Masarykova univerzita

y.Boosting and Hedging

y.i)Introduction

As indicated above, this chapter will explain the basic distinction between boosting and hedging. It has already been mentioned that the degree of speaker’s involvement relates to modifying the illocutionary force of speech acts. In this connection Urbanová (2003) states that “the interpretative character of meaning […] is reflected in the modification of the illocutionary force […]. Meaning in conversation is dynamic in the sense that new shades of meaning constantly come into existence through contextual clues and speaker-hearer interaction, simultaneously reflecting idiosyncrasies and predilections on the part of the speaker” (2003:66, emphasis added). The illocutionary force of utterances is modified due to the incidence of two “counteracting, yet co-existing tendencies influencing the relative weight of the message, namely attenuation and accentuation” (Urbanová 2003:66, my emphasis).

y.ii)Boosting

In her article on modification of the illocutionary force, Holmes (1984) describes two communicative strategies for modifying the strength of the speech acts: attenuation (sometimes called “hedging”, “mitigation” or “weakening”) and boosting (“accentuation”, “strengthening” or “intensification”). These two concepts have been dealt with in various studies, among others e.g. by Brown and Levinson (1987), Lakoff (1972), Fraser (1980), Coates (1987), and Urbanová (2003).

Boosting and hedging are regarded as complementary, not contrasting, notions which, in opposition to Vanderveken’s concept (described in Chapter 4.2), are external modifiers of illocutionary force and not its constituents. The differentiation between attenuation and intensification should be understood as “illocutionary force gradation” (Urbanová 2003:67), thus, she continues, slight meaning distinctions may arise and reflect various degrees of the speaker's involvement to the proposition (2003:67). Holmes suggests reasons why a speaker may want to modify the force of a speech act: “firstly, to convey modal meaning or the speaker’s attitude to the content of the proposition, and, secondly, to express affective meaning or the speaker’s attitude to the addressee in the context of utterance” (Holmes 1984:348, my emphasis).

In the present analysis, the means of strengthening the illocutionary force will be termed “boosters”, however, there appear many more designations for them with identical or almost identical meaning in the relevant literature, namely, “intensifiers” (Quirk et al. 1985), “up-graders” (House and Kasper 1981) “accentuation markers” (Urbanová 2003), and “strengtheners” (Brown and Levinson 1987). If the speaker wants to persuade the listener about the validity of the proposition expressed, s/he makes use of means which “boost the illocutionary force of the speech act asserting the proposition, expressing great certainty or conviction concerning its validity” (Holmes 1984:348).

The expression of affective meaning, another reason for modifying the illocutionary force mentioned by Holmes (1984), includes the speaker’s attitude to the recipient. “Modifying the illocutionary force of a speech act may serve to express a variety of attitudes to the hearer, ranging from very positive to very negative attitudes” (Holmes 1984:349). In other words, both hedging and boosting can be used to modify positively and negatively affective speech acts from any of the categories defined by Searle (such as directives, declaratives, commisives, etc., see Chapter 4.3). Moreover, Holmes states that one possibility of analysing the affective meaning of attenuation and boosting is to “examine the contribution of these strategies to the speaker-hearer relationship” (Holmes 1984:349). In this connection, Holmes (1984:346-347) gives several examples which demonstrate a variety of linguistic devices used to attenuate or boost the illocutionary force of a speech act:

Really you are amazingly pretty. - boosting of a positively affective speech act

My god you are such a fool. - boosting of a negatively affective speech act

You are kind of pretty in a way. - attenuating of a positively affective speech act

You are a bit of a fool you know. - attenuating of a negatively affective speech act

From that it follows that boosting of a positively affective speech act can increase solidarity and the feeling of friendliness between the speaker and the hearer. On the contrary, boosting the force of a negatively affective speech act may decrease friendliness and increase social distance between the speaker and the hearer. Similarly, attenuation of a positively affective speech act may increase social distance and reduce the effects of a positive speech act. Finally, attenuation of a negatively affective speech act, for example mitigation, can contribute to the maintenance of the speaker-hearer relationship (Holmes 1995:77). Since political discourse is predominantly oriented towards conveying facts and information, it means that it has a “referential” function rather than “affective” function (Holmes 1995:3), which is used to “convey feelings and reflect social relationships” (Holmes 1995:3). Although matter-of-factness is typical of political interviews, a certain amount of affectiveness may also be found in this genre. It manifests itself in the use of linguistic means contributing to the modification of the illocutionary force, thus showing involvement. Politicians must show a positive relationship to their viewers and be frank and unreserved, otherwise they may have difficulties with persuading their voters.

