VIII   Conversation and Narration

VIII

Conversation and Narration

1. CONVERSATION

1.1 According to Peter Hartmann (1970: 91), every text essentially functions as a contribution to a dialogue (see also Coulthard 1977: 100). For various text types, the dialogue between producer and receiver is carried out with a greater or lesser MEDIATION in regard to SITUATIONALITY (I.4.11.5; cf. Beaugrande & Dressler 1970: Ch. VIII). In conversation,. mediation is not extensive, due to mutual awareness of participants, usually (except via telephone or the like) supported by physical presence. The immediacy of the communicative situation leads to heavy reliance on INTERTEXTUALITY (1.4.11.6; Beaugrande & Dressler 1978: Ch. IX), the principle whereby the textuality of any one text arises from interaction with other texts. What is cohesive, coherent, and acceptable in conversation may be quite different from what meets those standards in other modes of communication.

1.2.1 The action-oriented perspective began with the behaviorist definition of conversation as a pairing of stimulus and response (Ruesch 1957: 189). This narrow approach was replaced by the investigation of TURN-TAKING, in which a discourse action and reaction are seen as constituents of a “speech exchange system” (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson 1974: 696). Here, sociologists have undertaken to define the ways people select or delegate speaking turns in a conversation. Most recently, conversational actions have been probed from the standpoint of how people plan to attain goals (Winograd 1977a; Allen & Perrault 1978; Cohen 1978; McCalla 1978a, 1978b; Allen 1979; cf. VI.A).

1.2.2 The meta-action-oriented perspective is obliged to deal with content and topic, issues pursued at first with hesitation (Sacks 1968, cited in Coulthard 1977: 75) in absence of general methods to deal with meaning. Little can be gained by the common linguistic procedure of assigning structural descriptions to abstract sentences. However, advances have been forthcoming from disciplines besides linguistics: sociology (Sacks, Schlegloff), discourse analysis (Sinclair, Coulthard),¹ [1. Many early the papers on conversational analysis were circulated as mimeographs and were difficult to obtain. The situation worsened after the sudden death of Harvey Sacks in 1975, whose collected papers were published only many years later.]

and artificial intelligence (Grosz 1977; Schank 1977; Lehnert 1978),” so that topic and content are gradually becoming more thoroughly explored in this domain.

1.3 Earlier work on conversation understandably preferred to address relatively restricted domains. The study of comparatively stabilized communicative situations, such as rituals (Salmond 1974), verbal duels (Dundes, Leach, & Ozkõk 1972; Labov 1972a, 1972c), litigation (Frake 1972; Leodolter 1975), and chanting (Scherzer 1974), is concemed with a limited range of conventional topics and actions. The study of “registers” (characteristic styles of text production in typical situations or among certain groups, e.g. dialect options, (cf. Blom & Gumperz 1972; Ervin-Tripp 1972), focuses more on the variations within the virtual systems of sound and grammar/syntax than on topic or action.

1.4 Harvey Sacks (cited in Coulthard 1977: 75) states as a “general rule about convetsation that it is your business not to tell people what you can suppose they know.” It might be more accurate to state that a great deal of conversational material is indeed already known to all participants, but that the particular configuration of text-world models in discourse is not known as such or in the conscious mind, due to new combinations, limitations, modifications, or directions (see IV.3.14). We could say that the DISCOURSE MODEL which conversational participants co-operate in building (cf. Reichman 1978; Rubin 1978b; Webber 1978) often fails to provide a complete or exact match with the stored knowledge of those who enter the receiver role. This partial match is especially attributable to the enormous diversity of sources for conversational materials, such as the following:

1.4.1 Typical and determinate concepts and relations in world knowledge can safely be taken to be accessible to conversational participants at large, e.g. that the sky is blue, water boils and freezes, humans live in houses, and so on. Such knowledge is therefore too trite for conversing even with strangers.

1.4.2 Cultural and social attitudes, such as conventions of politeness or standards of desirability and value (cf. VI.A.10), can be presupposed to apply in most situations, unless signals are given to the contrary.

1.4.3 Conventional scripts and goals serve to alert conversationalists to what people are expected to say, and why, in familiar situations. In the enactment of scripts, e.g., going to a restaurant, participants need not provide explanation of why they are speaking, as long as they are conforming to expectations.

