of academic writing and this genre has traditionally been described as impersonal faceless and objective (33MS12)

(20)

so hedges have been er as you know well researched in er academic discourse and er since 1972 where the term was first er introduced er it has received quite a lot of er attention er with linguists so as a result there are many many different various er approaches (22MM12)

(21)

so now i can go on erm oh yeah so book reviews as we all know er describe and evaluate recent publications (01OD14)

The referential function of we can be interpreted as building an ingroup status: the speaker draws on the inclusive domain of we and helps construct group identity by (i) pointing to concrete individuals, in CPs represented by the audience/hearers, which speaks for the pronoun’s integrative use, i.e. including both speaker and audiences; (ii) categorizing or even ‘isolating’ them from other parallel discourse groups; (iii) creating a strong interpersonally-laden atmosphere of the situation – inviting the audience to the research presented, signalling alignment and solidarity of the discourse; and also (iv) relying on a wider socio-cultural context and drawing on the collective sense of the ‘community’ (cf. DontchevaNavratilova 2011: 112). The speaker thus seems to identify with the

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community’s values in terms of shared knowledge, and seems to be more assured of his/her expert status. 3.3.3 Move C: Research rationale The last move in the framework is analyzed as fulfilling two major rhetorical strategies existing in a relational Motivation-Response format. First, the Motivation subsumes all the steps that have stimulated the researcher’s interest in the work and have helped him/her establish a prospective and viable research niche, by indicating problems and gaps, introducing counter-claims, stressing relevance and centrality, or serving as a reminder of research tradition and signalling its continuation or the speaker’s (= author’s) follow-up. Some of these steps cluster together in example (22), where it is possible to observe how the problem has been identified (in bold) and how this gap will be dealt with (underlined), though very vaguely at this stage: (22)

i’m aware of the fact that er the field of addressing has been mapped and studied by many linguists in many languages but usually their attempts resulted in rather erm static grids or tables of possible configurations of polite exchanges in addressing … er the aim of my analysis is not to reject er static approaches although it may have sounded too critical but it is not like to reject but rather to support er the need of the dynamic er alternative focusing on the dynamic aspect of the interplay of the semantics of power and solidarity (03SV11)

The speaker employs various devices that have an effect of mitigation, showing the speaker’s tentativeness when raising a matter of criticism. The strategies are basically face-enhancing for the criticized approaches, and they are: (i) stressing positive aspects by the use of quantifiers (many linguists in many languages), (ii) repetition of negation + verb (not to reject, not like to reject) to restore the balance, (iii) impersonal subject it + sounded hedged by a modal verb, (iv) repetition of the compromiser rather, and (v) indirect or evoked evaluation where the adjective static (grids, approaches) expresses negative appreciation and dynamic (aspects) expresses positive appreciation, which is supported with interplay and alternative as expressions of inscribed attitude, stressing novelty and innovation. Another way of identifying the gap and establishing a niche is in (23), where the author shows that research in the field is practically nonexistent and she is therefore filling this gap:

104 (23)

Chapter Three the fact is that er consistent research of book reviews is relatively recent , yeah it’s (xx) some ten years ago probably already fifteen , er ten plus , er and er since there are not so many , er , guides analysis et cetera written on er book reviews er i thought it might be interesting to look at them (01OD14)

Only few speakers have an urge to clearly state their motivation in terms of commenting on the relevance of the research and its centrality. When such a step does occur, it largely takes the form of rather subjective claims without explaining the actual need for the research – as in the following example, where the speaker’s strong personal conviction I believe is taken as the only ‘solid’ evidence: (24)

i believe i still believe that it is slightly useful concept with the intention on the interaction between the writer and the reader but i think that whoever is dealing or has been dealing with metadiscourse for some time yes i mind must admit that there are many difficulties (24TM12)

The step Continuation of previous work occurs mainly in cases when speakers are part of a larger project or research and where using this step enables them to delimit the scope of the research they are presenting. The step partly overlaps with the Acknowledgements discussed in section 2.2.1 above; however, there are some differences between the two steps. While in the former we learn the name of the funding institution/project, as in example (5) and (6), in the present step the information regarding the continuation of the previous work focuses on the extent of the project (if there is any), or helps the author specify the research positioning or staging in terms of being at the beginning or moving towards its end. In (25) there is a typical strategy employed in many talks: the speaker combines the ‘announcing the topic’ step (which relates to the concrete situation of the conference context) with the act of introducing the audience to the global context; this immediately activates a larger research frame, thus making the audience aware of the speaker’s own research progress and development: (25)

so for the present research … although more university websites have been surveyed [as part of larger research by the author] today’s presentation focuses on four universities the choice as we can see is not accidental (07RT11)

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Example (26) is a full version of (15) above, where the focus was on the conference context. This step is followed by a verbatim reference to the present (second) stage of the research: (26)

this is something i talked about er actually here in brno in february so i won’t be doing to (xx) that and i’ll be focusing on the second part of the research er so that was basically (transxx) english into czech and here er we focus on the correct rendering of the original meaning (20JS10)

Second, the Response sub-move includes all the steps that are reactions to the Motivation component and lead to the fulfilment of needs just outlined by the speaker in his talk. Rowley-Jolivet & Carter-Thomas (2005: 55) claim that “the clause-relational Problem-Response format is a productive one [in their data]” and that it underlies “the rhetorical structure of many CPs introductions” to talks which are more theoretical than application-oriented. In the present research, however, the format is less productive; this may be due to the fact that the data come from soft sciences. Here the speakers rather tend to first preview results in great detail, where they may partly introduce hypotheses as in (27), and then, against this background, outline research goals – as in the following example: (27)

when we look at the findings , so we can see that in , a , written academic discourse a root possibility meaning prevails , … . on the other hand , quite surprisingly , epistemic possibility expressed by , especially , may is not that frequent . so , the aim of my presentation is to distinguish between root and possibility readings of these modal verbs , then to discuss in detail other texts in which , in which they , they occurred and finally to , erm , comment on those modal meanings which can be employed as , hedging devices . (10PH14)

Such a structure of the CP introduction is typical in presentations that have arisen as a result of a completed piece of research, which the author presents to the audience in small ‘pieces’ – this may be the case of unpublished PhD theses, as in (27) above, or other academic studies. A more productive pattern can be seen in (28), where the author conflates the Question-raising/hypotheses step (realized by an indirect question opening with how) with the Outlining research goal step:

106 (28)

Chapter Three the aim of this presentation is to observe power as an important part of the inter interpersonal meanings that is , how the interpersonal meaning reflects the power of the speaker , also another aim is to analyse fragments from the pre-war speeches … and to observe the features of his discourse (19MH11)

In a brief introduction to the talk in (29), the individual steps include outlining the research goal (I’d like to focus, I’m going to look at), followed by mentioning research context, and closing with asking a research question: (29)

i’d like to focus on one section and it is the lead section er i’m going to look at er general quality quantity of systemic functional linguistics and er erm er . the categorization that i apply to my analysis was developed by semino and short er so the the question i was asking is how the reported language and all (xx) reflect of contribute to the function of the lead is up-to-day and today in an increasing level (11ZU12)

Some researchers, however, skip the response step and move directly to the ‘Outline research goal’ step, which usually signals the end of the introductory part of the CP. In (30) the speaker brings variation to the step by first announcing the ultimate aim of the research, and then she singles out a more narrow, specific goal – the aim of the presentation – as embedded in the global aim: (30)

my ultimate aim is to make it a cross-culturally research which this is not this is only looking at er at erm english native speakers written book reviews and that should be focused on a very particular selection of book reviews book reviews published in a single jou er journal and this is the journal of english for academic purposes (01OD14)

A slightly different strategy is employed in (31), where the speaker is joking by trying to introduce a humorous look at the two long words decontextualization and recontextualization – which he, unintentionally and occasionally, used interchangeably: (31)

in my presentation i would like to talk about how , er , decontextualization that is not recontextualization @@ by the way but to show how decontextualization works and how synergetically in works in er in er promotional discourse in the discourse of er global upmarket brand prom-commercials (12TE13)

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This third step in the research rationale move, Outline research goal, has the frequency of 37.14% in the data and occurs mainly in the CPs by senior researchers; in 62% of occurrences it concludes the introductory part of the talk.

4. Conclusion Conference presentations rank among the key research-process genres whose systematic investigation has been stimulated by various needs – such as to explore how the genre has developed over the years, how the genre’s rhetoric works, or how it reflects and responds to the new possibilities offered by increasingly multimodal and multimedia aspects of academic communication. Whereas most written academic genres have long been at the centre of attention for many scholars from various schools, conference presentations and oral academic genres in general have only come to the forefront of attention in the past decade or two. Much recent research draws on the genre’s interactive nature, and tries to explore how a continuous, two-way exchange between the speaker and the audience influences and forms the genre’s rhetoric or generic make-up. From a genre approach, however, conference presentations do not represent one stable and rigid genre with a schematic structure, consisting of a series of recurring units. One of the salient characteristics of the genre approach is that genres are generally ‘open’ concepts and invite a high degree of rhetorical flexibility. This approach leads the researcher to look at conference presentations as a series of relatively independent subgenres (or part-genres), taking the introductory part of the CP as an autonomous generic unit of its own. The introductory section in academic genres poses a great challenge to researchers: it is a crucial place where various rhetorical strategies accumulate, and the speaker must learn (usually learning by doing) how to adapt to the situation by adopting necessary rhetorical skills. An instrumental tool in genre analysis, which helps us to reveal the rhetorical structure of the genre and to study its (ir)regularities, is that of viewing the conference paper introduction as a series of moves and steps. Many of the existing models, frameworks and typologies draw on the rhetorical structure of the genre’s written counterpart, the research article. The potential drawbacks of such a model can be mitigated by developing it into a new model, including criteria which take into account the on-line context of the discourse. The analysis of CP introductions revealed that the two submoves (steps), dealing with the interpersonal and discourse framework and missing in the RA, are the dominant strategies present in

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most talks. What also clearly emerges from the analysis is that there is a distinction between types of speakers (senior, junior, PhD researchers) in terms of the moves and steps employed. While many senior speakers tend to present their current research as being part of an established, precisely localized and mapped field and one which is in line with their previous research (in order to stress continuity), most junior and PhD researchers fail to do so – they largely focus on announcing the topic and signalling the scope and structure of the talk. Also the latter group fails to firmly state the research goal, whereas the former group does this regularly, thus confirming the crucial rhetorical function of this step. Overall, the preferred steps used by the speakers in the corpus cover all three basic moves A, B, and C. However, the steps from move A are predominant, closely followed by move B and accompanied by one dominant step from move C – outlining the research goal. When comparing the findings with the previous research on native speaker data, the results do not reveal a huge discrepancy in the repertoire of frequent and preferred steps. This can lead us to conclude that the interactional context of the conference presentation genre has a considerable influence on the generic structure.

Corpus The data for this study consist of a sub-corpus of 35 conference presentations by non-native speakers using English, recorded at the following conferences: 1. Interpretation of Meaning in Spoken and Written Discourse: 4th Brno Conference on Linguistic Studies in English, 16–17 September, 2010, Brno. 2. Collective and Individual Aspects of Social Dynamics: Language, Discourse and Society: 42nd PoznaĔ Linguistics Meeting, 1–3 May, 2011, PoznaĔ. 3. Theories and Practices: 3rd International Conference on Anglophone Studies, 7–8 September, 2011, Zlín. 4. Translation and Interpreting Forum Olomouc: TIFO, 11–12 November, 2011, Olomouc. 5. Grammar and Genre: Interfaces and Influences, 24–26 October 2012, Turku. 6. The Interpersonal Function of Language in the Genres of Academic, Institutional and Media Discourse, 8–9 November, 2012, Ostrava. 7. Contexts, References and Style: 5th Nitra Conference on Discourse, 21–22 March, 2013, Nitra.

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8. From Theory to Practice: 5th International Conference on Anglophone Studies, 5–6 September, 2013, Zlín. 9. Communication across Genres and Discourses: 6th Brno Conference on Linguistic Studies in English, 11–12 September, 2014, Brno. 10. The Changing Landscape of Professional Discourse, 6–7 November, 2014, Ostrava.

Bibliography Androutsopoulos, Jannis (2014) Moments of sharing: Entextualization and linguistic repertoires in social networking. Journal of Pragmatics, 73, 4-18. Bhatia, Vijay K. (1993) Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings. London: Longman. —. (2004) Worlds of Written Discourse. A Genre-Based View. London: Continuum. Cheng, Stephanie W. (2012) That’s it for today: Academic lecture closings and the impact of class size. English for Specific Purposes, 31, 234248. Degano, Chiara (2012) Texture beyond the text: slides and talk in conference presentations. In Stefania M. Maci and Michele Sala (Eds.), Genre Variation in Academic Communication. Emerging Disciplinary Trends (pp. 135-152). CERLIS Series vol. 1. Bergamo: CELSB. Dontcheva-Navratilova, Olga (2011) Coherence in Political Speeches. Brno: Masaryk University. Dubois, Betty L. (1980) Genre and structure of biomedical speeches. Forum Linguisticum V, 140-168. Fairclough, Norman (1995) Media Discourse. London: Edward Arnold. Feak, Christine (2013) Narratives in and of public meetings of the university. In Maurizzio Gotti and Carmen S. Guinda (Eds.), Narratives in Academic and Professional Genres (pp. 81-103). Bern: Peter Lang. Halliday, Michael A. K. (1994) Introducing Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold. Hood, Susan and Forey, Gail (2005) Introducing a conference paper: Getting interpersonal with your audience. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 4, 291-306. Hyland, Ken (2009) Academic Discourse. English in a Global Context. London: Continuum International Publishing Group. Ishikawa, S (2015) Reconsideration of the difference between speeches and writings by English native speakers and Japanese learners of

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English: a learner-corpus-based study. Discourse and Interaction, 8, 45-60. Lee, Joseph J. (2009) Size matters: An exploratory comparison of smalland large-class university lecture introductions. English for Specific Purposes, 28(1), 42-57. Leech, Geoffrey (2014) The Pragmatics of Politeness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Martin Jim R. and Rose, David (2003) Working with Discourse. London: Continuum. Mauranen, Anna (2001) Reflexive academic talk: Observations from MICASE. In R. C. Simpson and John M. Swales (Eds.), Corpus Linguistics in North America (pp. 165-178). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. —. (2012) “But then I started to think…:” Narrative elements in conference presentations. In Maurizzio Gotti and Carmen S. Guinda (Eds.), Narratives in Academic and Professional Genres (pp. 45-66). Bern: Peter Lang. Morell, Teresa (2015) International conference paper presentations: A multimodal analysis to determine effectiveness. English for Specific Purposes, 37, 137-150. Myers, Greg (2000) Powerpoints: Technology, lectures and changing genres. In Ann Trosborg (Ed.), Analysing Professional Genres (pp. 177-191). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Polo, Francisco J. F. (2012) “The title of my paper is …:” Introducing the topic in conference presentations. In Carol Berkenkotter, Vijay K. Bhatia, and Maurizio Gotti (Eds.), Insights into Academic Genres (pp. 149-168). Bern: Peter Lang. Povolná, Renata (2010) Interactive Discourse Markers in Spoken English. Brno: Masaryk University. Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey and Jan Svartvik (1985) A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman. Rowley-Jolivet, Elizabeth and Carter-Thomas, Shirley (2005) The rhetoric of conference presentation introductions: Context, argument and interactions. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 15(1), 45-70. Searle, John A. (1969) Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Swales, John (1981) Aspects of Article Introductions (ESP Monographs No. 1). Birmingham: Aston University, Language Studies Unit. Swales, John M. (1990) Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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—. (2004) Research Genres: Explorations and Applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thompson, Susan (1994) Frameworks and contexts: A genre-based approach to analyzing lecture introductions. English for Specific Purposes, 13(2), 171-186. Thompson, Susan E. (2003) Text-structuring metadiscourse, intonation and the signaling of organization in academic lectures. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 2, 5-20. URL 1: http://www.helsinki.fi/englanti/elfa/ELFA_transcription_guide.pdf [15.2.2015]. Ventola, Eija (1999) Semiotic spanning at conferences: cohesion and coherence in and across conference papers and their discussions. In Wolfram Bublitz, Ute Lenk and Eija Ventola (Eds.), Coherence in Spoken and Written Discourse: How to Create it and How to Describe it (pp. 101-123). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. —. (2002) Why and what kind of focus on conference presentations? In Eija Ventola, Celia Shalom, and Susan Thompson (Eds.), The Language of Conferencing (pp. 15-50). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Ventola, Eija and Charles, Cassily (2002) A multi-semiotic genre: the conference slide show. In Eija Ventola, Celia Shalom, and Susan Thompson (Eds.), The Language of Conferencing (pp. 169-209). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Zapletalová, Gabriela (2011) Interpersonal aspects of conference presentations as a distinct academic genre. In Gabriela Zapletalová, Tereza Malþíková, and Daniel BizoĖ, Co-Membership and CoOperation: Interpersonal Discourse Strategies within Communities of Practice (pp. 13-39). Ostrava: University of Ostrava.

CHAPTER FOUR THE INTEGRATIVE APPROACH TO METADISCOURSE REVISITED: HEDGING IN ACADEMIC WRITING TEREZA GUZIUROVÁ

Abstract Drawing on the theory of metadiscourse, this chapter focuses on one category, hedges, and compares their occurrence and use in two academic genres, the research article and the undergraduate textbook, within one discipline – linguistics. Firstly, the chapter discusses different models of hedges in scientific writing, especially Hyland’s polypragmatic model (1998). The analysis focuses on hedging devices used in the two genres, and the results suggest that the differences were not only quantitative but also qualitative. While the most frequent hedges in the research articles proved to be epistemic lexical verbs, the textbooks showed the highest incidence of adverbs, which were also the only hedging devices that occurred more frequently in the textbooks than in the RAs. Finally, the implications for metadiscourse theory are addressed.

1. Introduction Metadiscourse has attracted a large body of applied linguistic research in the last twenty years or so. It might be surprising that its popularity endures despite numerous definitions of the concept that vary significantly. It is probably not possible to say any more that metadiscourse is “undertheorized”, as Hyland and Tse suggested in 2004; however, the differences between its conceptualizations are not negligible, but have important methodological and practical implications for research. The reasons for the enduring interest in metadiscourse might be twofold. Firstly, at the heart of this notion lies the fascinating capacity of a

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human language to describe itself. The term which is often used to denote this capacity is ‘reflexivity’. According to Sinclair, the term was coined by Charles Hockett, who “included it in his list of the defining characteristics of human language to distinguish our unique communication potential as a species […]” (Sinclair, 2005: 164).1 The term is used in semantics, for example by Lyons, who gives an example of reflexivity in language: “The word Socrates has eight letters”, in which Socrates is not used to refer to a particular person but, in a certain sense, to refer to itself (1977: 5). In a similar sense, Jakobson, while introducing his model of six functions of language, describes metalanguage as “a language in which we speak about the verbal code itself” (Jakobson, 1980: 86). He calls this function ‘metalingual’ (or ‘glossing’) and states that we use metalanguage without realizing the metalingual character of our operations, e.g. in the sentence ‘What does this word mean?’ Whenever the speech is focused on the code itself, a metalingual function is prominent (ibid.). The second reason may be connected with the growing interest in the interpersonal aspects of language in general, and academic writing in particular. According to Hyland, metadiscourse “has emerged to help reestablish the importance of interpersonal aspects of language following a period when linguists were almost exclusively concerned with the ways language is used to convey information” (2005: 14). And it is no coincidence that the majority of metadiscourse research has focused on academic genres. Mauranen speaks about an “interpersonal turn” in the analysis of academic writing in the early 1990s, when written academic discourse began to be systematically analyzed in terms of interaction between writers and readers, developing such concepts as hedging and metadiscourse (2012: 45). The role of social actors in the construction of scientific knowledge has been foregrounded especially in the theories of social constructionism, which rank among the best-known approaches to conceptualizing academic discourse nowadays (Hyland, 2009: 11). Within this approach, science is seen as a social and rhetorical activity, and scientific knowledge is regarded “primarily as a human product, made with locally situated cultural and material resources, rather than as simply the revelation of a pre-given order of nature” (Golinski, 2005: xvii). The two reasons mentioned above may in fact be interconnected. Reflexive language as captured in metadiscourse categories such as code glosses, frame markers or endophoric markers is the expression of the writer’s effort to communicate the message in such a way as to make it 1

Hockett (1966) uses the term ‘reflexiveness’ and suggests that it might be one of language universals.

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coherent and understandable for the reader. The writer aims to meet the reader’s expectations and processing needs by explicitly organizing a discourse, referring to its individual parts, reformulating or exemplifying. In a way, reflexive language is “highly interactive, whether couched in monologic or dialogic form” (Mauranen, 2010: 16). Drawing on the theory of metadiscourse, this study focuses on one category, hedges, and aims to compare their occurrence and use in two academic genres, the research article and the undergraduate textbook, within one discipline – linguistics. Since the analysis is part of a larger research project aiming at the description of metadiscursive features in the undergraduate textbook, the paper also briefly discusses an integrative approach to metadiscourse, represented especially by Hyland (2005). Despite its popularity among researchers (e.g. Crismore & Farnsworth, 1990; Luukka, 1994; Hyland, 1998, 2005; Bondi, 2001; Boggel, 2009; Kuhi, 2012 etc.), the integrative approach to metadiscourse has recently been criticized for covering disparate language phenomena that cannot be easily put under one umbrella term (text-organizing elements, the expression of stance, writer-reader interaction). Therefore, the study also assesses the potential advantages and drawbacks of this model.

2. Hedging Hedges essentially form part of all integrative approaches to metadiscourse (e.g. under the labels validity markers in Vande Kopple, 1985; hedges in Crismore et al., 1993; hedges in Hyland, 1998, 2005). As a functional, context-dependent category, a hedge can be realized by various linguistic means – ranging from a modal verb to a whole sentence. It thus seems necessary to first provide a theoretical background of hedging and to delimit the term for the purposes of this study, since there does not appear to be full agreement in literature as to what the concept includes. The term ‘hedge’ is believed to have been introduced by Lakoff to describe words “whose job it is to make things fuzzier or less fuzzy” (1973: 471). Lakoff draws on fuzzy set theory and develops the assumption that “natural language sentences will very often be neither true, nor false, nor nonsensical, but rather true to a certain extent and false to a certain extent, true in certain respects and false in other respects” (1973: 458). He deals with hedges such as sort of, technically or regular, which modify the degree of category membership; they can allow nonprototypical members to fall within the boundaries of the category (A

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penguin is sort of a bird).2 However, according to Clemen, Lakoff remained rooted in semantic theory and stayed within the realm of cognitive science, without considering later impulses in hedging research from pragmatics and discourse analysis (1997: 238–39). Since then, the use of the term hedge has undergone a change from a narrow semantic concept to a wider pragmatic one (Kaltenböck, Mihatsch & Schneider, 2010). Brown and Levinson (1987) developed more fully the speech act dimension of hedging, considering it to be a strategy of politeness (mainly negative politeness). Nevertheless, they adhered to a definition of hedging which includes both attenuation and reinforcement, regarding also strengtheners (such as really, definitely, exactly) as hedges: In the literature, a ‘hedge’ is a particle, word, or phrase that modifies the degree of membership of a predicate or noun phrase in a set; it says of that membership that it is partial, or true only in certain respect; or that it is more true and complete than perhaps might be expected [...]. (Brown & Levinson, 1987: 145)

Pragmatic understanding of hedging led to a widening of the concept – hedges were taken as modifiers of the speaker’s commitment to the truth value of a whole proposition, not just modifiers of the category membership (Markkanen & Schröder, 1997: 4). Some researchers even distinguished two types of hedges; Prince et al. (1982), for example, makes a distinction between approximators and shields. Approximators operate on the propositional content proper; they signal “nonprototypicalness with respect to class membership” (e.g. somewhat, sort of, approximately) (1982: 86). The second type of hedges, shields, concerns fuzziness in the relationship between the propositional content and the speaker, i.e. they affect the speaker’s commitment to the truth of the proposition (e.g. I think, probably, according to her estimates). Unlike approximators, shields leave the truth conditions of propositions unchanged and only affect the degree of speaker’s commitment to it (ibid.: 93). The classification of hedges suggested by Prince et al. (1982) has been criticized in later works on the grounds that it is difficult to draw a distinction between approximators and shields in authentic language use.3 2

Hedges can reveal different degrees of membership of a given category. In Lakoff’s example, robin is a prototypical member of a category of bird, while penguin is not typical; this is expressed by the use of the hedge sort of. 3 Varttala claims that these categories “may in fact be assumed to hold very similar pragmatic potential, which casts doubt on the usefulness of the distinction” (2001: 12).

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Both of them can perform the same function of expressing indetermination, making sentences more acceptable to the hearer (Markkanen & Schröder, 1997: 5). It is certainly true that hedges revealing different degrees of class membership can at the same time be used to reduce the risk of negation of the statement; often hedges have more than one function, which is useful for speakers. However, the distinction made by Prince et al. (1982) is similar to later theories and even shares some identical features with Hyland’s (1998) influential model. An interesting approach to hedges is adopted by Salager-Meyer (1994), who associates them with two different motivations. The first connects hedges with unscientific imprecision, defining them as “understatements used to convey (purposive) vagueness and tentativeness, and to make sentences more acceptable to the hearer/reader, thus increasing their chance of ratification and reducing the risk of negation” (1994: 150). This concept of fuzziness was developed, for example, by Brown and Levinson (1987), who regarded hedges as a means of negative politeness, minimizing face-threatening acts. The other viewpoint claims that interpreting hedging solely in terms of vagueness and fuzziness can blur its other important functions. It has been suggested that hedges could actually be considered ways of being more precise in reporting results, as they may present the actual state of the writers’ understanding; they can be used “to negotiate the right representation of the state of the knowledge under discussion, that is, to achieve greater preciseness in scientific claims” (Salager-Meyer, 1994: 151). Thus hedges could be regarded as means of expressing scientific uncertainty and scepticism, which is not negative but natural, since it appears impossible to achieve absolute positivistic objectivity in science. Myers (1989) is considered one of the first researchers who applied politeness principles to scientific writing,4 as he reinterpreted several features that occur commonly in scientific texts, such as hedging or impersonal constructions, as politeness strategies. He associates hedges with negative politeness on the grounds that making a claim can be a facethreatening act (FTA) – it is actually a demand for credit, it implies a restriction on what other researchers can do now, etc. Similarly, naming something, speculating, or asserting one’s primacy can threaten negative face, since for example speculation implies that even though the author does not have relevant data, his assumptions are worth general attention (Myers, 1989: 6). Naturally, among the most frequent FTAs in scientific texts are denials of the claims made by other researchers. Myers (1989) 4

See, for example, Varttala (2001: 69) or Hyland (1998).

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argues that claims and denials of claims in scientific writing are often mitigated by politeness strategies, which indicates that they in fact include impositions that have to be redressed. Thus, in his view hedging reflects social interactions in scientific texts rather than the probability value of statements (1989: 30). Myers’ (1989) interpretation of hedging solely in terms of politeness (and especially the model formulated by Brown and Levinson) has recently been criticized. Hyland (1998), for example, argues that “hedging plays a more rhetorical and normative role in the accomplishment of consensus in scientific persuasion than it does in the achievement of understanding in social encounters” (68). In his view, scientific discourse cannot be reduced to conflict avoidance, and he ascribes a much greater role to discourse community norms and power. A member of a discourse community has to adhere to certain norms and meet obligations in order to be successful; this includes mitigating one’s claims and showing respect for other researchers. As Hyland put it, “a failure to observe ‘politeness’ will not merely prevent individuals securing goals, but will incur social sanctions” (1998: 69). In other words, it could be argued that hedging in academic discourse cannot be interpreted only in terms of avoiding or redressing face-threatening acts, but also in terms of norms imposed on the writer by the discourse community.

2.1 Models of hedges in scientific writing One of the most comprehensive models of hedges is Hyland’s “polypragmatic model” (1998), which was devised on the basis of scientific research articles from the field of biology. As mentioned above, in Hyland’s view writing is a social act and thus it is partly determined by social institutions (in this case discourse communities), their norms and aims. Moreover, Hyland emphasizes the problem of indeterminacy, which seems to be an inherent feature of the epistemic use of language (1998: 157). As far as hedges are concerned, it is not possible to associate particular linguistic forms with the same functions in different contexts. Secondly, one and the same linguistic form can express several meanings simultaneously (e.g. root and epistemic meanings of modal verbs), which is probably the reason why Hyland speaks of indeterminacy. Finally, functions that are attributed to hedges in different models can only partially capture their nature, since with this pragmatic category the motivations for use could be not only complex, but also subconscious, and it will always be a projection of the analyst’s own views and experience. This is also demonstrated by Hyland’s study; he admits that his expert

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informants occasionally differed in their interpretations of the same utterances and were unable to decide which kind of hedge in Hyland’s taxonomy a particular case represents. These experts could not always identify the precise motivation for a particular hedge, and it could be argued that sometimes the motivation is so simple, or so complex, that it cannot be categorized at all. However, this does not mean that hedges cannot be studied. Hyland tried to incorporate indeterminacy into his theory by using a fuzzy set model of graded membership and prototype theory (which actually refers back to Lakoff’s work). Basically, this perspective assumes that “categories are not homogeneous but have a prototype, good and bad members and fuzzy borders” (Hyland, 1998: 159). Prototypical members have the largest number of attributes in common with other members, and are maximally distinct from prototypical members of other categories (ibid.). Membership is thus a matter of degree. In terms of this theory, hedging would be a basic-level category including attributes such as “weakens force of statements, contains modal expressions, expresses deference, signals uncertainty” (160). This model is designed to account for less prototypical cases of hedges, regardless of their form. Hyland (1998) distinguishes two main categories of hedges: contentoriented and reader-oriented. The first category concerns the relationship between propositions and reality. They “serve to mitigate the relationship between propositional content and a non-linguistic mental representation of reality; they hedge the correspondence between what the writer says about the world and what the world is thought to be like” (Hyland, 1998: 162). There are two main motivations for content hedges: 1) stating propositions in accord with reality (accuracy-oriented), and 2) seeking self-protection from the negative consequences of poor judgement (writer-oriented hedges). Hyland’s model is summarized in Figure 1 below. Hedging Content-oriented ---------------------- Reader-oriented Accuracy-oriented ---------- Writer-oriented Attribute ---------- Reliability Figure 1 Hyland’s model of hedging in scientific research articles (1998: 156)

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The main function of accuracy-oriented hedges is to achieve precision, either by “a) marking a departure from an ideal or b) indicating that a proposition is based on plausible reasoning or logical deduction in the absence of full knowledge” (Hyland, 1998: 163). The use of hedges as an attempt to seek precision has already been recognized by SalagerMeyer (1994; see above), but Hyland developed this assumption further by recognizing two different functions and motivations of these hedges. Attribute hedges reflect the fact that experimental results often vary from how scientists imagine and structure them (their idealized cognitive models), and in order to describe these deviations, attributes are frequently hedged. They are often realized by degree of precision adverbs, style disjuncts or content disjuncts (quite, more or less, generally) (164–165). Reliability hedges indicate the writer’s confidence in the validity of the propositions. The common means of expressing these hedges is by conventional epistemic forms, such as modal verbs, modal adjectives and nouns or adverbs expressing propositional uncertainty (e.g. possibly, probably). Hyland’s typical example is as follows: (1) ...it appears possible that the mechanism causing the light-activated fluorescence quenching may be triggered by either photosystem. (167)

The second type of content-oriented hedges is writer-oriented. Such hedges “aim to shield the writer from the possible consequences of negatability by limiting personal commitment” (Hyland, 1998: 170). Writers need to protect themselves from possible criticism, and they can do that, as Hyland suggests, by diminishing their presence in the text, which is often achieved by the absence of writer agentivity. Therefore, these hedges can be realized by passive constructions or impersonal subjects. A common strategy is using “abstract rhetors” which suggest that the situation described is independent of human agency (e.g. these data indicate, the model implies). Other means for realizing writer-oriented hedging include epistemic lexical verbs, especially judgemental and evidential lexical verbs, for example: (2)

Circumstantial evidence indicates specific shifts [...]. (173)

The final category in Hyland’s model is reader-oriented hedges, which address the social interaction between writer and reader. Presenting categorical claims does not leave any room for readers; there is no space for negotiation. On the other hand, hedged statements can involve readers in a dialogue and invite them to influence the scientific process, which could increase the chances of acceptance. Such hedges are also used to

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mitigate critical comments of the work of other researchers, mostly by using personal subjects (example 3). Hyland interprets such statements as an overt acceptance of personal responsibility. (3) From our investigations we conclude that the data of Wydrzynski et al. can be seen in a different light when the adverse effects of CI deprivation are seen [...]. (180)

Hyland repeatedly points out that precise categorization of polypragmatic forms is difficult, and even expert informants did not agree in certain cases. He adheres to a fuzzy-set model and claims that e.g. core examples of accuracy-oriented hedges will carry proposition-focused meanings, while a number of cases will occur in the periphery, carrying writer-focused meanings (1998: 177). However, even these core examples are sometimes difficult to categorize. For instance, example 1 above is understood as an accuracy-oriented hedge on the grounds that it is supposed to be “concerned with precision” of the claim. It seems, however, that it could also be interpreted in terms of protecting the writer from potential disagreement and could be thus classified as writeroriented. Furthermore, this expression is impersonal and the absence of the writer’s agentivity is characteristic of writer-oriented hedges. Thus, the distinction between accuracy-oriented and writer-oriented hedges appears problematic since the actual cases of language use frequently combine more functions, which might actually be advantageous for writers.5 To conclude, Hyland’s model provides an elucidating account of different motivations of hedging in scientific RAs and describes its functions, but it appears that a strict categorization of hedges might not be feasible (or useful). An interesting account of hedges is provided by Mauranen (1997). She distinguishes epistemic and interpersonal uses of hedges based on the primary motive for their use. The epistemic use of hedges reflects the uncertainty of the writer, since especially in academic contexts there are naturally many things that scientists cannot know, and they therefore want to leave space open for other possibilities. Thus the main reason for the use of hedges is to comment on the epistemic status of the information provided (Mauranen, 1997: 120). Moreover, the expressions of vagueness (e.g. around 500 nm) suggesting that more exact figures are unnecessary or unimportant are also regarded as epistemic hedges (ibid.). 5

See also Varttala’s detailed discussion (2001) of Hyland’s model, pointing out that the distinction between certain categories is difficult in practice, especially between the accuracy-oriented and writer-oriented hedges.

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The other main reason for the use of hedges suggested by Mauranen is the personal protection they offer to the writer, i.e. primarily an interpersonal strategy. The writer uses more tentative language to protect him/herself from potential disagreement, or to show consideration to the scientists who hold a different view on the subject (1997: 122). In practice the two motivations may overlap; nevertheless, this does not make the distinction between the functions invalid. Mauranen’s model is in some respects similar to Hyland’s complex taxonomy, but it does not seem to connect the functions of hedges with any particular linguistic forms. Moreover, it raises an important question which is often overlooked by studies dealing with hedges. It is generally agreed that hedges are highly context-bound and that the expressions that function as hedges in certain contexts have other uses in different contexts (e.g. modal verbs). However, Mauranen points out that the larger textual context plays a crucial role in the identification of hedges, and the potential of certain expressions for acting as hedges is only realized in some contexts. For example, the expression in general may not have a hedging effect at all if “the statement s read as a generalization which acts as a basis for the conclusion in the next sentence” (1997: 119): The academic qualifications are in general high. […] thus the marks in the matriculation examination and the GPA must be high. (PK)

However, the same expression may function as a hedge if it indicates that the generalization is of limited validity (ibid.): The academic qualifications are in general high. […] There is, however, a clear difference between male and female applicants. It has been much easier for male applicants to get into the university. (PK)

This issue turned out to be relevant to my corpus – especially the undergraduate textbooks. For example, the adverbs of indefinite frequency are often considered to be hedges in the literature (Hyland, 1998; Varttala, 2001 etc.). The question is, however, whether all uses of adverbs such as usually or often impart a hedging effect. While research articles in general include many claims which are uncertain, which put the writer’s face at stake or which have to take account of readers’ reactions, university textbooks are more neutral in this respect as they include more fact-like statements (or at least statements regarded as facts in the current scientific paradigm). Therefore, it seems more difficult to decide which expressions function as hedges in actual use. Compare, for example, the following occurrences of the adverb often:

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Chapter Four (1) The hard palate is often called the “roof of the mouth”. You can feel its smooth curved surface with your tongue. (TB5: 9) (2) As the two quotes illustrate, prescriptivists and descriptivists are often very antagonistic towards one another. In highly emotional language, Simon characterizes “descriptive linguists” as a “curse upon their race.” (TB1: 13)

In the first example, the author simply mentions a more colloquial name for the hard palate, possibly so that the students will be able to more easily remember it. He does not express uncertainty about the matter; he does not want to be fuzzy or vague, nor does he want to be more precise. In the second example, the adverb seems to be used more strategically to show the readers that while prescriptivists and descriptivists are typically in conflict, this need not always be the case; this is also the author’s conclusion at the end of the chapter. While this distinction is sometimes very difficult to maintain, it seems to be crucial in all studies of hedging, and more attention should probably be paid to it. If we neglect this issue, we will have to consider all indefinite language devices (adverbs, adjectives etc.) as hedges, which would probably make the concept too broad.

