Much like in everyday life, politeness is key to the smooth running of relationships and interactions. Professional contexts, however, tend to be characterised by a plethora of behaviours that may be ...specific to that context. They include 'polite' behaviours, 'impolite' behaviours and behaviours that arguably fall somewhere between - or outside - such concepts. The twelve chapters making up this edited collection explore these behaviours in a range of communication contexts representative of business, medical, legal and security settings. Between them, the contributions will help readers to theorize about - and in some cases operationalize (im)politeness and related behaviours for - these real-world settings. The authors take a broad, yet theoretically underpinned, definition of politeness and use it to help explain, analyse and inform professional interactions. They demonstrate the importance of understanding how interactions are negotiated and managed in professional settings. The edited collection has something to offer, therefore, to academics, professionals and practitioners alike.
Aims The present investigation was interested in whether formal thought disorder (FTD) in schizophrenia was in any way related to linguistic creativity. The project's main aims and research questions ...were the development of operational definitions of linguistic creativity and FTD in schizophrenia, an investigation of creative language processing in schizophrenia, and an investigation of creative language output in schizophrenia. Methods We designed a psycholinguistic experiment and collected natural language data to build a specialised schizophrenia corpus. Recruitment for the psycholinguist experiment was challenged by the COVID pandemic and the technical abilities of clinical participants. Those data are thus underpowered and not reported in the results. We collected sufficient data for the construction of the specialised corpus. Results We tested an operational definition of FTD in schizophrenia (the '4TD Framework') against our natural language dataset. There was good support for the framework, with grammatical and discourse tracking features reliably distinguishing clinical and comparison speakers (p < 0.05). We also examined concordance lines and grouped random concordances into error types. Error types were consistently similar across groups, suggesting that speech disturbances in schizophrenia are on a continuum with those of nonclinical speakers. We also conducted a keyness analysis to examine the key terms and semantic categories present in the corpus and noted significant differences in the clinical cohort. Clinical participants found discussion of the topic of linguistic creativity more challenging, deviating from topic more often. They also involved topics of emotional and personal concern at rates of up to 16 to 32 times more often than comparison participants in some cases. Conclusion Our results provide support for the dysexecutive and dyssemantic hypotheses of FTD, as well as work on the Thought Language Index (TLI) that also suggests that language disturbances in schizophrenia and FTD are on a continuum with nonclinical speech. Further research is needed to understand how these phenomena are positioned in relation to FTD as a transdiagnostic entity.
This paper explores the language of MPs and Peers, when negotiating their differences in times past. Specifically, I draw upon Historic Hansard data (1803–2005) representative of the two Houses ...(Commons and Lords), paying particular attention to exchanges involving expressive politeness features (deferential terms, polite preludes, etc.). I demonstrate how such features enabled parliamentarians to “do” deference and respect, but sometimes at a surface level only. For example, utterances containing expressive politeness features functioned as implicit accusations relating to another's inaccurate or misguided views on a particular issue and/or as a means of claiming a conflicting position. I suggest that, because such behaviour was (and remains) institutionally sanctioned and deliberately ritualistic, it did not then nor does not now constitute systematic impoliteness, in the main (cf. Harris, 2001). Rather, we witness a range of facework behaviour in parliamentary debates: from face enhancement to face aggravation, and everything between (Archer, 2015).
•Parliamentarians have had to avoid unparliamentary language use for some time•This paper explores how they negotiate(d) their differences•MPs and Peers (past and present) countered, position-claim(ed), persuade(d), etc.•They used expressive politeness features in order to denote a level of deference•Such features sometimes varnished (in order to intensify) face-threatening acts
Fowler's (Linguistics and the novel, Methuen, 1977) original definition of mind style emphasised consistency as a defining feature of the phenomenon, something that is (i) difficult to measure, and ...(ii) often missed in qualitative analyses. In this paper we investigate how a computational semantic analysis might be used to address this difficulty, with particular reference to McIntyre's (Journal of Literary Semantics 34: 21–40, 2005) analysis of the deviant mind style of the character of Miss Shepherd in Alan Bennett's play
. To do this we analyse the speech of all the characters in
using Wmatrix (Rayson, Matrix: A statistical method and software tool for linguistic analysis through corpus comparison, Lancaster University PhD thesis, 2003, Wmatrix: A web-based corpus processing environment, Lancaster University, 2008), to see whether it provides quantitative support for the interpretative conclusions reached by McIntyre. Wmatrix utilises the UCREL Semantic Annotation System (USAS) which has been designed to undertake the automatic semantic analysis of English. The initial tag-set of the USAS system was loosely based on McArthur's
(McArthur, Longman, 1981), but has since been considerably revised in the light of practical tagging problems met in the course of previous research, and now contains 232 category labels (such as
, etc.). We use Wmatrix's facility for identifying key semantic domains in pursuit of our two main aims: (i) to determine whether Miss Shepherd's odd mind style is consistent, as Fowler's definition suggests it should be; and (ii) to determine the usefulness of computational semantic analysis for investigating mind style.