1.4.4 Apperceivable traits of the current situation are presumably known to all participants present or can be pointed out with little difficulty. The countless conversations about weather fall under this heading, aided by the social convention that weather is a universally acceptable topic.

1.4.5 Episodic knowledge of shared experiences among participants applies when some past situation involved the presence of people in the current conversation. This knowledge contributes to the speaker’s internal model of the hearer (cf. I.6.1), and extends the store of shared situations (cf. Clark & Marshall 1978). The speaker may assign as defaults and preferences the components of his or her own self-model to the hearer-model (Cohen 1978: 93; cf. VIII.1.14).

1.5 Conversation differs from other text types especially in its greater reliance on SITUATIONALITY (VIII.1.1 ), whether current or shared in the past. This factor allows rich UPDATING of expectations and steady FEEDBACK about the effects of utterances (cf. Rubin 1978b). The participants’ plans and goals will be more directly evident or firmly established in prior knowledge (cf. the notion of “life themes” in Schank & Abelson 1977).

1.6 This immediate situationality lends conversation an enormous range and flexibility. Paul Grice (1975, 1978) has undertaken to systemize conversation somewhat by formulating some “conversational maxims” with the status of preferences or defaults. In comparing his maxims to my own model, I noticed what seemed to be some unclearness and overlap in his definitions. I accordingly asked Grice himself about the disputed points, and my discussion below incorporates the explanations he kindly afforded (for a more detailed treatment, cf. Beaugrande & Dressler 1980: Ch. VI).

1.6.1 The principle of CO-OPERATION is cited as: “Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the state at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged” (Grice 1975: 45; cf. Clark & C1ark 1977: 122ff.). My own criteria of INTENTIONALITY and ACCEPTABILITY (I.4.11.3f.) seem applicable here in regard to participant attitudes, and that of SITUATIONALITY in regard to “direction and purpose.” I cited some examples of deliberately unco-operative utterances in II.1.8 and IV.3.7.

1.6.2 The principle of QUANTITY is cited as: “Make your contribution as informative as (but not more informative than) is required” (Grice 1975: 45). This principle concerns the amount of content presented, and seems related to my notion of RELEVANCE to communicative plans (cf. I.4.14; VII.2.8). I would not equate the principle with my own notion of informativity as expounded in Chapter IV, because I am concerned more with knownness and expectedness than with volume. A text which is “more informative than is required” would, in my model, be too discontinuous or discrepant (cf. IV.l.12); for Grice, such a text could be merely too extensive.

1.6.3 The principle of QUALITY is concerned with truthfulness: “Do not say what you believe to be false, or that for which you lack adequate evidence” (Grice 1975: 46). The expectation that a textual world ought to match at least the determinate elements and configurations of a corresponding world ­knowledge pattern is, I suspect, stronger for text types other than conversation (e.g. science texts, cf. VII.1.8.6). Indeed, conversation often demands false assertions for the sake of social conventions, e.g., insincere praise of other people’s appearance or possessions. Also, the pursuit of a plan may require false assertions for motives such as we saw in the stage play in VI.4. Still, these usages are probably parasitic on a principle such as Grice has proposed, or else they would not be effective.

1.6.4 The principle of RELATION is cited simply as “be relevant” (Grice 1975: 46). Grice’s notion subsumes at least some factors of my notions of relevance (oriented toward a plan or goal) and knowledge access (what kind of contents are in principle related to each other). One could devise cases where these two notions of mine come into conflict, for example, when someone’s plan calls for a sudden change of content to a topic not accessible from the previous one (e.g. Mrs. Haggett’s attempt to stall in (86) of sample (188); or the mother’s change of song in (15) of sample (247). But these cases could plausibly be seen as violations of normal conversation.

1.6.5 The principle of MANNER is rather diverse: (1) “be perspicuous”; (2) “avoid obscurity of expression “; (3) “avoid ambiguity”; (4) “be brief”; and (5) “be orderly” (Grice 1975: 46). In a recent presentation at the University of Bielefeld Symposium on Theories of Language Use (June 1979), Grice also proposed to state this maxim as “Frame whatever you say such as to be appropriate to a reply.” These notions can be clarified as follows (I rely here again on Grice’s explanations). Be perspicuous would yield this maxim: “Be such that the intentions you have for what you say are plainly served.” Avoid obscurity could be stated as: “Do not be difficult to understand.” Avoid ambiguity can be rephrased as: “Do not express yourself such that your audience will take meanings other than what you intend.” Be brief could be: “Do not use more time than necessary to make your contribution”; hence, “quantity” concerns how much you say, and “brevity” concerns how much you take to say it. Be orderly could be restated as: “Present your materials in the order in which they are required.” Grice’s illustration of appropriateness to a rep/y was the use of formats suitable for a denial.

