Masarykova univerzita
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a.IntroductionThis study presents a pragma-semantic analysis of linguistic means expressing the speaker’s involvement in the genre of political interviews. It is often claimed that formal interaction represents a low-involved style, while informal conversation typically displays a higher degree of involvement (cf. Tannen 1985; Chafe 1982, 1984; Elias 1987; Besnier 1994; Katriel and Dascal 1989, Gumperz 1992, among others). Political interview belongs to a genre of public discourse which should be characterised by a low degree of involvement. Additionally, it is generally thought that the language of female speakers is more indeterminate and vague, that females speak more than male speakers and do not speak to the point. And, by contrast, it is usually maintained that males express themselves more directly and matter-of-factly. Based on the literature dealing with involvement (Tannen 1984, 1985; Chafe 1982, 1984; Gumperz 1992) and with language and gender (Holmes 1995; Coates 1993; Lakoff 2003), the following hypotheses can be formulated: hypothesis IThe genre of political interview is detached and impersonal and it shows features of a low-involved style as is typical of any other type of formal interaction. hypothesis IIFemale politicians are more indeterminate and vague in their expression and they do not speak to the point. The expression of male politicians is matter-of-fact and they express themselves more precisely than female politicians. The aim of the present thesis is to confirm or reject these hypotheses. The research is based on an analysis of a corpus of 40 interviews with British and American politicians. The illocutionary force of utterances in the genre of political interview is modified by linguistic means expressing involvement. Means that accentuate this force are commonly called boosting devices, and linguistic means of attenuation of illocutionary force are commonly called hedging devices. Apart from boosters and hedges, modal expressions may also modify the illocutionary force of speech acts. All these means are quantitatively and qualitatively analysed in this thesis. Since the majority of linguistic means of speaker’s involvement are context-sensitive, the methods of analysis of these means are pragmatic and semantic. The thesis consists of ten chapters. After the introduction, Chapter 2: The Delimitation of Involvement as a Linguistic Category provides the theoretical background for the investigation of speaker’s involvement in political interviews. It describes the approach to involvement within the framework of interactional sociolinguistics and discourse analysis. Involvement has also been studied by scholars of the Prague School, which is also included in this chapter. Chapter 3: Political Interview as a Discourse Genre explains why this thesis understands political interview as a genre and gives its basic characteristics. The research of authentic data has shown that there is a growing tendency towards conversationalization of political interview, which is also dealt with in this chapter. Chapter 4: Illocutionary Force and Speech Act Theory offers a brief introduction to the concept of illocutionary force and its components and an explanation of the speech act theory, which was proposed by Austin (1962) and further developed by Searle (1969). Since this thesis focuses on the modification of the illocutionary force of speech acts, the explication of these concepts is appropriate. Chapter 5: Corpus Description provides details about the extent of the corpus, the subject of the analysis, sources of the data for the analysis, as well as information about the speakers and topics discussed. Chapter 6: Boosting and Hedging may be regarded as an introduction to the research presented in this thesis. It acquaints the reader with the basic distinction between boosting and hedging and explains why it is important to take into account the context in which the given utterance occurred. Chapter 7: Intensification of the Illocutionary Force provides classifications of boosters, quantitative and qualitative analyses of boosting devices. It also identifies pragmatic functions of boosters that appear in the corpus. Chapter 8: Attenuation of the Illocutionary Force is very similar in structure to Chapter 7. It introduces several classifications of hedges, namely Quirk’s classification, Brown and Levinson’s classification, and also classification of hedges by their relationship to discourse meaning. It looks into the frequency of occurrence of hedges in the corpus and, as with boosters in Chapter 7, pragmatic functions of hedges are discussed. Chapter 9: Modality discusses another means of modification of the illocutionary force of speech acts in the corpus that also shows the speaker’s involvement. This study offers a wider insight into the concept of speaker’s involvement. Therefore, it also analyses modal means that contribute to a higher degree of involvement. It will be shown that pragmatic functions of boosting and hedging devices are interrelated with modal expressions very closely. In the introductory sections of Chapter 9, the difference between mood and modality, and between evidentiality and modality is explained. Further, particular types of modality are described. This chapter also comprises quantitative and qualitative analyses are not missing even in this chapter. An interesting issue that is discussed in connection with modality is gender-specificity. It is shown that an interpretation of quantitative results should take into account not only the types of modality but also the separate means that express particular types of modality. Concluding sections of this chapter are devoted to modal combinations occurring in the corpus. Finally, Chapter 10: Conclusions summarizes the outcomes of the research present in this thesis into the means of expressing speaker’s involvement in the corpus of political interviews, and compares them with the proposed hypotheses. |