The corpus contains a large number of devices which accentuate the force of the proposition. They range from one expression to a part of a sentence, as shown in Example and Example :

Example

JON SOPEL: But here you are, sitting with us and we're delighted to have you here on the Politics Show, talking about your campaign for the Deputy Leadership at the same time as you're the Labour Party Chair. Now, you're going to be doing both simultaneously aren't you.

HAZEL BLEARS: No, I said very clearly yesterday that my focus for the next couple of months will be on winning those elections for Labour. I want to see Labour representatives, particularly in local councils and in Scotland and in Wales because as I said to you before, if you're not in power and you don't have the ability to do the things the public wants us to carrying on doing, and that is absolutely what I will be getting on with in the next couple of months.

(App., p. 69, Hazel Blears, 2007-02-25, ll. 175-183)

Example

JON SOPEL: You keep using the word bad practice, but it would be permissible to have selection by interview.

JACQUI SMITH: No, let's be clear, the admissions system is governed by a code of practice that we introduced with recourse to a statutory adjudicator who can rule admissions practices out of order, and frequently does.

That's the current basis that we introduced, that's the basis on which we'll be going forward but what's more important and in fact actually this isn't about competition between schools, this is about what we are passionate about in the Labour Party and that is how we can make sure that every child in every school is making the sort of progress that we want to see them making.

That's why at the heart of White Paper is how we personalise education, how we get parents engaged, how we build on the successes in our schools (overlaps) ...

(App., p. 252, Jacqui Smith, 2005-11-27, ll. 28-39)

Several boosters may be combined in one utterance in a sequence, as can be seen in the first highlighted utterance of Tony Blair in Example . These linguistic means function as boosters also because when used at the beginning of an utterance, they anticipate and stress the information that will follow. There are more boosting devices in this extract which are not highlighted now since they will be commented on later.

Example

JON SOPEL: But isn't part of that is that because there's a frustration that you never seem to criticise President Bush, you know, that you get the Iraq Study Group Report coming out, which says that there ought to be a sort of gradual withdrawal of troops and there ought to be an engagement of Syria and Iran, George Bush goes in seemingly the opposite direction with this surge of additional troops, and it seems that Britain stands right by that.

TONY BLAIR: Yeah. But I think that - I mean look, first of all, when people say we never disagree with the administration, climate change is a disagreement. Of course we do. But we're fighting as allies in Iraq and in Afghanistan. I happen to support what we're doing there.

And in relation to the Baker Hamilton Study Group, actually, if you look at it, what it's saying is you have to build up the, the Iraqi capability and whether you increase the numbers or troops or not, is actually left as an open question.

Now I think for President Bush, cos the situation for example in Basra is completely different from the situation in Baghdad. I think the issue is for them, how do they make sure that when they erm revitalise the Baghdad security plan this time it works.

(App., pp. 47-48, Tony Blair, 2007-01-28, ll. 179-195)

Expressions sure and really written in bold in Example 7 below, function pragmatically as boosting devices. This means, they are used to demonstrate the degree of the speaker’s commitment to the validity of a proposition. From the semantic point of view, they are termed as devices expressing “epistemic modality” (Lyons 1977:793). Modality as another characteristic feature signalling speaker's involvement to the proposition will be discussed in Chapter 9.

Example

JON SOPEL: Made more difficult by all the people going in to the buy to let market in Bristol. I mean one could even say the Prime Minister, buying flats in Bristol.

TONY BLAIR: I'm sure you can but in respect of those young couples, we need things like shared equity schemes which we're introducing. We need to be releasing land quicker for development but here's the other thing and this is the test for the future, we also need I'm afraid, to build more houses in the south.

Now we say we have to do that, the Conservatives say they don't want any more built in the south. In which case, her problems are going to get worse. But all I'm saying to you really is this. When you come in 1997, you have certain groups of problems that you have to deal with.

Ten years on, the problems have shifted, partly cos as a result of what's happened in the ten years. So, for example, you know, if you go back and...

(App., p. 58, Tony Blair, 2007-04-15, ll. 281-292)

More examples of boosting devices together with the identification of their pragmatic functions may be found in Chapter 7.

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