Masarykova univerzita
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af.iv)ConclusionIn the corpus of political interviews there appear diverse lexical items the function of which is to attenuate the illocutionary force of utterances. Although hedging devices occur less frequently than boosting devices in the corpus, they belong to important linguistic means of showing speaker’s involvement in political interviews as well. It is due to the fact that, on the one hand, politicians want to show power and assert themselves in front of their audience and do not want to look uncertain or hesitant. On the other hand, they aim at being closer to their voters, and as a result they show a high degree of involvement in their language. They want to use a similar language as their voters, therefore, there are signs of informality in their language. Figure : Pragmatic Functions of Hedges As shown in Figure 6, hedging devices were divided into nine pragmatic functions, the most frequent of them being attenuation of the forthcoming message. Politicians do not want to sound too authoritative and reserved so they use hedging devices I think, I would say, I would think, etc. to soften their propositions. A very low frequency of occurrence of functions of detachment and evasiveness confirms a high degree of speaker’s involvement in the genre of political interview. It relates to what has already been pointed out: by being detached and evasive, politicians would not have confidence of their voters. By contrast, they want to be in touch with public. As regards the difference between male and female politicians, the present analysis reveals that in case of hedging devices, these difference are not significant. Females used more hedging devices expressing unspecified reference and detachment but the difference is insignificant (the difference between females and males considering unspecified reference is six instances and mere two instances in the case of detachment). What is interesting is the frequency of occurrence of evasiveness. Males produced 25 instances, while females used it only twice. As already explained in Section 8.4.9, female politicians feel the need to vindicate their position in the area of politics since this sphere is usually connected with men. Some voters may not believe in the abilities of females in top politics, female politicians are aware of this and try to counterbalance this by using a language similar to their male counterparts. Speaker’s involvement in political interviews manifests itself not only by using boosting and hedging devices but also by using modal expressions. The next chapter will discuss the concept of modality in political interviews in greater detail.
ag.Modalityag.i)IntroductionAs anticipated in the previous section, this chapter will deal with modality in the corpus of political interviews. Needless to say, it is a distinct linguistic category which has been described from various viewpoints. It has also been contrasted with the related notions of mood and evidentiality (cf. Frawley 1992; Hoye 1997; Palmer 2001; Huddleston and Pullum 2002; among others). A comparison of these concepts with modality will be provided in Sections 9.1 and 9.2. Modality is classified into several types, which will be described in Section 9.5. Apart from classifying modality into epistemic and deontic types, there have been other classifications, they are mentioned in Section 9.6. As with boosting and hedging, the frequency of occurrence of modal expressions in the corpus was investigated. A quantitative and qualitative analysis of these expressions and types of modality is offered in Section 9.9. Section 9.10 deals with gender-specificity and modality and Section 9.11 describes an interesting topic of modal combinations. As already mentioned, the expression of speaker’s attitude towards the proposition is also connected, apart from the intensification or attenuation of the illocutionary force, with the concept of modality, which equally functions as a means of modifying the illocutionary force of utterances. The main reason for this is the fact that speakers or writers communicate not only bare facts but also their own stance toward the proposition. “Speakers often qualify their statements with respect to believability, reliability, and general compatibility with accepted fact” (Frawley 1992:384). In this connection, Urbanová (2003:27) correctly points out that it is not possible to separate the “matter-of-fact content [of the message] from the attitudinal aspects”. ag.ii)Mood and ModalityThis section will explain the differences between mood and modality and it will introduce approaches of several scholars to this issue (Bybee and Fleischman 1995; Huddleston 1984; Lyons 1977; Huddleston and Pullum 2002; Frawley 1992; Hoye 1997; Palmer 2001). The relationship between these two concepts is often discussed in literature owing to the frequent confusion over the use of these two terms. “[...] mood refers to a formally grammaticalized category of the verb which has a modal function. Moods are expressed inflectionally, generally in distinct sets of verbal paradigms, [...], which vary from one language to another in respect to number as well as to the semantic distinctions they mark” (Bybee and Fleischman 1995:2, my emphasis). “[...] mood is a category of grammar, modality a category of meaning. Mood is the grammaticalisation of modality within the verbal system. The term ‘mood’ is usually applied to inflectional systems of the verb, as in the contrast between indicative, subjunctive, and imperative in such languages as Latin, French, and German.” (Huddleston and Pullum 2002:172, emphasis added). In addition, Lyons (1977:848) states that “mood is a grammatical category that is found in some, but not all languages.” Huddleston (1984:164) proposes a distinction between “an analytic mood system” and “a synthetic mood system” in different languages. An analytic mood system manifests itself in languages in which modal auxiliaries are markers used to express “the contrast between factual assertion and various kinds of non-factuality and/or non-assertion” (1984:164). English is such a type of language because there is no inflectional system of mood, but there is a difference between “He is downstairs, He may be downstairs, He must be downstairs, and so on” (1984:164, italics in original), which clearly falls within the semantic area. “Where mood is expressed through verbal inflection, it can be described as synthetic” (Hoye 1997:39). As mentioned above, mood is a grammatical category in contrast with modality which is a semantic phenomenon. Huddleston and Pullum (2002:173) assert that “modality is centrally concerned with the speaker’s attitude towards the factuality or actualization of the situation expressed by the rest of the clause”. A similar description has been provided by Palmer (2001:1): “Modality is concerned with the status of the proposition that describes the event.” He continues by stating that it is different form tense and aspect in that “it does not refer directly to any characteristic of the event, but simply to the status of the proposition” (Palmer 2001:1). Further, what is important to take into consideration is the fact that has been proposed by Frawley: “The notional content of modality highlights its association with entire statements. Modality concerns the factual status of information; it signals the relative actuality, validity, or believability of the content of an expression. Modality affects the overall assertability of an expression and thus takes the entire proposition within its scope” (Frawley 1992:385, italics in original). Bybee and Fleischman (1995) add that modality is expressed “in a variety of ways: morphological, lexical, syntactic, or via intonation. These are not mutually exclusive” (1995:2). Halliday (1970) proposes a different approach towards mood and modality from the above-mentioned ones and draws a distinction between the three concepts of modulation, modality and mood. He states that these concepts are different but at the same time they are “in some sense semantically alike” (1970:342). Since Halliday considers these concepts from the viewpoint of the functions of language, he claims that modality is “derived from the ‘interpersonal’ function of language” (1970:342, my emphasis), expressing “the speaker’s assessment of probability and predictability. It is external to the content, being part of the attitude taken up by the speaker” (1970:349, my emphasis). Because of the expression of the speaker’s attitude towards the factual content of the utterance, modality is, at the same time, oriented towards the ideational function of language (1970:349, my emphasis). The concept of modulation is different because “it is ideational in function, and expresses factual conditions on the process expressed in the clause” (1970:343). It presents the relationship of the participant to the process (1970:349). Finally, mood is often regarded as an interrelation of two functions. On the one hand, it is connected with the textual function of language which regards the way how sentences are organized to form a text, on the other hand, it relates to the interpersonal function which is concerned with the “speaker’s choice of role in the communicative situation (1970:325, note 9). Download 1.35 Mb. Share with your friends:
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