Slurs such as nigger tend to function as “disparaging remarks”: that is, they are an attempt by speakers (S) to deliberately deprecate a target – or targets (T) – in some way (Croom, 2011). ...Accordingly, they can be seen to share the same pragmatic space as other verbally aggressive acts such as insults, put-downs, snubs and backhanded compliments (Jucker and Taavitsainen, 2000). Mention of backhanded compliments, in turn, serves as a useful reminder that compliments can be seen as representing the positive end of a larger pragmatic space relating to the speaker's evaluation of the addressee, with slurs and insults representing the negative end (Taavitsainen and Jucker, 2008) and back-handed compliments, a positive/negative blend. In this paper, I introduce a facework scale that serves to capture face-enhancing and face-threatening strategies (and combinations thereof). It can thus explain various uses of terms such as nigger: for example, its use in order to slur or negatively frame another (Croom, 2011); its use (by in-group members) to express affection for or approval of another (Smitherman, 2006); and unsuccessful cases of (re-)appropriation (Bianchi, 2014) such that an utterance meant to build camaraderie between S and T ultimately serves to offend T. The facework scale can also explain additional facework moves, such as S's use of strategic facework strategies which afford them some plausibility deniability (Archer, 2011; Leech, 1983). Although paradigmatic slurs are not likely to be (strategically) denied by S, given their overt use in insulting, injuring, threatening the face of, or otherwise imposing a negative identity on T (Croom, 2013: 178), facework which is strategically ambivalent in some way(s) can be an effective means of S manipulating others' views of T without explicitly “doing” impoliteness (Archer, 2011). This work thus contributes to the field of im/politeness research as well as to the growing body of (pragmatic) research focussing on slurs.
•This paper introduces a facework scale capturing a pragmatic space of evaluation.•That is, face-enhancing and face-threatening strategies (and combinations thereof).•Prototypical facework intent of terms like nigger shown to be purposely offensive.•Same terms also used to frame T negatively (‘racist’) or positively (‘friend’).•Scale shown to account for these and other (strategic) facework moves.
Currently, understanding what questions and answers mean in context equates to accounting for the questioner’s role as well as what they expect to (versus) achieve, the position as well as ...form/function of their question(s) within the interaction: and, if spoken, their delivery, as well as whether a response is given, what type, how, etc. This paper advocates for a further widening of the linguistic analytical lens beyond traditional syntactic/pragmatic criteria so that we might account, in turn, for participants’ facial expressions, body movements and gestures as they deliver their questions and/or respond to others. The paper argues this is particularly pertinent when negotiating meaning generally and crucial when seeking to understand potentially deceptive and/or evasive moves on the part of participants.
Currently, understanding what questions and answers mean in context equates to accounting for the questioner’s role as well as what they expect to (versus) achieve, the position as well as ...form/function of their question(s) within the interaction: and, if spoken, their delivery, as well as whether a response is given, what type, how, etc. This paper advocates for a further widening of the linguistic analytical lens beyond traditional syntactic/pragmatic criteria so that we might account, in turn, for participants’ facial expressions, body movements and gestures as they deliver their questions and/or respond to others. The paper argues this is particularly pertinent when negotiating meaning generally and crucial when seeking to understand potentially deceptive and/or evasive moves on the part of participants.
Abstract This paper draws upon three texts from the trial section of the Corpus of English Dialogues , in order to explore the tactical impression management strategies used by Early Modern English ...courtroom participants (defendants, judges, lawyers and witnesses). I will demonstrate that modern impression management strategies (identified with other activity types in mind) are in evidence in the texts, as are additional courtroom-specific strategies. I discuss the nuances of these impression management tactics, in light of (a) the obvious power differences between the participants involved, (b) the need to be perceived as credible in this legal setting, and (c) their convergence with particular types of face(work).
Impolite behaviour is thought to be easier to investigate than polite or politic behaviour in diachronic contexts, because of attracting more evaluative comment. But an approach based on such ...metapragmatic commentary can miss a lot of facework strategies in contexts such as the UK parliament (modern and historical). In this paper, I draw on Historic Hansard datasets (1812-2003) to demonstrate how a (semi)automatic method involving contiguous searches of two-to-four features can better reveal the nuances of these MPs' facework strategies than a focus on metapragmatic terms has afforded hitherto. The (semi)automatic method uses the recently created Historic Thesaurus Semantic Tagger (HTST) to search for meaning constellations (Archer and Malory 2017). Meaning constellations relating to facework are made up of sequences of semantic fields and/or parts-of-speech which, when organised in certain ways, achieve im/politeness, politic behaviour, strategic ambiguity, a combination of face enhancement and face threat, etc. This paper discusses a number of these meaning constellations, with a particular focus on those which engage in both face enhancement and face aggravation simultaneously (whilst nonetheless avoiding the label, "unparliamentary language").
Abstract
This paper has two purposes. First, it constitutes an exploration of
context
from the perspective of some prominent historical pragmaticians, and/or as demonstrated by publications which ...represent/exemplify a particular approach within historical pragmatics (
Jacobs and Jucker 1995
;
Archer and Culpeper 2003
,
2011
;
Nevala 2011
;
Traugott 2004
,
2011
;
2012
;
Jucker and Taavitsainen 2014
) as well as related disciplines such as historical sociolinguistics (
Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg 2003
). Second, it explores my own (evolving) view in respect to context, often in response to the influential work of others, as evidenced in a selection of my work (
Archer 2005
,
2011
,
2012
,
2013
,
2014
).
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