2.2 Linguistic realization of hedging Before discussing the use of hedges in two genres of academic discourse, it is necessary to delimit the concept for purpose of this analysis of metadiscourse. A number of linguistic forms have been associated with hedges, ranging from epistemic modal verbs to the passive voice. Varttala (2001) observes that there is no absolute uniformity among researchers as to which linguistic phenomena should be regarded as hedges, which is one of the main problems in the analysis of the phenomenon. However, there are several taxonomies of hedging devices based on their surface realizations, one of them being Hyland’s (1998). Hyland distinguishes two main categories of hedges (based on the corpus of research articles): lexical and strategic. It is suggested that scientific hedging is principally a lexical phenomenon because lexical devices account for 85% of all hedging devices in Hyland’s corpora (1998: 104). Therefore, this study also focuses on lexical hedging. Hyland’s categories of lexical hedges include modal auxiliaries, epistemic lexical verbs, epistemic adjectives, adverbs and nouns. Modal auxiliaries are traditionally regarded as hedges and, to my knowledge, they are present in all taxonomies of hedging. Nevertheless, it is especially epistemic modality that has been traditionally connected with hedging because it

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“indicates the degree of commitment by the speaker to what he says” (Palmer, 1986: 51). In the following examples, only the first one has an epistemic meaning, while the second one expresses permission – which is referred to as deontic modality. (3) Students may steal books from the library. (4) Students may borrow books from the library if they have a student card.

However, it has been shown that other modal meanings can function as hedges as well (e.g. Huschová, 2008). For example, Coates (1983) distinguishes root and epistemic possibility, with the modal verb may being able to express both meanings. Root possibility may, at least in a sense defined by Coates, has been found to have a hedging effect in my corpus, as in the following example: (5) We may explain these differences by reference to differences in the ideology and epistemology of the two disciplines. (RA4: 313)

This could be paraphrased by “it is possible for us to explain”, which is characterized as root possibility by Coates (1983: 139), but it has been regarded as a hedge in this study. This study does not aim to discuss all devices that could function as hedges, but rather focuses on more prototypical cases in two academic genres. As far as modal verbs are concerned, the JDEST corpus of scientific texts has shown that the most frequent modal verbs used epistemically were found to be would, may and could (Hyland, 1998: 107). Another modal verb that frequently functions as a hedge is might. Generally, modal verbs with epistemic meaning were considered hedges in this analysis, with a few exceptions. Epistemic must (which is relatively infrequent in scientific discourse, Hyland, 1998: 108) has not been regarded as a hedge since it expresses the speaker’s confidence in the truth of the proposition: the speaker is actually saying “I’m sure” or “from the evidence available I confidently infer that” (Coates, 1983: 19). It thus expresses only very slight tentativeness, and it has not been considered a hedge in this study. In fact, epistemic must is on the list of boosters in Hyland’s account of metadiscourse (2005: 222). Similarly, epistemic will has also been omitted. Hyland states that its epistemic use involves “claims about the present, [...] in scientific writing the reference is usually to general truths”; they refer to predicted logical outcomes (1998: 115). However, Hyland admits that it is extremely difficult to distinguish an epistemic from a future interpretation where will refers to a future action,

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as it inevitably involves some uncertainty (116). Moreover, even will referring to general truths was found to have only limited epistemic potential, so will was recognized as a hedge only when it occurred together with another signal of uncertainty, e.g. epistemic adverbs (presumably, probably). The modal verb can is not traditionally associated with epistemic meanings, at least not in declarative and positive sentences. While one of the functions of can is to express possibility, it is only “theoretical possibility” (The road can be blocked = It is possible for the road to be blocked), unlike may, which represents “factual possibility” (The road may be blocked = It is possible that the road is blocked) (Leech, 1987: 81). While this distinction proved to be useful, there were cases in both genres that were ambiguous, allowing for both interpretations. The situation is further complicated by the fact that in academic texts may can be used to express a theoretical possibility (which is usually connected with can), since it is considered more formal. Besides modal verbs, there are other devices that express epistemic meanings: Hyland (1998) distinguishes epistemic lexical verbs (e.g. suggest, indicate, predict), epistemic adverbs (e.g. probably, apparently, generally), adjectives (e.g. likely, possible) and nouns (e.g. possibility). The second main category of hedging is non-lexical, and it accounts for 15% of all hedges in Hyland’s corpus. The means by which such hedges are expressed include questions, conditional clauses, contrast markers etc. (1998: 103). These hedges are referred to as strategic since they are divided into three discourse-based strategies that could have hedging functions (141–147): (a) Reference to limited knowledge (e.g. It is not known whether) (b) Reference to limitations of a model, theory or method (e.g. In the context of the proposed model) (c) Reference to experimental limitations (e.g. Under these conditions phosphorylations of PEPc by...)

On the whole, Hyland’s taxonomy can provide a useful guideline for the analysis of hedging. However, it seems to combine both formal and functional criteria – strategic hedges are often realized by lexical devices such as modal verbs. Although hedges are regarded as an open-ended category (it includes various means limiting the commitment of the speaker), this study draws on the taxonomy by Varttala (2001), who combines the approaches of Hyland and Salager-Meyer. It also focuses on more prototypical examples and omits peripheral categories, for example

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the use of the passive voice, whose hedging status is controversial (see Varttala, 2001).

3. Material The corpus consists of 7 undergraduate textbooks and 8 research articles, written by British, American or Australian authors. To my knowledge, the authors are all native speakers of English. In order to avoid the disciplinary variation in metadiscourse shown by previous studies, only one discipline was chosen: linguistics. The textbooks were published between 1997 and 2010, and they are all “introductory” textbooks in a sense that they are regarded as introductions to linguistics or relevant linguistic disciplines. The aim of the book is usually specified in the preface, where the authors claim, for example, that “[the] book is designed for the course, entitled ‘Language and linguistics’, which my colleagues and I teach to first-year students” (Lyons, 1981/2002). The corpus consists of four general introductions to English linguistics, one introduction to phonology, one introduction to morphology and one introduction to the history of the English language. One or two chapters from each textbook were analyzed so that the total number of words would be approximately the same; this yielded 51,522 words altogether. The research articles were taken from two well-established journals, English for Specific Purposes and the Journal of Pragmatics, published between 2002 and 2008. Eight articles have been analyzed, totalling over 53,000 words. The texts chosen were not fragments: research articles were analyzed as a whole and textbooks were represented by one or two chapters (in one case one and a half), so that the number of words taken from each textbook was approximately 7,000 words. The research articles were shorter, so 8 complete articles were analyzed in order for the corpus to be balanced. The textbook chapters were randomly chosen, but the introductory chapters were omitted (only one Chapter 1 was included) because they have a special status; they were found to differ in many respects from the rest of the book (see Bondi, 2001). The full chapters rather than segments were analyzed since it is believed that chapters constitute distinctive macro-units in the structure of textbooks and language features are best studied within these macro-units (Bondi, 1999).

4. Hedging in textbooks and research articles For the purposes of the present analysis, hedges have been formally divided into several groups, based on Varttala’s (2001: 100) taxonomy:

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x x x x x x x

modal auxiliaries lexical verbs (epistemic) adverbs adjectives nouns clausal elements others.

As mentioned above, this study focuses mainly on lexical hedges, but it does not omit certain structural elements that clearly functioned as hedges in the data, e.g. questions and if-clauses. The overall incidence of hedges in both genres is given in Table 1. Table 1 Relative frequencies (per 1,000 words) and raw numbers of hedging devices in the corpus Textbooks Type of hedge Modal auxiliaries Lexical verbs (epistemic) Adverbs Adjectives Nouns Clausal elements Others Total

2.06 1.71 2.93 0.35 0.23 0.10 0.62 8.0

(106) (88) (151) (18) (12) (5) (32) (412)

RAs 2.97 3.39 2.43 0.79 0.51 0.35 0.58 11.02

(158) (180) (129) (42) (27) (19) (31) (586)

Both genres included several hedging clusters, especially the research articles (example 6). These compound hedges have been counted as a single hedge since they seem to function as a single unit. However, this approach made it difficult to consider all the devices of which compound hedges consist. Example 6 was classified as including a “full epistemic verb”, with the modal verb would only supporting a hedging potential of the phrase. Therefore, modal would does not appear in the table above. It is obvious that this approach is not ideal, but since the quantitative approach to hedges is always problematic, I decided to record an overall number of hedges (hedging units). Table 1 thus shows the number of hedges in the two genres and a governing element in the hedge; it does not show the actual number of, for example, modal verbs.

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(6) It would also seem that the frequency of nominalization in these extracts is sub-genre sensitive. (RA1: 355)

Salager-Meyer (1994) considers compound hedges as one of the categories in her taxonomy. This does not seem to be ideal either, given that other categories are modal auxiliary verbs, modal lexical verbs, approximators or introductory clauses. Nonetheless, she claims that the commonest forms of compound hedges are: “1. a modal auxiliary combined with a lexical verb with a hedging content (e.g. it would appear), and 2. a lexical verb followed by a hedging adverb or adjective where the adverb (or adjective) reinforces the hedge already inherent in the lexical verb (e.g. it seems reasonable/probable)” (1995: 135). Thus in Salager-Meyer’s view one of the elements reinforces the other, which could partly justify the present approach regarding them as a single unit. Table 1 shows a higher frequency of hedges in research articles than in textbooks (11.02 to 8.0 items per 1,000 words). The results are quite consistent with Hyland’s (2005) analyses of larger corpora, which showed the ratio of hedges as 15.7 to 8.5. The most frequent categories in the textbooks were adverbs (2.93 per 1,000 words), followed by modal auxiliaries (2.06 per 1,000 words) and lexical verbs (1.71 per 1,000 words). On the other hand, the most frequent hedging devices in the research articles proved to be lexical verbs (3.39 per 1,000 words), followed by modal auxiliaries (2.97 per 1,000 words) and adverbs (2.43 per 1,000 words). The only hedging devices that occurred more frequently in the textbooks than in the RAs were adverbs (“others” occurred with virtually the same frequency). It would be interesting to look into this category and discuss it in detail. Adverbs and adjectives can be further divided into probability devices and approximators (see, for example, Salager-Meyer, 1994), and a preliminary analysis has demonstrated that their number is different in the two genres. Probability adverbs explicitly express a degree of probability and can thus be seen as indicating epistemic modality. They include devices such as: probably, perhaps, presumably, potentially, likely etc. In negative sentences the adverb really was also found to have a hedging effect: (7) Again, we cannot really describe the nose and the nasal cavity as articulators in the same sense as (i) to (vii) above. (TB5: 10)

Probability adjectives are adjectives “that are most typically seen to involve epistemic modality” (Varttala, 2001: 135) and a number of them

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correspond to the adverbs above (probable, likely, potential), the most common item in the corpus being (un)likely (n=23). (8) (1a) and (1b) are also likely to differ in terms of pitch accent and boundary tone. (RA7: 1549)

Approximators are recognized as a hedging category by Salager-Meyer (1994) who draws on Prince et al.’s (1982) taxonomy. She distinguishes approximators of quantity, degree, frequency and time, which express “heed and coyness” and considers them to be the category “which most closely reflects what we could call the ‘institutionalized’ language of science” (1994: 154). Varttala (2001) provides a more detailed classification of adverbs; besides probability adverbs, he distinguishes adverbs of indefinite frequency (often, usually, typically), adverbs of indefinite degree (quite, somewhat, relatively)6, and approximative adverbs (almost, about, approximately). This study considers all these types of adverbs as approximators, as well as the corresponding adjectives. Table 2 shows the frequency of the two types of adverbs and adjectives in the corpus. Adverbs functioning as approximators are the most frequent hedges in the textbooks, with 2.6 items per 1,000 verbs. This is the only category that occurred more frequently in the textbooks than in the RAs. Approximators in the textbooks included adverbs of indefinite frequency (usually, generally, typically, normally, often)7, as in example 9. (9) Public discussions of the shift to gender-neutral language have typically ignored the linguistic motivation for this change. Instead, the shift is often framed within the context of discussions of “politically correct” language usage, a discussion with purely political motivations. (TB1: 14)

The use of indefinite adverbs allows writers to avoid categorical assertions and state that while something is typical or frequent, there might be other cases that contradict this trend. In example 9, the author does not agree with the lack of linguistic debate concerning political correctness, 6

In Varttala’s (2001) study, certain amplifiers are also treated as hedges (e.g. significantly) on the grounds that they are indefinite. These adverbs expressing “a higher degree” were, however, omitted in this study. 7 Typically is considered an adverb of indefinite frequency by Varttala (2001). Dušková classifies it as a modifier expressing a writer’s attitude to the proposition, specifically commenting on the propositions from the point of view of usualness/unusualness (1988: 480, the translation is mine). Therefore, it is treated as an approximator here, albeit not a typical one.

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and even though he is quite sure that such debate is indeed lacking, he does not want to say that it is non-existent, which could offend those linguists that strive for it. Table 2 Relative frequencies (per 1,000 words) and raw numbers of adverbs and adjectives Textbooks Type of hedge Probability adverbs Adverbs – approximators Probability adjectives Adjectives – approximators

RAs

0.33 (17) 2.6 (134)

0.6 (34) 1.8 (95)

0.27 (14) 0.1 (4)

0.7 (38) 0.1 (4)

Another group of approximators that occurred repeatedly in the corpus are adverbs of indefinite degree, such as quite, somewhat, fairly, or relatively. These adverbs partly correspond to “downtoners”, which have a “lowering effect on the force of the verb or predication” (Quirk et al., 1985: 597). “Downtoners” are further divided into approximators (I almost resigned), compromisers (I quite enjoyed the party), diminishers (I partly agree with you), and minimizers (She scarcely know me) (ibid.). According to Quirk et al. (1985: 449), downtoners can also function as modifiers of nouns, pronouns, numerals etc., indicating their imprecision (They will stay for about a week). However, this study regards these adverbs as approximators expressing indefinite degree (see Salager-Meyer, 1994) as most of them answer the question how much? or to what extent? This is corroborated by Dušková (1988), who regards all these adverbs as “intensifiers” (as a subgroup of adverbials of degree)8, and who distinguishes the intensifiers of adjectives and adverbs (It was a fairly good performance) and the intensifiers of verbs (I quite understand) (465– 470). According to Dušková (1988), intensifiers express a scale from the highest degree to the lowest degree (completely – at all). Nevertheless, only intensifiers that have a lowering effect on the propositions are considered hedges in this study (somewhat, partially, quite, kind of). Several examples follow.

8

The translation is mine.

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Chapter Four (10) The letter of the alphabet in writing is a unit which corresponds fairly well to the unit of speech we have been talking about earlier in this chapter - the segment. (TB5: 39) (11) Indeed, relatively few of the linguists who were impressed by the technical advantages and heuristic value of Chomsky's system of transformational-generative grammar when he first put this forward in the late 1950s have ever explicitly associated themselves with the body of assumptions and doctrines that is now identifiable as generativism. (TB4: 228) (12) The key work of Sapir and Whorf is often referred to under the label ‘Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis’, a convenient though somewhat misleading name […]. (TB6: 74)

In example 10, the writer cannot say that the letter of the alphabet fully corresponds to the unit of speech, but in accord with his idea of reality he can state that it fairly corresponds to it. It makes the proposition true in certain respects and false in other respects, which suggests Lakoff’s conception of hedges (1973) as modifying the degree of category membership. Another related category can be described as approximators expressing indefinite quantity (approximately, roughly, about); these are regarded as approximators proper by Varttala (2001). Example 13 illustrates it. (13) [I]t was located at Westminster, where it became a self-perpetuating bureaucracy of about 120 clerks. (TB2: 55)

Other approximators included essentially, virtually, practically etc. (14) In fact, the notion of functional contrast, which was invoked above in drawing the distinction between phonetics and phonology, is essentially that of Trubetzkoy […]. (TB4: 224) (15) But when the alphabet is used to write with, these letters appear on the page in a practically infinite number of different shapes and sizes. (TB5: 40)

Generally, the results have shown that approximators were the only hedging devices that occurred more frequently in textbooks than in RAs. Given that they concern the relationship between propositional content and a representation of reality rather than the writer-reader relationship, the results suggest that textbooks included more ‘accuracy-oriented hedges’ than RAs. As mentioned above, these belong among the so-called ‘content oriented’ hedges, which serve to “mitigate the relationship between propositional content and a non-linguistic mental representation of reality”

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– the relationship between what the writer says about the world and what the world is thought to be like (Hyland, 1998: 162). The main function of ‘accuracy-oriented hedges’ is to achieve greater precision, e.g. by indicating that the claim is based on plausible reasoning since our knowledge of the topic does not allow us to speak with confidence. Moreover, they were used not only where exact data were not available, but also when the writers assumed that they were not relevant for the readers/students. Thus, the writers lowered the precision level of propositions on purpose to adapt them for a non-specialist audience. On the other hand, RAs contained a higher number of epistemic modal verbs and especially epistemic lexical verbs than textbooks, which indicates that they include more ‘writer-oriented hedges’ – which, according to Hyland (1998), are typically realized by epistemic lexical verbs, especially judgemental and evidential verbs. RA writers tried to protect themselves from potential criticism or disagreement, so these hedges also seem to correspond to the ‘shields’ distinguished by Prince et al. (1982). Hedges that are preceded by personal subjects (I suggest, we could describe) are treated by Hyland as ‘reader-oriented’, addressing the social interaction between writer and reader. They indicate that the writer is fully responsible for the claim, thereby “shifting the interpretive frame, drawing attention to the relation of the work to the investigator, and signalling that the claim is left open to the reader’s judgement” (Hyland, 1998: 182). While personal attribution is undoubtedly important for hedging, in practice it was quite difficult to distinguish between different types of hedges proposed by Hyland (see above). Instead, it could be argued that RAs generally included more hedges that concerned writerreader interaction (whether writer- or reader-oriented) than textbooks.

5. Collocations with hedges It has been noted before that discourse reflexivity9 tends to collocate with hedges (e.g. Mauranen, 2010). Mauranen calls this ‘discourse collocation’, since it refers to a co-occurrence tendency between two discourse phenomena, not only between specific lexical items. She argues that metadiscourse implies an imposition of the speaker’s perspective on the discourse and thus reduces the negotiability of the dialogic perspective. 9

The term ‘discourse reflexivity’ is used here since this tendency has been pointed out by Mauranen, who interprets metadiscourse in a narrow sense, basically as a discourse reflexive phenomenon (roughly corresponding to ‘textual metadiscourse’ in other approaches).

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This can be mitigated by hedging, which again opens up the room for the reader’s views and “the combination thus serves to restore the balance between expressing speaker perspective and keeping it negotiable” (Mauranen, 2010: 24). In her analysis, Mauranen focused on two verbs used reflexively, PUT and SAY, which were found to co-occur with mitigating expressions (e.g. you could put it that way) (ibid.). Collocations with hedges were also observed in my corpus of RAs and university textbooks. What proved particularly striking was the tendency of hedges to co-occur with another metadiscourse category – attitude markers. In the original framework formulated by Hyland, attitude markers are defined rather generally as expressions “indicating the writer’s affective, rather than epistemic, attitude to propositions. They convey surprise, agreement, importance, obligation, frustration and so on.” (Hyland, 2005: 53) While attitude in academic writing can be expressed through the grading of the ideational content, by the use of subordination, comparatives, punctuation, text location etc., most explicit metadiscourse signals include: attitude verbs (agree, prefer) sentence adverbs (unfortunately, hopefully) adjectives (appropriate, logical, remarkable) (ibid.)

Such expressions foreground the writer and contribute to the construction of a credible disciplinary identity, as they often “signal the evaluator’s desire to identify with the standards and values of a particular field” (Hyland, 2012: 81). The results of my previous research have shown a higher number of attitude markers in RAs (5.9 items per 1,000 words) than in textbooks (3.8 items per 1,000 words), with different functions reflecting different purposes and audiences of the two genres (see Guziurová, 2014). The analysis has also shown an uneven distribution of attitude markers in RAs, where they tended to cluster in the Introduction or in the final sections (‘After the Result’ sections), in which writers need to ‘create a research space’, i.e. to justify their research and state why it is important or interesting. The use of attitude markers in textbooks often reflects their instructional purpose. Textbook authors carefully guide readers through the discourse and instruct them at the same time, sometimes indicating how they should understand the given issue. Since this presents a potential imposition on the reader, these structures are sometimes hedged, as in the example 16.

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(16) It is probably best to think of any proposal concerning processing pathways in the brain as some form of metaphor that may turn out to be inadequate once we learn more about how the brain functions. (TB3: 159)

Textbook authors also sometimes evaluate theories that represent the “codified knowledge” of the discipline, commenting on different approaches, terminology etc. In these comments attitude markers also cooccur with hedges, which stresses the argumentative nature of the issue in question. (17) The term ‘form’ is well established in this sense in philosophy and relates, on the one hand, to Wilhelm von Humboldt’s notion of the inner form of a language (innere Sprachform) and, on the other, to the Russian formalists’ notion of form as opposed to content in literary analysis. But it is potentially misleading. (TB4: 220) (18) The distinction between primary and secondary Cardinal Vowels is a rather dubious one which appears to be based to some extent on a division between those vowels which are familiar and those which are unfamiliar to speakers of most European languages. (TB5: 17)

In the RAs authors needed to adequately justify their current research, so they frequently pointed out the significance of the topic discussed or the issue investigated. However, their professional modesty did not allow them to be too direct in this respect, and these statements are often hedged (example 19). The significance of the topic can be reinforced by emphasizing its usefulness in practice (for students, L2 writers, etc.), which was typical of the English for Specific Purposes journal where pedagogical implications can often be drawn (example 20). (19) Since use of nominalization seems to be significant in the development of scientific writing at this period, it would be interesting (despite Gross et al.’s comment) to investigate the possibility that Latin had some influence on this. (RA1: 351) (20) The findings of the present study suggest that the notion of metaphenomenon may be a useful one in teaching about variable disciplinary discourses. (RA2: 360) While additional research needs to be conducted in this approach, especially with regards to larger corpus analyses and the pedagogical significance of the chronotope, it seems apparent that introducing students to the syntactic and semantic practices that help to construct the move would be valuable. (RA5: 23)

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The same applies to the authors’ comments about their findings, whose significance or unexpectedness is hedged. However, such explicit comments about the results were particularly rare; the authors rather emphasized that the topic is worth examining in general, e.g. by stating that it seems to be problematic for non-native speakers. Finally, attitude markers were followed by hedges where authors expressed negative evaluations of other theories or disagreed with other researchers. While the researchers need to comment on the theories used, and often to take a certain stance while interpreting them, they need to be careful in presenting criticism since it is potentially their colleagues they are referring to and such criticism, albeit indirect, would threaten these colleagues’ “professional” face. One explicit example follows: (21) One conclusion we could draw from this kind of example is to say that Capone is wrong to say that Grice’s cooperative principle only applies to linguistic cooperation. While that is one way of putting it, it may be preferable to say that the cooperative principle does indeed only apply to linguistic cooperation but in some cases the extralinguistic goal determines linguistic cooperation. (RA8: 1901)

6. Conclusion The present analysis of hedges in two academic genres seems to have implications for the theory of metadiscourse, especially the integrative approaches represented e.g. by Hyland (2005). Firstly, it shows that the quantitative approach itself (which has been described as a ‘thin’ approach to metadiscourse) might be misleading, since it is often the functions or types of metadiscourse devices that seem to be genre-specific. For example, the number of hedges was expected to be significantly higher in RAs than in textbooks because the genre has been described as “the arena for conflicting views” (Myers, 1992: 6), where writers have to make claims with caution and modesty, leaving a rhetorical space for alternative views. While this has been proved, the analysis has shown that textbooks also include a considerable number of hedges. What the quantitative analysis cannot show is different types of hedging devices found in the two genres. The most frequent hedging devices in the research articles proved to be epistemic lexical verbs, such as suggest, indicate, predict. On the other hand, the most frequent hedges in the textbooks were adverbs, which were also the only hedging devices that occurred more frequently in the textbooks than in the RAs. Moreover, the largest category of adverbs is accounted for by approximators, i.e. adverbs of indefinite frequency,

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adverbs of indefinite degree, and approximative adverbs proper. This suggests that textbooks generally contained more ‘accuracy-oriented hedges’ than RAs, which concern the relationship between propositional content and reality. They allow the writers to bring propositions closer to reality (or rather their mental representation of reality) and thus be more precise in this respect. Another problematic issue of metadiscourse theory which the present analysis has reopened is the non-propositionality as a defining feature of metadiscourse (e.g. Crismore et al. defined it as “linguistic material, written or spoken, which does not add anything to the propositional content”, 1993: 40). Although this criterion has been challenged repeatedly, it is still among Hyland’s three key principles characterizing metadiscourse: “metadiscourse is distinct from propositional aspects of discourse” (2005: 38). The term ‘proposition’ is problematic since it is a semantic term, which originated in logic, and as such it is not easily transferable to discourse analysis. The traditional truth-conditional criteria do not apply here because a number of metadiscursive statements can be described as true or false. However, even if we loosen the criteria and distinguish “things in the world and things in the discourse, propositions and metadiscourse”, as Hyland proposed (2005: 38), there are still many cases which remain problematic. Considering attitude markers, for example, one of Hyland’s examples reads: “The basis of the enormous productivity and affluence of modern industrial societies is their fantastic store of technological information” (2005: 164). It is questionable whether “enormous” is an expression of the writer’s attitude. While Hyland interpreted it as an attitude marker, i.e. as non-propositional (thus qualifying as metadiscourse), it could equally be argued that it contributes to the proposition expressed by the text. Similarly, certain hedges mentioned above are said to affect the propositional content, e.g. approximators as identified by Prince et al. (1982). All these examples seem to indicate that non-propositionality is hardly tenable as a reliable criterion for characterizing metadiscourse in its broader sense. Generally, it seems that the integrative approaches to metadiscourse have moved away from the text reflexivity as the capacity of a language to refer to or describe itself, and instead foreground the interpersonal meanings. Whether this approach is justified today (when the interpersonal aspects of language are conceptualized under the headings of stance, evaluation or positioning) is difficult to say. However, at least in academic writing the concept seems to have been useful in showing how writers project themselves into their discourses in order to structure them, negotiate meanings and engage readers as discourse participants. And it

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has also shown that even reflexive devices perform an interpersonal function, in that they take account of readers’ knowledge, expectations and their role in the discourse. In short, these devices reflect our interpersonal and social relationships.

Corpus Textbooks (TB1) Meyer, Charles F. (2009) Introducing English Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2–15. (TB2) Knowles, Gerry (1997) A Cultural History of the English Language. London: Arnold. 46–62. (TB3) Yule, George (2010) The Study of Language (4th ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 127–136, 156–166. (TB4) Lyons, John (2002) Language and linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 216–235. (Original work published 1981) (TB5) Roach, Peter (2006) English Phonetics and Phonology (3rd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 8–11, 38–47. (TB6) Penhallurick, Rob (2003) Studying the English Language. Hampshire/New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 70–84, 58–60. (TB7) Lieber, Rochelle (2010) Introducing Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 59–73, 75–85.

Research articles (RA1) Banks, David (2005) On the historical origins of nominalized process in scientific text. English for Specific Purposes 24/3, 347–357. (RA2) Moore, Tim (2002) Knowledge and agency: a study of ‘metaphenomenal discourse’ in textbooks from three disciplines. English for Specific Purposes 21/4, 347–366. (RA3) Flowerdew, John (2003) Signalling nouns in discourse. English for Specific Purposes 22/4, 329–346. (RA4) Charles, Maggie (2006) Phraseological patterns in reporting clauses used in citation: A corpus-based study of theses in two disciplines. English for Specific Purposes 25/3, 310–331. (RA5) Crossley, Scott (2007) A chronotopic approach to genre analysis: An exploratory study. English for Specific Purposes 26/1, 4–24. (RA6) Spencer-Oatey, Helen (2007) Theories of identity and the analysis of face. Journal of Pragmatics 39, 639–656.

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(RA7) House, Jill (2006) Constructing a context with intonation. Journal of Pragmatics 38, 1542–1558. (RA8) Lumsden, David (2008) Kinds of conversational cooperation. Journal of Pragmatics 40, 1896–1908.

Bibliography Boggel, Sandra (2009) Metadiscourse in Middle English and Early Modern English Religious Texts. A Corpus-based Study. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Bondi, Marina (1999) English across Genres. Language Variation in the Discourse of Economics. Modena: University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. —. (2001) Small corpora and language variation. In Mohsen Ghadessy, Alex Henry & Robert L. Roseberry (Eds.). Small Corpus Studies and ELT: Theory and practice. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 135–174. Brown Penelope and Levinson, Stephen C. (1987) Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clemen, Gudrun (1997) The Concept of Hedging: Origins, Approaches and Definitions. In Raija Markkanen & Hartmut Schröder (Eds.), Hedging and Discourse: Approaches to the Analysis of a Pragmatic Phenomenon in Academic Texts. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. 235–248. Coates, Jennifer (1983) The Semantics of the Modal Auxiliaries. London/Canberra: Croom Helm. Crismore, Avon and Farnsworth, Rodney (1990) Metadiscourse in popular and professional science discourse. In Walter Nash (Ed.), The Writing Scholar: Studies in Academic Discourse. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. 118–136. Crismore, Avon, Markkanen, Raija, and Steffensen, Margaret S. (1993) Metadiscourse in Persuasive Writing. Written Communication 10/1, 39–71. Dušková, Libuše (1988) Mluvnice souþasné angliþtiny na pozadí þeštiny. Prague: Academia. Golinski, Jan (2005) Making Natural Knowledge. Constructivism and the history of science. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Guziurová, Tereza (2014) The Expression of the Writer’s Attitude in Undergraduate Textbooks and Research Articles. Ostrava Journal of English Philology 6/2, 81–94.

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Jakobson, Roman (1980) The framework of language. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Hockett, Charles F. (1966) The problem of universals in language. In Joseph Greenberg (Ed.), Universals of language. Cambridge: The MIT Press. 1–29. Huschová, Petra (2008) Epistemic and Root Possibility Meanings of CAN and MAY in Written English (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Charles University, Prague. Hyland, Ken (1994) Hedging in Academic Writing and EAP Textbooks. English for Specific Purposes 13/3, 239–256. —. (1998) Hedging in scientific research articles. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins. —. (2005) Metadiscourse. London/New York: Continuum. —. (2009) Academic discourse. London/New York: Continuum. —. (2012) Disciplinary Identities. Individuality and community in academic discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hyland, Ken and Tse, Polly (2004) Metadiscourse in Academic Writing: A Reappraisal. Applied Linguistics 25/2, 156–177. Kaltenböck, Gunther, Mihatsch, Wiltrud and Schneider, Stefan (Eds.) (2010) New Approaches to Hedging. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing. Kuhi, Davud (2012) Interpersonal Resources in Academic Discourse: Research Genres vs. Instructional Genres. Saarbrücken: Lambert Academic Publishing. Lakoff, George (1973) Hedges: A Study in Meaning Criteria and the Logic of Fuzzy Concepts. Journal of Philosophical Logic 2, 458–508. Leech, Geoffrey N. (1987) Meaning and the English Verb. (2nd ed.). London/New York: Longman. Luukka, Miina-Riita (1994) Metadiscourse in academic texts. In BrittLouise Gunnarsson, Per Linel & Bengt Nordberg (Eds.), Text and Talk in Professional Contexts. Uppsala: ASLA. 77–88. Lyons, John (1977) Semantics Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —. (2002) Language and linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1981) Markkanen, Raija and Schröder, Hartmut (Eds.) (1997) Hedging and Discourse: Approaches to the Analysis of a Pragmatic Phenomenon in Academic Texts. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. Mauranen, Anna (1997) Hedging in Language Revisers’ Hands. In R. Markkanen & H. Schröder (Eds.), Hedging and Discourse:

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Approaches to the Analysis of a Pragmatic Phenomenon in Academic Texts. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. 115–133. —. (2010) Discourse Reflexivity – A Discourse Universal? The Case of ELF. Nordic Journal of English Studies 9/2, 13–40. —. (2012) Exploring ELF. Academic English shaped by non-native speakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Myers, Greg (1989) The pragmatics of politeness in scientific texts. Applied Linguistics 10/4, 1–35. —. (1992) Textbooks and the sociology of scientific knowledge. English for Specific Purposes 11/1, 3–17. Palmer, Frank R. (1986) Mood and Modality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Prince, Ellen, Frader, Joel and Bosk, Charles (1982) On Hedging in Physician-Physician Discourse. In Robert J. Di Pietro (Ed.), Linguistics and the Professions. Norwood: Ablex Press. 83–97. Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey and Svartvik, Jan (1985) A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman. Salager-Meyer, Françoise (1994) Hedges and Textual Communicative Function in Medical English Written Discourse. English for Specific Purposes 13/2, 149–170. —. (1995) I Think That Perhaps You Should: a Study of Hedges in Written Scientific Discourse. The Journal of TESOL France 2/2, 127– 143. Sinclair, John (2005) Language as a string of beads: Discourse and the Mword. In Elena Tognini-Bonelli & Gabriella Dell Lungo Camiciotti (Eds.), Strategies in Academic Discourse. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 163–168. Vande Kopple, William J. (1985) Some Exploratory Discourse on Metadiscourse. College Composition and Communication 36/1, 82–93. Varttala, Teppo (2001) Hedging in Scientifically Oriented Discourse. Exploring Variation According to Discipline and Intended Audience (Doctoral dissertation). University of Tampere. Retrieved from: http://tampub.uta.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/67148/951-44-51953.pdf?sequence=1

CHAPTER FIVE INTERACTION AND INTERSUBJECTIVE POSITIONING IN BOOK REVIEWS OLGA DONTCHEVA-NAVRATILOVA

Abstract This chapter studies social interaction in a relatively neglected evaluative genre of academic interaction – book reviews. Book reviews establish complex and often conflicting relationships between the members of a disciplinary discourse community, as the reviewer has to find a delicate balance between the expression of critique and collegiality (Hyland 2004) while striving to construct an expert identity and engaging in a dialogue with the author of the book under review and other voices in the disciplinary discourse community. Drawing on Brown and Levinson’s (1987) approach to politeness, this study explores the interplay of praise and criticism, focusing on the distribution of explicit negative and positive evaluative acts across the generic structure of linguistics book reviews published in the Journal of English for Academic Purposes. The analysis seeks to identify and discuss the reasons for the existing divergences in the evaluative strategies reviewers opt for when evaluating different types of books.

1. Introduction The view of written academic discourse as embodying interaction between the writer and the reader has been evidenced by a substantial body of recent research. When endeavouring to present new ideas and findings, not only do academic writers position their work in the context of previous disciplinary knowledge, they also engage in a dialogue with their readers in an attempt to negotiate their views, evaluate the views of others, and persuade their audience of the relevance and validity of their claims.

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This dialogic and evaluative aspect of written academic discourse is particularly prominent in the relatively neglected ‘genre colony’ (Bhatia 1997, 2005) of ‘evaluative genres’ of academic interaction, such as book reviews, review articles, publisher descriptions and blurbs (Hyland and Diani 2009), the purpose of which is to convey a highly visible public assessment of research involving the explicit positioning of the reviewer with regard to the text and the contribution of fellow scientists to disciplinary knowledge. This chapter explores interaction and intersubjective positioning in linguistics book reviews published in the Journal of English for Academic Purposes, focusing on the politeness phenomena of praise and criticism expressed by negative and positive evaluative acts. There are several studies focusing on the rhetorical structure of book reviews (Motta-Roth 1998), evaluative acts and their distribution across the generic structure of book reviews (Shaw 2004, 2006, Salager-Meyer and Alcazar Ariza 2007, Moreno and Suarez 2008, 2009), the structural patterns expressing praise and criticism (Gea Valor 2000, Hyland 2004) and identity construction (Tse and Hyland 2009), yet none of them addresses variation according to the type of book under review. This investigation attempts to identify differences in the evaluative strategies reviewers opt for when evaluating different types of books and discusses the motivation for the existing divergences.

2. Book reviews as a site of academic interaction Until recently the book review has attracted considerably less attention than the research article, regarded by many as the most visible and prototypical genre of academic discourse (e.g. Swales 1990, 2004, Duszak 1997, Zapletalová 2009). Published in annual reviews and in specialized sections at the end of academic journals, book reviews, which are often solicited and do not reflect original research and intellectual innovation (Felber 2002: 170), are seen as a marginal and less prestigious genre of academic discourse. However, recent research (cf. Felber 2002, Hyland 2004, Shaw 2004, 2006 Hyland and Diani 2009) has shown convincingly that book reviews have a number of important functions in mediating social interaction within research communities. By describing and evaluating recent publications they facilitate the dissemination of new knowledge, allow reviewers to align themselves with particular orientations, theories and methods, and provide an alternative forum for the exchange of views and ideas, thus supporting social cohesiveness within the community.

