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- Ad a) hedges on illocutionary force
- Ad b) hedges addressed to Grice’s Maxims
- Ad biii) relevance hedges
- Ad c) hedges addressed to politeness strategies
- Ad d) prosodic and kinesic hedges
ab.v)ConclusionIt is evident from the research presented in this chapter that boosting devices perform various pragmatic functions in the genre of political interview (see Figure 3 below). All these pragmatic functions contribute to a higher degree of speaker’s involvement of this discourse genre. With reference to the differences between male and female speakers, as regards the functions of boosting devices in general, there are no substantial distinctions, which is attributable to the fact that female politicians have used fewer boosters overall than their male counterparts, so the absolute numbers are lower. Figure : Pragmatic Functions of Boosters The most frequent function of boosters performed by females is subjectivity, which means that female politicians focus on presenting their own values and attitudes as true and in this way attempt to influence the audience. Female politicians used more boosting devices which express the degree of a certain quality. This result confirms the feature that has already been observed, namely, that women have a more difficult position for asserting themselves in the field of politics, thus, their language must show certainty and confidence for them to be perceived as competent for the position of a politician. Since males do not have to justify their position in front of the public to such a great extent as women do, they, in addition, focus on foregrounding those parts of utterances which are significant for the hearer. That is why the linguistic means whose function is to express hearer-oriented emphasis appears more frequently by males. Males also pay a greater attention to the content of the message, so the most frequent function occurring by male politicians is content-oriented emphasis. To sum up, the use of boosting devices in the genre of political interview is, as is evident from the research, very common and recurrent, which contributes to a higher degree of involvement. Therefore, it cannot be claimed that this type of discourse belongs to low-involved genres. In addition, the choice of particular devices depends to some extent on the speaker’s decision and his/her personal preferences. As mentioned in the previous sections, accentuation is not the only linguistic means used to modify the illocutionary force. Chapter 8 will describe another concept, namely, attenuation of the illocutionary force.
ac.Attenuation of the Illocutionary Forceac.i)IntroductionAs in the previous chapter dealing with boosting devices, this section will be structured in a similar way. First, it will introduce classifications of hedging devices (Subchapter 8.2), the next section will deal with the frequency of hedges in the corpus (Section 8.3) and finally, in Section 8.4 quantitative and qualitative analyses of pragmatic functions of hedges will be given. ac.ii)Classifications of HedgesAs the present analysis shows, boosting and hedging devices belong to important linguistic means reflecting speaker’s involvement in interaction. Chapter 7 dealt with boosting devices, their classifications and pragmatic functions in the corpus of political interviews. Just like boosters, hedges may be classified into categories according to their contribution to discourse meaning. This classification of both boosting and hedging devices is appropriate for the present research as it reflects the attitude of the participants to the content of the message. For this reason it was used in this thesis. This categorization will be described in Section 8.2.3. There are other classifications of hedges, one suggested by Quirk et al. (1985), and another proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987), which will be outlined in Sections 8.2.1 and 8.2.2. ac.ii.1Quirk et al.’s Classification of HedgesQuirk at al. (1985) define downtoners as items which “have a generally lowering effect on the force of the verb or predication and many of them apply a scale to gradable verbs” (1985:597). They belong to the group of intensifiers but as Quirk at al. emphasize, this term does not relate only to devices which are used to strengthen the illocutionary force. “Rather, an intensifying subjunct indicates a point on an abstractly conceived intensity scale; and the point indicated may be relatively low or relatively high” (1985:589). Quirk at al. (1985: 597) suggest the following classification of downtoners: approximators indicate “an approximation to the force of the verb” and at the same time they imply that “the verb concerned expresses more than is relevant” (e.g. nearly, almost, practically) compromisers decrease the force of the verb only moderately and similar to approximators they indicate that the item related expresses more than it is suitable (e.g. kind of, sort of, quite, rather, more or less) diminishers “scale downwards” and their rough meaning is “to a small extent”. They are further divided