1.6.6 Grice also has introduced the notion of IMPLICATURE (not a maxim) for utterances whose intended utilization is recoverable from their conceptual content only via social conventions (cf. also McCawley 1978; Sadock 1978). A well-known illustration is the utterance:

      (208) Can you pass the salt?

where a request is presented like an inquiry about someone’s abilities. The need for implicature arises from the ASYMMETRY between the connectivities of concepts/relations and those of planning. My notion of RELEVANCE might account for how implicatures are created and recovered.

1.7 The principles suggested by Grice and others exert powerful controls on expectations, defaults, and preferences in conversation. Their violation may elicit regulative utterances such as:  

(209) So what? [violation: co-operation]

(211) Why are you telling me this? [violation: perspicuity]

(212) I don’t know what you’re talking about! [violation: obscurity]  

These signals cannot be used freely on participants with pronounced social dominance over the speaker. Also, some social situations require people to converse in absence of materials needed to live up to Grice’s principles. In many discussions of the weather, (209) through (212) would not be usabIe responses.

1.9 I have proposed to define TOPIC with reference to the density of conceptual-relational configurations in text-world models (e.g. in III.4.27). A single utterance in conversation might not have its own topic, but might rather present material which would become topical if developed in follow-up utterances (Schank 1977: 424). Hence, topic is a dynamic aspect of the flow and shift of knowledge drawn from the various sources enumerated in VIII.1.4ff. Topic shifts/are especialIy pronounced among participants with rich knowledge stores regarding each other’s personal histories. An illustration would be this dialogue I overheard on the University of Florida campus: .

(213.1) Hey, what’s happening?

(213.3) If I get the physics paper done. Your brother back yet?

(213.4) Sometime next week. Got hung up somehow.

(213.5) Sounds just like him.

Without a context of shared experience, these utterances would hardly occur together. Conversely, unco-operative speakers can deflect interaction by deliberately discontinuous shifts, as in this recent campus exchange:

(214.1) BIBLE EVANGELIST: It’s a fearful thing to meet with God the King!

(214.2) STUDENT: Like when Godzilla meets King Kong?

The student used superficial similarities among expressions to move the topic from religion to a monster movie made some years ago.

(215.1) I’m afraid I’ve been dissipating.

(215.3) And yet the temptation, you see, Mr. Weller.

(215.4) Ah, to be sure.

(215.5) Plunged into the very vortex of society, you know, Mr. Weller.

(215.6) Dreadful indeed.

Sam’s (ironic) contributions display his solidarity without affecting topic flow. This type of response can extend back further than to a previous utterance, though clarification may be needed (Dickens 1836-37: 552):

(216.1) What a lucky fellow you are!

(216.2) How do you mean?

(216.3) That there young lady. She knows what’s what, she does. [Mr. Weller closed one eye, and shook his head from side to side.]

(216.4) I’m afraid you’re a cunning fellow, Mr. Weller.

Sam’s first remark looks back to a topic raised some time before — the youngest daughter of the footman’s master “leaning heavily on his shoulder’ — so that its motivation is not at once obvious. The final remark (216.4) of the footman takes Sam’s feedback as grounds for inferring his mental abilities.

(217) Why did you do that? [reason-of]

(219) How did you manage that? [enablement-of, instrument-of]

(220) Why did you do that? [purpose-of]

(221) What brought that on? [reason-of]

(222) When did that happen? [time-of]

(223) Where did that happen? [location-of]

(224) What’s it made of? [substance-of]

(225) How did you find out? [apperception-of]

(226) How did you think that up? [cognition-of]

(227) Where did you get it from? [entry-into-possession-of]  

1.12 To use these questions, participants would search the applicable knowledge pattern for problematic entries (cf. examples in Schank 1977). The acceptability of a question rises with the uncertainty of the elements in its focus, and with their relevance to an event, action, object, or situation involved. A statement like:

(228) I fell in love last night.

could sensibly be responded to with (218), (221), (222), or (223), but hardly with (217), (219), (220), and (224) would be less likely: falling in love is popularly supposed not to be guided by reason or purpose, nor to have substance. A good test for problematic and interesting aspects of some assertion is to try the effects of these various follow-up questions upon it. Put into a quasi­-Gricean maxim, but with my terms, we obtain: “Select an active node of the discourse world and pursue from it a pathway whose linkage or goal node is problematic or variable.”