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Book reviews fulfil both ideational functions, involving (i) the expression of judgements and the description and evaluation of the book under review, and (ii) interpersonal functions related to the negotiation of social relations with the intended addressees, i.e. the author of the book under review and the disciplinary discourse community (cf. Gea Valor 2000, Hyland 2004, Salager-Mayer and Alcazar Ariza 2007). In line with previous research on the genre (Hyland 2000, Gea Valor 2000, SalagerMayer and Alcazar Ariza 2007, Hyland and Diani 2009), this study draws on Brown and Levinson’s (1987) approach to politeness, which builds upon Goffman’s concept of ‘face’ (Goffman 1967) and regards book reviews as highly face-threatening speech acts, since they involve assessment of the work of other members of the discourse community. Within this approach, face-threat mitigation is achieved by attending to the interrelated positive and negative face needs of the participants and involves the use of positive politeness strategies aimed at softening the threat by establishing solidarity and negative politeness strategies aimed at minimizing imposition. Contrary to the promotional genres of blurbs and publisher descriptions, book reviews are a disinterested (non-promotional) genre (Shaw 2004, 2006, 2009) and therefore presuppose an impartial and often critical evaluation of the book under review. Thus in order to construe an authoritative position granting them the right to make judgements in public on the work of fellow members of the disciplinary community, book reviewers need to demonstrate an up-to-date expert knowledge of the field and typically do not attend exclusively to the positive politeness needs of the reviewee. These genre- and community-driven concerns are often complemented by the desire to avoid direct personal conflict within the closely interwoven local and global disciplinary discourse communities, which can undermine chances of promotion and publication opportunities. As a result, while trying to preserve their own credibility and to negotiate their relationship with the reviewee, book reviewers have to balance praise with criticism, which in turn may require mitigation in order to maintain politeness. Criticism in reviewing may also be required by journal editors who could decline to publish reviews that are devoid of any criticism on the grounds that the reviewer is not impartial or lacks the expertise to evaluate the research under review in a broader context. On the other hand, some journal editors may discourage wholly negative reviews, which is in accordance with previous research findings (Hyland 2000, Giannoni 2009) indicating that in academic book reviews, positive evaluation predominates.

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3. Data and Methodology This chapter explores the interplay of praise and criticism in academic book reviews as expressed by negative and positive evaluative acts. The investigation focuses on the reviewing practices of a single journal – the Journal of English for Academic Purposes (JEAP). The specialized corpus is fairly small (21,000 words), as in the targeted period (2009-2014) there were only 15 reviews meeting the criterion of representing the writing habits of native-speaker linguists; nevertheless, I believe that the material is representative enough to map the strategies used by the reviewers when evaluating different kinds of books. The books under review can be seen as representing three types of publications: monographs (5 reviews), edited collections (4 reviews) and handbooks or guides (6 reviews), which despite some differences in content and purpose were grouped together on the basis of their applied character. The differences between the reviews of the monographs, edited collections and handbooks are explored on the basis of a comparison of their generic structure applying Motta-Roth’s (1998) description of rhetorical moves in book reviews. According to Motta-Roth, book reviews typically include four basic moves, often visually signalled by paragraph shifts: (i) introducing the book, (ii) outlining the book, (iii) highlighting parts of the book, and (iv) providing closing evaluation of the book. The first stage of the analysis is thus aimed at detecting variation in the realizations of the sub-functions of these moves, as these are expected to reflect the specificities of the three types of publications under review. The second stage of the investigation focuses on a quantitative analysis of the occurrence of negative and positive evaluative acts across the rhetorical moves of book reviews. In agreement with Thompson and Hunston (1999: 5), evaluation is conceived here as a “cover term for the expression of the writer’s or speaker’s attitude or stance towards, viewpoint on, or feelings about the entities and propositions that he or she is talking about”. I am concerned in this study with evaluative acts, understood not as a grammatical, but as a functional unit, which – irrespective of its lexicogrammatical configuration – contains both the aspect commented upon and what is said about it (Moreno and Suarez 2008). An evaluative act comprises one or more expressions which explicitly indicate “the qualities ascribed to the entities, situations or propositions that are evaluated” (Bednárek 2008: 15) along the good-bad axis, one of the four parameters of evaluation identified by Thompson and Hunston (1999: 22-25), the other three being certainty, expectedness and importance. As opposed to implicit evaluation, which essentially is

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contextually derived, explicit evaluation is conveyed primarily by lexical means (Shaw 2004, 2009) such as adjectives (e.g. correct, important, useful), adverbs (adequately, surprisingly, sadly), nouns (problem, confusion) and verbs (misunderstands, ignores). When performing an evaluative act, a reviewer comments on various aspects of the book under review – content, style, readership, text, author and commercial aspects – in relation to a criterion of evaluation such as novelty, usefulness or accessibility (cf. Hyland 2000, Moreno and Suarez 2008). The analysis of evaluative acts applies a simplified version of the typology suggested by Giannoni (2009), which comprises positive, negative and comparative evaluative acts. In this investigation, comparative evaluative acts (e.g. X is better or worse that Y/ is the best or worst) are interpreted as positive or negative evaluative acts according to their overall meaning and thus are subsumed under these general categories. Evaluation is typically expressed in two alternative ways: by claiming that a certain value-laden trait is present (additive evaluation) or that it is absent (detractive evaluation) in the book under review. Since, as Giannoni (2009: 21) points out, the majority of the evaluative expressions are instantiations of the positive additive type, while detractive realizations are used exclusively for negative evaluation, the distinction along this dimension is not taken into consideration in the present research. Thus only two basic types of evaluative acts are considered here: 1) positive evaluative acts This book is a welcome addition to the resources available for EAP. 2) negative evaluative acts Attempting to satisfy all these readers makes the book feel less than cohesive, and the structure of its individual sections is at times hard to navigate.

The final stage of this investigation comprised a qualitative analysis of evaluative acts used in monographs, edited collections and handbooks. The results of this analysis served as basis for a comparison of the strategies reviewers use when evaluating different types of books and attempts to explain the reasons for the existing divergences.

4. Findings and discussion The aim of this investigation is to explore how book reviewers interact with reviewees and the disciplinary discourse community through an analysis of the distribution of explicit negative and positive evaluative acts across the generic structure of reviews evaluating different types of books.

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4.1 Variation in the rhetorical structure of JEAP book reviews Table 1: Rhetorical structure of JEAP book reviews Moves Introducing the book ‫ ޤ‬Defining the general topic ‫ ޤ‬Indicating potential readership ‫ ޤ‬Inserting the book into the field Information about the author ‫ ޤ‬Making topic generalizations Outlining the book ‫ ޤ‬Outlining book organization ‫ ޤ‬Stating the chapter/section topic ‫ ޤ‬Citing extra-textual material Highlighting parts of the book ‫ ޤ‬Providing focused evaluation Closing evaluation ‫ ޤ‬Recommending the book ‫ ޤ‬Recommending the book despite indicated shortcomings

Monographs

Collections

Handbooks

Total

5 2 3 3 1

4 3 3 2 1

6 6 2 2 1

15 11 9 7 3

5 5 1

4 4 0

6 6 0

15 15 1

5

4

6

15

4 1

1 3

3 3

8 7

An analysis of the distribution of the sub-functions of rhetorical moves in book reviews across the three types of publications – monographs, collections and handbooks (Table 1; significant frequencies are highlighted in bold) – shows that all JEAP reviews realize the central subfunction of the rhetorical moves identified by Motta-Roth (1996, 1998), i.e. defining a general topic and/or introducing the book into the field, outlining book organization and stating the chapter/section topic, providing focused evaluation and recommending the book (despite shortcomings). However, variation in the occurrence of the subsidiary rhetorical sub-functions focusing on different aspects of the book under

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review indicates some differences in the way reviewers approach the three types of publications. The main difference concerns the Introducing the book rhetorical move, typically coinciding with the first paragraph, which indicates the type of book under review (e.g. monograph, collection, handbook) and describes its basic characteristics. When introducing a monograph, reviewers often refer to the author, whose reputation, expertise and contribution to the field are key attributes of the book, while editors of collections and authors of handbooks are mentioned only occasionally. A significant feature of collections, also indicated in reviews of monographs, is the topic in relation to the disciplinary field. In the case of handbooks, greater prominence is given to the readership that the book addresses and the accessibility and usefulness of the book for the target audience, which reflects their applied character. The descriptive Outlining the book move constitutes the main body of the text of all JEAP reviews, as its aim is to provide the reader with a general idea of the organization of the book and the main topics it discusses. The specificity of the Providing focused evaluation move resides in its diffuse positioning in the generic structure, as reviewers may shift from describing the contents of the book to evaluation, praising or criticizing specific aspects or parts of the publication at any stage of the text progression. While the cycling of moves 2 and 3 is present in all JEAP reviews, the rate of occurrence of the Providing focused evaluation move is clearly lower in collections than in monographs and handbooks (cf. Figure 1). The Closing evaluation move, typically included in the last paragraph of the text, summarizes the evaluative comments of the reviewer and recommends the book to the reader. It is relevant to note that four out of the five monographs under review are recommended without any reservations, while shortcomings are indicated in the case of most collections (3 out of 4) and half of the handbooks. This suggests that the members of a disciplinary discourse community generally avoid reviewing a monograph when they find that the shortcomings predominate, thus actually opting out of performing the highly face-threatening act of authoring a negative review addressing a single author (or a small group of authors). In the case of edited collections, criticism often concerns the focus of the individual chapters, the composition of the volume, or editorial shortcomings, which makes the critical remarks rather diffuse as they may target the authors, the editor or the publisher, thus somewhat reducing personal conflict.

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The above-mentioned variation in the occurrence and distribution of the sub-functions of the rhetorical moves in JEAP book reviews reveals differences in the way reviewers approach the evaluation of monographs, collections and handbooks, which is likely to be reflected in the evaluative strategies used when commenting on these publications.

4.2 Analysis of evaluative acts across rhetorical moves of JEAP reviews The results of the quantitative analysis of occurrence of evaluative acts in JEAP book reviews show that their normalized rate in the corpus is 11.95 per 1000 words, which is higher than the average rate of 8.5 reported by Hyland (2004) for his soft sciences corpus (philosophy, applied linguistics, marketing and sociology), as well as the rate of 9.17 found by Lorés Sanz (2009) in history book reviews. This confirms the existence of disciplinary variation in the strategies reviewers adopt for balancing politeness considerations with the requirement of the disinterested genre to provide objective and truthful evaluation. It also supports the view (Hunston 1993) that academic discourse in the field of linguistics is highly dialogic and that “linguists engage in academic controversies more extensively than other scholars” (Giannoni 2009: 30).

300 250 200 150 100 50 0 Introducing Outlining the Highlighting the book book parts Monographs

Collections

Closing evaluation

Total

Handbooks

Total

Figure 1 – Distribution of evaluative acts across the rhetorical moves of JEAP book reviews

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As Figure 1 indicates, the distribution of evaluative acts across the rhetorical moves of JEAP reviews shows the same overall tendency in monographs, collections and handbooks – the evaluative acts peak in the Focused evaluation move and to a lesser extent in the Closing evaluation. However, the rate of occurrence of evaluative moves in the three types of publication differs. Reviews of handbooks show the highest (112) and those of collections (63) the lowest rate of occurrence of evaluative acts. Reviews of collections display a relatively even distribution of evaluative acts across their rhetorical moves and seem to focus on description rather than evaluation of chapter content. The presence of evaluative acts in the Introducing the book move is most prominent in reviews of monographs, as the reviewers tend to indicate immediately the contribution of the book to the development of disciplinary knowledge. The evaluative character of the Highlighting parts of the book move is particularly striking in reviews of handbooks (more than half of the overall occurrence of evaluative acts), which seems to reflect the range of criteria according to which handbooks are assessed (novelty, composition, accessibility, usefulness, etc.) and the higher frequency of negative evaluative acts. Variation in the distribution of positive and negative evaluative acts also confirms that reviewers adopt different strategies when evaluating the three types of publication (Table 2). The results of the analysis suggest that evaluation in JEAP book reviews is not balanced, as positive evaluation clearly prevails in all types of publication, accounting for 68 per cent of the overall count of evaluative acts. The opening Introducing the book move seems primarily to reflect politeness considerations, focusing on general praise of the book (1) or endorsement of the author (2), thus showing solidarity and acknowledging the reputation of fellow members of the disciplinary discourse community. (1) EAP Essentials encourages a serious-minded and critical approach to EAP teaching, and presents innovative and effective methods for achieving this. (2) Joel Bloch is an experienced teacher and researcher writing for L2 students whose experiences of teaching abroad undoubtedly give him a wide perspective on the teaching of writing across cultures.

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Table 2: Distribution of positive and negative evaluative acts in JEAP book reviews Evaluative acts

Introducing the book

Outlining the book

Highlighting parts

Closing evaluation

Total

Monographs ‫ ޤ‬Positive ‫ ޤ‬Negative

13 0

11 0

25 7

18 2

67 (88%) 9 (12%)

Collections ‫ ޤ‬Positive ‫ ޤ‬Negative

5 4

11 5

11 6

13 8

40 (64%) 23 (36%)

Handbooks ‫ ޤ‬Positive ‫ ޤ‬Negative

7 0

11 3

26 35

20 10

64 (57%) 48 (43%)

Total ‫ ޤ‬Positive ‫ ޤ‬Negative

25 4

33 8

62 48

51 20

171 (68%) 80 (32%)

However, in two of the collections the opening move comprises critical remarks targeting the focus and the cohesiveness of the volume, thus questioning the overall quality of the publication. While complying with the requirements of a disinterested genre, the reviewer in (3) seems to mitigate the force of criticism by acknowledging the complexity of the task the author faces. (3) It is a challenge to write a reference book that can be used by teachers, teacher trainers and materials designers, while giving enough relevant information to satisfy the reader with an interest in language education and ‘other areas of applied linguistics’. Attempting to satisfy all these readers makes the book feel less than cohesive, and the structure of its individual sections is at times hard to navigate.

Praise and criticism commonly interact in the Outlining book organization and Highlighting parts of the book moves. Positive evaluation is typically expressed by evaluative adjectives, such as interesting, impressive,

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powerful, beneficial and helpful, occasionally enhanced by intensifiers. While praise in reviews of monographs and collections tends to focus on their contribution to disciplinary knowledge and research methodology (4), handbooks are evaluated positively primarily for their usefulness (5) and stylistic adequacy (6). (4) What is particularly powerful and liberating about this conceptualisation is that it turns register, genre and style into concepts that “can be studies on many different levels of specificity (p. 10) (…) (5) This chapter includes the first of useful language focused suggestions and examples, such as the inclusion of metatext. (6) The discursive style is an accessible one for supervisors and students, with the authors’ stated aim of the book as making available some of the tacit knowledge supervisors have of the thesis writing process that may not be shared by their EAP students.

The rare instances of negative evaluative acts in monographs are typically hedged and tend to be formulated as a personal opinion and not as an objective trait of the volume, thus mitigating face-threat by opening up space for negotiation of alternative views: (7) My reservations are around the chapter sequencing and organization which I found a little repetitive and confusing and the fact that not all chapters were of similar length or similarly structured.

The occurrence of negative evaluative acts is most prominent in reviews of handbooks and guides, where they account for 43 per cent of all evaluative acts. Moreover, in the Highlighting parts of the book move negative evaluative acts prevail, i.e. they represent 58 per cent of all evaluative acts in reviews of handbooks, while in reviews of monographs and collections the proportion of negative evaluative acts is 21 per cent and 35 per cent respectively. Critical remarks often use elaborate argumentation and detractive evaluation (Giannoni 2009) to mitigate criticism, and additionally they may be hedged by personal intrusions of the reviewer (8). The use of negation (9) can be interpreted as a hedging device, as it allows the negated features to be retained so that the overall meaning of the evaluative expression is a “toned down version of the affirmative rather than a total eradication of that affirmative” (Giora et al. 2005: 83).

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(8) I feel the text could have been made stronger by ensuring that there were distinct headings for each theme area. The lack of such creates confusion because all the units seem to meld together, making navigating through Instant Academic Skills awkward. (9) The abstracts themselves are not entirely consistent in their inclusion of interpretative commentary.

In reviews of monographs, critical remarks appear only in the Highlighting parts of the book and Closing evaluation moves and are rather scarce (9%), which confirms that reviewers tend to opt for a strategy of avoiding criticism in order to minimize personal conflict. The fact that two of the reviews of monographs comprise no explicit negative evaluation suggests that the editors of JEAP do not require the presence of critical remarks and leave the balancing of praise and criticism to the reviewers. The Closing evaluation move, typically signalled by a metadiscourse marker such as overall, to sum up or in conclusion, provides a final evaluation of the whole book and recommends the book to the reader with or without indicating shortcomings. Unreserved recommendation, as typically conveyed in monographs, indicates the contribution of the book to the field and attributes credit to the text (10) or directly to the author (11). (10) In summary, Register, Genre and Style is an epochal, ǥgame changing’ publication, which may well turn out to have as profound an impact on the EAP community as John Swales’s Genre Analysis (1990) did two decades ago. (11) Overall this book is a must read for anybody in the field of second language writing – researcher and instructor alike. What excites me most about the volume is Canagarajah’s insights, which continue to be fresh, into looking at critical pedagogy in a realistic and perhaps revolutionary light.

An effective mitigation strategy when the Closing evaluation move involves indication of shortcoming is the use of clusters of positive and negative evaluative acts which form ǥpraise-criticism pairs’ (Hyland 2000, Diani 2007). These comprise two evaluative acts of opposite polarity, typically connected explicitly by a contrastive conjunction. The ordering of the clusters may vary, but in the majority of cases the positive polarity act precedes the negative one; however, the overall rhetorical effect of the pair is dependent on the context, the length of the evaluative act and the

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force of the criticism. Thus the negative-positive pair in (12) is nested in a sequence of more than ten negative evaluations and thus can be seen as a relatively weak repair to face-threat. By contrast, (13) follows a critical remark concerning a lack of cohesiveness and cross-referencing between the chapters in a collection, but it praises the book’s analytical depth, which from the perspective of disciplinary values may be assumed to be a quality of higher importance; therefore the overall rhetorical effect of the pair is praise, rather than criticism. (12) Despite these drawbacks, Instant Academic Skills is a good resource text, and college minded English language learners could benefit from its academic skills learning activities. (13) This carefully edited book’s in-depth treatment of highly specific features of evaluative texts nonetheless outweighs its few shortcomings.

The praise-criticism pair may be seen as emblematic of the efforts of reviewers to attend simultaneously to politeness considerations and the requirements of the disinterested genre. By using clusters of positive and negative evaluative acts reviewers strive to express collegiality, while at the same time claiming objectivity and adherence to professional standards.

5. Conclusions Book reviews are a site of complex interaction in which the writer strives to satisfy the requirements of a disinterested genre by constructing an expert identity and showing objectivity, while endeavouring to create relationships of collegiality with the author of the book under review and the disciplinary discourse community by establishing a delicate balance between the expression of praise and criticism. Variation in the distribution of evaluative acts across reviews of different types of linguistics books is thus bound to reflect differences in the evaluative strategies reviewers tend to adopt when interacting with text, their authors and the disciplinary discourse community. The results of this analysis of JEAP book reviews have shown that they generally follow the generic structure indicated by Motta-Roth (1996, 1998) and Moreno & Suarez (2006); however, this study has revealed differences in the way reviewers approach the evaluation of monographs, collections and handbooks. These differences concern the selection of basic aspects of the book highlighted in the review, the rate of occurrence of evaluative acts in the generic moves and the overall rhetorical effect of

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the Closing evaluation move, which in the case of reviews of monographs is typically devoid of criticism, while in reviews of handbooks and collections indications of shortcomings are fairly frequent. Thus in reviews of monographs positive evaluative acts prevail, suggesting that reviewers tend to abide by considerations of politeness, are reluctant to engage in personal conflict and so opt for the strategy of avoiding criticism. Praise in reviews of monographs and collections addresses the contribution of the text and the author(s) to the field; however, reviews of collections tend to be more descriptive than evaluative. When including critical remarks, reviewers of monographs and collections use hedges and often reduce face-threat by presenting their comments as personal opinion. It is the reviews of handbooks that comprise the highest rate of occurrence of negative evaluative acts which typically criticize the organization and choice of materials, while praise addresses the usefulness of the books and their accessibility for the intended readership. Face-threat mitigation is achieved by the use of praise-criticism pairs, the overall rhetorical effect of which is dependent on the context and the force of criticism. The potential of this strategy to resolve effectively the tension between praise and criticism is indicated by its occurrence in all types of books under review in the JEAP sample. In conclusion, this investigation into interaction in linguistics book reviews has revealed that the positioning of the reviewer with regard to the author of the book and the disciplinary discourse community varies according to the type of book under review. However, the scope of this study is too limited to reveal all aspects of variation in evaluation strategies and evaluative devices used by reviewers. Further insights may be gathered from larger-scale research using a sample from various journals and different disciplines, which may contribute to a better understanding of the reasons for the existing variation in reviewing practices.

Acknowledgement The study is supported by the ongoing research project CZ.1.07/ 2.3.00/20.0222, ‘Posílení rozvoje Centra výzkumu odborného jazyka angliþtiny a nČmþiny na FF OU’ [Centre for the Research of Professional Language], funded by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic.

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References Bednárek, Monika (2008) Evaluation in Media Discourse: Analysis of a Newspaper Corpus. London/New York: Continuum. Bhatia, Vijay K. (1997) ‘Genre-mixing in academic introductions.’ English for Specific Purposes 16(3), 181-195. —. (2004) Worlds of Written Discourse. London: Continuum Brown, Penelope and Levinson, Stephen. C. (1987) Politeness. Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Diani, Giuliana (2007) ‘The Representation of Evaluative and Argumentative Procedures: Examples from the Academic Book Review Article’, Textus 20(1), 37–56. —. (2009) ‘Reporting and Evaluation in English Book Review Articles: A Cross-Disciplinary Study.’ In: Hyland, Ken and Diani, Giuliana (eds) (2009) Academic Evaluation: Review Genres in University Settings. Basingstoke: Palgrave. 87-104. Duszak, Anna (1997) ‘Cross-cultural Academic Communication: A Discourse Community View.’ In: Duszak, Anna (ed.) Culture and Styles of Academic Discourse. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 11-39. Felber, Lynette (2002) ‘The book review: Scholarly and editorial responsibility.’ Journal of Scholarly Publishing 33(3), 166-172. Gea Valor, Luisa M. (2000) A Pragmatic Approach to Politeness and Modality in the Book Review Articles. SELL Monograph. Valencia. Universitat de Valencia. Giora, Rachel, Fein, Ofer, Ganzi, Jonathan, Levi, Alkeslassy, Natalie and Hadas, Sabah (2005) ‘On negation as mitigation: The case of negative irony’ Discourse Processes 39 (1), 81-100. Giannoni, Davide S. (2009) ‘Negotiating Research Values across Review Genres: A Case Study in Applied Linguistics.’ In: Hyland, Ken and Diani, Giuliana (eds) (2009) Academic Evaluation: Review Genres in University Settings. Basingstoke: Palgrave. 17-33. Goffman, Erving (1967) Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face to Face Behavior. Garden City: New York. Hunston, S. (1994) ‘Evaluation and organization in a sample of written academic discourse.’ In: Coulthard, Michael (ed.) Advances in Written Text Analysis. London: Routledge. 191-218. Hyland, Ken (2004). Disciplinary Discourses. Michigan: University of Michigan. Hyland, Ken and Diani, Giuliana (2009) ‘Introduction: Academic evaluation and review genres.’ In: Hyland, Ken and Diani, Giuliana

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(eds) Academic Evaluation: Review Genres in University Settings. Basingstoke: Palgrave. 1-14. Moreno, Anna I. and Suarez, Lorena (2008) ‘A study of critical attitude across English and Spanish academic book reviews.’ Journal of English for Academic Purposes 7(1), 15–26. Moreno, Anna I. and Suarez, Lorena (2009) ‘Academic book reviews in English and Spanish: Critical comments and rhetorical structure.’ In: Hyland, Ken and Diani, Giuliana (eds) (2009) Academic Evaluation: Review Genres in University Settings. Basingstoke: Palgrave. 161-178. Motta-Roth, Desirée (1998) ‘Discourse analysis and academic book reviews: A study of text and disciplinary cultures.’ In: Fortanet, Immaculada, Posteguillo, Santiago, Palmer, Juan C. and Juan F. Coll (eds) Genre Studies in English for Academic Purposes (Castello de la Plana: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I). 29–58. —. (1996) ‘Same genre, different discipline: A genre-based study of bookreviews in academe.’ The ESPecialist 17 (2), 99-131. Salager-Mayer, Francoise, Alcazar Ariza, Maria Angelez (2007) ‘Negative appraisals in academic book reviews: A cross-linguistic approach.’ In: Candlin, Christopher N. and Gotti, Maurizio. 2nd ed. Bern: Peter Lang. 149-171. Shaw, Philip (2004) ‘How do we recognise implicit evaluation in academic book reviews?’ In: Del Lungo Camiciotti, Babriela and Tognini Bonelli, Elena (eds) Acdemic Discourse – New Insights into Evaluation. Bern: Peter Lang. 121–40. —. (2006) ‘Evaluative language in evaluative and promotional genres.’ In: Del Lungo Camiciotti, Gabriela, Dosena, Marina and Crawford, Belinda (eds) Variation in Business and Economic Discourse: Diachronic and Genre Perspactives. Roma: Officina Edizioni. 152165. —. (2009) ‘The lexis and grammar of explicit evaluation in academic book reviews, 1913 and 1993.’ In: Hyland, Ken and Diani, Giuliana (eds) (2009) Academic Evaluation: Review Genres in University Settings. Basingstoke: Palgrave. 217-235. Swales, John (1990) Genre Analysis. English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —. (2004) Research Genres. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thompson, Geoff and Hunston, Susan (1999) ‘Evaluation: An introduction.’ In: Hunston, Susan and Thompson, Geoff (eds) Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1-27.

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Tse, Polly and Hyland, Ken (2009) ‘Discipline and Gender: Constructing Rhetorical Identity in Book Reviews.’ In: Hyland, Ken and Diani, Giuliana (eds) (2009) Academic Evaluation: Review Genres in University Settings. Basingstoke: Palgrave.105-120. Zapletalová, Gabriela (2009) Academic Discourse and the Genre of Research Article. Banská Bystrica: Univerzita Mateja Bela v Banskej Bystrici a Filozofická fakulta Ostravské university v OstravČ.

III. GENRES IN INSTITUTIONAL AND PROMOTIONAL DISCOURSE

CHAPTER SIX THE CUSTOMER ISN’T ALWAYS RIGHT… AGGRESSIVE AND DEFENSIVE RESPONSES TO NEGATIVE CUSTOMER REVIEWS ON TRIPADVISOR CHRISTOPHER HOPKINSON

Abstract This chapter reports on a study of hoteliers’ antagonistic and/or aggressive responses to negative customer reviews on the TripAdvisor website. Institutional responses to customer complaints are prototypically characterized by a high degree of deference towards the complainant. Antagonistic and aggressive responses represent a radical departure from this norm, and can be characterized as a marginal type of behaviour. However, the study rests on the premise that such behaviour is not merely destructive in nature, but also plays a profoundly constructive role in the discourse – especially in a public forum such as a customer review website. I seek to offer an insight into this constructive potential and to account for the reasons which may motivate respondents (hoteliers) to engage in verbal antagonism and aggression against complainants. Drawing on socio-pragmatic concepts of facework and rapport management (Spencer-Oatey), the study first sets out to identify what main types of antagonistic and/or aggressive behaviour can be found in a corpus of TripAdvisor responses, and then proceeds to explore the face and relational effects that such behaviour may have on the participants. Besides damaging the face of the target (the complainant), this behaviour also enables respondents to construct their own face in the discourse, and – crucially – to build relationships with third-party readers (potential guests of the hotel).

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Introduction In recent years there has been an upsurge of interest in impoliteness and verbal aggression, with numerous discourse-analytical and pragmatic studies addressing these and related phenomena. Much of this research has focused on antagonistic discourse in online contexts – particularly in multi-party settings such as blogs and internet discussions (e.g. Angouri & Tseliga 2010; Bou-Franch & Garcés-Conejos Blitvich 2014; Dobs & Garcés-Conejos Blitvich 2013; Hardaker 2010, 2013; Hopkinson 2012, 2013, 2014a, 2014b; Kleinke 2010; Lewis 2005; Lorenzo-Dus & GarcésConejos Blitvich 2011; Neurauter-Kessels 2011; Perelmutter 2013; Shum & Lee 2013; Upadhyay 2010). The prevalence of verbal aggression in online genres – including practices such as trolling (Hardaker 2010, 2013; Hopkinson 2013) and flaming (Angouri & Tseliga 2010; Perelmutter 2013) – has been linked to the “decreased social inhibition” felt by participants in computer-mediated communication (Reid 1999: 111). This phenomenon is exacerbated by the fact that participants are frequently anonymous, as well as by the powerful group dynamics which often underpin multi-party online discussions (based on clearly delineated in-group and out-group communities); these factors have the effect of ratcheting up the intensity of online conflicts (Hardaker 2010, 2013; Hopkinson 2013, 2014a). In this study, I set out to build on the growing body of work exploring these issues by seeking insights into the practice of verbal antagonism and aggression in a rather different type of online setting – one in which participants’ anonymity is relatively restricted and the group dimension of the interaction is backgrounded (though not absent entirely). The study focuses on the discourse of customer complaints, exploring antagonistic and aggressive behaviour on the TripAdvisor website (a customer review website for hotels and restaurants).1 The interface between service providers and their customers offers fertile ground for verbal antagonism, and several studies have focused on the pragmatics of customer complaints and complaint-response sequences (for an overview see e.g. Orthaber & Márquez-Reiter 2011: 3861-3862). 1

In this study I draw a working distinction between antagonism and aggression. Antagonistic behaviour is understood as any behaviour through which an opposition between two parties (antagonists) is manifested. This opposition does not necessarily involve a negative emotional attitude towards the antagonist; it may, for example, manifest itself merely as an emotionally neutral (or even polite) disagreement. Aggressive behaviour, on the other hand, is characterized by a negative emotional stance and an evident intention to inflict damage or harm on the other party.

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However, one aspect of this discourse that has not yet been widely explored is antagonistic and aggressive behaviour by service providers towards their customers – whether refuting customers’ claims, criticizing their behaviour, or even mounting personal attacks against customers. This is perhaps unsurprising, as behaviour of this type is relatively rare. Antagonistic or even aggressive behaviour by customers towards service providers is an integral part of customer service discourse (see e.g. Archer & JagodziĔski 2015); though such behaviour may not always be socially condoned (especially in its more aggressive forms), it is nevertheless generally considered to be a fact of life. By contrast, verbal antagonism towards customers is seen as something to be avoided if at all possible, while verbal aggression towards customers is dispreferred to the extent of being taboo. It entirely violates social expectancies concerning the behaviour of the two parties in the commercial relationship – i.e. that the service provider should behave with a degree of deference towards the customer. Moreover, it is far from clear what benefits a service provider could possibly gain from indulging in such behaviour, which at first sight may be expected to be counter-productive. Nevertheless, the fact remains that service providers do occasionally indulge in verbal antagonism and even aggression towards customers, however marginal such behaviour may be. Indeed, it is precisely the atypical, marginal nature of this behaviour which makes it so fascinating from a pragmatic perspective, and I would argue that a study of such behaviour also has the potential to provide interesting insights into verbal antagonism and aggression in many other settings. This study therefore sets out to explore the occurrence of this type of behaviour on the TripAdvisor website. TripAdvisor allows representatives of hotels to post online responses to customer reviews; these responses are displayed directly under the review, and (like the review itself) they can be read by all visitors to the website – most of whom will be potential guests, using the site to help them choose accommodation. As will be seen below, the public nature of this genre is a crucially important factor affecting the practice of verbal antagonism and aggression. The corpus for this study consists of selected responses to negative customer reviews – responses in which representatives of hotels engage in antagonistic or aggressive behaviour towards customers who have posted complaints about the hotel on the site. TripAdvisor publishes guidelines intended to help representatives of hotels respond adequately to customer reviews.2 2

http://www.tripadvisor.com/TripAdvisorInsights/n2428/how-add-managementresponses-tripadvisor-traveler-reviews, accessed 29 December 2014.

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Respondents are advised not to write “aggressive/defensive” responses; these are explicitly contrasted with what the text terms “appropriate” responses. Nevertheless, it is evident that the concept of appropriacy is not a simple one; despite the advice given in the guidelines, some respondents evidently consider “aggressive/defensive” responses to be appropriate in certain circumstances. In this study I set out to explore why this might be the case. My main area of focus is on an aspect of interaction which is central to understanding this type of behaviour: face and facework (Goffman 1955/1967). I also draw on the closely related concept of rapport management (Spencer-Oatey 2000, 2002, 2007, 2008). Participants’ face is particularly vulnerable when engaging in antagonistic interactions; it may be threatened, attacked, damaged, saved, repaired, and so on. I therefore set out to explore the face effects of antagonistic and aggressive behaviour – not only the intended effects on the face of the target (the complainant – i.e. the hotel guest who wrote the negative review), but also the effects on the face of the speaker (the respondent – i.e. the hotel replying to the review). I also examine the relational effects of such behaviour – i.e. the ways in which it impacts upon the relationships (rapport) between the respondent and the other parties in the discourse. My approach is underpinned by a view of verbal antagonism and aggression as a form of strategic behaviour, through which speakers seek to achieve their face goals. This means that such behaviour not only has destructive effects (damaging the face of its target); it also plays a profoundly constructive role in the discourse, and may benefit the speaker in various ways. Although this constructive dimension of verbal antagonism and aggression has been addressed by some researchers (Dobs & Garcés-Conejos Blitvich 2013; Graham 2007; Neurauter-Kessels 2011; Upadhyay 2010), it still remains somewhat underexplored in the literature. Guided by this approach, this study seeks to answer several key questions: i) What types of antagonistic and/or aggressive acts are performed by respondents (hotels) against complainants (customers who posted negative reviews), and what forms do these acts take? ii) What impact do these acts have on the face of the two primary participants? – i.e. a) What are the face effects on complainants – which aspects of complainants’ face are attacked? b) What are the face effects on respondents – how does verbal antagonism and/or aggression enable respondents to construct their own face in the discourse?

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iii) What is the possible impact of such behaviour on the relations (rapport) between the respondent and the other parties in the discourse (not only the complainant, but also the other readers of the website, i.e. potential guests)? By answering these questions, I hope to offer an insight into the constructive potential of this type of behaviour and account for the reasons which may motivate respondents to engage in verbal antagonism and aggression against complainants. This chapter is divided into three main sections. First I introduce the corpus used for the analysis and give a brief characterization of the genre in order to situate it within its social context (section 2). Then I outline the key theoretical concepts on which the study rests (section 3). The core of the chapter (section 4) presents and discusses the results of the analysis, focusing on the key research questions listed above.

2. Material and genre 2.1 Corpus The corpus analyzed for this study consists of 159 responses to negative reviews posted on the TripAdvisor website. The corpus was compiled in October 2014 and January 2015. The compilation process was as follows. First, two English counties were randomly selected (Northamptonshire and Northumberland); there were a total of 111 hotels listed on TripAdvisor for these two counties combined. TripAdvisor uses a rating system whereby reviewers (customers) grade hotels on a scale from a minimum of 1 point (“terrible”) to a maximum of 5 points (“excellent”). For the purposes of this study, “negative” reviews were defined as those which rate the hotel with either 1 or 2 points (“terrible” or “poor”, respectively). For the 111 hotels in question, there were a total of 3 670 1point or 2-point reviews posted up to and including 31 December 2014. This was chosen as the cut-off date for the corpus (any reviews or responses posted from 1 January 2015 onwards have not been included). Out of these 3 670 negative reviews, 1 665 reviews elicited a response from the hotel (a 45.3% response rate). This data set of 1 665 responses was then assessed to determine which of the responses included some form of antagonistic and/or aggressive behaviour by the respondent; the data set was thus narrowed down to give the final corpus for the study. For inclusion in this final corpus, it was necessary for a response to take some kind of stance against the review – disagreeing with the complainant’s

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evaluation, disputing the complainant’s version of events, expressing negative evaluations of the review or the complainant, and so on. Cases in which the respondent essentially accepted the complainant’s criticisms were not included in the corpus. The resulting corpus consists of 159 responses (i.e. 9.5% of all the responses to negative reviews) and contains 28 600 words (averaging 180 words per response). The responses cover a period from 16 May 2007 to 26 December 2014. A manual qualitative analysis of the corpus was then performed in order to identify the types and forms of antagonistic and aggressive acts performed by the respondents and to assess the face and rapport effects of these acts on the parties in the discourse. Quantitative analysis is beyond the scope of this study; this is partly due to the relatively small size of the corpus (a small corpus is necessary to enable an in-depth exploration of complex facework mechanisms) and partly due to the fact that most of the acts and mechanisms examined in the study (and their linguistic realizations) resist simple classification into clear-cut categories. All examples given below have been anonymized where necessary in order to conceal the identity of both complainants and respondents.