into the ‘expression diminishers’ which indicate “only part of the potential force of the item concerned” (e.g. partly, partially, slightly, somewhat, to some extent, a bit, a little, etc.), and into ‘attitude diminishers’ which imply that “the force of the item concerned is limited” (e.g. only, merely, just, simply etc.) (1985:598) minimizers are “negative maximizers”, meaning ‘(not) to any extent’. There are two groups of minimizers - negatives such as hardly, little, scarcely; and nonassertives in the least, at all, a bit, etc. This categorization proposed by Quirk et al. rests on semantic differences among downtoners. All types of these hedging devices serve the function of reducing the illocutionary force, however, approximators and compromisers combine this function with questioning the appropriateness of the item concerned, diminishers and minimizers grade the intensity of the related item (Quirk et al. 1985:597). This classification is purely semantic, therefore, the classification of hedges according to discourse meaning, which express the attitude of the speakers towards the message, is preferred in this thesis. ac.ii.2Brown and Levinson’s Classification of HedgesIn this section, Brown and Levinson’s classification of hedges will be introduced. These scholars have proposed a categorization of hedges within the framework of negative politeness. They introduce these basic groups of hedges:
ad.hedges addressed to Grice’s Maxims ad.i)quality hedges ad.ii)quantity hedges ad.iii)relevance hedges ad.iv)manner hedges ae.hedges addressed to politeness strategies af.prosodic and kinesic hedges (Brown and Levinson 1987:146ff.) Ad a) hedges on illocutionary forceA significant subgroup of hedges on illocutionary force are performative hedges because they are “the most important linguistic means of satisfying the speaker’s want [...]. Such hedges may be analysed as adverbs on (often deleted) performative verbs that represent the illocutionary force of the sentence” (1987:146). In English, there are expressions, for example in fact, in a way, in a sense, it seems to me, etc. with this function, which are called ‘adverbial-clause hedges’ (1987:162). Hedges on illocutionary force include also particles (really, certainly, sincerely, etc.) as means of hedging the propositional content (Brown and Levinson 1987:147). Ad b) hedges addressed to Grice’s MaximsThis category of hedges highlight the fact that “the cooperative condition is met, or serve notice that it may not have been met, or question whether it has been met” (Brown and Levinson 1987:164). There are four types of hedges relating to Grice’s Maxims of the Cooperative Principle: Ad bi) quality hedgesQuality hedges indicate that “the speaker is not taking full responsibility for the truth of his utterance”, for example: I think, I assume, there is some evidence that, etc. Alternatively, they emphasize the speaker’s commitment to the truth of the proposition: I absolutely promise/believe that..., or finally, they indicate the speaker’s irresponsibility to inform the hearer: as you know, as it is well known, etc. (1987:164-165). Ad bii) quantity hedgesQuantity hedges point out to the fact that the information provided by the speaker will not be as accurate as expected. Thus, these expressions are used to signal the imprecision: roughly, more or less, approximately, or so, to some extent, etc. (1987:166). Ad biii) relevance hedgesRelevance hedges are associated with the topic change. As Brown and Levinson put it, “because of the sensitivity of topic changes as impositions on hearer’s face, such changes are often done off record” (1987:168-169). Attenuating devices that indicate this change may be these: this may not be relevant/appropriate/timely, but..., now is probably the time to say..., by the way..., anyway..., etc. (1987:169). Ad biv) manner hedgesManner hedges are used to “redress all kinds of FTAs [face threatening acts] - for example, insults” (1987:171). These include: ... if you see what I mean/I’m driving at, in a nutshell, you see, to put it more simply, what I meant was..., etc. Ad c) hedges addressed to politeness strategiesBrown and Levinson add that all these Maxim hedges, mentioned above, are used very frequently in everyday interaction. In addition to these hedges, there is another type of devices which “function directly as notices of violations of face wants” (1987:171). These hedges are called “hedges addressed to politeness strategies”. Brown and Levinson give these examples of this category of hedges: frankly, to be honest, honestly, I must say (1987:171-172). Ad d) prosodic and kinesic hedgesThis kind of hedging devices, the last type mentioned by Brown and Levinson, accompanies verbal hedges in that they may emphasize them and so indicate a higher degree of tentativeness. “The raised eyebrow, the earnest frown, the umms and ahhs and hesitations that indicate the speaker’s attitude toward what he is saying, are often the most salient clue to the presence of an FTA, even cross-culturally” (1987:172). Brown and Levinson’s classification is relevant and useful and it is