(229.1) ‘Next morning he gets up, has a fire lit, orders in three shillings worth of crumpets, toasts them all, eats them all, and blows his brains out’.

Although the pro-form ‘that’ is itself non-determinate, there is no doubt that Mr. Pickwick’s follow-up question (229.2) is directed only toward the final action of ‘blowing one’s brains out’, normally requiring an unusually powerful “reason-of’ linkage. People ‘get up’, ‘light fires’, ‘eat crumpets’, etc. in the normal course of life.

(230.1) Will you allow me to inquire why you make up your bed under that there deal table?

A speaker can encourage conversation by withholding some problematic knowledge and allowing others to make guesses. A cobbler Sam meets in debtors’ prison turns out to have a very informative reason for his arrest (Dickens 1836-37: 653) (231.1-5) This reason is so non-expected that a regulatory interchange concerning believability ensues (231.6-7):

(231.1) What do you suppose ruined me now?

(231.2) Why, I suppose the beginning was that you got into debt.

(231.3) Never owed a farthing. Try again.

(231.4) You didn’t go to law, I hope?

(231.5) Never in my life. The fact is, I was ruined by having money left me.

(231.6) Come, come, that won’t do.

(231.7) Oh I daresay you don’t believe it. I wouldn’t if I was you; but it’s true all the same.  

The final remark (231.7) clearly signals how participants project their own knowledge and beliefs onto others in conversation (VIII.1.4.5).

(232.1) WelI now, you ‘ve been a-prophesying away very fine, like a red­faced Nixon as the sixpenny books gives pictures on.

(232.3) This here gentleman was a prophet.

(232.4) What’s a prophet?

(232.5) Why, a man as tell what’s a-going to happen.

(232.6) I wish I’d known him, Sammy. Perhaps he might have throwed a small light on that here liver complaint as we was a-speaking of just now. Howsoever, if he’s dead and ain’t left the business to nobody, there’s an end on it. Go on, Sammy.

The elder Mr. Weller steers the topic back to an earlier one (the ‘liver complaint’ of his wife’s pastor) and then signals, with ‘go on’, a return to the previous point (232.1), where the digression occurred (232.6).

(233.1) Very queer life is a pike-keeper’s, sir.

(233.3) There alI on ‘em men as has met with some disappointment in life.

(233.4) Ay, ay?

(233.5) Yes. Consequence of which they retires from the world and shuts themselves up in pikes; partly with the view of being solitary, and partly to revenge themselves on mankind by taking tolls.

1.17 These examples illustrate conversations whose components are less goal-directed than those we looked at in the stage play in VI.4. They are typical of situations where people are motivated by social factors to uphold a continuity of communication. That continuity requires a corresponding continuity of topic, but shifts may pursue a wide variety of links. Situational settings and participants’ episodic apperception and know ledge can readily be used, since they rest upon experiential continuity.

(234) I’d like to say three things about that.

The speaker hopes that no reply will come except at most an encouragement to continue. Anything else would be considered as clear an interruption as breaking into the midst of a half-uttered sentence.

(236.1) Curious little nooks in a great place like London these old inns are.

And Jack Bamber was indeed ‘the figure that now started forward and burst into an animated torrent of words’. Similarly, people encourage conversation by searching memory for a special topic that a given participant, especially a socially important personage, should know about (Dickens 1836-37: 530):

(237.1) “Have you seen his lordship’s mail cart, Bantam?” inquired the Honourable Mr. Crushton after a short pause, during which […] Mr. Crushton had been reflecting upon what subject his lordship could talk about best.

(237.2) “Dear me, no,” replied the M.C .; “a mail-cart! What an excellent ideal Remarkable!”

(237.3) “Gwacious heavens!” said his lordship, “I though evewebody had seen the new mail cart; it’s the neatest, pwettiest, gwacefulIest tbing that ever wan upon wheels. Painted wed, with cweam piebald. [etc.]”