2.2 The genre and its social context – participants, roles, goals This section briefly characterizes the genre of public online complaint responses and situates it within its social context. My main focus here is on those aspects of the genre with particular relevance to the practice of verbal antagonism and aggression – the participatory framework, the roles and relative status of the participants, and the communicative goals pursued by speakers. My approach to genre draws on theories anchored in a systemic functional framework (e.g. Martin 1997; Martin & Rose 2008). Martin offers a concise definition of genres as “staged, goal-oriented social processes” (Martin 1997: 13). Martin’s “stages” are analogous to what Swales (1990) and Bhatia (1993, 2004) term “moves” – the sequentially arranged structural components of a genre, through which speakers seek to achieve their communicative goals. It is not the aim of this study to explore the move structures found in the responses, and this aspect of the genre will only be mentioned in passing. More relevant to the study are the other two aspects of Martin’s definition – the concept of genres as social processes, and their goal-oriented nature. With regard to genres as social processes, two key aspects of public complaint responses are particularly salient for the type of behaviour explored in this study: the participatory framework of the discourse in

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which the genre is embedded, and the roles and relative status of the participants. Participatory framework Goffman’s model of participant roles (1981), with its distinction between ratified and unratified participants, has formed the basis for many similar frameworks (for an overview see e.g. Dynel 2014). Before the emergence of customer review websites, customer complaints were typically dealt with in private correspondence between the complainant and a representative of the company; responses of this type have a simple dyadic participatory framework (with the respondent as the speaker and the original complainant as the hearer). In public complaint responses, the participatory framework is more complex; in addition to these two parties (whom I term “primary participants”), there are also readers visiting the site, who constitute an audience of “side participants” (Haugh 2013; Kádár & Haugh 2013). In this study, I term these side participants “third parties” or “third-party readers” (these terms are interchangeable); a third party is “a ratified listener to whom an utterance is not addressed but who is fully entitled to listen to it and make inferences, according to the speaker’s communicative intention” (Dynel 2014: 40). In Goffman’s framework, unratified hearers (either bystanders or eavesdroppers, depending on whether the speaker is aware they are listening) are “those to whom the speaker does not wish to communicate any meanings, whilst they do listen and make inferences” (Dynel 2014: 40). I would argue that in the case of public complaint responses there are in fact no unratified hearers, because the genre exists largely in order to persuade third-party readers, to “communicate meanings” to them. This is acknowledged in the guidelines for respondents published on the TripAdvisor website,3 which refer to the third-party readers as “potential guests”. Moreover, as will be shown later, respondents sometimes address these readers directly; the boundary between addressees and third-party readers is thus blurred, but both categories are ratified participants. Roles and status The second key aspect of the genre as a social process involves the relative status of the participants. The default social situation in which 3

http://www.tripadvisor.com/TripAdvisorInsights/n2428/how-add-managementresponses-tripadvisor-traveler-reviews, accessed 29 December 2014.

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public complaint responses are embedded is based on a clear imbalance of status (power) between the respondent and the complainant. This imbalance is due to the nature of the commercial relationship in which the parties are involved. The act of paying for a service establishes a relationship between the parties based on mutual rights and obligations; within the bounds of the commercial relationship, the customer essentially buys power over the service provider. This creates a social expectancy that the customer will be treated with a certain degree of deference (though the degree of deference that is felt to be appropriate will differ somewhat between cultures); it is this expectancy that is violated when respondents decide to indulge in antagonistic or aggressive behaviour. In this regard, the practice of verbal antagonism and aggression in public complaint responses is pragmatically more complex than in some other online genres that have been widely studied – such as internet discussions. Unlike the respondents on TripAdvisor (who not only represent a particular hotel, but also tend to sign the responses with their own names), participants in internet discussion forums are often anonymous. Although discussants may come to know each other under their virtual identities (user names), the prevailing anonymity of the discourse means that the interaction is devoid of social context cues based on discussants’ real-world identities. As a result, the participants are essentially operating in a social vacuum, characterized by an absence of pre-existing role- and status-based expectancies. If everyone is anonymous, everyone is equal. All participants in the debate start from the same position, and they all have to struggle to assert their own primacy ab initio – without deriving any advantages from a higher status, and without having to overcome any disadvantages caused by a lower status. By contrast, antagonistic and aggressive behaviour in genres such as public complaint responses is pragmatically more complex, as it is embedded in a context of pre-existing social expectancies which influence participants’ perceptions of what is acceptable or unacceptable behaviour. The respondents on TripAdvisor are locked into this framework, and their facework choices are constrained and conditioned by it. Verbal antagonism and aggression by respondents against complainants thus not only has a high impact (because it is unexpected), but it is also accompanied by a high degree of risk that such behaviour will be perceived by other participants (third-party readers) as an unacceptable violation of social norms and expectancies.

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Communicative goals In view of these social constraints and the attendant risks of antagonistic and aggressive behaviour, one might reasonably ask the question: Why do respondents sometimes choose to behave in this way? How may they benefit from it? This is one of the central issues that this study seeks to address, and it will be explored more fully when discussing the results of the analysis (in section 4). However, as a preliminary to the later discussions it will be useful at this point to offer a brief commentary on the final aspect of Martin’s definition of genre – namely its “goal-oriented” nature – and to focus on what communicative goals are typically pursued by respondents in non-antagonistic complaint responses. Of course, such non-antagonistic responses make up the large majority of all complaint responses; they represent a prototypical background against which the marginal cases (antagonistic/aggressive responses) can be viewed, enabling the specific characteristics of these marginal cases to appear in clearer relief. It is possible to identify two main communicative goals that are typically pursued in non-antagonistic responses. Firstly, public complaint responses represent a valuable opportunity for image management. A negative review can potentially damage the hotel’s public image, yet the response (if handled skilfully) offers the hotel a chance to turn this awkward situation around and gain advantage from it. The hotel can explain the reasons why the problems occurred, offer remedy or compensation, and generally show itself to be sympathetic and responsive to its customers’ needs – all in an attempt to repair its damaged image. Such responses are thus an example of what Goffman (1971) terms “remedial work”. Of crucial importance here is the public nature of the discourse: the respondent is attempting not only to persuade and “win over” the original complainant, but also to create a good impression on third-party readers. Most of these third parties will be potential guests using the site to help them when choosing accommodation – so a wellhandled response ultimately offers the possibility of significant commercial gain. This image repair – the “reversal” of a disadvantageous initial situation to create a potential advantage for the respondent – is one of the central communicative goals of the genre. Of course, the description given above applies to prototypical (non-antagonistic) responses; antagonistic and aggressive responses represent a radical departure from this norm. One of the issues explored in this study is therefore this: May similar goals of image repair and persuasion be achieved through antagonistic or aggressive responses, and if so, how?

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There is also a second key communicative goal that is typically pursued in non-antagonistic responses – one which involves not the hotel’s image as such, but rather the mutual relationship between the two primary participants (the complainant and the respondent). Most public complaint responses centre around some form of apology (see e.g. Page 2014). One of the primary purposes of apologizing is the restoration of social equilibrium between the parties (e.g. Holmes 1990; Davies et al. 2007).4 The circumstances motivating the complaint (i.e. the hotel’s failure to meet some of its obligations to the customer) represent a disturbance of this equilibrium, so an apology offers an opportunity to restore it; this restoration of social equilibrium can be viewed as the second key communicative goal of the genre. Of course, this description applies solely to prototypical (non-antagonistic) responses; antagonistic responses contain elements of apology only rarely, and aggressive responses never. This study therefore explores the potential consequences of antagonistic or aggressive responses for the social equilibrium between the parties, and attempts to deduce what communicative goals are being pursued by respondents in such cases. In addressing issues related to the communicative goals of antagonistic/aggressive responses, I will be guided by the assumption outlined in the introduction: such behaviour is not merely destructive, but can perform profoundly constructive functions in the discourse. Although verbal antagonism and aggression are marginal in terms of quantity (occurring in just 9.5% of all the responses to negative reviews collected for the corpus), such behaviour should not be dismissed as a mere aberration. It is a genuinely strategic type of behaviour, which has the potential to bring benefits to the speaker. This assumption will remain central when discussing the results of the analysis.

3. Facework and rapport management My approach to verbal antagonism and aggression is anchored in Goffman’s concept of face, defined as “the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself […] during a particular contact. Face is an image of self delineated in terms of approved social attributes […]” (Goffman 1955/1967: 5). Face is simultaneously an individual 4

Equilibrium should not be confused with equality of status or power; it involves the maintenance of a stable relationship between parties, based on mutual and/or social expectancies – even if these expectancies mean, as is the case here, that the parties’ status is unequal.

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psychological construct (the individual’s idea of him/herself) and a social phenomenon (created through facework in interaction). The interactive dimension of face is of crucial importance; it means that face is not stable, but can be attacked, threatened, lost, defended, enhanced, and so on. Face has generally been approached as an individual phenomenon. However, here I proceed from the assumption that not only individuals, but also institutional entities can have their own face. An institution can present itself as caring, responsive, morally upstanding, and so on – in other words, the institution presents itself as a bearer of human attributes. This institutional face is projected by individuals speaking on behalf of the institution; in terms of Goffman’s participant roles (1979, 1981), the institution is the “principal”, while the individual representing the institution is usually both the “author” (the person who composes the utterances on behalf of the company) and the “animator” (the person who communicates the utterances to hearers). Orthaber & Márquez-Reiter (2011) define “institutional face” as “the professional persona through which the company presents itself to the public” (2011: 3863). An analogous concept is Gunnarsson’s (2009: 221-236) “organizational self” (involving a company’s culture and values as reflected in its interactions with those outside the company). My approach to facework draws mainly on Spencer-Oatey’s rapport management framework (e.g. 2000, 2002, 2007, 2008), which views face as consisting of three components: quality face, social identity face, and relational face. Of particular importance for the material analyzed here are quality face and relational face. Quality face concerns an individual’s positive self-image (self-esteem) arising from his/her claim to be a possessor of positive personal qualities (competence, intelligence, morality, attractive appearance, etc.) on whose basis he/she is favourably evaluated by others (Spencer-Oatey 2002: 540); these are Goffman’s “approved social attributes” (Goffman 1955/1967: 5). In the case of an institution such as a hotel, quality face will involve attributes such as efficiency, helpfulness, and so on; these are the aspects of the institution’s face that are damaged when a customer posts a negative review. However, it is not only the hotel’s face that is at stake in a complaint/response situation. The complainant’s face is also at stake; it may be publicly threatened by the response, or it may be publicly enhanced. As has been mentioned above, the majority of complaint responses on TripAdvisor tend to centre around an apology. In such cases, respondents typically use strategies which aim to maximize the face benefits to both parties, while also minimizing the risks of face loss. This approach represents what Spencer-Oatey (2008: 32) terms a “rapport

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enhancement orientation” or a “rapport maintenance orientation”. The complainant’s face is enhanced by acknowledging that the review is accurate, fair, and justified, while the hotel attempts to enhance its own institutional face by emphasizing that – although it occasionally fails to meet its own high standards – it is nevertheless empathetic and responsive to its customers’ needs. Acts that risk threatening the complainant’s face are avoided, as are acts that would bring further damage to the hotel’s institutional face. By contrast, in the antagonistic responses which form the basis of this study, respondents show at best a “rapport neglect orientation” (a lack of concern for the complainant’s face), and more typically a “rapport challenge orientation” (a desire to damage the complainant’s face) (Spencer-Oatey 2008: 32). The responses are thus characterized by their use of various forms of face attack in an attempt to damage the opponent’s face; a face attack can be defined as a facethreatening act (FTA) performed with the deliberate intention of damaging the face of its target. The second component of face with particular relevance to this study, relational face, concerns the individual’s (or the institution’s) status as a participant in the given interaction, characterized by Spencer-Oatey as “the relationship between the participants (e.g. distance–closeness, equality– inequality, perceptions of role rights and obligations), and the ways in which this relationship is managed or negotiated” (Spencer-Oatey 2007: 647). Relational face is closely connected with the concept of sociality rights, which Spencer-Oatey defines as “fundamental personal/social entitlements that individuals effectively claim for themselves in their interactions with others […] Sociality rights […] are concerned with personal/social expectancies” (Spencer-Oatey 2000: 14 – emphasis by the author). In the context of customer complaints, these “entitlements” and “expectancies” are closely bound up with the commercial relationship between the two parties – a relationship in which, as has been discussed in the previous section, there is a personal and social expectancy of inequality, an imbalance of power between the customer and the service provider. Page acknowledges the importance of relational face in the discourse of customer complaints when she writes of “a rapport-building strategy which acknowledges the sociality obligations towards the customer” (Page 2014: 41). In a non-antagonistic (i.e. apology-like) complaint response, this expectancy is reflected in the fact that the respondent typically displays a certain degree of deference towards the complainant. This deference can also be seen to some extent in the milder types of antagonistic responses, but in the more openly aggressive responses it is abandoned entirely.

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4. Results and discussion In the first part of this section (4.1) I examine how verbal antagonism and aggression is manifested in the corpus, giving examples of acts which serve antagonistic and/or aggressive purposes and assessing how these acts target and attack the complainant’s (reviewer’s) face.5 The focus here is on the face effects of such behaviour – meaning the effects both on the reviewer and on the respondent. In the second part (4.2) I assess the relational effects of verbal antagonism and aggression, exploring its implications for the relationship between the two primary participants (i.e. the effects of verbal antagonism and aggression on relational face) and discussing the ways in which such behaviour can assist the respondent in constructing positive relationships with other readers (third parties).

4.1 Face effects of antagonistic/aggressive acts Antagonistic and aggressive behaviour in the corpus is manifested in a range of acts through which respondents threaten or attack the reviewer’s face. Two main types can be identified: general negative evaluations of the review and/or the reviewer, and contradictions/counterclaims (which target more specific aspects of the review). 4.1.1 Negative evaluations of the review and/or the reviewer These acts can be interpreted as attempts to persuade third-party readers by discrediting the review and/or the reviewer in their eyes. A very simple opening move found in many of the responses is an explicit expression of disagreement, using illocutionary force indicating devices (IFIDs – Blum-Kulka et al. 1989) to signal the respondent’s stance towards the review: (1)

 

I strongly dispute this review I strongly disagree with this contribution

IFIDs such as these declare the antagonistic nature of the response at the outset, establishing the tenor for the rest of the text. Respondents typically follow this up by expanding on the IFID to give a more specific negative evaluation of the review; the respondent may 5

Throughout the study, the terms complainant and reviewer are used interchangeably.

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criticize the review as inaccurate, unfair, dishonest, and so on. Attacks such as these may be performed with varying degrees of intensity. The negative evaluation may be somewhat mitigated; in the following example, the main clause verb feel signals the subjectivity of the evaluation, and may be interpreted as performing a hedging function: (2a)

 I do not feel your feedback is a true reflection of the product we have on offer here

In other cases, the negative evaluation appears in a more direct, unhedged form: (2b)

 This guest has painted an unfair and inaccurate portrait of our hotel 6  Criticism is more often a help to us than upsetting, however, I find this review to be a work of fiction  This unreasonable tirade of abusive inaccuracies does little justice to yourself

Negative evaluation may also be expressed through irony. The following example is a response to a review which was described by its writer as an “honest and unbiased” account: (2c)

 The vast majority of the feedback received is very positive and highly encouraging […]. However, your “honest and unbiased” comments have invoked our following response. […]

Here the ironic quotation of the reviewer’s own words aggravates the face attack; it not only signals a negative evaluation of the review, but by singling out and casting doubt on the reviewer’s positive evaluation of their own review, it implies that the reviewer lacks self-awareness. Any attack on a review naturally implies an attack on the face of the reviewer. However, in some cases the link between the review and the reviewer is made more explicit: (3)

6

 Regarding your feedback about one of our team, it is disappointing that you felt it necessary to comment on someone personally.

Here and in all other examples, bold type is added to highlight points under discussion.

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Here the negative evaluation (it is disappointing) is focused mainly on the agent and the process (encoded clausally as you felt it necessary to comment on someone personally) rather than on the content of the review (encoded via the nominalization feedback). The reviewer’s role in writing the review is thus foregrounded, and the reviewer becomes the main target of the attack. As the examples above suggest, respondents tend to target those aspects of the reviewer’s quality face that relate broadly to notions of morality: the reviewer is attacked not just for giving an inaccurate account of events (which may not necessarily be due to moral failings), but for behaving unfairly, unreasonably, or even dishonestly. Direct attacks on what I will label the “morality face” of the reviewer may involve explicit negative evaluations of their motives for writing the review. The review may be attributed to dishonest motives on the part of the reviewer – (4a)



I suspect you are making mischief

– or the respondent may directly accuse the reviewer of lying (as in the following response to a guest who claims not to have received any e-mails from the hotel’s proprietor): (4b)



why do you have to lie? I have emailed you twice

Besides direct accusations such as the example above, respondents sometimes use indirect means to imply that the review is mendacious: (4c)

 Well, we’ve never had a TA* review from someone who has not stayed with us before. [*TripAdvisor]

Such indirect means may also include irony. When performing an ironic face attack, speakers typically juxtapose ironic and non-ironic elements; the latter provide the interpretative cues that guide hearers to the correct (ironic) interpretation of the former: (4d)

 And we’re shocked at your review, which has us bamboozled. Not that we’re doubting this is a genuine review, of course, nor are we accusing anyone of telling wee porky pies*... but what you say here isn’t right. [*rhyming slang – lies]

Here the ironic intention of the respondent’s insistence (highlighted in bold type) is interpreted in the light of the non-ironic negative evaluations

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that precede and follow it. The use of rhyming slang, typically associated with a jocular register, also supports the ironic interpretation, suggesting that the statements should not necessarily be taken seriously (at face value). As part of the attack on the reviewer’s “morality face” (i.e. when attacking the review/er as unfair or dishonest), respondents sometimes attempt to foreground the notion that the hotel is not the only victim of this unfairness or dishonesty, and that the reviewer’s behaviour also has a negative impact on other parties. This adds an extra, aggravating layer to the face attack. The following response positions your users (i.e. the users of TripAdvisor) as the main victims of the distorted version of reality allegedly presented by the reviewer: (5a)

 To say that our restaurant resembles a motorway cafe is untrue, unfair and extremely misleading to your users.

The hotel thus presents itself as a staunch defender of the interests of TripAdvisor readers. This can be interpreted as a manifestation of a strategy through which the hotel attempts to align itself with the thirdparty readers of the site and create the impression that they and the hotel are in fact on the same side, united by their opposition to the reviewer. A similar mechanism can be seen in the following example, which is a response to a guest’s complaint that their enjoyment of the hotel’s swimming pool had been disturbed by the presence of large numbers of children: (5b)

 The children’s times are from 9–10.30 am and 4–5.30 pm daily. This is fully advertised and I do not feel it is reasonable to complain about the children’s rights during those times.

Here again the respondent accuses the reviewer of being unreasonable not primarily to the hotel, but above all to the children who were present. The accusation that the reviewer is somehow opposed to the children’s rights can be viewed as an emotionally exploitative attempt to influence readers’ perception of the reviewer by evoking their deep-rooted protective instincts towards children. Both examples shown above (5a and 5b) thus seek to assign victim status to other parties besides the hotel. Readers are more likely to feel sympathy with “innocent” victims of the reviewer than with a hotel; this is partly because the hotel is a corporate entity rather than an individual, but above all it is because – given the roleand status-related expectancies outlined in section 2.2 above – a hotel is generally viewed as “fair game” for customers’ criticism. However, by

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aligning itself with other (alleged) victims of the reviewer’s comments, the hotel is attempting to become a beneficiary of readers’ sympathy – and ultimately to turn readers against the reviewer. Besides what I have termed “morality face”, respondents may also attack other aspects of reviewers’ quality face. This is done particularly by stating or implying that the reviewer has certain personality defects. Responses of this type primarily characterize reviewers as obsessive, hyper-critical types who derive a perverse pleasure from complaining: (6a)

 Oh poor Godzilla! We tried but you are professional complainers.

The following example criticizes a reviewer’s disproportionate reaction: (6b)

 I can honestly say that I have never come across such an extreme reaction to not just one bedroom, but also a four poster suite, which incidently [sic] is neither dusty nor smelly.

By presenting the reviewer’s reaction as strangely excessive, the respondent is attempting to position the reviewer’s behaviour as somehow abnormal, and thus to drive a wedge between the reviewer and the thirdparty readers of the site – who, it may be assumed, will tend to view themselves as basically normal. The existence of this type of personality defect may also be insinuated in a more subtle way, as in the following example: (6c)

 I am sorry that the minor mistake from our waiter ruined your evening meal.

Here the respondent’s lexical choices highlight the incongruity of cause and effect: the downplaying of the cause (the minor mistake) is contrasted with the extremity of the effect (ruined). This juxtaposition again implies that the reviewer’s reaction was disproportionate and abnormal. In some cases, the attack on the reviewer’s face involves encoding the reviewer via third-person forms. In effect, the respondent turns to the third-party readers and addresses the negative evaluation of the reviewer to them – not directly to the target of the evaluation: (7a)

 I am of course embarrassed by [reviewer name]’s claims and comments; but not half as much as he should be.

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This represents a powerful attack not only on the reviewer’s quality face, but also on their relational face; it expresses intense disrespect for the reviewer, signalling the respondent’s opinion that the reviewer is not even worthy of being addressed directly. This “turn” to the third-party readers is analogous to a type of behaviour that may occur in a face-to-face multiparty conversation, namely turning one’s back on one of the participants (either literally, or simply ignoring that person’s presence) and then openly directing criticism of the excluded individual to other group members while that individual is still present. Culpeper (2011: 136) identifies “turning one’s back on someone” as a type of conventionalized non-verbal impoliteness behaviour, and the face-damaging potential of its verbal equivalent is clear. In the following example, the “turn” to the third-party readers involves addressing them directly with a speech act of invitation (Take a look). The third-person encoding of the reviewer is combined with an ironic evaluation of the reviewer’s personality (the ironic distancing is signalled by the use of inverted commas around the word ‘charming’ ), followed by a non-ironic negative evaluation: (7b)

 Take a look at this ‘charming’ young man’s other reviews. What this individual does is give TripAdvisor a bad name. As we find their comments ridiculous we are not going to waste our time further responding to their comments […]

Occasionally the third-person evaluation may involve overt mockery of the reviewer. The following example involves name-calling (Culpeper’s “derogatory nomination” – Culpeper 1996: 358) to attack the personalityrelated aspects of the reviewer’s quality face: (7c)

 We have a strong local following and are very popular with visitors too, so folks, if you are reading this – please make up your own minds – we look forward to welcoming you. Mr Grumpy Pants will be avoiding us!

In the context of a direct address to the third-party readers, the namecalling not only belittles the reviewer, but also invites the third parties to laugh at the reviewer’s expense; this is about as far as it is possible to get from the default social expectancy of deference towards a customer, and it represents an intense attack on the reviewer’s relational face.

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4.1.2 Contradictions and counterclaims Besides offering general negative evaluations of the review and/or the reviewer, many responses involve a more detailed engagement with the specifics of the review; respondents typically contradict at least some of the reviewer’s claims or evaluations. This behaviour is generally less aggressive in tenor than the negative evaluations discussed in the previous section, though it still involves an antagonistic stance towards the posted review (and thus implicitly towards the reviewer). In the corpus, this frequently takes the form of a simple contradiction – a negation of the reviewer’s claim – followed (or preceded, respectively) by a counterclaim: (8a)

 Our general manager did not shrug and say not my problem. He gave you the telephone numbers but said that unfortunately there was nothing further we could do.  This incident happened on one of our busiest days in the year on a Bank Holiday Weekend, not, as you say, at a time when the inn was not busy.

The contradiction sometimes uses inverted commas as quotation marks to identify the precise word or phrase that is being targeted for contradiction, clearly isolating it from the rest of the text: (8b)

 I can confirm that [hotel name] is inspected and rated independently by the AA* and therefore we are not “self-rating”. [* the UK’s Automobile Association, which operates a hotel grading scheme]  The “worst kippers” he has ever eaten are from the same quayside smokery that supplies Gordon Ramsay*. [* A chef and restaurant-owner well known for his TV programmes]

This quotation device is particularly used when the respondent is contradicting words or phrases that express particularly intense or expressive (emotive) negative evaluation; by using inverted commas, respondents are attempting to put the maximum possible distance between themselves and these offending lexical items, as if erecting a cordon sanitaire around them in order to neutralize their force: (8c)

 I am delighted the inn is here and its staff are polite, helpful and anything but “witless fools”.  I would strongly contend your statement that “they do not give a toss” – we do care deeply and will therefore take your comments to heart and learn from them.

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Respondents sometimes attempt to support their counterclaims by citing evidence; this strategy is an attempt to persuade third-party readers of the veracity of the respondent’s counterclaim. The evidence offered may take various forms. In the following example (in response to the reviewer’s complaint that there was an inadequate selection of breakfast items), the respondent states that there is video evidence which refutes this claim: (9a)

 you came down to breakfast at 9.15 – after service is finished, however there were sufficient supplies and plates on the breakfast buffet. […] CCTV footage confirmed the timing and plentiful supplies

However, the core means of supporting counterclaims is to depict the complaint as somehow atypical. This is typically done by citing the evidence of positive feedback from other parties. These other parties may be hotel certification organizations – (9b)

 Thankfully it is only very rarely that we receive such a negative review. Indeed only this week [hotel name] was awarded a TripAdvisor 2014 certificate of excellence. The hotel was also inspected by Visit England Quality in Tourism who had no hesitation in confirming our 3 star country house hotel status.

– but more commonly the respondents cite the opinions of other guests. This constructs a category of “normal guests” – essentially an in-group, with which third-party readers are implicitly invited to align themselves, while the complainant is excluded from the group and positioned as abnormal: (9c)

 As for breakfast not being acceptable, going by 90% of our guest book comments and TripAdvisor we serve a satisfying and quality breakfast. We will continue to welcome and enjoy the company of our many returning guests and can only apologise that this person did not enjoy their stay.

Some responses include more specific references to other guests’ opinions, citing TripAdvisor statistics or quoting the words of previous reviewers: (9d)

 The afternoon tea that caused such offence is the same one described just two days earlier by [reviewer name] as very nice, “the scones and biscuits were amazing”. We have had 17 reviews

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As well as supporting their counterclaims, respondents may also give additional information which seeks to undermine the reviewer’s evaluation and claims; again, this can be viewed as a clear attempt to persuade third-party readers. This “undermining” function may be performed by means of a simple statement which implicitly attacks the review’s veracity: (10a)

 Dear Guest, This review was written before you stayed with us.

Or it may involve explicitly casting doubt on the circumstances and process of writing the review, in order to plant seeds of doubt in readers’ minds: (10b)

 I note you stayed in June, but only posted your review in August which seems strange.

Respondents may also draw third-party readers’ attention to the complainant’s other reviews posted on TripAdvisor, pointing out the harshness with which the complainant typically evaluates all hotels. This is an attempt to subtly undermine readers’ confidence in the reviewer’s claims by implying that they are likely to be excessively critical: (10c)

 I was very disappointed with our score, but on checking you have scored us the highest of all your reviews!

Besides the relatively brief and simple contradictions and counterclaims shown above, the respondents in the corpus also give more detailed alternative accounts of the incident described in the review, providing additional information and offering their own version of events in an attempt to “set the record straight”. A relevant concept here is what Martin & White (2005) term heteroglossia – i.e. the notion that texts have “a heteroglossic backdrop of prior utterances, alternative viewpoints and anticipated responses” (Martin and White 2005: 97); an analogous concept is that of polyphony (ýmejrková & Hoffmannová 2012). The effect of creating a second, alternative text – a competing account of the incident or events in question, told from the respondent’s perspective – is to undermine and weaken the authority of the complainant’s original account as perceived by third-party readers. This is a strategy that is clearly

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designed to persuade third parties, and its potential effectiveness is strengthened by the fact that the TripAdvisor website does not allow for follow-up responses. The respondent (the hotel) thus has the last word, and the response cannot be publicly challenged on the site – even if the complainant may consider it to be a distorted version of the reality. This clearly puts respondents at a considerable advantage, enabling them to gain a greater degree of control over the representation of the incident at the centre of the dispute. Some respondents take this opportunity to give additional information which attacks the complainant’s allegedly dishonest motives for writing the review: (11a)

 I refer you to our numerous discussions where we showed that we do value constructive feedback and are willing to compensate where we have fallen short of your expectations. What we however are not prepared to do is be blackmailed with threats of exaggerated negative online reviews.

Or they may add information which depicts the complainant’s personality and behaviour in negative terms, in an attempt to influence readers’ perception of the complainant in general: (11b)

 I was concerned to hear of your aggressive behaviour towards a young female receptionist and whilst I appreciate your frustrations, feel this behaviour was not warranted.

The respondent’s version of events occasionally involves a highly personal attack on the complainant’s personality and behaviour: (11c)

(in response to a complaint that a Christmas party at the hotel was boring)  I suggest you were bored with the company you were with. […] If you are so impolite as to leave your party for at least an hour to walk to and from the village pub you are not really in the right frame of mind for the festive season.

In all three of these examples, the complainant is addressed directly using second-person forms, though clearly the main purpose of these utterances is to persuade third-party readers by influencing their perception of the complainant. In other cases, the readers are addressed directly, and the complainant is encoded in the third person. As discussed above (with reference to examples 7a–7c), this is analogous to turning

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one’s back on the complainant; the attack on quality face is thus overlaid with an attack on relational face. In the following example, the respondent depicts the complainant’s behaviour as inconsistent (planting seeds of doubt in readers’ minds with regard to the complainant’s veracity): (11d)

 perhaps [reviewer name] should have thought twice before this posting. He described his stay to me at checkout as perfectly fine thank you!

Some responses in the corpus give extensive, highly detailed accounts of the incident or events at the centre of the dispute. The following account is in response to a review which alleges that guests were locked out of their rooms and that the hotel manager behaved with “breathtaking rudeness”: (11e)

 I am sorry that this guest has had a memory lapse in the 8 months since his visit. The facts which he omits to mention are as follows. Various members of the [surname] party had rather too much wine and had to be assisted/escorted to their bedrooms. Room doors were double locked from inside by the occupant causing problems for my staff when a second occupant wanted access. In particular the male guest in the room next to the writer was in an extremely distressed state wandering along the corridor in his boxers unable to get into his room. This took place in the early hours of the morning. The writer admitted to me that he stood idly by without offering any assistance to his friend. I suggested to him that I found his conduct unacceptable which he disagrees with. Further I had complaints from other guests about the noise […]

Here the respondent attacks the complainant’s account as inaccurate and incomplete; this is supported by drawing readers’ attention to the fact that eight months have elapsed between the incident and the posting of the review. Clearly the purpose of this is to undermine and weaken the authority of the complainant’s account. However, the respondent’s alternative account also represents an attempt to discredit the complainant in the eyes of third-party readers. By positioning the complainant (and other guests belonging to the complainant’s family) outside the bounds of acceptable behaviour, the respondent is attempting to construct an outgroup and to drive a wedge between the complainant and the readers, implicitly inviting readers to align themselves with the respondent as fellow members of the morally acceptable in-group. Moreover, the respondent’s claim that I had complaints from other guests about the noise recalls the strategy discussed above with reference to examples 5a and 5b;

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it is not only the hotel that is depicted a victim of the complainant’s behaviour, but also other guests – i.e. innocent victims, with whom readers are more likely to sympathize. By aligning itself with other victims of the complainant’s behaviour, the hotel is attempting to become a beneficiary of readers’ sympathy – and ultimately to turn readers against the reviewer. 4.1.3 Face effects on the respondent In the previous sections I have focused primarily on the way in which antagonistic and aggressive verbal behaviour targets the face of the complainant. However, this behaviour also has a significant impact on the face of the speaker – the respondent. As I mentioned in the introduction, verbal antagonism and aggression not only has destructive effects (damaging the face of its target); it also plays a constructive role in the discourse. It is a form of strategic behaviour, through which speakers seek to achieve their face goals. By attacking an opponent’s face, one not only causes damage to that opponent; one can also construct and enhance one’s own face. Respondents on TripAdvisor are performing in front of an audience of third-party readers, and their construction of an institutional face is geared primarily towards persuading these third parties – shaping the readers’ perceptions of the respondent (the hotel), building a positive public image of the institution, and thus ultimately achieving commercial gain. In this section I focus primarily on the effects of such behaviour on the institution’s quality face (relational face effects are dealt with in the following section). When discussing the quality face of an institution such as a hotel, a useful distinction can be drawn between two key aspects, which I term “competence face” and “morality face”. (A discussion of how respondents balance the sometimes conflicting needs of these two aspects of face will be presented in a separate forthcoming study.) Competence face concerns the institution’s professional competence – its expertise, efficiency, ability to provide excellent customer service, and so on. In other words, it concerns the institution’s performance as a provider of services to the public. In the corpus, respondents assert their competence face explicitly through simple claims or counterclaims, as discussed above (see examples 9a–9d). The gist of these claims is that the negative review is either inaccurate or atypical, and that the hotel does in fact consistently provide excellent service at reasonable prices. More complex, and more interesting from a pragmatic perspective, is the other component of institutional quality face. Morality face concerns the institution as a bearer of morally positive qualities – humility,

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responsiveness to others’ needs, helpfulness, a caring attitude, respect for others, and so on. These qualities have more to do with the notion of “personality” than of performance; they involve a certain humanization of the institutional persona. Respondents’ construction of their own morality face is usually done indirectly, through a process of implicature. By attacking the opponent’s negative qualities, the speaker implies that he/she in fact possesses the opposite, positive qualities. Specifically, by attacking a reviewer’s morality face (e.g. claiming that the reviewer is dishonest), the respondent enhances their own morality face (implying that they, by contrast, are honest and honourable). As some of the examples above have shown, respondents often attempt to depict themselves as the victims of the reviewer’s behaviour; the review(er) is characterized as unfair, unreasonable, dishonest or vindictive, thus positioning the reviewer outside the moral norm and enabling the respondent to claim the moral high ground. Although respondents tend to construct their own morality face implicitly, using the indirect mechanism described above, the corpus also contains cases in which they use more direct means – explicitly asserting their own moral qualities in an attempt to construct an overtly moral persona. This can be seen in the following example (the incident in question involved a dispute over the respondent’s handling of a complaint by a customer whom the respondent claims was acting unreasonably): (12)

 I stand by my actions, 100% and believe that I was more than fair in this episode. […] I might be stubborn and even antiquated but sometimes you have to stand up, rightly or wrongly and be counted. My other option was to ask tripadvisor to remove this article but that’s wrong also. You should be allowed to have an opinion.

Three key elements of this response combine to project a strong morality face:  Firstly, the response makes its point using the language of uncompromising moral judgements (right, wrong, stand up and be counted).  Secondly, the respondent openly acknowledges his own weaknesses (I might be stubborn and even antiquated). This acknowledgement has two functions. On one level it enhances his morality face by demonstratively projecting a persona based on humility and self-awareness. On another level, however, the respondent’s acknowledged stubbornness and antiquatedness are

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merely masquerading as weaknesses; qualities such as these are in fact likely to be perceived as positive moral attributes by many or most readers (stubbornness will be viewed as uncompromising moral rectitude, while antiquatedness will be viewed as upholding traditional values). In face-construction terms, the respondent thus gains doubly from this act; his projection of one set of positive moral values (stubbornness and antiquatedness) is overlaid with another set of positive moral values (modesty, humility and selfawareness).  Thirdly, the respondent claims that it would be “wrong” to ask TripAdvisor to remove the review, even though he considers the review to be a complete distortion of reality. By doing so, the respondent again demonstratively positions himself as a scrupulously moral, self-sacrificing person, guided by higher moral principles than mere commercial motivations; even though the review damages the hotel’s institutional face (and may thus have a negative commercial impact), the respondent states that such considerations are overridden by a deeper moral dimension. The combination of all three of these elements amounts to an overt parading of the respondent’s moral credentials in an attempt to shape third parties’ perceptions. As has been mentioned above, the projection of morality face involves a humanization of the institutional persona. The institution is thus more than merely an efficient provider of services; it is a bearer of morally positive qualities, and as such it has a “personality”. As part of an attempt to construct a human persona, respondents frequently make lexical choices that position them as emotion-sensers: (13)

 I feel deeply disappointed that the reviewer has not told the truth  We were really saddened by your closing comments  non vegetarians even tend to eat these dishes and praise them so I do find your comments quite disheartening  We were extremely distressed to read the comments about hotel cleanliness

The other main means through which respondents attempt to humanize the institutional persona is humour. The use of humour in this context serves multiple goals; besides humanizing the respondent’s persona and appealing to third parties, humour may also, in some cases, be directed against a target – it may be used for the purpose of mocking the reviewer

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and damaging their face. There is a spectrum running from gentle humour, which functions to create or strengthen social bonds without attacking an external target, to more aggressive humour, which serves as a means of face attack. At the more gentle end of the spectrum are humorous utterances which enable respondents to project a human persona by simply demonstrating that they have a sense of humour. The following example is part of a response to a review which claims that the hotel lacks the “required elements” for success, and that the hotel management is merely “flogging a dead horse” – in other words, that the hotel in its present state is doomed to failure: (14)

 We do try very hard, and certainly do not feel we are ‘flogging a dead horse’ […] I would love for you to contact me direct, elaborate somewhat on the missing ‘required elements’ […] your feedback is important to us to keep this horse kicking!