possible to use it for an analysis dealing with negative politeness. However, this thesis focuses on boosting and hedging devices from the point of view of their contribution to discourse meaning. When applying the classification relating to discourse meaning, speaker’s attitude to the proposition is manifested better. In addition, the last category in Brown and Levison’s classification, prosodic and kinesic hedges, are actually extralinguistic means whose investigation is beyond the scope of the present analysis, as mentioned in Section 2.9. af.i.1Classification of Hedges by their Relationship to Discourse MeaningAs explained in the previous sections, the most relevant classification for this thesis is the classification relating to discourse meaning. According to the relationship to discourse meaning, hedges may be divided into groups which roughly correspond to that of boosters. The following categorization has been proposed by Holmes (1984:359ff.): speaker-oriented hearer-oriented content or other-oriented hedges In this analysis, speaker- and hearer-oriented categories of hedges are used in the same way as they have been described by Holmes. The last category, content or other-oriented hedges, was narrowed to “content-oriented” hedges which attenuate the force of the proposition as a whole. The reason is that other-oriented hedges as Holmes defines them is a too broad category of various types of expressions, so called “deresponsibilizing devices”, that focus on a “semantic distinction between appearance and reality as the basis of the attenuation” (Holmes 1984:361). Expressions which she includes in this category are on the face of it, superficially, ostensibly, nominally, theoretically, etc. These linguistic means do not appear in the corpus at all that is why the focus is only on content-oriented hedges. Since hedges and their functions may be expressed by various linguistic means, it is not possible to list all of them in the chapters below. Therefore, only several selected expressions are shown there; all hedges occurring in the corpus may be found on pages XIV-XVI. All hedges are underlined in the appendix of this thesis and their types and functions are abbreviated in brackets, for example: you know (HHO, H.-o. uncert.) = you know is a hearer-oriented hedge, the function is hearer-oriented uncertainty af.i.1.1Speaker-oriented HedgesThis type of hedges includes linguistic devices that are used to express speaker’s doubts and uncertainty in relation to the validity of the particular proposition (Holmes 1984:359). This category of hedges comprises verb phrases having the form the first-person singular pronoun I + a verb of cognition - I suppose, I guess, I would hope, I think, I don’t think, I mean, and I assume, and the adverb perhaps. Hedges, as well as boosters, may be expressed not only by one- or two-word expressions but also, and very often they are, expressed by a whole clause or a sentence or a part of clause or sentence. This is shown in Examples 56 and 57: Example JON SOPEL: Well, let's talk about why this has all come about most recently and the rows there have been over MPs pay and MPs allowances and particularly Derek Conway. We've had Nick Clegg talking about getting rid of the MP as a Derek Conway clause. An MP is able to claim four hundred pounds a month for food on their second home without any receipts. Why. THERESA MAY: Well that's - the system has grown up because frankly, on that particular allowance, and I've said, I mean I believe that that allowance we should take that housing allowance out - that's my personal view, take that housing allowance out. I think we should ... (App., p. 183, Theresa May, 2008-03-09, ll. 58-65) Example JON SOPEL: Do you see any similarities between yourself and Barack Obama. DAVID CAMERON: Not really no because I think American politics and British politics are quite different. He's a Democrat, I'm a Conservative. I mean I suppose we're both trying to, you know, kind of overturn the government and win. I enjoy watching him and he's a great speaker. But I'm also a big John McCain fan. I think the plain speaking of this man who just, you know, he goes to Michigan and says look, I know we've lost a lot of jobs here but I've got to tell you they're not coming back. You know, it's so frank and refreshing to see somebody who really tells it how it is. (App., p. 120, David Cameron, 2008-03-16, ll. 231-240) In the following extract, the participants discuss the US - French relationship. Rice assures the listeners of a good relationship with this country but she is not certain about the future development and admits a possible occurrence of problems by hedging the last utterance by the use of perhaps: Example QUESTION: Tell me, the French have elected a new president. What impact might this have on the bilateral relationship between the United States and France? SECRETARY RICE: Well, I've had an opportunity to meet Mr. Sarkozy on a couple of occasions and he's a ball of energy, and I think he will -- obviously he's run on a platform of reform and it'll be very interesting to see. But of course, we've had good relations with France, and particularly on some issues like Lebanon and the Middle East, and I really do really look forward now to intensifying those efforts because we need a strong and vibrant France as a part of the transatlantic relationship that can help to deal with these very difficult problems. We've had our differences in the past with France, but really the relationship has been going in the right direction for some time now and I expect that it's going to continue and perhaps accelerate some. (App., p. 215, Condoleezza Rice, 2007-05-07, ll. 7-19)
