Masarykova univerzita
f.iv)Chafe’s Approach to the Notion of Involvement
Download 1.35 Mb.
|
- Navigate this page:
- Ego involvement
- Interpersonal involvement
- Involvement of the speaker with the subject matter
f.iv)Chafe’s Approach to the Notion of InvolvementThe notion of involvement is significant in the research of Chafe (cf. Chafe 1982, 1984, 1985) as well. By examining and comparing spoken and written discourse he observes that “the slowness, editability and permanence” are significant for writing, in contrast with “the speed and evanescence” of spoken interaction (Chafe 1985:116). In addition, he states that what is different between these two discourse genres is the fact that speakers usually interact face-to-face with their conversational partners, while writers are isolated both spatially and temporally from their listeners. That is why Chafe states that involvement is a typical characteristic of spoken language, whereas detachment dominates written language (1985:116). He defines three types of involvement in conversation: involvement of the speaker with himself (ego involvement) involvement of the speaker with the hearer (or interpersonal involvement; concern for the dynamics of interaction with another person) involvement of the speaker with the subject matter (an ongoing personal commitment to what is being talked about) (Chafe 1985:116). Ego involvement of the speaker is evident in the use of verbal phrases with the first-person pronouns such as I mean, I suppose, I think, I don’t think, and as I say. This type of involvement is typical of the genre of political interview as well. Apart from linguistic means mentioned above, my corpus contains verbal phrases I know, I believe, I guess, I gather, and I agree. When using these forms, politicians express subjectivity and try to sound persuasive in front of their audience. They also want to promote truthfulness of their message and sound confident. Verbal forms of ego involvement in the corpus outnumber the other two types of involvement defined by Chafe. A detailed description of these means and their occurrence in the corpus can be found in Chapters 7 and 8. Interpersonal involvement is apparent in the use of second-person pronouns, addressing the hearer by name, asking the hearer a question, replying to a hearer’s question, or using hearer-oriented phrases and expression like you know or you see. Political interview is governed by certain rules, so it is different from informal conversation in some respects. There is an interviewer who asks the questions and leads the discussion, and there is a politician who answers them. In informal conversation, there are no such rules, the participants ask and answer questions quite freely without any restrictions. As for hearer-oriented expressions, they occur to a lesser extent than the means of ego involvement in the corpus. This means that politicians concentrate more on themselves and on strengthening their position, rather than on their listeners. Hearer-oriented phrases that appear in the corpus are you know and you see. Chapters 7 and 8 provide detailed information about these expressions and their occurrence. Involvement of the speaker with the subject matter is shown by exaggerating, vagueness, hedging, fuzziness, using expressive vocabulary, using historical present, and using emphatic particles like just and really (Chafe 1985:117). This type of involvement is predominantly shown by the use of hedging and boosting devices in the corpus. The group of expressions with this function is called “content-oriented” in the case of hedging devices (see Section 8.2.3.3) and “discourse-organizing” in the case of boosting devices (see Section 7.2.2.3), and their main function is to attenuate or accentuate the message that politicians want to convey to their listeners. Vague and fuzzy expressions can also be found in the corpus but their analysis is beyond the scope of this thesis. Expressive vocabulary and historical present are not used in the genre of political interviews. Rather, they are found in a spontaneous face-to-face conversation because they are connected with using narrative strategies. These strategies, as already mentioned above (see Chapter 2.9), relate to telling stories, which is not typical of the genre of political interview. As regards written discourse, it is correspondingly more detached than spoken discourse. “A writer is typically less concerned with ego expression, less concerned with any direct interaction with the audience, and less immediately involved with the subject matter” (Chafe 1985:117). Means of detachment employed in written language are the passive voice and the use of abstract subjects. With reference to this, Besnier points out that “the detached quality of writing is reflected in the fact that relatively few involvement strategies are used in writing, and in the preponderance in written texts of certain linguistic features which give it a detached quality: passive constructions, indirect quotes, impersonal expressions, etc.” (Besnier 1994:283). As Daneš (1994) notes, Chafe’s theory is “evidently narrow and one-sided” because the characteristic features he proposes are “more or less incidental and heterogeneous (due to his rather limited material basis)” (Daneš 1994:255). Furthermore, he suggests that detachment features as described by Chafe may be treated as devices of a condensed style. To summarize, Chafe’s account of involvement seems to be closer to that of Tannen’s rather than to Gumperz’s because it designates a psychological, internal state which manifests itself in linguistic phenomena (Tannen 2007:27). Further, she states that her conception of involvement emphasizes that it is “an internal, even emotional connection individuals feel which binds them to other people as well as to places, things, activities, ideas, memories, and words” (2007:27). Tannen’s concept also points out “the interactive nature of conversational interaction” (2007:27), which also encompasses Gumprez’s view because he understands involvement predominantly as an active engagement in conversation. “In Gumperz’s framework conversational involvement is achieved in intracultural communication but compromised in cross-cultural communication (Tannen 2007:26). Tannen does not agree with Gumperz’s notion of “cultural homogeneity” because she perceives it as an “idealization that is never completely realized” (2007:26). As she points out, individuals who are brought up in the “same culture” are different as for their gender, class, age, ethnic origin, etc. In this connection she mentions her own investigation (Tannen 1984) into conversation of five Americans that proves the existence of differences in their conversational styles and also misunderstandings that result from these differences. Download 1.35 Mb. Share with your friends:
|