Here the extension of the “dead horse” metaphor is a clear attempt to signal that the respondent has a sense of humour. The joke is not targeted against the reviewer or any other external entity; the butt of the joke is the hotel itself. The use of humour here thus demonstrates that the respondent does not take him/herself too seriously, and is able to laugh at him/herself: this is likely to be perceived as a positive quality, thus enhancing the respondent’s face. In the less gentle part of the spectrum are acts of ironic humour. Though ironic humour can be used to support social harmony, in the corpus it is used for purposes of face attack. Wilson (2013) notes the ability of irony to convey negative attitudinal stances: “The point of an ironical utterance is to express the speaker’s own dissociative (e.g. mocking, scornful or contemptuous) attitude to a thought similar in content to the one expressed in her utterance […]” (Wilson 2013: 46). If performed with obvious aggressive intent, ironic humour signals that the target (the opponent) is being ridiculed. Ironic humour may thus be used for the purpose of ridiculing the reviewer. This has several functions in the discourse. Besides attacking the reviewer’s face, it also attempts to appeal to third parties by making them laugh – and thus, ultimately, encouraging them to side with the respondent against the reviewer. When performing an ironic face attack, speakers typically juxtapose ironic and non-ironic elements; the latter provide the interpretative cues that guide the reader to the intended (ironic) interpretation of the former. In the following example, the ironic evaluation (favourite) is juxtaposed with non-ironic evaluations (grudger, suspicious):

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 What can we say? Our favourite grudger is back again. Please read our other reviews rather than taking into account any suspicious reviews like this.

In other cases, the context may provide enough cues to guide readers to the intended ironic interpretation: (15b)

 an extract from the review, in which the customer complains about the poor quality of the food in the hotel’s restaurant: What came was cooked from frozen (apart from an unappealing, undressed salad garnish).  the ironic response: Dear Gill, I’m amazed that you know how we prepare and cook food!

4.2 Relational effects of antagonistic/aggressive acts The previous section has explored antagonistic and aggressive behaviour primarily in terms of its face effects – not only on the face of the complainant (the target of the face attacks), but also on the face of the respondent – in an attempt to show how respondents attempt to achieve their communicative goals related to image repair and the persuasion of third parties. In this section I shift my focus to explore the relational effects of verbal antagonism and aggression, exploring its implications for the rapport between the two primary participants (i.e. the effects of verbal antagonism and aggression on relational face) and discussing the ways in which such behaviour can assist the respondent in constructing positive relationships with other readers (third parties). 4.2.1 Relational effects on the two primary participants Whereas the discussion in the previous section has focused mainly on quality face, the key concept here is that of relational face, which concerns the relationship between the participants in the given interaction. The TripAdvisor complaint responses offer a forum through which respondents can attempt to shape and manage this relationship. A central aspect of relational face is Spencer-Oatey’s concept of sociality rights – the personal/social “entitlements” and “expectancies” that individuals “claim for themselves in their interaction with others” (Spencer-Oatey 2000: 14). In the context of customer complaints, these entitlements and expectancies are derived from the nature of the commercial relationship

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between the two parties – a relationship in which, as has been mentioned above, there is an expectancy of inequality (an imbalance in status) between the customer and the service provider. This inequality represents the default “equilibrium” in the relationship, and it conditions how the two parties typically play their respective roles in the interaction. Mitigated responses In non-antagonistic (i.e. apology-like) complaint responses, this default expectancy of inequality is typically reflected in the fact that the respondent displays a degree of deference towards the complainant; in other words, the respondent acknowledges the complainant’s sociality rights as a customer. Such behaviour can also be observed in some antagonistic responses – those at the milder end of the spectrum, in which the respondent still evidently wishes to remain within the bounds of the prototypical role template. Though these responses are antagonistic in the sense that they take issue with the content of the review, and take a stance against the reviewer’s claims, they nevertheless attempt to mitigate the degree of face threat to the reviewer and preserve a certain rapport between the two parties. Expressed in Kleinke’s (2010) terms, there is “propositional disagreement” but not “personal disagreement”. Means of mitigation may be both lexicogrammatical and structural. Mitigation through lexicogrammatical means typically involves the use of various hedges and downtoners, as well as other lexical and grammatical choices which serve to shift responsibility away from the complainant, such as the use of vague language and the blurring or deletion of agency. The following example is a response to a reviewer’s accusation that members of staff stole his wife’s jeans from a locker: (16)

 There was clearly a confusion over which locker your wife placed her jeans in but I can assure you that our staff did not move your wife’s item of clothing.

The implication made by the respondent is that the reviewer’s wife in fact mislaid her own jeans, and did not remember which locker she had placed them in (i.e. she was confused). However, the response uses an impersonal nominalized structure (There was ... a confusion) to blur the identity of the person experiencing the confusion. It is not explicitly stated that the reviewer’s wife was the confused party; instead, the confusion is tactfully generalized. Mitigation through structural means typically involves juxtaposing the potential face-threatening act with acts which (at least ostensibly) seek to placate the complainant by enhancing their face. Thus the response may

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open by explicitly thanking the complainant for their valuable feedback and/or apologizing to them, before moving on to take a stance against the review: (17a)

 Thank you for taking the time to write this review. I apologise for not exceeding your expectations, however I do not recognise the bad paragraph to be [hotel name], our kitchens and food safety has been awarded the highest possible standard by the Environmental Health Officer […]

Alternatively, the contradiction of the reviewer’s claims may be followed by a face-placating act. The following example is a response to a reviewer’s complaint about the inadequate provision of power sockets in the room: (17b)

 I have visited the room you stayed in to review the situation with the power points you describe. I found there to be no challenge with a double power socket on the wall by the desk. You have my apologies if I’ve missed something or the location of our power points in the room were not to your expectations.

In terms of relational effects, the function of such mitigation strategies is to restore and/or reinforce the desirable equilibrium – the imbalance in status between the two parties. Respondents thus attempt to achieve a winwin solution for both parties: repairing and/or enhancing their own face as far as possible, while minimizing any potential face threats to the complainant. Of course, the actual force of these acts will vary depending on their reception by individual readers. It is possible to read such acts as mere ‘token’ face enhancements, included in the text as an empty, formulaic element rather than reflecting any genuine intention to enhance the complainant’s face; the reader may in fact feel that he/she is being ‘fobbed off’ by the response. With such a reading, the face effect of such acts on the complainant is at best ambiguous, and at worst negative. Unmitigated responses However, the situation is very different elsewhere in the corpus, with responses characterized by unmitigated antagonism or aggressive verbal behaviour. Here respondents show little interest in remaining within the constraints of the prototypical role template outlined above. They step out of their predetermined role, abandoning the default expectation of deference and taking up an attitudinal stance based on varying degrees of disrespect for the reviewer (ranging from mild to intense). The relational

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effects of this are clear. Such behaviour represents an attack on the reviewer’s relational face, as the respondent refuses to acknowledge the reviewer’s sociality rights as a customer. As has been seen above, this disrespect tends to have its basis in notions of morality; respondents attack reviewers for their dishonesty or for other forms of morally or socially unacceptable behaviour. By linking a reviewer’s perceived moral failings to the attack on his/her relational face, respondents demonstratively signal that the complainant’s behaviour has disqualified him/her from the higher status typically associated with the role of customer, thus revoking the attendant sociality rights (e.g. the right to be treated with deference by the service provider). Another important relational effect of verbal antagonism and aggression is connected with the notion of exclusion from a group. The previous sections have already touched on this aspect, when discussing examples 7a–7c (i.e. negative evaluations of the reviewer which encode the reviewer via third-person forms) and example 11e (in which the respondent decides to “set the record straight” and give the hotel’s version of events, again encoding the reviewer via third-person forms). In cases such as these, the respondent turns to the third-party readers and addresses the negative evaluation of the reviewer to them – not directly to the target of the evaluation. This is analogous to “turning one’s back on someone” in a face-to-face conversation. It has the effect of excluding the reviewer, while at the same time drawing the third-party readers into the discourse. The group aspect of the discourse is salient here; the respondent implicitly or explicitly constructs an in-group, with which third-party readers are invited to align themselves, while the reviewer is marginalized. This strategy can be seen in several of the examples discussed above. The reviewer is typically excluded from the in-group on the basis of their alleged social or moral failings. Social failings involve an attack on the reviewer’s personality, as in the following response (introduced above as example 7c): (18)

 We have a strong local following and are very popular with visitors too, so folks, if you are reading this – please make up your own minds – we look forward to welcoming you. Mr Grumpy Pants will be avoiding us!

Here the respondent constructs an in-group including local people, visitors, and potentially also third-party readers – who are explicitly invited to join the group. The reviewer is excluded from the in-group on the basis of his abnormal and undesirable personality (Mr Grumpy Pants),

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which offers a stark contrast to the welcoming atmosphere within the ingroup. In other cases, the reviewer is excluded from the in-group on the basis of their moral failings. An instance of this is discussed above as example 11e, in which the respondent “sets the record straight” by describing the morally unacceptable behaviour of members of the complainant’s party, who (allegedly) wandered drunk and half-dressed through the hotel corridors at night, causing a disturbance to other guests. This constructs an in-group consisting of decent, moral people who are offended by such behaviour, implicitly inviting readers to align themselves with the respondent as fellow members of the morally acceptable in-group. The invitation for third-party readers to align themselves with the ingroup may be implicit (as in example 11e), or it may be explicit (as in the preceding example 18: folks, if you are reading this – please make up your own minds – we look forward to welcoming you). Occasionally the ostracization of the reviewer is also performed as an explicit act; the reviewer is addressed directly and instructed that they will no longer be welcomed as a guest of the hotel. Such speech acts of ostracization can be seen in the following response: (19a)

 I do trust you will go elsewhere in future. The team at [hotel name] does not need negative nonsense when they have worked so hard and made so many people happy.

and in the following response (where the final utterance is not merely a prediction, but a declaration of the respondent’s intent): (19b)

 It is unfortunate that even after a sincere apology you felt uncomfortable over a minimal issue that was easily rectified, you became belligerent, threatening and rude to the discomfort not only of the duty staff, but also other guests commented on your loud unacceptable behaviour. After due consideration of the investigation, the Group Managing Director considers that your actions were deliberate and planned in order to gain a refund of £23.55 for your food. We note that you will not be staying with us again.

Here the ostracization is expressed in the final move of the response. In non-antagonistic complaint responses, the closing move often consists of an invitation for the complainant to return to the hotel in future, combined with a promise that the problems will be rectified and the complainant will

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receive excellent service. In example 19b, the final utterance echoes and almost parodies this prototypical closing “invitation” move. The ultimate relational effect of the in-group construction strategy outlined above is to terminate the relationship between the two primary participants; it is unlikely that the complainant will return to the hotel in the future. In exceptional cases, however, the respondent goes beyond merely terminating the relationship, and actually attempts to construct an entirely new relationship on a different footing. The following example (a response to a complaint about the allegedly discourteous behaviour of the hotel staff) can be characterized as a counter-attack: (20a)

 You check into my hotel, you came to reception after check in and demanded a free upgrade to a double room free of charge. You were told extra charge £5.00, you told reception no way would you pay and want compensation, or you would complain on trip advisor, you were told by my manager after consulting with me to go ahead. I have to advise you I have put a formal complaint to your company and demand a full apology from your company

Here the respondent essentially reverses the roles of the two parties. The original complainant (the customer) becomes the complainee, while the original complainee (the hotelier) becomes the complainant. The respondent thus lays claim to the sociality rights that are attendant upon the status of complainant (which license him/her to demand a full apology from the complainee). In the following example, the newly constructed relationship is one between two parties in a future legal dispute. This is a response to a reviewer’s allegation that the hotel was in breach of legal safety regulations: (20b)

 I am going to take you to task […] I have instructed the solicitors to contact you, for proof of any regulation we have abandoned. Along with any intent on my company to put a guest at risk in any way. You have entered into a very expensive legal disagreement that I must clear my name and my company and staff. We have a full risk assessment for fire EHO* and all the legal responsibility so we demand proof. [*Environmental Health Office]

Here the respondent not only lays claim to the rights ensuing from the status of a party in a legal dispute (we demand proof ), but also issues a public threat (You have entered into a very expensive legal disagreement). The default relationship of deference towards the customer is thus radically overturned.

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4.2.2 Relational effects involving third parties The role of third-party readers in the discourse has already been discussed extensively in the preceding sections. Essentially these readers affect the discourse in two main ways. Firstly, they are an audience for both the complainant and the respondent. All the types of antagonistic or aggressive behaviour outlined above are designed to be observed by third parties; the purpose of the response is to persuade these third parties, to shape their perceptions of the reported incident and of both primary participants. After all, much of the antagonistic and aggressive facework done by the respondents – discrediting the reviewer and attempting to enhance their own face – would be largely redundant if the complaintresponse sequence were played out in private, with a dyadic participant framework consisting of just the complainant (the customer) and the respondent (the hotel). Secondly, as has been discussed mainly in the previous section (4.2.1), the respondents use certain types of antagonistic and aggressive behaviour in an attempt to construct positive relationships with third-party readers. They attempt to bring these third-party readers on-side, inviting them to align themselves with an in-group from which the complainant is excluded. This may be done implicitly, simply by characterizing the complainant as somehow morally unacceptable and leaving third parties to arrive at their own conclusions and side with the respondent. Or it may be done more explicitly, when third parties are encoded in the text in an attempt to draw them in and encourage them to feel involved in the discourse. If third parties are explicitly encoded in the text, they may be addressed either directly or indirectly. An indirect mode of address can be seen in the following example, where readers are encoded via third-person forms: (21a)

(in response to a complaint that the food in the restaurant was not fresh, but was cooked from frozen)  I can assure other trip advisor readers that this is not the case and the views of amateurs are unwelcome and damaging to a business.

Respondents sometimes attempt to enhance readers’ perception of involvement by explicitly inviting them to weigh up the evidence and make their own judgement. The third parties may be encoded via thirdperson forms:

192 (21b)

Chapter Six  we hope that future guests will make their judgement on the credibility of this comment.  no deposit was taken and within 15 minutes [reviewer name] had been contacted, the situation explained and an apology offered. Readers will decide for themselves whether his “Urgent Warning” is needed and one star review justified.

Alternatively, third parties may be addressed directly, using secondperson forms or speech acts of invitation or request: (21c)

 […] for the benefit of all of you reading this I will put forward our side of the story and ask that you take a considered view of both sides. […]  Just replied to a five star review immediately before yours. Well readers, the decision is yours.

Besides drawing third-party readers into the discourse and encouraging a perception of involvement, this move also performs a facework function. By positioning the readers as playing the role of judges, respondents subtly enhance the readers’ quality face by implying that they are capable arbiters who are competent to weigh up the evidence and arrive at a mature and considered judgement. Moreover, the role of a judge confers a degree of power on its holder. This subtly enhances readers’ relational face by underlining the empowerment that they enjoy as a result of their role as potential guests (i.e. potentially the higher-status partners in any commercial relationship with the service provider). Such moves can thus be seen as a form of flattery, performed in an attempt to win third-party readers over to the respondent’s side and encourage them to be future guests.

5. Conclusions This study has set out to build on the growing body of research exploring antagonistic and aggressive discourse by examining the occurrence and impact of such verbal behaviour in public online responses to customer complaints. This is a genre in which respondents typically treat complainants with respect and deference. Antagonistic and aggressive behaviour towards complainants is a marginal phenomenon; nevertheless, the study shows that it can in fact benefit the speaker (the respondent) in various ways. Antagonistic and/or aggressive acts performed by hoteliers against the authors of negative reviews fall into two broad categories: 1) general

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negative evaluations of the review and/or reviewer, and 2) acts through which respondents contradict specific claims made in the review – including the presentation of counterclaims and alternative accounts in an attempt to “set the record straight” and undermine the authority of the reviewer in the eyes of third-party readers. Antagonistic and/or aggressive responses can potentially have a powerful impact on the face of both primary participants – the reviewer and the respondent. Through such behaviour, the respondent attacks both the quality face and relational face of the reviewer. Quality face attacks are typically directed against what I have termed the reviewer’s “morality face” (the reviewer is depicted as unfair, unreasonable, or dishonest) as well as those aspects of quality face related to the reviewer’s personality (the reviewer is depicted as grumpy, obsessive, prone to over-reaction, and generally abnormal). The reviewer’s relational face is also damaged through demonstrative displays of disrespect. This type of behaviour additionally enables speakers (respondents) to construct their own face and project it into the discourse. By attacking reviewers’ morality face, respondents implicitly accentuate their own moral credentials – a process that is reinforced by the use of strategies which “humanize” the institutional face of the respondent (including humour and the foregrounding of the respondent’s emotions). Antagonistic and/or aggressive responses also have the potential to create significant relational effects, impacting on the rapport between both primary participants. Some antagonistic responses at the milder end of the spectrum attempt to restore and/or maintain equilibrium between the participants by acknowledging the reviewer’s sociality rights as a customer – expressing gratitude and deference, and using various forms of mitigation. However, most responses examined in this study involve abandoning this prototypical role template. Respondents openly disrespect the reviewer; the reviewer is excluded from an in-group consisting of moral or normal people; and the relationship between the two primary participants is either terminated, or their mutual social roles are radically redefined. All the types of antagonistic or aggressive behaviour outlined above take place in a public arena; they are designed to be observed by third parties (the readers of the TripAdvisor website). The purpose of these responses is thus fundamentally persuasive: respondents are aiming to shape readers’ perceptions of the reported incident and of both primary participants. In some cases respondents use antagonistic and aggressive behaviour in an attempt to construct positive relationships with third-party readers. They attempt to bring these third-party readers on-side, inviting

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the readers to align themselves with an in-group from which the complainant is excluded – all with the vision of transforming these “potential guests” into actual guests, and thus ultimately achieving commercial gain. The common thread which links all the various acts and strategies explored in this study is the fundamentally constructive nature of verbal antagonism and aggression, both on the individual and group levels. Although such behaviour brings certain risks (particularly as it may alienate third-party readers), it nevertheless also offers numerous potential benefits to those who practise it, and should not be dismissed as a mere aberration. As was mentioned in the introductory section, TripAdvisor’s guidelines strongly advise hoteliers against writing “aggressive/defensive” responses to negative customer reviews, and instead recommend that they write “appropriate” responses. However, it is clear that on some occasions at least, respondents evidently feel that a defensive/aggressive approach is – paradoxically – an appropriate one. This study has aimed to provide an insight into why that might be the case.

Corpus 1. http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Hotels-g186348Northamptonshire_England-Hotels.html (retrieved 18 October 2014 and 9 January 2015) 2. http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Hotels-g186350Northumberland_England-Hotels.html (all retrieved 9 January 2015)

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CHAPTER SEVEN THE POLYPHONY OF A SUPER-GENRE: BLOG AS A HETEROGLOSSIC ELEMENT IN UNIVERSITY WEBSITES RENÁTA TOMÁŠKOVÁ

Abstract The paper focuses on institutional websites, particularly the websites of selected British, North American and Czech universities, exploring their generic status and characteristics. Drawing upon a multi-faceted corpus analysis anchored in a Hallidayan Systemic Functional approach, the related, recently developed fields of genre analysis and multimodal discourse analysis, and Bakhtin’s concept of polyphony in text, the study focuses on the complexity of the generic structure of the websites, which gives rise to their heteroglossic nature. Students’ blogs are presented as a sub-genre of the super-genre of university websites, incorporating an array of socially differentiated voices into primarily monoglossic institutional discourse.

1. Introduction The university website is still relatively novel as a genre of institutional discourse, and – especially in a cross-cultural perspective – it could be seen as an emerging genre. As genres are social and culturespecific processes (Martin 1997: 13), the generic repertoire is in constant evolution. Genres and their conventions reflect social changes and contacts between cultures, hence “…their existence is to a large extent dependent on their compliance with the current communicative needs of users and their institutions. Thus genres appear on the scene when they are demanded, and expire when the situation is not relevant any more” (Giltrow & Stein, 2009: 10). The discourse of educational institutions has

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been substantially shaped by the changing social context: universities are expected to communicate with the general public more than ever before, explaining the importance of their existence and impact and supporting these claims with arguments and evidence, as such considerations are no longer taken for granted. Universities also have to compete for students, including international applicants. The increasing demand for selfpresentation has coincided with the development of the world-wide web. On the one hand this development has facilitated communication in many ways; however, on the other hand it has imposed on universities another tacit requirement – to keep track of the affordances offered by the internet technology. The institutional website is a complex genre. Its complexity arises from the double purpose it pursues, presenting and at the same time promoting the university experience; from the multiple target audiences it addresses; and also from the multimodal, interactive environment on the screen. This complex purpose, content and form projects itself into the realization of the genre as a multimodal ensemble, as a discourse colony consisting of verbal and non-verbal elements, and a genre colony with a variety of embedded genres, held together by the layout design, recurrent concepts and shared goals. Genre embedding is one of the forms of genre hybridization that is typical of new and emerging genres and enhanced by the hypertextual nature of internet communication (cf. Bhatia 2004, Santini 2007). Hypertext navigation enables documents to be interwoven with links to other websites and thus complemented with genres of various kinds. In discourse colonies in general the coherence and cohesion of a genre does not lie in the linearity of a text, supported by a network of grammatical cohesive devices, but draws instead on relatively loose semantic relations among formally independent components, unified by their affiliation to a common frame (headline, sub-headline, university website header), and by their related topics and shared communicative purposes, reflected linguistically in lexical cohesive devices. The salience of linguistic cohesion in discourse colonies is thus lowered, giving way to non-verbal cohesive means, such as typography, layout and the choice of colours. Discourse colonies thus represent an environment that is open to new components of a variety of genres and modes. As I have suggested above, genre embedding may be realized through the simple insertion of a link leading the user to a relevant web document on a different website. However, embedding can also mean that a genre originating and functioning independently elsewhere is intentionally designed as a self-contained yet also allied component integrated into an

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institutional website. One example of this is the use of blogs as components of university websites. This study aims to explore the status of a blog as an embedded genre within university websites. It seeks to identify the features differentiating blogs from other parts of the colony and the features that help them integrate into the website as a whole. Most importantly, the study investigates the role(s) blogs play in this genre of institutional discourse.

2. The corpus and methodology The corpus includes sixteen university websites, which were accessed between January 2011 and January 2015 and represent a selection of eight British universities (Oxford, Bristol, Warwick, Edinburgh, Cambridge, Brighton, Leeds Metropolitan/Leeds Beckett, Sheffield), four North American universities (Harvard, University of California Los Angeles, Central Oklahoma, Alabama), and four Czech universities (Charles, Masaryk, Palacký University, and the University of Ostrava). All the websites were searched to determine whether they use blogs as a regular section, and if they do, where the blogs are located within the website and how they would fit into current blog typologies. The analysis builds on recent research results in the field; it is based on the typology of blogs as presented by Herring et al. (2005) and Mauranen (2013), and it takes inspiration from Myers (2010), applying some of the parameters he suggests as significant for researching blogs, namely time and place anchorage, and strategies building the readers’ community. The main focus, however, is on the function(s) blogs perform in this type of discourse, especially on the role a blog may play as a source of heteroglossia and polyphony. Both the concept of heteroglossia and the concept of polyphony were introduced by Bakhtin (1981, 1986), originally in relation to his study of literary genres, particularly the novel as a complex genre: “The novel orchestrates all its themes, the totality of the world of objects and ideas depicted and expressed in it, by means of the social diversity of speech types (heteroglossia) and by the differing individual voices that flourish under such conditions” (Bakhtin 1981: 263). Heteroglossia is characterized as the presence of different social and regional varieties of language in a text, while polyphony is defined as the harmony or disharmony of co-present voices in the text, as the rendering of themes or topics in texts through different voices, or as themes travelling across language varieties in the text of a novel. In other words, themes in complex genres are introduced and developed through a variety of characters whose social and cultural background shapes the standard or

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non-standard language variety they use. In this chapter the contribution of the bloggers’ voices and the language varieties they bring into the university discourse are analyzed by means of register analysis, reflecting the contextual features of the field, tenor and mode (Halliday & Hasan 1985).

3. Searching for blogs on university websites: occurrence and typology A survey of the university websites in the corpus has shown that rather than residing in a specific section at a specific place within the websites, blogs tend to be scattered across the hypertext, and they manifest substantial variability in number, purpose, content and accessibility, being located either on the surface or deeper in the net (facilitating quick, direct access or expecting only limited and determined audiences respectively). Out of the sixteen university websites explored here, seven contain blogs framed by the university as a whole, i.e. the university with its achievements, events, academic and student life; these are easily accessible a few steps from the university home page. University blogs include science blogs, arts blogs and student blogs. Five universities have specialized blogs related to university constituents (schools, faculties, departments, or individual teachers in the case of teacher blogs), or to specific topics or research fields (project blogs, blogs on subjects, sustainability blog, a “Be Broncho Fit!” blog, or a “Sharing the beauty of language” blog). Four universities do not use the genre at all. The range of types of blogs appearing in this corpus corresponds with recent comments made on blog development elsewhere (cf. Mauranen 2013): blogs have diversified, and even though a number of categories have been identified and described, many current blogs defy strict classification and follow scales or develop hybrids. The scales span between community and individual blogs, personal and topical blogs, or the types merge forming hybrids of public and private, personal and professional (Herring et al. 2005). The specificity of the blogs in the corpus consists in the fact that no matter how varied they are, they all belong to the relevant institutional website. In blogs as forms of institutional discourse, the opposition of public and private translates into the opposition between outward-oriented blogs and inward-oriented ones. Whereas some of the blogs are directed explicitly outwards (e.g. by addressing prospective students), and some are directed explicitly inwards (e.g. blogs designed by teachers for students of certain subjects, or advice blogs for current students), they can all be

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accessed on the internet, and in the majority of them the desired target audience is not specified. Science and arts blogs are clearly community blogs presenting university team achievements for both academia and the general public. They are topical and professional, written by a science journalist responsible for posting regular updates. These blogs use the news report format and a popular scientific register. The faculty, project, teacher or topical blogs range between community and individual blogs, and most of them combine discussions of certain topics and the personal views and attitudes of the bloggers in the posts. Similarly their format and register are also mixed, employing personal as well as impersonal style, popular scientific accounts and diary-like passages. Finally, student blogs are used both to speak for the community and to build a new community, as well as to offer an individual point of view. Student blogs are again personal and topical hybrids, but they are more compact in terms of format, unfolding as personal diaries in idiolectal registers. It is the student blogs that will be the centre of attention in the following analysis.

4. Student blogs Student blogs can be found at five of the websites surveyed, helping to present the universities of Harvard, California (Los Angeles), Cambridge, Warwick, and Edinburgh; none of the Czech universities in the corpus have opted for this genre yet. A link to student blogs is located on the prospective students’ home page and is presented as an invitation to meet current students (see Fig. 1). The link leads to a set of students’ profiles, invariably accompanied by their portrait photographs, and subsequently to their blog texts themselves. There is also a menu of the titles of recent posts, giving the visitor a chance to choose either by author or by topic. The locations, as well as the direct and indirect addresses used within the posts, clearly target an audience of prospective university students. At the University of Warwick the purpose of student blogs is explicitly stated in a separate section: the university considers Student Ambassadors to be important to prospective students, thinks that blogs can help “to capture what being a student here actually feels like”, and sees them as a possibility to show more eloquently “not just the academic side of life but also the social life and REAL life situations our students find themselves in” (About Student Blogs). The intentions behind the blogs are explained in a fairly similar way in brief opening texts on the student blog opening

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Fig. 1 University of Warwick prospective students’ home page

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pages (see example 1), which may also be read as a careful response to anticipated readers’ doubts about the authenticity of students’ blogging. The use of the intensifier really, underlined in example 1 below, even suggests a possible contrast or incongruence between the picture of the university constructed by the voice of the institution as such and the voice of its students. The opening texts apparently strive to add legitimacy to the blog posts they introduce. (1) Our Student Blogs are all written by current students, working and often living on campus. We don't edit the posts or tell our bloggers what to say. These are their thoughts, opinions and insights and hopefully that comes across in their own words. http://studentblogs.warwick.ac.uk/ Although nothing quite compares to visiting Harvard Yard, we hope that these students’ stories and video vignettes give you a sense of what Harvard College and our students are really like. https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/hear-our-students (my highlighting)

Example 1 not only states the objectives of the genre; it also shows the attitudes the universities adopt towards it. These attitudes are surprisingly concordant: the academic community, which is otherwise constructed as unified, is here split into the university as an institution (referred to with the 1st person plural pronouns we and our) and the students – independent (cf. the use of their, these students), yet belonging to the alma mater, even in the physical sense (both universities mention explicitly the premises: the campus and Harvard Yard). Both universities cherish the personal character of blogs and see their contribution in attitudinal rather than factual terms, as is obvious from the lexical choices highlighted in bold. The way in which student blogs are introduced indicates that their principles are well recognized and purposefully employed in the institutional environment. As Miller and Shepherd have noted (2004: 14), “the generic exigence that motivates bloggers is related less to the need for information than to the self and the relations between selves”. It seems to be this personal and interpersonal aspect that has brought blogs into the discourse of university websites. But who is the blogger in this context and what motivates them? Student bloggers and their motivation acquire a double identity: the bloggers are individuals confessing their personal experiences, and at the same time they are ambassadors of the university, motivated to help their prospective peers as well as prompted by academia to support the university in its self-presentation. The personal here is in

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service of the institutional: “the blogging subject [that] constitutes itself in and through its own mediation” (Miller & Shepherd 2004: 15) pertains not only to the student bloggers themselves, but also to the university – as the student blogs are firmly embedded in and framed by the website, the blogging students contribute to the constitution of the identity of the educational institution. Using the Warwick characteristics of student blogs as a stepping stone, the following analysis explores the strategies and devices through which the communicative purpose of this genre is realized.

4.1 “Student Ambassadors are important to prospective students” Within university websites – which are broad in scope, address a wide range of audiences, and thus often provide general overviews with generic reference – the use of blogs offers a welcome opportunity to balance generalization with personalization, specification and a “zoom in” on details. As has been mentioned above, bloggers are not anonymous – the readers know their names, meet them “in person” through their photographs, and may be attracted by possibly shared or interesting features in their profiles (see Fig. 2). Bloggers form numerous groups within their universities, representing the diversity of the student community. As illustrated with Fig. 3, showing students of a variety of subjects and from various ethnic backgrounds, the composition of the blogging student set is very probably shaped by the institution in order to present its educational diversity and multicultural nature. The profiles not only present essential facts mapping the bloggers’ university studies and private lives; they also characterize the writers indirectly via their personal language style – an idiolect including colloquial, slang or dialect expressions, favourite jokes, greetings, or forms of address. As such, student blogs enrich the polyphony of voices and the heteroglossia of the discourse, speaking for the university in their own words.

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Fig. 2 Harvard University Admissions web page

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Fig. 3 Cambridge University student blogs and profiles

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The posts reflect the regular course of events at the university and show how the bloggers fit into these events, how they find their place in the community and what it means to them to be part of academic and student life. In the blogs, educational, cultural or sports events which have their place in the university calendar become personal experiences, valued and assessed as such. As illustrated in example 2, the factual message is typically accompanied by subjectified evaluative language, and the event becomes detached from regularity to gain a special, “once-in-a-lifetime” charm: (2) Every year the Classics Society puts on a production of an ancient play for everyone's enjoyment. ... However this performance is not for the general public and is instead part of the 'Ancient Drama Day for schools'... I took part in this last year and...It was a great experience which I would have loved to have taken part in as a student when I was 16! Warwick Student Blogs

Similarly in example 3, written by a different student at a different university, the blog post interlinks the general course of events with study commitments – the public event and the private plan. The personalized view of the blog post functions as a magnifying glass imposed on the occasion to provide a detailed description of one of its components: (3) Festival of Ideas has arrived in Cambridge! Consisting of 250 talks, debates, and exhibitions over a span of two weeks ... I'm planning on attending a few talks that are all related to psychology, and the one I'll talk about called 'A mind full of memories' explored what PTSD is and how it can be treated using theatre. I went to this talk because it was related to the research paper I’m going to be doing this year... Cambridge Student Blogs

The blog as a web genre opens up space for interaction; this is an affordance that makes the genre particularly attractive for institutions (including universities), and sometimes becomes a key objective of using the genre: (4) Online communication tools such as blogs are recognized by UCO as valuable communication and interaction tools for use in creating community, interaction and facilitating feedback with students, staff, faculty, parents, the community and other UCO stakeholders. University of Central Oklahoma Blog Guidelines

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Interestingly, interaction and feedback are placed after creating community. The relationship between the genre and the community whose needs it is to meet lies at the core of most of definitions of genre as such (cf. Swales 1990, Bhatia 1993, 2004, Martin 1997, Bax 2011, Giltrow & Stein 2009). However, the traditional, pre-internet approaches tend to see genres as arising from communities rather than creating them (Swales 1990). Even though the idea of communities established through genres is not new – it was suggested by Mauranen as early as 1993 – it is only with the emergence of web genres, and particularly blogs, that it has been elaborated on and supported with more evidence. In her study focusing on research blogs, Mauranen comes to the conclusion that “if we accept that a group of regular followers of a blog constitute a community of some kind, then the relationship would rather be the other way around: it is the genre that determines the community” (2013: 13). This generic process in blogs is discussed along the same lines by Miller and Shepherd, who see building a community as interrelated with the communicative purpose of blogs: “Is what is truly novel in the blog the ability to address simultaneously these dual yet mutually reinforcing purposes, to engage in self-expression in order to build community and to build community in order to cultivate the self?” (2004: 11). Institutional blogs, i.e. blogs embedded in university websites, could be best described as governed by a double relation between the genre and its community: they are designed and produced by the academic community to build a community of prospective students, in other words they meet the needs of a community by creating a new community. This is a principle felt or even explicitly manifested in the blog posts themselves: (5) I’m very passionate about education and accessibility issues, which is why I’m excited about my positions as a student blogger and a coordinator for HFAI. I love talking about all opportunities here for students of all socioeconomic backgrounds, so feel free to reach out to me with any questions you have about life at Harvard! Harvard Student Blogs

Although the corpus of student blogs surveyed here does not document any comments added to the posts, the texts are clearly driven by an effort to open up contacts and build relationships with their readers. The language is highly conversationalized and accordingly relies on the assumption of the irrelevance of social status (or the equal status shared by student peers), shared interests in university studies and the opportunities offered by student life, and being part of the community.

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The bloggers address the receivers via 2nd person pronouns and imperatives, appealing to a common experiential background and getting the readers involved. See example 6: (6) You would not believe how bitterly cold Bristol can be in the mornings... DO EVERYTHING! (you cannot sign up for enough societies, believe me!) Bristol Student Blog Imagine my delight when I saw my supervisor on stage talking about the research she had done! Cambridge Student Blogs Come fall, they offer a pumpkin spice topping alongside the usual nonfat milk and brown sugar. Yup, that’s right – you can fall-ify any drink at the flick of a wrist… Harvard University Student Blogs

As the students who agree to blog for themselves and the university then run their blogs for a relatively long period of time (from several months to as much as one or two years), blogging becomes a regular part of their student life, and they also tend to turn to the receivers as long-term readers. This long-term partnership is simulated both retrospectively and prospectively, referring backwards as well as forwards along the chronology of the series of blog posts, as illustrated by the extracts in example 7: (7) Hiya everyone! Forgive my absence over the Xmas period... I can’t wait to tell you more about them and their progress as the term goes on! Warwick Student Blogs ...I will let you know how this works out for me! Cambridge Student Blogs

The blog typically represents a discourse colony – an aggregate of relatively independent posts unified by a communicative purpose, the personality of the author and a framing field rather than by grammatical cohesive devices, thus facilitating selective and discontinuous reading (cf. Hoey 1986, 2001, Tomášková 2011a). Relatively long intervals between the individual posts (usually one to three months) distinguish blogs from many other types of discourse colonies and contribute to the avoidance of any cross-referencing that would make the posts dependent on each other

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for meaning-making. Yet the authors occasionally introduce co-referential links supporting the coherence of their blog as a whole and constructing a community of regular readers (see example 8): (8) Another friend (who some of you may recognize as the particularly pro-active international student who inspired me to take up a new hobby every term if you’ve followed my blogging across this year) mentioned that… Cambridge Student Blog

No matter what topics the posts focus on, the student bloggers invariably play the role of university ambassadors, positioning themselves as guides and advisors inviting less experienced peers to enjoy the rich spectrum of university life and at the same time helping them out by foreseeing possible concerns or fears and dispelling them by revealing their own worries and weaknesses, which they have managed to cope with. The texts thus not only contain the explicit dialogical elements presented above; they also attract the readers by means of their inner dialogicity, their responsive character anticipating the recipients’ expectations and reactions (see example 8): (8) I remember all the way back in Michaelmas that I was very conscious that Cambridge was not home. ... The distinction from Michaelmas doesn't apply any longer. University can be home too. It is for me at least. Cambridge Student Blogs I have to say that it was a bit apprehensive before I moved in due to the fact that I had to share a flat with 8 people. I wondered what they would be like; if they would be nice and friendly, and too noisy and messy haha! … Over the next week, I got to meet my flat mates and thankfully, they were all nice and pleasant…. I absolutely love living in Lakeside! Warwick Student Blogs

As was illustrated in this section, an important role played by student blogs is the ideational or representational function – blog posts represent a valuable source of information on academic life as well as extracurricular activities, a source that on the one hand runs parallel to texts presented on the website by the university management, while on the other hand functioning as a source of individualized and personalized close-ups balancing and complementing the general and generalized institutional website discourse.