af.i.1.2Hearer-oriented HedgesThis group of hedges expresses uncertainty or hesitation relating to the hearer. As the present research confirms, and as has already been mentioned in the previous chapter dealing with boosters, one and the same expression may, in some contexts, function as a booster or a hedge, respectively. This is also true about the hearer-oriented hedge you know. Holmes (1990:189) correctly emphasizes that you know is a “complex and sophisticated pragmatic particle [...]. It may act as a turn-yielding device, as a linguistic imprecision signal, as an appeal to the listener for reassuring feedback, or as a signal that the speaker attributes understanding to the listener.” Linguistic means appearing in the corpus that belong to the category of hearer-oriented hedges are not as diverse as those of other categories. The reason is that it is the least frequent category not only of hedging but also of boosting devices. It is mostly expressed by the discourse marker you know in the corpus. In Example 59, Hazel Blears expresses her uncertainty about the elections in the UK and turns to the hearer by using you know: Example
JON SOPEL: I don't want to get hung up on the titles, but there was a time when a Labour person would have been thrilled to be described as Blairite, because it - you know they were being associated with the winning team. I just wonder whether it is seen a bit more maybe as a handicap now? HAZEL BLEARS: Well I, I think it's really dangerous erm if we actually distance ourselves from what we've been doing over the last ten years. If you think about it, in America, Al Gore kind of tried to put a bit of distance between himself and Clinton and what people did was they voted for George Bush. What I don't want us to do is to distance ourselves from all the good things that we've done over the last ten years, because I do think we've got a really good record. Because my concern is that people then might, you know, see David Cameron and his Tories, as a bit more interesting. If people think that we're saying, well, we didn't get it all right, then I think they'll take a pretty dim view of us. I mean we, we haven't got everything right, but I think overall the record on health, on education, on tackling crime, all of that is pretty successful. (App., pp. 66-67, Hazel Blears, 2007-02-25, ll. 31-48) In Example 60, Cameron rejects any similarities between himself and Barack Obama and explains why. He also talks about John McCain, another candidate for US president. Cameron has to formulate his ideas very quickly, and that is why he uses not only the hedge you know but also just, which, however, belongs to the category of content-oriented hedges. Example JON SOPEL: Do you see any similarities between yourself and Barack Obama. DAVID CAMERON: Not really no because I think American politics and British politics are quite different. He's a Democrat, I'm a Conservative. I mean I suppose we're both trying to, you know, kind of overturn the government and win. I enjoy watching him and he's a great speaker. But I'm also a big John McCain fan. I think the plain speaking of this man who just, you know, he goes to Michigan and says look, I know we've lost a lot of jobs here but I've got to tell you they're not coming back. You know, it's so frank and refreshing to see somebody who really tells it how it is. (App., p. 120, David Cameron, 2008-03-16, ll. 231-240) In the following extract, the speaker is not certain about what to say next, she needs some time to think of the right words, so at first she uses the hearer-oriented hedge you know and then she continues her talk: Example JON SOPEL: But you've had a review on this, the Barker Review, that looked at what the availability would be of brown field sites, came up with a figure of just under being able to create a million new homes, your estimate is that you need three and a half million new homes. YVETTE COOPER: That's right. And the thing about brown field land is that it comes, it becomes available all the time because you have you know, maybe a factory that closes or maybe use that changes in a particular area, so brown field land does develop and change. But ultimately, it is for local councils to decide what is the best location in their area, and they have to look at all the areas you know, around the town, the town centre, in their communities, because they'll know best where these homes should best be built to meet their local needs. (App., p. 144, Yvette Cooper, 2007-07-15, ll. 17-27) af.i.1.3Content-oriented