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4.2 “What being a student here actually feels like” As the Warwick introduction to student blogs suggests, the posts are also supposed to convey feelings and emotions, a view of the university environment shaped by the personal perception of individual students. Whereas university websites as such strive to build an image of objectivity and support positive assertions and evaluations with factual credentials (Tomášková 2011b: 68), the genre of a blog brings in the subjectivity of student voices enjoying the authority of prospective students’ peers, eyewitnesses sharing their own experience. Their reports do not aspire to achieve general validity – on the contrary, their irreplaceable value lies in the partial and individualized point of view that creates an informal and intimate atmosphere and constructs a friendly relationship with the readers. Feelings and attitudes relate either to how students feel about themselves, expressing their likes and dislikes and confessing their weaknesses or failures (example 9, highlighting is mine), or they reveal students’ evaluation of the university and university life in the broad sense, assessing the meanings and benefits they find for themselves (example 10 and 11, my highlighting): (9) [I] may end up pursuing a secondary in Visual and Environmental Studies (I absolutely love photography). Harvard Student Blogs My friend came round, we had tea and then endured a very hard and scary lab test online which I failed miserably! Warwick Student Blogs Others I started and then dropped, such as my college football team – my participation in the first three matches was an unmitigated disaster. Cambridge Student Blogs

(10) The high caliber and talent of my peers is always astonishing and inspiring. Harvard Student Blogs So far, the unit has been one of the most thought-provoking I have studied... analysing and discussing the texts in class has been an interesting and enjoyable experience. I am really enjoying this term... Bristol Students Blogs

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The power of one’s own experience as a credential apparently grows with the length of experience; this information is included in bloggers’ personal profiles and occasionally also mentioned in the posts to support the trustworthiness of the message, as underlined in example 11 (all highlighting is mine): (11) Cambridge is an amazing place to be, and after three exam terms I can tell you that it is possible to achieve grades that you are happy with and to stay happy and healthy too! University is a step up but is an amazing way to expand your mind… Cambridge Student Blogs

As is illustrated by the model post in example 12, the bloggers tend to construct a harmonious picture of student life, balancing reports of study commitments (underlined in the example) and social life with leisure-time pursuits (highlighted by wavy lines), and at the same time factual references and personal feelings (highlighted in bold). Emotional and evaluative comments are omnipresent. It is not only study commitments and extracurricular activities that are presented through individualized, subjective perceptions; time and place references (underlined with dotted lines) are also made emotionally salient by the individual situation of the writer. Confessions on what it feels like to be a student surround, or even enclose, factual descriptions, possibly outweighing them in terms of quantity: in example 12 they make up most of the initial paragraph, before making way for study-related remarks in the second paragraph, and then again becoming more prominent throughout the rest of the text, which also reports on the writer’s social life. The possibly intimidating effects of the study requirements mentioned are thus overshadowed by the attention paid to personal feelings, which are predominantly positive or follow the problem-solution pattern, introducing a challenge first and then easing the tension with a positive impression or an experience of success (e.g. from “a stressful couple of weeks” to how “it definitely paid off” and how Francesca is “already really enjoying it” in example 12). Such efforts to dispel anticipated fears and doubts come to the fore quite regularly, and not only in blogs; they are similarly woven into texts located along prospective students’ paths through university websites (see Tomášková 2011b: 58). Here, in an example of a Francesca post, “a fly-by visit to Austria” is explicitly intended “to demonstrate that it IS possible to take an entire weekend out slap-bang in the middle of term”.

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Chapter Seven (12) It’s been HOW long?? Posted on November 7, 2012 by Francesca Apparently it’s been five weeks since term started. If I hadn’t just counted the weeks in my diary, I would probably have guessed it had been about two. There has been very little time to notice the days pass by in between puzzling over examples sheets, researching PhDs and a fly-by visit to Austria last week (just to demonstrate that it IS possible to take an entire weekend out slap-bang in the middle of term, although I may have taken some lecture notes with me…). As in the final year for most courses, this year I will be spending a lot of time on an individual research project. I had a stressful couple of weeks at the start of term choosing and applying for various different projects, but it definitely paid off. My project is based around comparing data from the Large Hadron Collider to new theories of how particles interact with each other. I’ve only just started working on it (doing some background reading, learning how to use the software I will need etc), but am already really enjoying it. Apart from balancing work and a social life, one of the big challenges of this term (for a wimp like me, that is) is that IT IS COLD. It’s not that I wasn’t anticipating that winter would once again be cold, it’s just that as far as I’m concerned I was enjoying summer in Geneva just a month ago (OK, in reality it was two months since I left Geneva and three since the height of summer, but as I mentioned above I’m not great at keeping track of time). Fortunately, Cambridge offers some excellent remedies against the cold: - I find that hot drinks that come from the kettle improve almost any activity – work, chatting with friends, watching Downton Abbey, recovering from the tragedy of learning that Downton Abbey has finished… In fact, Cambridge even has a tea society, so I’m not alone. - Formal Hall. This is a peculiar Cambridge tradition in which a group of friends dress up “fancily” (i.e. ties, nice dresses and academic gowns) and goes to eat a (usually) delicious 3 or 4 course meal in their college. Yes, it’s a slightly odd thing to do, but people don’t take it too seriously, and it’s a lot cheaper that eating at a real restaurant. And you get candles on the table. - Cambridge is at least warmer than Austria. Cambridge Student Blogs

The relative perception of the passage of time reflects students’ busy lives, rich in a variety of attractions, as well as the different stages of university studies, with each of the academic years having its own distinct atmosphere. The seasons of the year are associated with either shared or diverse expectations of individual students, often related to specific places – hometowns, holiday destinations and the place of study (as in example 12 with Geneva, Austria and Cambridge). Very importantly, time and

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place references provide an anchor supporting the coherence of the discourse colonies of blog posts and contribute substantially to the construction of a context that the bloggers may rely on when writing for an unknown and probably multicultural readership (for a more detailed discussion see section 4.3). Cultural and social diversity is a value promoted on the websites of all British and American universities in the corpus, cherished as an attribute creating an enjoyable and inspirational atmosphere that defines the university experience (see Tomášková 2011b: 70). Intercultural encounters and an awareness and appreciation of social and cultural diversity are mentioned in many of the blogs (example 13), occasionally with comparisons revealing unexpected culture shocks (example 14): (13) Hey! My name is Bryant Yang, and I’m from a small town in South Dakota. The transition from cornfields to Cambridge has been extremely exciting so far... The enormous diversity of the people around me, especially compared to home, has given me the privilege to see how different others have lived their life. Harvard Student Blogs (14) Classes here are structured in a very different way. Okay, maybe saying “very different” is an exaggeration but I only do so because it is probably the only “culture shock” I’ve experienced so far, and because I don’t usually get culture shocked. I mean, I moved to the U.S. after living in Nepal for 19 years and none of the changes really felt like changes I needed to adapt to. But we’re only allowed to take three courses here, the lectures are usually two hours long, and the professors/lecturers are very hands-off. I’m not saying that this is a bad thing. I mean, a different learning environment is what I came here looking for. But I am acknowledging the fact that it’s a little harder to digest that I had thought it would be for me. Edinburgh Student Blogs

4.3 REAL life situations As Warwick University website (quoted in the opening part of section 4) suggests, student blogs are also seen as an opportunity to present viewers with “REAL life situations students find themselves in”. What makes the situations described in the posts “real”? Several key aspects have been mentioned above: the identity of the blogger, stated in the profiles and including photo portraits; the individualized perceptions and points of view; and the conversationalized language featuring slang, dialect or idiolectal elements. In addition to these, the authenticity and

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actuality of the personalized blog discourse is also supported by time and place references; the posts are typically framed by time specifications and grounded in specific environments. The system of time reference in blogs tends to be quite complex, developing and interrelating two time lines: the “time-stamp time”, attributed automatically as a technological affordance, and the “lived time”, anchoring the descriptions and narratives and expressed in a variety of ways across the posts (both concepts are used by Myers 2010: 66-67). The posting time is often paired in the heading with a note of the blogger’s study year (which is also a regular part of the blogger’s profile), and the stage of university studies in relation to the time of the (academic) year indeed represents the fundamental point of reference for most of the posts. The blogs flow with the cycle and rhythm of the academic year and with the seasons of the year, punctuated by seasonal holidays. The posts typically open with a reference to the current point in the calendar year and the academic year (see the introductory paragraphs in example 15) and cover a selection of events and impressions experienced since the last post, which – together with occasional apologies for a delay in posting (example 16) – indicates that the students might be encouraged or expected by the institution to blog at certain intervals: (15) Posted on November 25, 2014 My third year started on 27 September officially marking the beginning of the end for my University of Bristol adventure. This thought fills me with a mixture of sadness and excitement, as although I struggle to believe that this is my final year, I cannot wait to see all that it has in store. Bristol Student Blogs Lena Felton October 14, 2014 Fall on the East Coast is certainly a force to be reckoned with. Coming from California, I didn’t truly grasp the concept of seasons before last year; now, I’ll openly admit that autumn is the best one out there. Below are some fall activities worth checking out. ‘Tis the season! Harvard Student Blogs

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January 18, 2015 Billy Mullan 2nd Year Undergraduate Student Happy New Year! So my New Year kicked off with my final day in New York. ... Things got back into full swing when I returned, with my first assignment due on the 6th of January... Warwick Student Blogs (16) Bryant Yang July 6, 2014 I know I’m a little late to my end of freshmen year post, but better late than never! As I wrapped up the school year over a month ago, I thought a lot about how I’ve changed my first at college... Harvard Student Blogs

The choice of verb tense forms and their functions correspond with the aims and content of the blogs. Descriptions of the regular features of university life, regular activities and events are conveyed in the present simple (example 17); the present perfect expresses overviews of the recent past reaching up to the present, and frequently summarizes experiences; the simple past serves for narratives; and present progressive forms provide an insight into the situation depicted as current, helping to get the readers involved (ex. 18): (17) Revising in Cambridge also provides you with the opportunity to meet up with your supervisors to have “revision supervisions” so that you can clarify anything that you don’t understand... Cambridge Student Blogs The optional unit I have chosen is Prize Culture and Prestige, which focuses on prize-winning texts and asks questions about the influence of literary prizes on literature and vice versa. Bristol Student Blogs

The extracts in example 17 show that the present simple assertions of general and habitual facts tend to be combined either with 2nd person pronouns, which imbue general occurrences with a degree of personal relevance for prospective students, or with 1st person pronouns and tense forms such as the present perfect, where the agent plays a more decisive

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role as the deictic centre and which thus have a personalizing and particularizing effect in the context: (18) Posted on December 21, 2014 First term has passed in a frantic blur. I can’t believe Christmas is nearly upon us. ... I am looking forward to next term and all that it has to hold. (I’m also looking forward to some home cooked food and central heating during the Christmas break!) Bristol Students Blogs July 23, 2014 This week I am transforming my post into a travel blog because I spent the weekend in the Atacama desert in northern Chile! Harvard Student Blogs

In both parts of example 18 the time reference includes a link between the posting dates and the opening passage: in the first part this link is based on the readers’ assumed familiarity with the fact that December means the end of a term and the Christmas holiday, while in the second part “this week” and “the weekend” can only be interpreted through the anaphoric reference to the date. In his analysis of blog discourse, Myers argues that “[b]logs, set in a blogosphere of other blogs, are placeless by default; they have to do something to signal place or we don’t think about it.” They are placeless, Myers explains, in the sense that they typically do not offer any “indication of the place from which the blogger sees” the things they write about (Myers 2010: 48). Unlike time referencing (cf. Myers 2010), place references in student blogs are anchored differently. Rather than being present at an indeterminate location in the global blogosphere, student blogs are embedded within the specific environment of a particular institution; they are not placeless, but firmly grounded in the university they speak for. Even if the bloggers do not explicitly mention that they are writing from the university, their task is clearly to act as its ambassadors, so the place reference is understood by default. This “default setting” is confirmed by the bloggers’ frequent references to the university as such, its premises, the city and the surrounding areas (example 19), and by notifying the readers that they are just about to leave the university for a holiday or that they have just returned. Students’ blogging is thus presented as originating from the university environment, as part of the bloggers’ engagement there, being suspended during holiday periods and resuming with the resumption of the semester (see example 20):

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(19) Hey there! My name’s Lena Felton, and I’m a freshman living in Canaday. I’m originally from Marin County, CA, which is right outside of San Francisco. ... In addition to academics, I’m writing for the Crimson and doing publicity work for IDENTITIES, a studentrun fashion show on campus. When I have free time, I hit the gym, visit Boston, or relax with my friends in the beautiful Harvard Yard. Harvard Student Blogs

Example 19 suggests that students’ identification with the university, including its location and/or their role as its ambassadors, can be very close: the blogger here – even though a freshman – chooses “living” rather than “staying” to refer to her accommodation at one of Harvard’s halls of residence, and modifies the reference to her home region with the adverb “originally”. Not only her study commitments but also her extracurricular activities are located at Harvard University and in the nearby area. (20) ...as the third-years return once more, everyone slips back into this routine seamlessly. There is a sense of ease as the now familiar faces congregate in these now familiar rooms, and it is truly nice to be back together. Bristol Student Blogs Posted on June 20, 2014 by Matt So I’m currently packing my room. My first ever room at university. Tomorrow morning I will strip my bed for the very last time ... Posted on September 13, 2014 by Matt It’s September (not that this will be news to any readers out there), which means summer is almost over and Michaelmas Term will soon be upon us once more. So, what’s new? ... In short, summer has been uneventful but a much enjoyed break to end my insane first year as a Cambridge student. ... Cambridge Year Two. Bring it on! Cambridge Student Blog

The time-stamps of the Cambridge blog posts show the typical holiday gap between the contributions, framed by departures and returns from the university. Besides the references to the university and the surrounding area, there are two more types of locations used in the blogs: students’ home places and students’ travel destinations. Home places are invariably mentioned in the student profiles accompanying all the blogs; they contribute to the personalization of the discourse and help to demonstrate the cultural and

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social diversity of the student community. They are not a regular part of the posts, however, and if they play a role then it is to imply a contrast between the home environment and the university (see examples 13 and 15 above). A contrastive effect is also developed in the profile extract below (example 21), a rare occasion of a home place being presented as more attractive. (21) Hi there. My name is Ariel Smolik-Valles and I’m a freshman at the College, originally from Des Plaines, IL which is right outside of Chicago (best city in the world, sorry Boston). Harvard Student Blogs

Travelling is seen as a typical component of the university experience, inseparable from student life – either as a leisure activity or as a study/work-related experience; the blogs tend to explicitly mention the close relation of travelling to university life and the student community. Example 22 is a continuation of the extract introduced in example 18 above, and the post reproduced in example 23 reports on a study-abroad stay which interestingly, with the point of view shifted in space, broadens the scope of the readership to include fellow UCLA students. In both cases the blog posts become travelogues, representing samples of blog hybrids, combining the personal and the topical (cf. section 2); in a more delicate classification they could possibly be viewed as a sub-genre of blogs. (22) ... I spent the weekend in the Atacama desert in northern Chile! We had this weekend free from an organized Harvard activity, so a group of us (along with a couple of friends from MIT who are staying in Santiago) booked some flights and headed off to enjoy the desert. Harvard Student Blogs (23) Well that’s a quick summary of a couple of the places I’ve been thus far in London! I’m so incredibly grateful to my parents and UCEAP [University of California Education Abroad Program] for providing an opportunity for me to study in one of the greatest city in the world. ... Shoutouts to any Bruins abroad/from abroad right now! Let me know where you’re from in the comments below.:) UCLA Student Blogs

As has been suggested above, place reference in institutional/student blogs differs in nature from the role of references to locations in the open blogosphere: a description of the key location and an expression of a student’s personal ties to the place forms an essential part of the communicative aim in student blogs, as the blog is about the place and the

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author belongs to that place. Unlike in standalone blogs, where the participants cannot rely on any externally shared context and all the context needs to be produced internally (Peterson 2011: 10), or in online communication in general which – as Wittel argues – “lacks a common and mutual perception of context” (Wittel 2001: 63), in university blogs the context of place forms part of the institutional context of the university website in which the blogs are embedded. The university, then, as the examples indicate, becomes a deictic centre, the “here” from which most of the messages are sent and from which other places are seen. The unity of the university, its location and its students is in some cases also promoted through the metonymical title of the student blogs: at the University of Warwick the student blog section is entitled “We are Warwick”, and at the University of Cambridge it is called “Be Cambridge”. The construction of a “real life” picture is also supported by non-verbal elements –students’ photographs. The photo portrait in the profile is obviously obligatory, but photographs are also scattered across blog posts, providing extralinguistic context, a non-verbal counterpart to time and especially place reference (cf. Myers 2010: 57). Images show or suggest the seasons of the year and times of the day, and depict the places mentioned in the text – or to be more precise, photographs replace their potentially arduous descriptions. The pictures introduce an authentic situational context shared by the writers and their readers, which has a conversationalizing effect on the language: the bloggers refer to the photos, commenting on them and anticipating the viewers’ responses and imitate conversational exchanges (example 24 and 25). (24) ... This is what outside looks like. ... And this is the view from outside my window. Thanks for stopping by! Warwick Student Blogs

The comments are preceded by two photographs of the halls of residence and their surroundings respectively. (25) ... No, your eyes are not deceiving you, that’s a flamingo. ... As you can see, sunset is one of the most popular times to visit Valle de la Luna... ...

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Here the text refers to photographs mapping the author’s journey to northern Chile. In both examples (24 and 25) the pictures are integrated into the narrative of the post: the images complement the text whose coherence would be challenged without them.

5. Conclusion The blog is a genre embedded in university websites and contributing to the fulfilment of their goal – to present the institution and to promote it. University websites contain a variety of blogs: from those written by media professionals to blogs run by individual teachers, researchers, or students. The majority of these blogs do not fit into any strict classification but instead develop hybrid forms combining topical and personal orientations, involving the community as well as displaying individuality. Student blogs are written by current students, and – addressing primarily prospective students – they are found on web pages along the prospective students’ path. Student blogs represent one of the ways of “deinstitutionalizing” institutional discourse: they enrich the traditionally formal, impersonal, monologic language of institutional administration with informal, personalized, and conversationalized discourse enabling interaction; and even if no comments are added, the text strives to get the readers involved rather than keeping them detached. Through their posts, the bloggers contribute to the construction of the image of a university as a vivid, dynamic world and of university as an invaluable life experience. Blogs broaden the range of voices heard in the website, lend importance to individual points of view and open up space for a variety of registers; the genre of the blog thus becomes a source of polyphony and heteroglossia. Student blogs not only provide individualized information and share authentic experiences; they are also meant to create a community of writers and readers – or to be exact, within an institutional website, the relationship between the blog and the community is a dual one: on the one hand, student blogs are inspired by the academic community to help achieve its objectives, while on the other hand student blogs develop independently and build a community of their own.

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Corpus http://blog.admissions.ucla.edu/ http://www.becambridge.com/student-blogs/ http://www.brighton.ac.uk http://www.bris.ac.uk/ http://www.bristol.ac.uk/english/study/undergraduate/ http://www.cam.ac.uk/ http://www.cuni.cz/ http://www.ed.ac.uk http://www.ed.ac.uk/studying/visiting-exchange/study-abroad-blogs http://www.harvard.edu/ http://www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/ http://www.muni.cz http://www.osu.cz http://www.ox.ac.uk/ http://www.ua.edu/ http://www.ucla.edu/ http://www.uco.edu/ http://www.upol.cz http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/ http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/study/studentblogs/ https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/hear-our-students

Bibliography Bax, Stephen (2011) Discourse and Genre. Analysing Language in Context. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Bhatia, Vijay J. (1993) Analysing Genre. Language Use in Professional Settings. London and New York: Longman. Bhatia, V. J. (2004) Worlds of Written Discourse. A Genre-Based View. London and New York: Continuum. Bakhtin, Michail M. (1981) The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Holquist, M.(ed.) Austin and London: University of Texas Press. —. (1986) Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Austin: University of Texas Press. Giltrow, J. & Stein, D. (2009) Genres in the Internet. Innovation, evolution, and genre theory. In: J. Giltrow & D. Stein Genres in the Internet. Issues in the theory of genre (pp. 1–25). Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

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Halliday, Michael A.K.&Hasan, Ruqaiya (1989) Language, context and text: Aspects of language in a social semiotic perspective. Oxford: OUP. Herring, Susan C., Scheidt, Lois A., Wright, Elijah, Bonus Sabrina (2005) Weblogs as a Bridging Genre. Information Technology & People 18 (2): 142–171. Hoey, Michael (1986) “The Discourse Colony: A Preliminary Study of a Neglected Discourse Type.” In: Coulthard, M. (ed.) Talking about Text. Studies presented to David Brazil on his retirement.Birmingham: Birmingham Instant Print Ltd., 1–26. —. (2001) Textual Interaction. An introduction to to written discourse analysis. London and New York: Routledge. Martin, James R. (1997) Analysing genre: functional parameters. In F. Christie & J. R. Martin (eds.) Genre and Institutions. Social Processes in the Workplace and School (3–39). London and New York: Continuum. Mauranen, Anna (1993) Cultural Differences in Academic Rhetoric: A Textlinguistic Study. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. —. (2013) Hybridism, edutainment, and doubt: Science blogging finding its feet. Nordic Journal of English Studies 13(1): 7–36. Miller, Carolyn & Shepherd, Dawn (2004) “Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog.” Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community and the Culture of Weblogs. Eds. Laura Gurak, Smiljana Antonijevic, Laurie Johnson, Clancy Ratliff, and Jessica Reyman. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Myers, Greg (2010) The Discourse of Blogs and Wikis. London: Continuum. Peterson, Eric (2011) How Conversational Are Weblogs? Language & Internet, Volume 8, http://www.languageatinternet.org/articles/2011/Peterson. Santini, Marina (2007) Characterizing Genres of Web Pages: Genre Hybridism and Individualization. In 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'07). Accessible at: http://www.itri.brighton.ac.uk/~Marina.Santini/ Swales, John M. (1990) Genre Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tomášková, Renáta (2011a) Text Colonies or Hypertexts: On the Unified Discontinuity in Lifestyle Magazine Discourse. Ostrava Journal of English Philology 2011, vol. 3, number 1, 129–142. —. (2011b) Advertising Education: Interpersonal Aspects in the Genre of University Websites. In: Hopkinson, Ch., Tomášková, R., Blažková, B.

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Power and persuasion: Interpersonal discourse strategies in the public domain. Ostrava: Faculty of Arts, University of Ostrava, 44–73. Wittel, Andreas (2001) Toward a network sociality. Theory, Culture & Society,18(6), 51–76.

CHAPTER EIGHT DISCURSIVE LEGITIMATION OF MAJOR WORLD OIL COMPANIES ON THEIR OFFICIAL WEBSITES DITA TRýKOVÁ

Abstract With growing environmental concern among the public, oil companies are confronted with an increasing challenge to legitimate themselves. The present study analyzes the main discursive legitimation strategies employed by three global oil companies – BP, ExxonMobil and Shell – on their official websites. The analysis reveals uniformity in the use of such strategies among the companies, with each adopting all four types of legitimation means as classified by van Leeuwen (2008): rationalization, moral evaluation, authorization (materialized by reference to partnerships with respectable institutions) and mythopoesis (employed when giving an account of the company’s history, framed as a story of triumph). Rationalization strategies include a rhetoric of necessity and a pragmatic business rhetoric of profitability. These are combined with reference to moral values of the companies’ practices, namely other-orientation and helpfulness, environmental and social responsibility, and non-discrimination and fairness. All three companies legitimize their existence via the rhetoric of sustainable development, combining economic, ecological and social ethics discourses, while maintaining an anthropocentric view of nature. Environmental sustainability is presented by the companies as achievable through technological innovations.

1. Introduction Since the early 1970s the environment has become one of the major political and public concerns, with a plurality of (often contradictory)

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environmental discourses in existence (Hajer 1997). The rising environmental consciousness among the public has recently been accompanied by a consumer-driven pressure for environmentally friendly products and cleaner production processes (Elliott 2003, 16; Alazzani and Wan-Hussin 2013, 20). Due to the many negative impacts of the oil industry’s operations on the environment, ranging from physical impacts of drilling for and distribution of oil and gas to high emissions of carbon dioxide by burning fossil fuels, contributing to climate change (Elliott 2003, 4), risky deepwater drilling (National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling 2011) and the danger of oil spills, oil companies have faced an increasing challenge to legitimate their actions and to maintain a positive public corporate image. The present study is a discourse analysis of the websites of three major world oil companies: Beyond Petroleum (BP, formerly British Petroleum), ExxonMobil and Shell. The reputation of these companies and consequently the oil industry in general has been damaged owing to their responsibility for oil disasters with devastating effects, particularly the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, and owing to environmental and human rights problems in countries where they operate, including Nigeria’s Delta region. The Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska in March 1989 was the result of the crash of the Exxon Valdez supertanker into Bligh Reef, which was caused by the negligence of the captain and the crew and the Coast Guard’s inability to warn the crew in time. The oil slick resulted in widespread environmental damage and had harmful effects on local communities, causing trauma, stress, social disruption and economic problems (Gill et al. 2012). The Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the largest accidental marine oil spill in the U.S. history (National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling 2011), was a result of an explosion on a BP offshore oil drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico. It led to the death of eleven workers and immense ecological, economic and social devastation in the Gulf region (Barnshaw et al. 2012). The Deepwater Horizon blowout was not the only accident caused by BP; in fact, the company’s safety problems have been chronic (National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling 2011). The lack of adequate process safety measures implemented by the company has led to a number of other accidents, including the Texas City refinery explosion in 2005 and the Prudhoe Bay pipeline leak in 2006. Shell’s reputation has been shattered by the company’s contribution to environmental and health problems in the Niger Delta (where it is the

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biggest producer of oil) due to oil spills, partially caused by a lack of maintenance of pipes (and partially by sabotage and vandalism by local protesters), flaring of gas from production wells, and oil exploration in mangrove swamps, an ecologically sensitive area (Allen 2012; Livesey 2001). Aaron and Patrick’s research (2013) reveals that although the Shell Petroleum Development Company (Shell’s local company in Nigeria) has substantially increased community development spending in the last years, the corporate social responsibility performance of Shell in selected communities in the Niger Delta region has been inadequate, with community development projects either poorly completed or completed but not functional. BP, ExxonMobil and Shell are increasingly confronted with the task of defending themselves from potentially adverse views and gaining stakeholders’ trust. The present study aims to investigate how the three oil companies legitimize and justify themselves and their actions on their official websites, with the focus placed on an analysis of the main discursive legitimation strategies employed. A secondary goal of the study is to examine the companies’ positioning with respect to the environment.

2. Theoretical background 2.1 Critical discourse analysis The methodology adopted in the research is critical discourse analysis (CDA) (Fairclough 1992; van Dijk 1993; Weiss and Wodak 2003; Wodak and Meyer 2009), a heterogenous approach centred around a number of common features. One of these shared features is the view of discourse as having constructive effects – in other words, the view of the relationship between language and society as dialectical, with discourse being shaped by social structure and at the same time contributing to its constitution (Fairclough 1989). Discourse is perceived as helping to construct systems of knowledge and belief, social identities and social relationships. The present study is concerned with the establishment of knowledge and beliefs about the practices of BP, ExxonMobil and Shell and the construction of the companies’ social identities and social relationships between them and the addressees on their official websites. Based on Bucholtz and Hall’s definition of identity as “the social positioning of self and other” (2005: 586), social identity is understood as a relational phenomenon, interconnected with social relationships. It stands for a complex, dynamic, multi-dimensional concept (Iedema and CaldasCoulthard 2008, 2), emerging in discourse rather than being fixed.

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Another key feature of CDA is its focus on the investigation of links between language, power and ideology. Drawing upon Eagleton (1991) and van Dijk (1996), the present study views ideology as socio-cognitive schemata which function to reproduce, challenge or resist asymmetric power relations. Closely connected with the concept of power, ideology is both manifested and reconstructed in discourse. The aim of CDA is to bring an awareness of the ideological determinations and effects of discourse, which tend to become naturalized (Wodak 2006). Other major characteristics of CDA include an orientation towards social problems, a combination of a macro-analysis of context, including social context, and a micro-analysis of text, and an investigation of intertextuality and interdiscursivity. Recently, multimodal analysis has been incorporated into CDA, recognizing that discourse uses a variety of modes of representation, with each mode having a different potential for meaning making (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006).

2.2 Discursive legitimation Legitimacy and legitimation have played an important role in organizational research. Suchman defines legitimacy as “a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions” (1995: 574). Legitimation of commercial companies entails the obtainment of approval from social actors, the motivation for which stems from the companies’ goal of persuading consumers to buy their products and investors to invest in their shares, and thus to make profits. To maintain legitimacy, companies’ behaviour needs to be within the realm of what the wider society considers acceptable (Fuoli 2012). Companies are thus expected to respond to and reflect social changes, including a growing environmental consciousness. Suchman (1995) distinguishes three types of legitimacy: pragmatic, moral and cognitive. Pragmatic legitimacy is based on the self-interest of the audience involved in exchanges with the business organization. Moral legitimacy is based on adherence to a norm and to what is perceived as right. Cognitive legitimacy focuses on comprehensibility and taken-forgrantedness. Legitimation has also drawn attention in critical discourse analysis studies, where it is understood as providing justifications of “the practices of specific institutional orders” (van Leeuwen 2007: 92). It is seen as related to the notion of power (Giddens 1984), adopting and reproducing broader-level ideologies (Vaara 2014). A number of CDA studies have

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been conducted on discursive legitimation in business context, including Vaara et al.’s (2006) research on discursive strategies legitimating industrial restructuring in the media and Zhu and McKenna’s (2012) analysis of delegitimating discourse on a Chinese takeover of an Australian firm. The present research draws upon van Leeuwen’s (2008) categorization system of legitimation strategies, distinguishing four main types of legitimation: rationalization, moral evaluation, authorization and mythopoesis. Rationalization is legitimation by reference to the purposes, effects and uses of institutionalized social practices which are considered valid in society. Moral evaluation refers to the moral values of practices. Authorization justifies actions by reference to authority, namely the authority of tradition, law and people invested with institutional authority. The fourth type of legitimation, mythopoesis, is conveyed through storytelling in which legitimate practices are rewarded. One of the broader discursive strategies that enable legitimation is framing. According to Entman (1993), framing involves a selection and foregrounding of certain aspects of reality, consequently calling forth a particular interpretation. Frames are materialized in discourse, for instance, by the inclusion and exclusion of particular keywords, phrases and syntactic structures. The present research compares the main discursive strategies of legitimation employed by BP, ExxonMobil and Shell on their official websites, paying attention to the rhetoric and underlying ideologies. It investigates the adopted frames, examining which characteristics and practices of the oil companies are foregrounded on their websites.

2.3 Discourses on the human-nature relationship Livesey (2001) notes that three competing types of discourse regarding the relationship between mankind and nature have been distinguished in several business theories: the traditional development paradigm, radical environmentalism and reform environmentalism. The traditional development paradigm equates progress with economic progress. It views nature as a resource to be controlled by humans (Egri and Pinfield 1996). Mankind and nature are understood as separable, with humans able to dominate the natural world through knowledge and science (Livesey 2001). The traditional development paradigm is therefore a continuation of the Enlightenment ideology of the superiority of mankind over nature. Radical environmentalism rejects the development paradigm, deconstructing the human-nature dualism by stating that humans and the natural world are interdependent. In its radical form, environmentalism

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attributes a moral existence to nature. Besides science, it considers nonexpert aesthetic and spiritual experience to be valid sources of knowledge. In the late 1960s, radical environmentalism led to a heightened public concern about the environment and the ecological and social impacts of commercial companies’ activities (Livesey 2001). Reform environmentalism, also labelled ecological modernization by Hajer (1997), emerged in the 1980s. One of the crucial assumptions of this paradigm is that economic growth and the resolution of ecological problems can be conciliated (Hajer 1997). Commercial companies are viewed as being able to integrate care for the environment into their practices, with environmental degradation becoming calculable. Similarly to the development paradigm, nature is viewed as a resource. The grounding concept of reform environmentalism is sustainable development (Livesey 2001), which gained popularity after the publication of the report Our Common Future (referred to as the Brundtland Report) by the United Nations’ World Commission for Environment and Development in 1987 (Livesey 2002). The report defines sustainable development as development that meets the needs of the present time without hindering future generations from meeting their own needs (WCED 1987). This rather broad and vague definition has led to a number of conflicting conceptualizations of the notion of sustainable development and a continuing debate over what it means (Hajer 1997; Livesey 2001).

2.4 Data The sources of data for this study are the official websites of BP, ExxonMobil and Shell, accessed in September 2014. The websites are a medium of communication that allows the organizations to easily reach a broad general public, and they thus form an important site for the establishment of the corporate identity. Being multifunctional, they serve to mainly inform, promote, persuade and legitimize, aiming to construct the organization’s positive social image. The data have been collected from the “About BP” section (approximately 40,000 words) and the “About Shell” section (approximately 12,700 words) of the respective companies’ websites, and from the “Company” section (approximately 11,300 words) of ExxonMobil’s website. These particular sections have been selected due to their provision of general information about the companies aimed at a wide range of stakeholders and their main concern with the construction of the company’s identity, in contrast to the more specialized focus and narrower range of addressees of the other sections (e.g. “Products and Services,”

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“Investors” and “Careers”). The websites constitute a multimodal genre, with the main modes of communication being verbal written text, visual communication (such as layout, photographs, pictures, tables and graphs), and audio-visual communication (videos). The focus of the analysis is placed on the verbal text, with the other modes of communication representing supplementary data.

3. Analysis The analysis of the data reveals that the discursive legitimation strategies adopted by BP, ExxonMobil and Shell and the foregrounded aspects of the companies on their websites are to a large extent uniform. Each company employs all four types of legitimation distinguished by van Leeuwen: rationalization, moral evaluation, authorization and mythopoesis, the combination of which enhances the overall legitimizing effect of the discourse. The boundaries between the four categories of legitimation strategies are not always clear-cut, with two or more of them being intertwined on several occasions. The following sections introduce the main legitimation strategies employed by the three companies, classified according to van Leeuwen’s model, and examine their rhetoric and underlying ideologies.

3.1 Rationalization One of the discursive strategies justifying the practices of the oil companies by reference to their purposes and uses perceived as valid in society is the utilitarian rhetoric of necessity, constructing the companies as indispensable entities (cf. Breeze 2012). This rhetoric is based on the portrayal of the oil companies’ products as necessary for people, materialized by a recurrent reference to the products as needed and the attribution of the adjectives vital and fundamental to them, as illustrated in Table 1. The websites adopt not only people as the experiencers of the process need, but also the all-encompassing expression the world, enhancing the importance of the products and conveying the global reach of the companies. The significance of the products is further increased by stating that people need them every day (fundamental to everyday life; vital to daily lives).

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Table 1 – Rhetoric of necessity need

We produce essential sources of energy, turning them into products that people need. (BP) We apply science and innovation to find better, safer and cleaner ways to deliver the energy the world needs. (ExxonMobil)

vital/fundamental

At Shell, we use human ingenuity, innovation and technology to unlock the energy our customers need to power their lives in the years ahead. (Shell) [...] the supply of energy and other products fundamental to everyday life. (BP) Reliable economic supplies of natural gas and power are fundamental to the world’s economic growth. (ExxonMobil) Energy is vital to our daily lives. (Shell)

Apart from evoking a sense of urgency (products and services people around the world need right now), the oil companies also emphasize future demand for energy, represented as growing (the world’s growing natural gas and power demands (Exxon); the world’s growing demand for energy (both BP and Shell)). The future-orientation of the companies is also established in the repeatedly used expression ‘long-term,’ as in a long-term approach, a long-term commitment, long-term interests, longterm relationships and long-term value. The focus on a long-term perspective, one of the key features of discourse on sustainable development, constructs the companies as playing an essential role not only in the present but also in the future, constituting a persuasive message for investors. A growing demand for energy, established as a fact, is used as a justification for drilling for oil and gas (new sources of oil and gas needed to help meet the world’s growing demand for energy). The oil companies thus legitimize their practices through a cosmological rhetorical strategy, explaining their actions by the emphasis on their “inevitability because of forces beyond the agency of immediate actors” (Suddaby and Greenwood 2005: 55), which effectively strips the companies of responsibility. At the

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same time, such rhetoric obscures alternative viewpoints, including the replacement of oil and gas by alternative sources of energy and/or opposition to the growing demand for energy and calls for a sharp change in lifestyle that would lead to the reduction of consumption, as advocated by some environmentalists (Elliott 2003; Casas 2014). The second legitimation strategy of rationalization, employed by all three companies, is a pragmatic business rhetoric foregrounding profitability, success and the high performance of the companies. The generation of profit is included among the main objectives of all three companies, as illustrated in Examples 1, 2 and 3. Examples 2 and 3 reveal that the companies also aim to appeal to the self-interest of the audience, namely shareholders, emphasizing financial returns that they will obtain (similarly, BP states: we are committed to maintaining a progressive and sustainable dividend policy). The companies foreground the contribution of their practices to the economic situation of the local communities, where they claim to help to generate employment, investment and tax revenues, and to the development of the world economy, as revealed in Shell and other energy companies must find more energy to help keep the world’s economy humming. (1) We aim to make disciplined financial choices, so we can achieve continued growth in operating cash. (BP) (2) By running the business profitably and responsibly, we expect our shareholders to be rewarded with superior returns. (ExxonMobil) (3) Our strategy to generate profitable growth remains to drive forward with our investment programme, to deliver sustainable growth and provide competitive returns to shareholders. (Shell)

BP, ExxonMobil and Shell represent themselves as successful, being the leaders in the industry (we are one of the world’s leading international oil and gas companies (Shell); we are the world’s largest publicly traded international oil and gas company (ExxonMobil); we are a leader in the oil and gas industry (Shell)). Such a portrayal is often accompanied by the use of superlatives, including the BP Statistical Review of World Energy is the longest running compilation of global energy statistics available. At the same time, the companies place an emphasis on the high level of their performance and the quality of their products (promoting BP and our brands through high quality products; quality performance is at the heart of every product we sell). The third major legitimation strategy of rationalization, adopted by all three companies, is the designation of their operations as exploring, discovering and researching, practices whose purposes generally hold a

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higher social esteem than the goals of processes depicted as a search for, excavation of and drilling of oil and gas. BP designates itself as a great explorer, with a reputation which is based on decades of experience in discovering new sources of oil and gas, and states that the company and its academic partners research, develop and deploy a wide range of technologies, processes and techniques. ExxonMobil describes itself as a company involved at every level of oil and gas exploration and informs readers, for instance, about two major oil discoveries and a gas discovery in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico in 2011. Similarly, Shell asserts that it focuses on exploring for new oil and gas reserves and reports that, in the 1960s, the Dutch Groningen gas field and North Sea gas were discovered and Shell Chemicals entered a golden period for research. The careful selection of words with positive connotations, establishing BP, ExxonMobil and Shell as explorers, discoverers and researchers, serves to associate the companies with expertise, accomplishment and exceptionality.

3.2 Moral evaluation Moral evaluation is the most prominent legitimation strategy on all three websites. However, it cannot be unambiguously separated from rationalization as the two tend to be interconnected, particularly when the purposes and uses of the companies’ practices are endowed with a moral value. The main moral values through which all three companies legitimize their practices are other-orientation and selflessness, encompassing philanthropy, help to others and cooperation; responsibility, with regard to both society and the environment; and non-discrimination. 3.2.1 Other-orientation The oil companies often take on a discursive role of a helper (cf. Breeze 2012), framing their actions as benefiting others and contributing to the common good. This is illustrated, for instance, in: we help build a healthy, stable society; we help young people get a head start on their futures; we help our employees live healthier lives; we aim to improve the quality of life where we live and work; and we aim for the betterment of life on Earth. Benefit to the companies themselves, i.e. the profit that they make for corporate purposes, tends to be backgrounded. The construction of the companies as focused on others rather than self-interested is also materialized in the repeated references to their sharing of knowledge and experience with others, as in we share our skills and technologies with

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local businesses and academic institutions and the events provide a platform for Shell to share its expertise and insights. The group of social actors foregrounded by the text as beneficiaries of the companies’ help are local communities in the areas where BP, ExxonMobil and Shell operate. Oil companies have been criticized for their treatment of local communities, being accused of exploiting local environments and people, neglecting the impact of their operations on the communities, and not acknowledging indigenous people’s perspectives (e.g. Allen 2012; Fjellheim and Henriksen 2006; Swing et al. 2012). Defending themselves from potential criticisms, BP, ExxonMobil and Shell repeatedly emphasize their focus on benefiting local people and improving their well-being, as illustrated in Examples 4, 5 and 6. (4) We try to work in ways that will benefit the communities and habitats where we do business. (BP) (5) Our comprehensive diversity and inclusion efforts also include educational partnerships and supplier diversity initiatives designed to improve the quality of life where we live and work. (ExxonMobil) (6) We aim to bring benefits to local communities and reduce the impact of our operations. (Shell)

The provision of help is foregrounded in three areas: employment, education and healthcare. ExxonMobil informs that it supports local employee networks around the world, which facilitate professional development programs and sponsor educational and community service programs. It adds that a core part of its community engagement approach is providing support programs and services to help its employees and neighbors live healthier lives. Shell states that it implements a policy of placing local people in top positions in a given country, with BP including similar information by acknowledging that increasingly staff from developing countries are taking up senior positions, adding that it learns the joy of encouraging education in the societies where it operates. The selection of the word joy by BP aims to dispel doubts about the calculated intentions of the company’s help, implying their altruistic nature. Since health and education are considered to be among the pillars of a developed society; by emphasizing the company’s support for them, BP, ExxonMobil and Shell aim to win social acceptance and respect. The three companies’ websites include information about their donation of money to different sectors of society, constructing themselves as philanthropists and thus cultivating goodwill. As Bhatia notes, business organizations engage in philanthropic activities “in the hope that it will

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bring them community recognition and hence give them advantage over their competitors” (2010: 48). Shell and ExxonMobil emphasize their financial support to communities around the world ($159 million spent on voluntary social investment worldwide (Shell); ExxonMobil's donation through “Idol Gives Back” enables the distribution of hundreds of thousands of bed nets throughout disease-stricken communities in Angola (ExxonMobil)). BP devotes a whole sub-section to its sponsorship activities. It points out the sponsorship of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games (Example 7) and UK arts and culture (Example 8), with the force of the utterances enhanced by the rhetoric of necessity and a superlative in Example 7, and the adjective major positively qualifying the noun supporter and a time reference establishing a long tradition of the support in Example 8. By emphasizing its support for sport, associated with a healthy lifestyle, and for arts and culture, BP alludes to generally accepted social values, which helps the company to reduce potentially adverse views. (7) We work with the USOC to provide America’s athletes – Olympians and Paralympians alike – with the support and resources they need to compete at the highest level. (8) BP is a major supporter of UK arts with a programme that has spanned over 35 years.

The portrayal of the oil companies as non-individualistic organizations is also increased by the emphasis placed on cooperation and partnerships. This aspect is mainly foregrounded by BP (cf. Examples 9 and 10) and Shell, which devotes a whole subsection to information about its partnerships, including partnerships with the Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, CNBC and NGOs. (9) We form enduring partnerships in the countries in which we operate, building strong relationships with governments, customers, partners such as Rosneft, suppliers and communities to create mutual advantage. Co-operation helps unlock resources found in challenging locations and transforms them into products for our customers. (10) Our work with leading academic scientists and engineers provides long-term, large-scale collaboration on issues of fundamental science in energy and related fields.

The focus on cooperation and collaboration with others performs two main functions: firstly, it partially disperses responsibility for the oil companies’ actions among other entities, and secondly, the association of the oil companies with governments, universities and respected business

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media, i.e. institutions that occupy a powerful and creditable position in society, is an effective legitimizing device (see also section 3.3). 3.2.2 Respect Legitimation by reference to respect for the environment and society is one of the most prominent discursive strategies of legitimation on all three websites. The companies recurrently adopt a discourse of sustainable development, combining economic interests with concerns of social and environmental responsibility, adding a long-term perspective, as illustrated in Examples 11, 12 and 13. (11) We aim to create value for our investors and benefits for the communities and societies in which we operate, with the responsible supply of energy playing a vital role in economic development. […] We continue to develop long-term value for BP, by developing sustainable energy solutions. (BP) (12) ExxonMobil seeks to conduct business in a manner that is compatible with the environmental, social and economic needs of the communities in which we operate. […] Our environmental performance meets our expectations to “Protect Tomorrow. Today.” (ExxonMobil) (13) Our role is to ensure that we extract and deliver them [oil and gas] profitably and in environmentally and socially responsible ways. (Shell)

Apart from foregrounding their respect for and help to the societies in which they operate, discussed in the previous section, BP, ExxonMobil and Shell also place emphasis on enacting the identity of an environmentally conscious, responsible and protective company. They establish environmental concern as their core value (we have a single aim – to identify and grow low-carbon businesses; safety, environmental and social responsibility are at the heart of our activities) and employ an environmentally protective ethos, foregrounding that they reduce their environmental impact (Example 14), protect the environment (Example 15) and even aim to improve the environment (Example 16). According to Howlett and Raglon, the reason for the employment of the environmentally protective rhetoric by corporations is “to offset the increased demand from the public for more effective regulation of environmentally sensitive industries” (2001: 246). All three companies emphasize their positive actions with regard to the environment, with, for instance, BP informing that in 2001 it opened the greenest petrol station in the world, ExxonMobil pointing out that it established the Save The Tiger Fund, which is dedicated to supporting the conservation of Asia’s

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remaining wild tigers, and Shell reporting that it was a gold sponsor of Fortune’s 2013 Brainstorm Green conference and its “Energy, Climate & Policy” programme. (14) We aim to improve energy efficiency in our own operations: we […] develop technologies that increase efficiency and reduce emissions in the production of liquid products and natural gas. (Shell) (15) At ExxonMobil, we believe that it is possible to obtain the energy the world needs while also protecting people and the environment. (ExxonMobil) (16) Whatever we do, wherever we do it, we always strive to preserve and improve the surrounding environment. (BP)

Negative environmental effects of the companies’ actions are omitted, or, when referred to, tend to be mitigated – as illustrated in Example 17, which uses the mitigating modal verb can and the euphemism implications for ‘negative/damaging effects’. Often, syntactic structures that allow for agent deletion or agent transfer are adopted, including nominalizations (discharges into water are another concern; emissions from gas flaring contribute to the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere) and ergative structures (when a pipeline runs through an environmentally sensitive area), which hide the responsibility of the oil companies themselves. Each company’s rhetoric thus adopts aspects of so-called greenwashing, i.e. providing a biased portrayal of one’s products and practices as eco-friendly while backgrounding or omitting their negative environmental impact (Barnshaw et al. 2012). (17) Oil and gas production projects can have implications for air, water and wildlife. (BP)

Furthermore, all three companies establish themselves as advocates of a more environmentally-friendly future, educating readers (Example 18) and serving as a source of inspiration for others (Example 19). BP, ExxonMobil and Shell thus represent themselves not as problem-causers but as problem-solvers. (18) Effective urban planning is vital to easing global demand for energy, water and food tackling rising CO2 emissions and pollution. (Shell) (19) BP’s London 2012 vision was to use the power of the Games to inspire change and to provide real solutions for a lower-carbon future. (BP)

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The construction of an environmentally positive image of the companies is enhanced by non-verbal modes of communication, mainly photographs. The selected photographs of oil refineries consist of shots set in an idyllic scenery, with a blue clear sky, blue sea and mountains in the background, and romanticized shots taken at sunset or at night, showing the refineries illuminated. The overall impression is one of cleanliness and unspoiled natural beauty. Furthermore, both BP’s and Shell’s logos use an element of nature: a green and yellow sun/flower and a shell, respectively. The image of BP’s environmental friendliness is further strengthened by the choice of green as the prevailing colour on the website. The three companies uniformly portray environmental sustainability as being ensured by two means: safety and advanced technology, as illustrated in Examples 20, 21 and 22. Safety, a sensitive topic for the oil industry due to a number of catastrophic oil spills in the past, including the Exxon Valdez and the Deepwater Horizon accidents, is foregrounded by all three companies as their key value (safety is at the heart of everything we do (BP), safety is more than just a priority at ExxonMobil – it is a core value (ExxonMobil), safety, environmental and social responsibility are at the heart of our activities (Shell)), helping the companies to shield themselves from potential criticism. The word safety itself occurs (in different syntactic functions) 97 times in the “About BP” section, 84 times in the “Company” section of ExxonMobil’s website and 12 times in the “About Shell” section. Taking into consideration the total word count of the analyzed sections of the websites (ExxonMobil’s section is the shortest and BP’s section is approximately four times longer than the other two companies’ sections, as stated in section 2.4), the analysis reveals that the frequency of occurrence of the word safety is especially high on ExxonMobil’s website, followed by BP’s website, which seems to reflect an attempt by the two companies to restore their reputation after being responsible for two major oil accidents in the last 30 years. (20) We believe the answer [to protecting people and the environment] lies in three uncompromising pursuits: exceptional technology, rigorous standards and an unwavering commitment to best-practice safety procedures. (ExxonMobil) (21) These advanced technologies […] will provide the assurance we need to reach areas of oil tens of kilometers (miles) away from a platform, minimising the infrastructure needed on the surface resulting in safer, more environmentally friendly operations. (BP) (22) We use advanced technologies and take an innovative approach to help build a sustainable energy future. (Shell)

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The companies’ advocacy of technology and scientific innovations as means of enhancing safety, and consequently of protecting the environment (we apply science and innovation to find better, safer and cleaner ways to deliver the energy the world needs), echoes contemporary technological society. With regard to the human-nature relationship, this line of thinking is a continuation of the Western Enlightenment ideology of the domination of human beings over nature through reason (bringing the brightest minds together to develop advanced materials). Such an approach has been criticized as fallacious, since the use of technologies generally led to environmental degradation and climate change in the twentieth century (Norgaard 1994). Gramling and Freudenburg note that through technology “our capacity to do damage, both to ourselves and to our environment, may well have risen faster than our capacity to undo the damage” (2012: 66). A complementary type of rhetoric adopted by BP, ExxonMobil and Shell is the rhetoric of progress, as when the companies state that they aim for continuous improvement, continual innovations and continued growth in operating cash. The belief in never-ending progress, deeply ingrained in Western thinking since the sixteenth century (Norgaard 1994), is considered by Halliday (2001) to constitute an ideological threat. Gramling and Freudenburg note that “industrial development often proceeds at a pace that outstrips the ability to control unanticipated consequences” (2012: 66). As a result, the correlation between technological and cultural progress is questionable (Norgaard 1994). 3.2.3 Non-discrimination All three companies celebrate the diversity of their workforce, depicted as a means to success, as revealed in Examples 23, 24 and 25. The phrase diverse workforce, uniformly adopted by the three companies, implies non-discrimination; it can be considered both evidence for and a result of the companies’ non-discriminatory practices. The promotion of an equal rights policy is further conveyed by the companies’ foregrounding of their support for women and minorities, including ethnic minorities and disabled people, with Shell stating that it plays an active role in the communities by offering employment to people regardless of colour, ethnicity or physical ability, and ExxonMobil asserting that it promotes leadership opportunities for women and works to improve the gender balance within the company, applying a zero-tolerance policy to all forms of discrimination.

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Such a portrayal helps to legitimize the companies by endowing them with moral values of fairness, justice and tolerance. At the same time, by foregrounding non-discriminatory practices, the companies address one of the key concerns of Western society at the present time.

3.3 Authorization Legitimation by reference to institutional authority tends to be materialized implicitly via the foregrounding of partnerships with established institutions, particularly the government, universities and media (see section 3.2.1). This can be illustrated in the following extracts from the websites: BP’s multi-disciplinary research partnership with the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and these partnerships [with global media brands] bring together leading experts from the worlds of government, business, academia and non-governmental organisations (Shell). To provide evidence of their concern for the environment, both BP and ExxonMobil adopt the legitimation strategy of authorization, referring to the verification of their practices by established institutions in a business context, namely Ernst & Young and Lloyd's Register Quality Assurance, as illustrated in Examples 26 and 27. This discursive strategy helps to enhance the oil companies’ credibility. (26) Our annual Sustainability Report, charting our progress on environmental, health, safety and other measures, is independently verified by Ernst & Young. (BP) (27) We have been cited by Lloyd’s Register Quality Assurance for “being among the leaders in the extent to which environmental management considerations have been integrated into our ongoing business practices.” (ExxonMobil)

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3.4 Mythopoesis The websites of BP, ExxonMobil and Shell include information about the companies’ history, told as a story of progress from a small business to a large oil company occupying a leading position in the world; in other words, a story of a company whose practices have been rewarded with success. The story of triumph is framed differently by each company, with BP adopting an American dream narrative, ExxonMobil referring only to its achievements and Shell alternating between reference to its achievements and obstacles that it has encountered and overcome. The account of BP’s history is told as the story of a company that had to face a number of difficulties at the beginning, as illustrated in Examples 28 and 29, but, through hard work, perseverance (giving up was not part of George Reynolds’s [the first company explorer’s] character) and the ability to overcome obstacles, achieved success, as shown in Example 30. The success of BP is thus established as a result of a long, hard journey full of effort; a portrayal more likely to gain social approval and respect than if the success was depicted as having been achieved effortlessly. (28) To find oil in Persia, George Reynolds and his caravan of explorers had lived through seven years of harsh heat, gastric illnesses and disappointments. (29) By 1914 the Anglo-Persian project was nearly bankrupt for the second time in its short history. The company had plenty of oil but no one to sell it to. (30) From that first, uncertain search for oil in Persia, BP had grown to become a global energy company.

ExxonMobil builds for itself a positive image of a company to be admired by foregrounding its accomplishments since the very beginning of its existence (1859 – Colonel Edwin Drake and Uncle Billy Smith drill the first successful oil well in Titusville, Pennsylvania). The company points out, for instance, that it developed a method for producing gasoline that Fortune magazine called “the most revolutionary chemical-engineering achievement of the last 50 years” and completed the world’s first concrete production platform. Problems or failures of ExxonMobil are omitted. By contrast, Shell mentions not only its achievements but also the obstacles and problems that it has had to face (e.g. although the 1960s were years of remarkable growth for the oil industry and Shell, by the end of the decade, storm clouds were gathering), creating an image of a resilient company.

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4. Conclusion The analysis of discursive legitimation of three major world oil companies, BP, ExxonMobil and Shell, on their official websites has revealed uniformity among the companies in the use of the main discursive legitimation strategies. Each company uses all four types of legitimation distinguished by van Leeuwen (2008) – rationalization, moral evaluation, authorization, and mythopoesis, often in combination – which enhances the overall legitimating effect. The rhetoric of the companies and the underlying ideologies are also alike. Three main strategies of rationalization employed by all the companies are the use of a cosmological rhetoric referring to the necessity and indispensability of the companies’ products, including oil and gas, a business rhetoric emphasizing profitability, success and quality of the companies’ practices, and reference to companies’ operations by words with positive connotations of expertise and accomplishment, namely exploring, researching and discovering. Pragmatic rationalization strategies alternate with strategies of moral evaluation, which predominate on all three websites. The companies justify their practices by referring to values of altruism, helpfulness, social and environmental responsibility, fairness and tolerance. To address potential negative impressions, they focus on those aspects for which oil companies are criticized, namely the environment, safety and local communities, foregrounding their positive actions in these areas. They establish themselves as benefactors improving the quality of life in the societies where they operate, environmentally conscious and protective companies that advocate environmental friendliness, companies for which safety is a core value, and organizations that promote and celebrate diversity among employees, addressing one of the main public concerns of the time in the West, i.e. non-discrimination and support of minorities. Castelló and Lozano note that “under the pressure of changing societal expectations, some corporations are starting to intensify their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) engagement” (2011: 11), with a pragmatic business rhetoric appearing to have become an insufficient means of legitimation. This is indeed the case with the studied oil companies, which focus on constructing themselves as responsible corporate citizens. Apart from rationalization and moral evaluation, the oil companies also employ the legitimation strategies of authorization, foregrounding their cooperation with respectable institutions, including universities and the government, and mythopoesis, framing the account of their history as a story of triumph.

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BP, ExxonMobil and Shell legitimize their existence by adopting the discourse of sustainable development, combining economic, environmental and social concerns and emphasizing a long-term perspective. The websites constitute a hybrid, interdiscursive text, joining “the heterogeneous elements of the distinct domains of economics, environmentalism, and social justice” (Livesey 2002: 319). Such discourse involves a conflict between the inherent unsustainability of oil companies (with respect to the extraction of finite natural resources) and their aim to contribute to a sustainable future (Livesey 2001). Yet the employment of green rhetoric might be crucial for the competitive survival of BP, ExxonMobil and Shell (cf. Livesey 2001). The three companies attempt to alter public opinions to their advantage by foregrounding their activities which have a positive impact on the environment while mitigating and downplaying those with a negative, damaging effect. With respect to the human-nature relationship, BP’s, ExxonMobil’s and Shell’s rhetoric adopts an anthropocentric view of nature, maintaining the Western Enlightenment ideology of the superiority of mankind over the natural world. Protection of the environment is presented by the companies as achievable through science and technology. Such a view is criticized by Hajer for not addressing “the systematic features of capitalism that make the system inherently wasteful and unmanageable” (1997: 32). In contrast to more radical environmentalists’ viewpoints, calling for a rethinking of the human-nature relationship, emphasizing the inseparability of society and nature, and advocating a complete replacement of fossil fuels by alternative sources of energy and a radical change in lifestyle promoting a decrease in consumption, BP, ExxonMobil and Shell adopt the view of human beings as dominant forces, serving the profit-making purpose of oil corporations.

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Barnshaw, John et al. 2012. “Crisis in the Gulf of Mexico: Discourse, Policy, and Governance in Postcatastrophe Environments.” Journal of Applied Social Science 6(2): 133-148. Breeze, Ruth. 2012. “Legitimation in Corporate Discourse: Oil Corporations after Deepwater Horizon.” Discourse and Society 23(1), 3-18. Bucholtz, Mary, and Kira Hall. 2005. “Identity and Interaction: A Sociocultural Linguistic Approach.” Discourse Studies 7(4-5): 585614. Casas, Tanya. 2014. “Transcending the Coloniality of Development: Moving Beyond Human/Nature Hierarchies.” American Behavioral Scientist 58(1): 30-52. Castelló, Itziar, and Josep M. Lozano. 2011. “Searching for New Forms of Legitimacy Through Corporate Responsibility Rhetoric.” Journal of Business Ethics 100(1): 11-29. Eagleton, Terry. 1991. Ideology: An Introduction. London: Verso. Elliott, David. 2003. Energy, Society and Environment: Technology for a Sustainable Future. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Egri, Carolyn P., and Lawrence T. Pinfield. 1996. “Organizations and the Biosphere: Ecologies and Environments.” In: Clegg, Stewart R., Cynthia Hardy, and Walter R. Nord (eds) Handbook of Organization Studies. London: Sage. 459-483. Entman, Robert. 1993. “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm.” Journal of Communication 43(4): 51-58. Fairclough, Norman. 1992. Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press. Fjellheim, Rune S., and John B. Henriksen. 2006. “Oil and Gas Exploitation on Arctic Indigenous Peoples’ Territories Human Rights, International Law and Corporate Social Responsibility.” Journal of Indigenous Peoples Rights 4: 1-52. Giddens, Anthony. 1984. The Constitution of Society. Cambridge: Polity. Gill, Duane A., J. Steven Picou, and Liesel A. Ritchie. 2012. “The Exxon Valdez and BP Oil Spills: A Comparison of Initial Social and Psychological Impacts.” American Behavioral Scientist 56(1): 3-23. Gramling, Robert, and William R. Freudenburg. 2012. “A Century of Macondo: United States Energy Policy and the BP Blowout Catastrophe.” American Behavioral Scientist 56(1): 48-75. Hajer, Maarten A. 1997. The Politics of Environmental Discourse: Ecological Modernization and the Policy Process. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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CHAPTER NINE A STUDY OF THE IM/PERSONAL REALITY IN THE ADVERTISING LEAFLETS ON NONPRESCRIPTIVE PHARMACEUTICAL PRODUCTS IVANA ěEZNÍýKOVÁ

Abstract This study presents the findings of research into advertising discourse on non-prescription pharmaceutical products. It demonstrates how authors create a specific reality in our minds; in other words, how the authors create images of the customer, producer and product. It also presents how the authors build a relationship with the reader in order to turn the reader into a customer. All of these serve as persuasive strategies to sell products and hence represent characteristic features of advertising discourse.

1. Introduction Together with the rise of consumerism in the twentieth century came a rise in new types of communication to facilitate the needs of the business world. Besides various other types of business-related texts, there has been a constant development of advertising discourse – a discourse which has constantly sought new ways of getting its message across and turning the reader/listener into an actual customer. Such discourse is thus naturally persuasive, and many people consider it manipulative. This study addresses the ways in which advertising discourse may change or create images of reality, i.e. may create a reality of its own, in the minds of its recipients. The present research is focused on pharmaceutical advertising; it forms part of wider-ranging research into the communicative strategies of the pharmaceutical industry, through which this enormous and influential industry (and interest group) pursues

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its interests. Many studies, linguistic and non-linguistic, have been published on various issues connected to pharmaceutical advertising, e.g. on the empowerment of patients, the influence of pharmaceutical advertising on professionals (see e.g. Askehave & Zethsen, 2010; Hall, 2006, Cutreret al., 1991; Alperstein & Peyrot, 1993), etc. This study will present the mental models (van Dijk 2008) that are manifested in these advertisements and the images that are being created in our minds concerning various entities involved in the communication process. This is a comparative study; after introducing the analyzed texts, I outline the factors which limit their comparability – factors which arise from the different cultural conditions in the countries of origin (the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom). The following part of the study then offers a theoretical framework for two basic concepts in this study – the analyzed texts as a genre and the function of manipulation. The core of the study deals with the reality that is being created by the authors of these advertising leaflets. I will especially examine how the authors build relationships with the potential customers through both verbal and nonverbal means and also how they build the images of the customer and producer, and the image of the product itself, all of which seem to be the most ideological aspects of advertising communication. The study will compare both Czech and British leaflets and outline possible similarities as well as differences.

2. Corpus: texts analyzed, limitations to their comparability The Czech corpus consists of pharmaceutical advertising leaflets that are freely accessible to either people visiting a professional (both general practitioners and specialized doctors) or to people visiting a pharmacy. All of the analyzed leaflets advertise only freely accessible drugs, because Czech law does not permit direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs (unlike e.g. the USA or Australia). Advertising of medicines has to be in accordance with legislation and agreed standards of good practice. The leaflets are examples of both short and long copy, with the number of words ranging from fifty to nearly a thousand, which yields a corpus of 30 leaflets comprising approximately 14,000 words in total. Although variable in length, these leaflets have been collected as a representative sample across a particular market, or in linguistic terms, as a representative sample of a genre. In order to be able to determine the distinctive features of two different language varieties of one genre, I collected and analyzed over sixty leaflets

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available in the waiting rooms of general practitioners and specialized doctors as well as pharmacies in the UK. However, a careful approach to the possible comparison of both halves of the corpus is necessary, as the British and Czech texts reflect slightly different cultural and legislative conditions. One important difference is the accessibility of nonprescription drugs (in Britain easily accessible on the shelves of pharmacies for selection by customers, in the Czech Republic sold only over the counter, and therefore requiring communication with a pharmacist). Another important difference is the approach to commercial advertising (in Britain doctors cooperating with the National Health Service (NHS) should be impartial with respect to commerce and therefore should not promote companies and their products, whereas no such ethical concerns are discussed in the Czech Republic). The most striking difference between the two parts of the corpus is that most of the British leaflets may be considered examples of non-product advertising. Nearly thirty per cent of all the collected leaflets are leaflets produced by the NHS. These are mostly placed in GPs’ waiting rooms and serve as informative materials which are intended to raise awareness of certain diseases/health problems and advise people on how to deal with them, including medical solutions. The advisory function may be also found in the second type of the British texts: leaflets created by various charities and non-profit organizations dealing with a diverse range of health problems. These are also non-product advertisements offering advice on how to deal with various medical and health-related issues. They mostly recommend visiting a doctor. They often speak about the need to use various general types of medicines, i.e. the need for vaccination, medicines for allergies etc. Nevertheless, they do not explicitly promote any specific product. They are thus not legally considered advertisements, as the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) does not legally consider “information relating to human health or diseases where there is no reference to medicinal products” (www.mhra.gov.uk) as an advertisement. However, this obviously does not reflect the real communicative purpose of such leaflets, i.e. the required change in behaviour with respect to our health resulting in the usage of pharmaceutical products. The existence of advertising texts with such a two-fold purpose is discussed by Cook (2003), who notes that “there are advertisements which do not sell anything, but plead or warn or seek support.” (10). Cook further adds that “non-product ads do not need to say that their intention is to alter our behaviour.” (232) However, that does not mean that such an intention is not definable through linguistic and paralinguistic features. Therefore, we may assume that the leaflets

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concerning some non-product medical support may fulfil the generally accepted idea of an advertisement, even though they are not legally considered to be advertising. Nevertheless, neither type of these nonproduct advertisements has been included in this study, in order not to distort the comparative value of this research; they will be dealt with in a separate study. This pre-analysis then yields a smaller sample of comparable texts, consisting of only 24 examples of advertising leaflets which promote the same products and are targeted at the same types of readers as the Czech corpus. Invariably long copy, they mostly exceed a thousand words in length. The numbers of leaflets in the Czech and British halves of the corpus differ; nevertheless, they are comparable in their representative characteristics in terms of market and genre.

3. Theoretical framework of the present study Before addressing the results of the analysis, this section will present the theoretical framework on which the analysis draws. Firstly, the leaflets will be situated within a framework of a genre; I will attempt to define them in generic terms, and this definition will be evaluated during the course of the analytical part. As I have mentioned in the preceding section, cross-cultural differences are crucial in this study, and it will become apparent that although both Czech and British leaflets share certain common features, it is also possible to identify distinctive generic features in each half of the corpus. Secondly, I will introduce the theoretical framework of relevance to the manipulative character of the advertising discourse, in order to demonstrate the reality which is generally created in this particular sub-genre, i.e. pharmaceutical leaflets.

3.1 Theoretical framework: genre Although the second half of the twentieth century brought several distinctive frameworks of genre analysis (e.g. the American school represented by Miller (1994) or Bazerman (1994) or the Sydney school developed by Martin et al. (1987) drawing on the systemic-functional approach of Halliday), the theoretical framework of genre applied here is based on Bhatia’s concept, transecting disciplines and registers. In other words, I understand genres as “much more action oriented than registers, which often indicate the general flavour of lexico-grammatical choices” (Bhatia, 2004: 32) in that they “display typical cognitive structuring realizing communicative purposes” (ibid.), whereas registers are restricted through different aspects of the grammatical system. Also Swales (1990:

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58) describes a genre as a class of schematically structured communicative events that share a recognizable communicative purpose and show similarities in form, style, content, structure and intended audience; this view draws on Halliday’s systemic-functional linguistics, which sees language as inextricably related to society, ideology and culture. The result is that genre is considered “simultaneously, on the one hand, a semiotically constructed social entity and, on the other, a characterisation of a class of identifiable linguistic artefacts.” (Bateman, 2008: 184) That is, when external cultural and social circumstances change, it may lead to various fluctuations in the generic characteristics of individual discourse entities. The rapid development of society in recent decades has brought rapid changes in various fields – and thus also in the genres of discourse related to these fields. One of the characteristic features of Western society is the move towards consumerism, which naturally influences the discourse connected to this area of life, i.e. business-related discourse, including advertising. Cook (2003: 222) observes that “the conventions of ads change fast, driven by an internal dynamic, by changes in society, and by changes in the genres on which they are parasitic or in which they are embedded.” He adds that there are so many features which are shared as well as used by various advertisements that it is difficult to precisely define ads as a genre. Bhatia notes that advertising is “one of the most dynamic generic forms exhibiting some of the most innovative uses of lexico-grammatical and discoursal forms and rhetorical strategies.” (Bhatia, 2004: 63) However, he also observes that “these innovations are often used within rather than outside, the typical generic boundaries of promotional discourse”. (ibid.) The approach to the texts examined here is based on Bhatia’s concept of genre colonies in the sense of “grouping of related genres within and across disciplinary domains” (Bhatia, 2004: 58). From this perspective we may define colonies of promotional genres, whose main ‘generic values’ (Bhatia, 2004) are the description of a product and its evaluation, and which consist of individual genres with specific communicative purposes, such as advertisements. These genres may then be divided into subgenres depending on their form/media, such as print ads, as “the choice of substance affects the nature of the ad and is an integral part of its identity” (Cook, 2003: 28). They may be even further sub-divided into leaflets for a particular product, i.e. pharmaceutical products.

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3.2 Theoretical framework: reality in advertising discourse The concept of manipulation has been discussed in many studies (van Dijk, 2008; Fairclough, 2001; Srpová, 2007), yet the boundary between manipulation and persuasion is a blurred one. The generally applied distinction is that manipulation is seen as benefiting one side only, i.e. it ascribes to the recipient a passive role and views the manipulator as acting solely in his/her best interests and against the interests of the recipient (see e.g. van Dijk, 2008: 212). Although advertising discourse is generally considered (also by the above-mentioned authors) to be manipulative, this characterization is somewhat problematic. The problem is that we can accept the idea of producers seeking their own profit; however, we cannot objectively state that it is against the best interests of the potential customers. Especially in the case of the products connected to our health, this notion would be considered highly dubious by professionals as well as by the public, who may see the broadening of our knowledge in this matter as beneficial. Hence the frequently discussed empowerment of patients, which has become a popular issue in recent years (see e.g. Askehave & Zethsen, 2010). Whether this is a justified approach or not is a question for a different study. This study will draw on van Dijk’s concept that “manipulation is one of the discursive social practices of dominant groups geared towards the reproduction of their power. Such dominant groups may do so in many (other) ways as well, e.g. through persuasion, providing information, education, instruction and other social practices which are aimed at influencing the knowledge, beliefs and (indirectly) the actions of the recipients.” (van Dijk, 2008: 214-215) Since the pharmaceutical industry is one of the most important commercial sectors in the world, we may easily consider it as a dominant group, seeking its own benefits and influencing public behaviour in various ways, be it through scientific studies, lobbying or advertising, in order to gain profit. Following van Dijk (2008), we may perceive manipulation as an act not only attempting to change our understanding of a particular meaning but also activating and forming certain attitudes which would be in the best interests of the manipulator. In other words, the producers of a text aim to form or change the mental models (see van Dijk, 2008: 221) created in our minds. By a mental model we may understand a reality created in our minds about a particular entity, i.e. the meaning of it, our beliefs connected to it, or our attitude to it. This study will discuss context models, which are the models connected to a particular communicative situation. It will present the proposed images of the interpersonal relationships between a producer and a potential customer, the customer’s own identity, the producer’s identity and the product itself.

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4. Reality constructed within the pharmaceutical advertising The following part of this study deals with the images that we acquire from the advertising texts promoting pharmaceutical products, or rather what images are being constructed by the producers of the text and correspondingly by the producers1 of the pharmaceutical products. Following van Dijk (2008), I will discuss what mental models are being created by the producers in our minds through various means. In other words, this section will demonstrate how the authors use both verbal and non-verbal means in order to manipulate the readers’ views of the mutual relationship between the producers and them, their views of themselves, the producers and the product.

4.1 Establishing relationships Enkvist (1987) presents the ideational and textual elements as being subordinate to the interpersonal aspects of communication. This study has shown that authors accommodate the facts presented (the ideational component) and the structure of the message (textual component) to what mutual relationship s/he desires to establish and what mental models s/he desires the addressee to acquire. This section will show the results of a morphosyntactic analysis of the structure of the message in order to show how the morphosyntactic elements are adjusted to the desired interpersonal reality, i.e. what relationship is being built and what mental model should be acquired by the potential consumer. The morphosyntactic approach will be followed by the interpersonal reality created through nonverbal means, which also significantly contribute to the differences between the two halves of the corpus. 4.1.1 Establishing relationships through selected morphosyntactic aspects Various morphosyntactic features have various functions within advertising discourse. The selection of these features may be influenced by 1 Although the authors of advertising texts (i.e. the creative teams of advertising agencies etc.) are not the same entities as the actual producers, they pursue the same interests as the producers, who approve of the final form of the advertisements; and thus they have to accommodate the communicative strategies to those of the actual producers.