HedgesAs the name suggests, this category of hedges relates to the content of the message. When using a content-oriented hedging device, the force of the speech act is attenuated and thus it indicates uncertainty and evasiveness of the speaker. Holmes includes also “other-oriented” hedges in this category. As already explained above (see Section 8.2), this viewpoint is too broad for this research and in addition, expressions belonging to the group of other-oriented hedges do not appear in the corpus. Linguistic means which contribute to attenuation of the content of the message and refer more to this content rather than to the participants of the interactional exchange are more varied than hearer-oriented hedges. That is why their complete list may be found on pages XIV-XV and here, the discussion was restricted to only some expressions. Content-oriented hedges found in the corpus are: epistemic adverbs probably, possibly, and maybe, modal verbs may, might, could, and other expressions such as well, sort of, kind of, more or less, in fact, quite, simply, relatively, just, actually, etc. In the following extract from the corpus, the speaker uses several content-oriented hedges. Well in the initial position in the first utterance is a sign for the hearer that the speaker will start speaking. Modal verbs may and might and the modal adverb maybe indicate uncertainty and assumption of the speaker, quite attenuates the quality of the adjective strong. Example
JON SOPEL: Well I'm joined now by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. Ruth Kelly, welcome to the Politics Show. We saw, at the end of that report there from Max Cotton, a youngster wearing at T-shirt saying 'Soldier of Allah'. Born and bred in the UK, wearing that sort of T-shirt. It sort of underlines the scale of the task. RUTH KELLY: Well I think that is a particularly worrying sign, but I don't think that that's the only issue that we're dealing with in the Report from the Commission on Integration and Cohesion. One of the things I understand that they do in their report is analyse very clearly, that each community, each town, each city in the country, faces very different challenges. In some that may be, as in Halifax, that the issue might be about how Muslims integrate with non-Muslims, in others, such as Boston in Lincolnshire, a small rural towns suddenly facing really quite strong wave of migration from the A8 European countries, who've come here maybe on a very short time basis to work, the challenge and the nature of the challenge is altogether different. (App., p. 177, Ruth Kelly, 2007-06-10, ll. 8-23) In Example 63, David Cameron is not sure about the exact number of GDP (= gross domestic product), so he hedges his utterance by basically, which is an indication that the number to follow is vague. Another interpretation could be that Cameron knows the exact number of GDP and uses basically as a means expressing approximation. Another hedge in this excerpt is the adverb actually, which expresses the speaker’s uncertainty about the following proposition: Example
JON SOPEL: So is the American example wrong, where there are tax cuts being introduced to help kickstart the American economy (interjection) BOTH TOGETHER DAVID CAMERON: No. Listen. Let me try and explain. The reason they can do that in America is they have not got as big a budget deficit, as a share of national income as we've got. Because our deficit is basically 3% of GDP, there's nothing left in the locker. If the government had announced some big tax cut on budget day, I think actually the markets would have taken fright. (App., p. 117, David Cameron, 2008-03-16, ll. 61-68) In Example 64 below, well is used to opening of Cooper’s reply. The hedge sort of is a typical sign of informal conversation, however, it also frequently appears in political interviews, which is an indication of conversationalization of this type of discourse, as explained in Chapter 3.5. Sort of is a vague expression relating to implicitness. As Urbanová points out “it is not always necessary or possible to make explicit references to the extralinguistic reality and specify details” (2003:61). Therefore, speakers use expressions such as sort of or kind of which mean anything (Urbanová 2003:62). Example
JON SOPEL: A lot more council housing. YVETTE COOPER: Well, this is not about a return to the old sort of 50s council estates. I don't think that's the right approach and I don't think anybody would support that, where you have, you know, the council estate on one side of town, the executive estate on the other. This is about developing mixed communities and that means a lot more working in partnership, you know, with other organisations, be they housing associations or developers or others. JON SOPEL: You say that's not what people want. That's exactly what a lot of local Labour councillors would love to see. The ability to build... YVETTE COOPER: No, I don't think that's right. What they want to see is mixed communities. (App., p. 146, Yvette Cooper, 2007-07-15, ll. 110-121)
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