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the physical space available for the ad, the medium through which it is transmitted, and the personal choice of the author, but these features may also serve to establish relationships between the producer and the target customer. This study will address especially the issue of personal pronouns, which are considered “one of the most distinctive features of advertising.” (Cook, 2003: 157) Apart from pronouns, I will also explore the use of interrogative clauses and imperative clauses. These devices affect the overall tenor of the discourse and reflect different approaches to the customers in the two halves of the corpus. Pronouns Previous studies have generally shown the frequent use of pronouns both in English and Czech advertising texts (see e.g. Fairclough, 1995; Cook, 2003; ýmejrková, 2007). However, the occurrence of pronouns in the analyzed pharmaceutical leaflets is not consistent across the entire corpus. The British leaflets use the pronouns in the anticipated manner, whereas the Czech leaflets actually demonstrate the opposite tendency, i.e. they seem to establish the relationship with a reader via personal pronouns only occasionally. Studies on the advertising discourse identify two types of pronouns. Pronouns may be either “endophoric, referring to a noun phrase within the text […] or exophoric, referring to someone or something manifest to the participants from the situation.” (Cook, 2003: 157) Here I will focus on exophoric pronouns. The reason is simple: these pronouns perform an interpersonal function by establishing contact with the reader. This is considered important especially with regard to the contact-seeking nature of advertising discourse. In fact, the use of pronouns is “one of the most distinctive features of advertising” (Cook, 2003: 157) since it has the power to make a reader a part of an otherwise monological type of a discourse. Following Fairclough, we may speak about so-called synthetic personalization, when “the producer turns to the mass, but creates the impression that each individual within the mass is seen as an individual.” (Fairclough, 1995: 98) Advertisers’ attempt to “connect the product or service with the living space of the receiver, in the most intimate way” (ýmejrková, 2007: 173) actually suggests even an excessive use of pronouns in advertisements. This has been shown by many studies (see e.g. ýmejrková, 2007; Cook, 2003; Myers, 1994). Nevertheless, the advertisements examined here show the opposite tendency, especially the Czech samples, in which the language system offers numerous possibilities to use these pronouns optionally and thus, through their presence to mark a particular utterance

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according to the author’s intention. One study of Czech advertisements is ýmejrková (2007), who points out the common overuse of the personal pronoun in the genitive form of the 2nd person tvĤj (your) where a reflexive svĤj would be suitable, and capitals in the case of Vy/Váš (You/Your), which “emphasize the polite appeal to the individualized receiver” (175) and thus make the use of a pronoun even more personalized. The results of the analysis demonstrate the opposite tendencies. In fact, almost 60% of the advertisements contain no pronouns at all. Only 30% contain the capitalized Vy/Váš, and 10% contain the pronoun vy. There is not a single case of a pronoun ty/tvĤj, which is a singular form of the 2nd person pronoun and suggests a close relationship between the participants. Because the use of the pronouns in Czech differs from the English system in that it is more optional and thus more functional, it is also necessary to explore the relevant inflectional morphemes in Czech which generally carry the same meaning (person) as the obligatory pronouns in English. However, references to the 2nd person do not occur in the examined materials on a regular basis. Only 30% of the leaflets contain syntactic structures of this type, mostly not exceeding 1-4 sentences in the long copy. In fact, the only clause commonly expressing the 2nd person is PozornČ si pĜeþtČte pĜíbalový leták (Read the inside information carefully), which is a conventionalized phrase used also on medicines and appearing in small print on the leaflets. Although 40% of all leaflets contain personal pronouns, even these texts were highly impersonal in tenor. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, all of the analyzed leaflets contain only one occurrence of a pronoun – mostly in an attention-catching phrase on the first page, such as Trápí Vás kašel? (Do You suffer from coughing?), Vaše jistota v boji proti chĜipce (Your guarantee in the struggle against flu), Vaši pomocníci v podzimních a zimních mČsících (Your helpers in the autumn and winter months), ýeká Vás zákrok u zubaĜe? (Are You going for dental surgery?). Secondly, the remaining parts of the texts actually seem to avoid the use of a personal construction by using different syntactic structures. The three most significant impersonal structures are as follows: i) passive structures (e.g. užívá se k léþbČ revmatických onemocnČní (it is used for the treatment of rheumatic diseases), tablety jsou urþeny k vnitĜnímu užití (tablets are intended for internal use – in fact, only the preposition for is used in English equivalent sentences), používá se jako podpĤrný lék (is used as a supporting treatment), þasto je provázena také problémy (it is also often accompanied by problems), je doporuþeno kontaktovat lékaĜe (it is recommended to contact a GP)); ii) noun phrases/non-finite/verbless structures (e.g. dlouhotrvající úleva od oþního diskomfortu (long-lasting

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relief from eye discomfort), znovu jako rybiþka (fit as a fiddle again), dokonalá technologie v jedné lahviþce (perfect technology in one bottle), první pomoc pĜi chrapotu (first aid for hoarseness)); iii) finite clauses in the 3rd person singular ascribing all the qualities to a particular product (e.g. snižuje zvýšenou tČlesnou teplotu (it lowers elevated temperature), pomáhá pĜi opakovaných zánČtech (it helps with repeated inflammations), posiluje imunitu (it strengthens immunity), snižuje nemocnost (it lowers morbidity)). Clearly, the above structures may be used for various reasons. The phrases may be used to save space and act as an attention-catching advice (as they are easier to spot and read than longer and more complex sentences). In fact, van Dijk (2008) mentions short simple syntactic structures as manipulative means since they allow for better processing in short-term memory and thus help to shift the reader’s attention to such structures. On the other hand, he mentions the use of complex sentences which draw attention away from the information in such structures. Further, passive structures may evoke an image of a formal and professional text (thus connecting the product with professionalism). The 3rd person finite clauses attempt to shift attention to the product and its qualities. There is, however, one underlying phenomenon to all of these structures, i.e. the tendency to avoid personalized communication. However unusual this may sound for advertising discourse, it seems an appropriate interpretation since the authors could have easily rephrased the sentences in a more personalized manner by using 2nd person structures such as mĤžete užívat (you can use), kontaktujte lékaĜe (contact a practitioner), pomáhá vám pĜi opakovaných zánČtech (it helps you with repeated inflammations), posiluje Vaši imunitu (it strengthens Your immunity), or by using 1st person pronouns to encode the producer, such as prokázali jsme (we proved) etc. The British samples must be treated carefully since, as mentioned above, the use of the pronouns is fixed within the grammatical system of the English language, rather than optional/functional as is the case in the Czech language. This may explain the much higher occurrence of pronouns in the British samples; only two UK leaflets avoid pronouns completely, whereas over 90% of the leaflets contain exophoric personal pronouns. Despite the fact that all of the leaflets still contain a number of impersonal structures (passive structures, noun phrases, or the 3rd person structures with the product as an agent), the use of pronouns not only serves the grammatical system, but also serves to establish the mutual contact. Firstly, the variety of pronouns in the English texts is much greater than in their Czech counterparts, since the leaflets use both 1st and 2nd person pronouns. The 1st person plural pronouns are used in both

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inclusive (e.g. We all know that smoking is bad for us…) and exclusive (e.g. We take pain seriously…, we can also recommend…) forms; but there are also occurrences of the 1st person singular used to label the reader (e.g. Is Souvenaid right for me?). Secondly, the pronoun you/your is used in rather personal and intimate contexts, such as your pain, your doctor, your child, your cholesterol, your health, your heart, you’re ready, you feel etc. Moreover, in many of these cases the pronouns could be omitted or replaced by the articles, e.g. the/a doctor etc. Nevertheless, the author opted for the use of pronouns and thus preferred to build a personal relationship with a reader. To make the comparison complete, it has to be said that obviously all of the above-mentioned structures (i) – iii)) also appear in the British leaflets. Nevertheless, noun phrases such as a new approach in early Alzheimer’s, useful information about Souvenaid, your guide to the best relief for you and your pain do not exclude the use of pronouns (which is common in the Czech samples) and they are mostly used as graphically prominent headings or as attention-catching phrases, mostly appearing on the first pages. The same applies to the non-finite syntactic structures such as getting the best out of your pain relief, managing eczema etc. Passive structures are most often used to describe products and research, e.g. specifically designed to support, formula has been developed, the efficacy has been approved, 2.2 g is recommended to shift the attention from the producer (not from the consumer), which seems to be a common communicative strategy in pharmaceutical advertising. To conclude, whereas there are two different grammatical systems possibly leading to a different use of pronouns, the main differences do not in fact arise from the differences between language systems, but from the communication strategies of the authors. While the British leaflets confirm the general assumption that the use of pronouns is intended to create a personal relationship between the producer and a target customer, the Czech leaflets demonstrate an opposite tendency, i.e. the desire to put some distance between the authors and the readers. Interrogative clauses There is always more demand for contact between an author and an addressee in imperative and interrogative clauses than in declarative clauses. Interrogative clauses were mentioned as being common in advertising discourse e.g. by Leech (1972), and the present research confirms the fact that questions are important means of communication in advertisements by attracting the reader’s attention and pointing out a certain problem (a health-related problem, in this study) to be discussed

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between the two participants of the discourse. Both halves of the corpus included interrogative clauses serving as questions (as opposed to possible polite requests etc.). These questions are of two basic types: yes-no questions and wh-questions. The first types clearly requires only a yes-no answer and helps identify and thus target a potential customer at the very beginning of the communication. These questions generally serve as an attention-seeking device and are therefore placed at the beginning of a text or at the top of the first page of an advertisement. Their aim is to suggest an affirmative answer and thus persuade a reader that his participation in a dialogue is justified, e.g.: Want help to stop smoking? Caring for someone with early Alzheimer’s? Unsure about how to lower your cholesterol? / Chystáte se cestovat?(Are you planning to travel?) Užíváte antibiotika? (Are you on antibiotics?) Jste celý den na nohou?(Are you up on your feet all day?) Trápí Vás kašel?(Do you suffer from coughing?). On the other hand, the samples also include wh-questions, which serve as an introduction to a part of the ad where either the medicine or the health problem is explained in detail. Again the questions are used to arouse the reader’s interest in a particular problem and appear to simulate the situation in which a non-expert patient asks questions and a professional answers and explains a particular medical phenomenon. For example: Why take Pregnance Breast-feeding? Did you know…? What is Osteoarthritis? What are the benefits of using FLEXISEQ? What should your cholesterol number be? / Jaké jsou pĜíþiny nadýmání? (What are the causes of flatulence?) Proþ se nČkomu rány hojí déle?(Why does it take longer for wounds to heal in some people than in others?) K þemu hoĜþík (Mg) v tČle slouží a máme jej dostatek? (What is magnesium good for in your body and do we have enough of it?) Co je to chronické žilní onemocnČní? (What is a chronic venous insufficiency?) ýím ještČ mĤžete prospČt svému srdci? (What else can we do to improve our heart function?). Both parts of the corpus use questions in an attempt to persuade readers to participate in a dialogue and to help define the reader’s role within this communication. Although it seems that the Czech samples use this device to compensate for the otherwise impersonal tenor, this is true only partly. Nearly half of all the advertisements (14) do not use any interrogative sentences at all. Those that do mostly prefer only one of the above-mentioned questions (in roughly equal proportions). As for the British samples, the proportions are quite different. Over 75% of the leaflets contain one or more question in one of the above forms, and most of these advertisements use both forms. This is in keeping with the

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observation that the British advertisements demonstrate more personal interaction with a reader than the Czech advertisements. Although the Czech excerpts also use questions and thus establish contact with the reader, they compensate for their otherwise impersonal tone only partly. Imperative clauses Imperatives are another possible syntactic means of direct communication. Their communicative goal seems more straightforward than that of questions, in that they seem to express the author’s aim directly by demanding a certain change in the reader’s behaviour. Nevertheless, even this means is often neglected in the Czech leaflets. Although nearly all of the analyzed leaflets contain at least one imperative clause, over 75% contain one imperative clause only. The clause comprises legally required information concerning the safe use of a medical product, i.e. the recommendation to either consult a medical professional or read the inside information before use. Moreover, these sentences (such as Kontaktujte lékaĜe (Contact a practitioner), PĜed použitím si peþlivČ pĜeþtČte pĜíbalovou informaci (Before using, read the enclosed information leaflet carefully)). are invariably displayed in small print, often hardly legible, and so they do not serve to establish contact with the reader; rather they serve only to protect the producers from legal responsibility for the consumer’s incorrect use of medicines. Only 25% of the leaflets contain a different imperative than the one given above, and only one leaflet contains more than one imperative sentence used to create contact with the reader. Typically for the impersonal approach, meanings that could easily be expressed as imperatives (e.g. advice on the drug dosage) are frequently expressed via nominal, passive or non-finite structures (je tĜeba užívat (it is necessary to use…), dávkování 2 kapsle dennČ (dosage of 2 capsules a day), je vhodné užít alespoĖ 2-3 hod. pĜed jídlem (it is suitable for use at least 2-3 hours before meals)). Therefore, the Czech leaflets establish a relationship with a reader through imperatives only exceptionally and further create a distant relationship between the two participants. By contrast, the British leaflets use imperatives in all instances, never in small print, and in a wider variety of situations than the Czech leaflets. The imperatives mostly serve either as instructions on use (e.g. smooth creams gently downwards, take with or after food, keep your child hydrated, do not apply the gel), a demand to contact a professional (e.g. speak to your healthcare professional, ask your doctor, specialist nurse or pharmacist, seek your GP’s advice, ask your doctor or nurse), or other tips and advice (keep a headache diary, take time to relax, check your posture, think before you eat, avoid triggers etc.). All three types are present in all the

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leaflets, with the highest proportion being advisory clauses. It appears that the British leaflets not only aim to establish a personal relationship with the reader, but also create a self-image of advisory/informational texts rather than advertising texts. Before offering some concluding remarks on the results of the analysis, I will briefly comment on one more phenomenon which may implicitly contribute to the overall tenor of the analyzed samples. Generally, simple and straightforward structures and expressions lead to a better understanding of a text and thus make the text more accessible to the general public. This appears to be a common device used in advertising texts. On the other hand, a specific audience, using a specific terminology, is usually a matter of professional discourse and not of advertisements, which usually attempt to address as broad a readership as possible. Nevertheless, in the case of the pharmaceutical leaflets, these contain terminology which may be difficult to understand for a general public, e.g. cartilage, osteoarthritis, arthritis, joint lubricants, phospoholipids / benigní hyperplazie (benign prostatic hyperplasia), histologické známky (histological evidence), nezhoubné zbytnČní (benign hypertrophy), enzym trypsin (trypsin enzyme), metabolit dihydrotestosteron (metabolite dihydrotestosterone). The professional terminology, together with a large number of numerals (e.g. 2013, 1 in 5, 60 years of age, 8.75 million, dose of 2.2 g, 39.8%, the graph scale 0 to 50, trial on 1395 adults, studies involving 1675 patients, treated for 52 weeks, graph scale of 0-3.0/1-6 let (1-6 years of age), 3-5krát dennČ (3-5 times a day), 50mg suspense (50mg suspension), 100mg/5ml (100mg/5ml), 10x500mg(10x500mg), 300 sterilních kapek (300 sterile drops), 20 tablet (20 tablets), 50 tobolek (50 capsules), 95% dČtí (95% of children), etc.) appearing in all the analyzed leaflets, serve to create an image of a professional text. On one hand, we may assume that the main reason is to build the producer’s credentials, which in the pharmaceutical industry are not usually attributed to the producer (as in other types of product advertising), but to medical professionals, whose special choice of vocabulary these advertisements may imitate. On the other hand, a professional/scientific text is mostly considered typically impersonal and detached. This manipulation of the mental models of a reader has been demonstrated by van Dijk (2005: 219), who says that the use of “abstruse words, a confused topic on a subject less familiar to the recipients may be the case […] of medical discourse that is not primarily geared towards better understanding by clients, and hence may assume manipulative forms when understanding is intentionally impaired.”

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To sum up the results of the analysis of verbal means from the perspective of the mutual relationships between a producer and a potential customer, it may be said that both halves of the corpus offer a different approach. Whereas it appears that the British pharmaceutical leaflets generally follow the usual methods of advertising discourse, i.e. to establish a personal relationship between the participants, the Czech leaflets rather seem to draw on the characteristics of professional discourse and, although impersonal, they establish a patient/doctor relationship between both participants. The next section will comment further on this with reference to the results of the analysis of non-verbal means. 4.1.2 Establishing relationships through selected non-verbal means Non-verbal means appear to play a crucial role in the overall tenor of the leaflets. As Cook (2003: 74) remarks, “advertising, like many other types of discourse, carries a heavy proportion of its meaning paralinguistically.” Correspondingly, many authors have pointed out that manipulation in communication may be (and often is) done multimodally – with the help of images, colours and fonts, especially in advertising (see e.g. van Leeuwen, 2005; Day, 1999; Messaris, 1997). The advertising leaflets examined in this study are no exception; they invariably combine textual and visual aspects, and they thus require analysis from different angles of view: “printed advertising using text and image is a heterogeneous semiotic entity; it consists of a set of both linguistic (verbal, symbolic) and non-linguistic […] sign systems.” (Jaklová, 2007: 226) It has been proved (see e.g. Bateman, 2008; Jaklová, 2007; Kostelnik & Hassett, 2003) that the complete meaning of any kind of multimodal document cannot be considered separately from “the message’s unique graphological, phonological, grammatical and lexical structure.” (Cook, 2003: 135) As a multimodal document, an advertising leaflet expresses its communicative purpose through various non-verbal means, which reinforce the textual parts or sometimes even outweigh them in importance, i.e. colour, font, images, and the layout of its individual components, which taken together form, according to Srpová (2007: 39), means of persuasion. The discussion here concerns the image of the mutual relationship between the author and the reader; therefore I exclude the use of colours and fonts from the analysis since their use is more connected to the image of the product, and I will describe only one nonverbal aspect – images – which serve to establish contact with the reader.

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Indirect Images Kroeber-Riehl & Esch (2000) speak of the main functions of advertising images as activating attention, giving information and conveying emotions. According to their research, images help us to understand the advertising message as a whole, and so the basic meaning of the advertisement needs to be encoded in the picture. Correspondingly, they distinguish between direct images, which depict the product according to reality, and indirect images, which have a different factual content than the product. These indirect images can be realized as e.g. image metaphors, where images are symbols representing the qualities of a product, or they may create a specific relationship with the reader as well as an image of the consumer; this is true of the pharmaceutical leaflets under investigation here. The combination of both these types of pictures will perform all of the above-mentioned functions that are necessary for the advertisement to be successful, i.e. presenting information (direct images), conveying emotions (indirect images), and attracting attention (especially by the size, colours and placement of pictures). There is no doubt that images form an inseparable part of the pharmaceutical advertising leaflets, as all of the analyzed leaflets invariably include direct images, i.e. those depicting a product itself, and most of the analyzed leaflets also use indirect images, i.e. those which picture different topics than the product itself. This section will deal with indirect images, as they are of primary relevance to the issue under investigation. Most of the analyzed leaflets (nearly 80 per cent) use images other than those related to the product itself. Most of the indirect pictures in the analyzed leaflets are photographs picturing people to provide physical evidence of various emotions and states, such as illness and suffering, or more frequently the required state of health and happiness, which is presented as a result of the restoration of health. The photographs of people are mostly placed in the top half of the leaflet, which is in accordance with the findings of Jaklová (2007: 225), who notes that it is the top half of a printed page that catches the reader’s attention first. The same point is made by Bateman (2008: 64), who presents the results of Holsanova’s eye-tracking research which confirmed “an assumption that information would be sought higher on the page before examining lower positioned information.” Therefore, the authors of the leaflets immediately attract the reader’s attention, and also, as I will show below, immediately establish a certain kind of a mutual relationship, as the readers will probably have tendencies to liken themselves to the human characters in the pictures.

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Given the differences between the verbal means used by the Czech and British leaflets (as outlined in the previous section), it seems reasonable to assume that there will also be significant differences in the non-verbal means. This is confirmed by the analysis. The Czech leaflets create the image of impersonal professional texts not only through lexical and morphosyntactic means but also with the help of indirect pictures. By contrast, the British samples proved to be more customer-focused, using various verbal means (endorsements by users or celebrities, personal pronouns, and 2nd person structures in general – including interrogatives and imperatives). These opposite tendencies are further reinforced by the use of indirect images, which generally help to establish contact with the potential customers, because, as Kress & van Leeuwen note, “the gaze of represented participants directly addresses the viewers and so establishes an imaginary relation with them.” (89) Their research also showed that an indirect image may perform possible functions with respect to the relationship between the represented participants and the viewer. Firstly it serves as a “visual form of direct address” (117), and secondly it (along with e.g. facial expressions or postures) encourages the viewer “to enter into some kind of imaginary relation with him of her” (118). Whereas only a small proportion of the Czech leaflets contained the addressing ‘gaze’, most of the indirect images in the British part of the corpus depicted people looking directly at the viewer, which confirms the differences in the im/personal approach between the Czech and British pharmaceutical advertisements. This difference is taken one step further by the second function listed above, i.e. establishing a relationship between a represented participant and a viewer. Here particular attention should be paid to smiles, which serve to ask the viewer “to enter into a relation of social affinity with them.” (Kress & van Leeuwen 118) The Czech corpus contains pictures that create the impression of impersonality by including indirect pictures containing no humans, pictures that depict people expressing negative emotions, and pictures depicting people with positive emotions. These occur in the proportion 16:7:7, which means that over 50% of all pictures do not depict any human character at all (and therefore offer no possibility to create any kind of a relationship), and the other half are equally divided into human characters expressing negative or positive emotions. Therefore, we can say that the Czech pharmaceutical advertisements do not generally create a social affinity with potential customers. Firstly, half of the leaflets prefer nonhuman indirect images such as various graphs, illustrations of body processes, or the ingredients used for a particular medicine, which are commonly used in scientific texts. This offers no way of creating a mutual

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relation between a viewer and the represented product, except that it may create the image of the professional and thus reliable approach with which the product was created. Secondly, although the represented people who express negative emotions may be considered to build a social relationship with a suffering customer, they suppress the mutual interaction by not looking at the viewer, thus creating an impression of detachment. By not looking at the addressee, they create a distance between a reader and the depicted characters, and instead they seem to prefer to depict a potential customer as a patient to be cured. This notion of a professional helping a passive patient is also evident in other means used to create a specific image of a customer, as will be shown below. On the other hand, the British corpus exploits the emotions in an absolutely opposite way. There basically exist only two of the abovementioned types of pictures – those which depict positive emotions and those which do not depict any humans at all (with one exception, but the negative emotions are compensated by other ‘smiling’ pictures in the same leaflet). Pictures depicting positive emotions account for over 70% of the total, while only 30% of the leaflets have non-human pictures. So there is a clear tendency to establish a social affinity with the potential customers through the images. The British leaflets generally prefer to express a smile accompanied by a direct gaze, thus creating a positive and close relationship between a product and a reader. Another important aspect of the leaflets in this regard is the framing used in the images; the frame size substantially influences the establishment of a close or distant mutual relationship between the producer and the customer. All the British advertisements contain close shot to medium close shot pictures (terms taken from Kress & van Leeuwen) which are pictures taken from a very short distance, i.e. giving no more than a head-to-waist view. This perspective reflects Hall’s (2006) concept of intimate personal distance. In other words, if we see people from such a perspective, this means that we have let them enter our personal intimate space. Such an approach is not applied to the same extent in the Czech corpus. The Czech indirect pictures exhibit various social distances; from intimate to close social distance, the latter of which Hall (2006) recognizes as rather impersonal and formal. To sum up, it appears that the indirect images seem to confirm or even deepen the differences between the Czech and the British leaflets. The British leaflets are created as highly demanding, interactive texts through both verbal means (especially specific morphosyntactic features) and nonverbal means (especially the content of indirect images and their framing). By contrast, the Czech leaflets are created to form an impersonal scientific

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impression, both through verbal means (especially morphosyntactic features) and through non-verbal means (the content of indirect images and their framing). The typical need of advertising texts to establish a mutual relationship with a customer is compensated only partly by the Czech texts’ use of interrogative structures. Generally, the British leaflets employ means of communication that are generally expected from advertising discourse, with a tendency to create the image of advisory/informational material, whereas the Czech leaflets tend to avoid the personalization that is typical of advertising discourse and instead build an image of a professional or scientific text.

4.2 Creating reality: the image of the customer Segmenting the market and targeting as precise a segment of consumers as possible are key aspects of marketing practice. Marketing experts have developed market research to such an extent that a business is able to define its potential customers by age, gender, demographic data, beliefs, attitudes, buying behaviour and many other variables, and thus to know exactly how to promote a product so that it reaches this precise sample of customers. An advertising expert will be able to evaluate the exact social and psychological needs and preferences of a potential customer and to create an advertising text correspondingly. As Fairclough (2001: 171) remarks, “the major ideological work of advertising is constructing subject positions for consumers as members of consumption communities.” This accounts for many different types of advertising – an author creates either an image of a consumer or a community to which such a consumer may belong if he or she buys a particular product. An example may be provided by the advertisements for cars – some cars are marketed as being for adventurous single men, some for men who feel responsibility for their families, some for independent women in their twenties, etc. In this way advertisers create a community to which a customer either belongs or desires to belong, and thus s/he will buy a particular product which seems to represent such a social group. However, medicine and most pharmaceutical products are not so closely connected to lifestyle as general consumer goods. Therefore, the aim of pharmaceutical advertising cannot be the straightforward creation of a social community to which a customer wants to belong (we generally do not consider it positive or desirable to belong to a group of people with e.g. Alzheimer’s disease); rather it aims to address a very specific group of potential users, i.e. those suffering from a certain disorder or those caring for the ill. The leaflets thus build an image of a potential customer,

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emphasizing and addressing their physical condition or emphasizing their will to look after somebody with ill-health. As has been mentioned above, the approach to the customer in the Czech leaflets is rather impersonal, and so there are texts with no verbal reference to a potential customer at all. Those which use verbal means to create an image of a customer often opt for vague expressions expressing the notion of the general public, e.g. problém mnoha osob (a problem of many people), lidé þasto trpí (people often suffer from), až 70% lidí v prĤbČhu cestování potkají zažívací potíže (almost 70% of people encounter digestive problems during their travels), pro osoby, které si chtČjí snížit hladinu cholesterol (for people who would like to lower their cholesterol levels) etc. However, there is one common feature of these expressions, and that is their connection to poor health, illness, etc. This notion is often further supported by the indirect pictures (if present) depicting a suffering person. In this way the authors create an image of a customer as a suffering person, a patient who is rather helpless and mostly not proactive. When ill, there is quite a natural need to be helped and cared for, and in this way the producers of the pharmaceutical products offer a helping hand. If we take into account that the leaflets are placed in the waiting rooms at doctors’ surgeries or in pharmacies, then it is clear that most of these leaflets will target such a potential customer immediately. This does not mean that a reader suffers from a particular condition when visiting the doctor or pharmacy, but most presumably s/he is suffering from another disorder and is seeking help for it, and whenever s/he experiences any discomfort connected to the condition presented in the advertisement, s/he knows where to go for help – the advertised product. This connection between emotions and the place and time of the first encounter with the advertisement has been demonstrated in a study by Eric du Plessis (2005). The British leaflets offer a variety of images, but there are two images that are built in one way or another in all the examined leaflets. Firstly, the authors generally assign to the potential customer the image of a responsible and caring individual, and in this way they create an image of a more proactive customer. This is done especially through verbal means, e.g. mums who want the absolute best for their children, prepare your body to maximize your chances, you can try children’s paracetamol, if you are caring for someone with Alzheimer’s, how can I lower my level of cholesterol? etc. Secondly, the authors create the abovementioned desired community arising as a result of using the medicine – a group of healthy and happy people. Since all the human characters depicted in the indirect images are smiling and apparently happy, the authors offer a possibility that comes with the product, i.e. to become a

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part of this healthy and contented part of society. With regard to the social ideological framework of potential customers that is apparent from the indirect pictures (though a complete analysis would be part of a more comprehensive study), it is interesting to see that the general user is a white male of middle or upper class – whitened teeth, clothes, professional haircuts etc., age approximately 40-60, with a slim body. In a multicultural country such as the United Kingdom, this standardization is rather startling.

4.3. Creating reality: the image of the producer The pharmaceutical leaflets represent an exceptional case with regard to building or drawing on the image of a producer in comparison with other types of advertisements. Generally, the producer’s name serves to build the credentials of a product; however, this approach is completely missing in pharmaceutical advertising. The numbers differ slightly between the two halves of the corpus, but they both show similar tendencies. In comparison to the name of the product, the producer’s name is mentioned only occasionally, e.g., the advertisements where a product name was mentioned 77 times, comprised only two occurrences of the producer. The same proportion is found in most of the analyzed leaflets. However, non-verbal means also function in the same way. The font used for the name of the producer is without any exceptions in a very small size, presumably due to the fact that it is unnecessary to emphasize the credibility of a distributor/producer, because professionals such as doctors and pharmacists naturally perform the role of reliable, trustworthy and knowledgeable entities. There thus seems to be a tendency towards the backgrounding of the producer and the foregrounding of the product name. The shift of attention from the producer to the product may also be connected with specific conditions in the pharmaceutical industry, in which the company has to foreground the product name because every specific product is protected by a patent only for a limited period of time, and in that time this product needs to be widely accepted and purchased in order to bring the producer a sufficient return on investment.

4.4 Creating reality: the image of the product All of the above-discussed features help to create a certain image of the product. The Czech leaflets, through their tenor, aim to create a professional and scientific image for their products, whereas through the personal tenor and advice-like features the British leaflets can be said to

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create an image of help within the customer’s reach. The image of a product is also supported or even built through the image of the customer. The Czech leaflets construct the efficacy and professional qualities of a medicine by emphasizing the idea of a customer as a suffering patient (the term pacient/patient aptly expresses the notion of a passive entity), whereas the British leaflets connect the use of a product with willingness and responsibility (and thus an active approach) among people who are content with their lives and form part of a certain social group. Nevertheless, the leaflets also use other means of referring to the product in a more direct way, both in verbal and non-verbal forms. With regard to verbal means, it is important to realize that what the authors do not say is just as important as what they do say, and the selection or omission of information helps to build a certain image of a product. Manipulation through omission will be mentioned only briefly here. However, one aspect is of relevance to the presentation of pharmaceutical products: the fact that these products are legally required to contain information about their side effects with an impact on human health. However, this is included in the instructions inside the package; it is not mentioned in the advertising in any form. In other words, none of the analyzed advertisements included any information connected to side effects, whether undesirable or beneficial effects. In this way, the producer avoids the complete and unbiased presentation of a product in order to manipulate mental models in a reader’s mind to create a positive image of a product. Apart from the images mentioned above, the two halves of the corpus also display other common features. Most of the products in the British leaflets emphasize the helping function of the product, such as help ease their discomfort, helping healthy pregnancies, improves joint mobility etc., thus building the image of an ultimate helper in times of need. Another notion frequently used in most of the British advertisements is that of uniqueness, e.g. most trusted, No. 1, supported by unique UK research, unique and innovative, contains a unique combination of nutrients etc. Many other images occur across the corpus; nevertheless, one more may be considered generic and shared by all the leaflets – and that is the image of a safe and highly professional product. These notions are expressed either explicitly, e.g. developed with world renowned scientists, formulated by experts, clinically proven, as effective as an arthritis prescription tablet, can be used safely, is safe and well tolerated etc., or implicitly, through professional terminology, e.g. DHA, EPA, B vitamins, UMP, Choline, Phospholipids; containing lidocaine, hydrochloride, cetylpyridinium chloride; includes 400mcg folic acid and 10mcg vitamin

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D3 or by emphasizing its ‘medical’ character, e.g. medical device, must be used under medical supervision, ibuprofen-containing medicines, etc. The Czech corpus demonstrates the same crucial notions, i.e. safety (bezpeþný prostĜedek (a safe medium); oznaþeny NPN þíslem, které je zárukou bezpeþnosti (assigned an NPN number, which is a guarantee of safety), záruka bezpeþného užívání (guarantee of safe use), úþinný a bezpeþný (efficient and safe)); healing ability (k léþbČ pĜíznakĤ (for the treatment of symptoms), užívá se k léþbČ revmatických onemocnČní (is used for the treatment of rheumatic diseases), lék užívat nalaþno (the medication is to be used on an empty stomach)); uniqueness (nejmodernČjší probiotikum nové generace (the most modern probiotics of the new generation), vyšší stupeĖ ochrany (higher level of protection), obsahuje unikátní smČs enzymĤ (it contains a unique mixture of enzymes)); and professionalism, through specific professional terminology and explicit references to medicine, professionals, scientists or experts (duodenální úþinnost pankreatických enzymĤ (duodenal efficacy of amylopsin), aftózní stomatitida (herpetic stomatitis), poruchy distenze a motility (disorders of distension and motility), stenóza pyloru (pyloric stenosis), zdravotnický prostĜedek (medical agent), úþinnost potvrzena na základČ klinických studií (efficacy confirmed by clinical trials), úþinnost ovČĜena rozsáhlým vČdeckým výzkumem (efficacy attested by extensive scientific research), registrovaný napĜíþ Evropou (registered across Europe)). The last remarks in this section are not directly related to building images, but are connected to the presentation of a product are thus worth mentioning. Generally, the authors make an effort for the product to stand out on the market and to be remembered. They do so through systematic repetition of its name as well as the use of colours and fonts on the packages of the products. Both of these features are applied very similarly in both halves of the corpus. The repetition is very frequent (although not compared to other types of advertisements), although in Czech leaflets the frequency of repetition is slightly lower than in the British ones. The occurrence of the product’s name ranges from 32 to 77 times per leaflet (depending on length, mostly approx. 1000 words and more). However, apart from the verbal repetition, we also have to bear in mind the use of direct images (see above). All of the analyzed leaflets invariably contain a picture of a product, or, to be more precise, a product package. The picture of a package bears the name of a product and presumably offers another possibility for an addressee to remember not only the name but the overall appearance of the package, enabling easy recognition in pharmacies. In this way the direct images serve as a further source of information, and thus carry an informational value. Again the occurrence of these pictures is

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not low; it ranges from 12 to 19 pictures of the product per leaflet. Furthermore, the informational value of these pictures may be also confirmed by their size, as they form quite a large proportion of the leaflet’s surface area. However, not only the size of the picture but also the details of the picture are relevant means of communication. The products are depicted from a close distance, which Kress & van Leeuwen (1996) see as the product being “represented as within the viewer’s reach.” (128) As such the leaflets aim to create an image of product’s accessibility. Apart from mentioning products verbally and through direct images, colours also play a very specific and crucial role in helping potential customers remember a particular product. It is widely accepted that “colour in advertisements subconsciously and directly affects the receiver’s perception.” (Jaklová, 2007: 224) And in pharmaceutical leaflets, this is invariably the case. The combination of colours used on the leaflets reflects exactly the same scale of colours used on the packages of the individual products in almost all instances. There is one exception in the British corpus, i.e. a negligible proportion of the analyzed leaflets uses colours corresponding to the corporate colours of the chain pharmacies which sell particular drugs (such as blue with Boots, or green with Lloyds Pharmacy) rather than the individual product packages. Nevertheless, if indirect images, i.e. those depicting another reality than the product, are used in both Czech and British leaflets, they are also mostly pictured in related colours. It is not only the background colours that reflect the colour scale used on a package (e.g. blue reflected by the colour of the sea); the colours are also used on the clothes of the characters (whether photographed or drawn), objects (vegetables, cups, furniture, cars etc.), graphs, other miscellaneous images (drops, various other graphic designs), or even the overall tones of the photography (from pale pink or blue to rich tones of brown and green being emphasized during the editing process). The same approach to colouring is applied in the colours of letters, including framing or background highlighting. Such homogeneity also extends to the font of the letters used in particular advertisements. As for the font of letters in the headlines, the overall text and the name of a product, these fonts graphically reflect the font used on the product package. “In part, the connection is indexical: we associate a particular kind of print with a particular product.” (Cook, 2003: 92) The size of letters varies, although the largest font size naturally belongs to the name of the product. We may only assume that the difficult comprehensibility and pronunciation of often foreign or unknown names of individual medicines is compensated by the vivid combination of colours and fonts,

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which are more easily memorable. In fact, Jaklová (2007: 225) confirms that visual homogeneity helps the product to be clearly identified.

5. Conclusion In a world driven by consumerism, advertising discourse has become a central means of communication. At the same time, the pharmaceutical industry has become one of the most influential sectors in the modern economy. Therefore, the combination of these two aspects of today’s life offers an intriguing source of material to be analyzed and studied from the view of communication strategies, as the strategies used by the industry are clearly successful. This study offers only a brief insight into a specific sub-genre of pharmaceutical advertising – the advertising leaflets promoting non-prescription pharmaceutical products. The study focuses on the concept of mental models that have been created in our minds by the authors of the advertising texts. In other words, it explores the images that we acquire from the advertising texts on pharmaceutical products, or rather what images are being constructed by the producers of the texts. I aimed to demonstrate how the authors create the image of the mutual relationships between the producer and the reader; the image of the customer; the image of the producer, and last but not least the image of the product. To explore whether the rules apply generally or are dependent on different cultural conditions, a comparative study was carried out, and Czech and British examples of this genre were analyzed. The establishment of relationships between the author and the reader was analyzed from the verbal and non-verbal perspectives. The results of both analyses have shown substantial differences between the Czech and British leaflets. Whereas it soon became apparent that the British leaflets generally follow the usual strategies of advertising discourse, i.e. to establish a personal relationship between the participants, the Czech leaflets instead imitated the characteristics of professional discourse, with a prevailingly impersonal tenor. If any relationship between the two entities is being established, then it is that between a patient and a medical professional. These different attitudes were formed through the specific use of verbal means, such as pronouns, noun phrases, interrogatives, and imperatives, as well as non-verbal means, especially the use of indirect images, including their content, size, and framing. Further differences may be traced in the images connected to the potential customer. The Czech authors appear to adopt an attitude to a patient rather than to a customer. This is also supported by the pictures, which mostly depict suffering people in poor physical condition, thus

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identifying the reader with an ill person. Verbally expressed images of customers are rare, and most of the Czech leaflets lack such images completely. By contrast, the British leaflets build the image of a customer both verbally and non-verbally. The leaflets include a variety of images, but two images are common to all the leaflets examined. Firstly, the authors generally assign the potential customer the image of a responsible and caring individual, thus creating an image of a more proactive customer than is the case in the Czech leaflets. Secondly, the authors appear to create an image of a customer as an individual belonging to a desired social group – a healthy and content middle-class community. This is done through indirect images, which depict the user as a physically active and apparently happy member of the middle class. On the other hand, the image of the producer is more universal across the entire corpus. Both Czech and British leaflets prefer to background the producer, which is not, in fact, a usual tendency in advertisements. This backgrounding is done both through the font used for the name of the producer, which is without any exception very small, as well as by mentioning the producer only rarely. We may only assume that this is due to the specific conditions in which the pharmaceutical industry operates (e.g. patent validity), and presumably also because the credibility of a producer (which has been identified as a significant communicative move in advertisements) may be easily shifted to professionals such as doctors and pharmacists, who naturally perform the role of reliable, trustworthy and knowledgeable entities. The image of a product is implicitly projected through all the abovementioned images, as well as gaining some explicit characteristics through verbal means. The study has shown that apart from suggesting positive images by avoiding unbiased information, the leaflets also present four important notions: safety, helping/healing ability, uniqueness, and professionalism. This is done mainly through the specific choice of explicit and implicit lexical means. Finally, various multimodal means are used by the producer in an attempt to make the product more memorable to the reader.

The study is supported by the ongoing research project CZ.1.07/2.3. 00/20.0222, ‘Posílení rozvoje Centra výzkumu odborného jazyka angliþtiny a nČmþiny na FF OU’ [Centre for the Research of Professional Language], funded by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic.

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