Week 7 - language intensity

Question 1

van Hooft (2011): what and why?

Answer 1

• Paper is about the perception of the communication styles, not how people communicate
  o Are there differences in perception of communication style between Mexican and US participants
   Monocultural and intercultural communication situations
   Professional context
• According to Hall and Hofstede’s models Mexico and USA should be very different in their style of communication
• Transitioning style: there have been suggestions that the Mexico’s style of communication is in a phase of transition

Question 2

van Hooft (2011): the perception of communication in three dimensions

Answer 2

o Sender-receiver orientation: degree to which responsibility for misunderstanding should be taken
 USA: individualistic, low context so expectation is sender oriented
• Emphasis on skills and strategies of speaker to communicate effectively
 Mexico: collectivist, high context so expectation is receiver oriented
• Responsibility for effectiveness of communication is with receiver and sender
o High-low context communication: degree to which encoded information is deduced from the context and situation
 USA: low context -> information is encoded explicitly
 Mexico: high context -> information needed to interpret a message is available in context (e.g. interpretation of silence)
o Attribution to context: degree to which communication can be conditioned by the situational context
 USA
• Emphasis on dispositional qualities when making social inferences
• Identity based on abstract information (e.g. I am a student)
 Mexico
• Emphasis on contextual factors
• Identity in relationship to others, types of situations or activities

Question 3

van Hooft (2011): hypothesis

Answer 3

o In both monocultural and intercultural contexts Mexican Spanish-speaking students should display higher scores on all three measures
 Sender-receiver orientation: more emphasis on sender and receiver
 High-low context: more emphasis on high-context communication
 Attribution to context: context more strongly influences communication

Question 4

van Hooft (2011): design

Answer 4

o Mixed design
 Between participant: nationality (ME or USA)
 Within participants: communication scenario (monocultural or intercultural)
o Dependent variable: communicative perception
 Sender-receiver orientation: who’s to blame
 High-low context: will they help?
 Attribution to context: dependent on situation
o Material
 Four communicative settings: two monocultural and two intercultural
 Translated in the participants’ L1 using the back translation method
 Names of fictive characters were all gender neutral
o A communication scenario: background and setting
o Questionnaire

Question 5

van Hooft (2011): results monocultural settings

Answer 5

 Sender-receiver: both groups are more in line with low-context/individualistic, but fairly in the middle
• Both groups are saying the sender is more to blame
 High-low context: both groups are more in line with low-context/individualistic, but fairly in the middle
• Tendency was to think that they did agree to help
 Attribution: more in line with high-context/collectivist
• Both groups thought that the context did influence the communication
 No significant differences
• The perception of the two groups do not differ

Question 6

van Hooft (2011): results intercultural settings

Answer 6

 Significant but small differences
 For high-low context and attribution they go into the opposite direction than hypothesised
 Sender-receiver: US scored lower
• US students were more likely to put blame on sender (as expected)
 High-low context: US scored higher
• US more in line with high-context/collectivist style
 Attribution: US scored higher
• US puts more emphasis on context

Question 7

van Hooft (2011): conclusion

Answer 7

o Culture does not discriminate between Mexican and USA perception of communication dimensions in monocultural situations
o Differences observed in intercultural situations indicate weak effects
o Hall and Hofstede would have predicted large differences
o Results are in line with the suggestion that there is a conversion in communication between Mexican and US participants
 Maybe having this shared business communication context leads them to adapt a more general common communication style

o Practices and standards in business communication are adapting to each other
 Cultural convergence
o Professional, corporate, and communication similarities could override cultural differences

Question 8

van Hooft (2011): self-criticism

Answer 8

o Both groups of participants are students, who share a similar age range and lifestyle
 Students do not work in these business communication contexts
o Most of the participants are in fact bilinguals, i.e. Mexican participants nearly all spoke English, and many USA participant spoke some Spanish
o There are increasing cultural encounters between groups in the virtual and real world which may have led to cultural convergence
o A lot has happened since the 70s!
 Nice to see that somebody is testing the dimensions

Question 9

language intensity

Answer 9

linguistic device that increases the stregth of an utterance

Question 10

why exaggerate? (4)

Answer 10

o Flare for the dramatic
o To come across as more sympathetic in conversations
o In tweets, Facebook it might compensate for other means of expressing emotion
o Can affect evaluations, attitudes, number of survey responses, persuasion

Question 11

reversing poles

Answer 11

Negative (sometimes positive) quasi superlative adjective changes to positive

Question 12

tools for intensifying (4)

Answer 12

o	Adding adverbs 
o	Using stronger words
	Think of car crash study
o	Using figurative speech 
	E.g. metaphor, irony, idiom
o	Hyperbole
	Restricted definition: only figurative speech
	Broad definition: every exaggeration is hyperbole

Question 13

van Mulken & Schellens (2012)

Answer 13

does language intensity affect the way people think?

Question 14

definition of language intensity

Answer 14

o Definition: “the quality of language which indicates the degree to which the speaker’s attitude toward a concept deviates from neutrality” (Bowers, 1963, p. 416)
 Problems with this definition
• How do you define neutral?
• Downtoners also deviate from neutrality but make things less intense
 Therefore this definition does not seem to work
o Our definition
 We begin with unmarked evaluations
 Marked evaluations are intensifiers

Question 15

language intensity

Answer 15

 Language intensity = claim’s intensity is lesser or greater
• All about evaluations (but not all evaluations include intensifiers!)
 Language intensifiers = stylistic way of reinforcing (positive or negative)

Question 16

predecessors: Renkema (1997)

Answer 16

o Intensifier: “an expression that can be replaced by an attenuated variant”
o Three main categories of intensifiers
 Lexical: intensifier can be omitted
 Semantic: intensifier must be replaced by weaker expression
• To make sure it stays an evaluation
 Stylistic: must be rewritten to make non-figurative prose
o Eighteen subcategories
o Problems with this model
 Unclear when something can be omitted vs replaced
 Used a different scheme to classify semantic intensifiers and lexical intensifier

Question 17

Predecessors: Pander Maat (2004)

Answer 17

o	Four categories based on grammatical grounds
	Intensifying prefixes
	Adjectives
	Adverbial elements
	Connectives 
o	Problems with this model
	Borderline between subcategories not clear
	Differences in texts analysed

Question 18

Predecessors tested: van Mulken & Schellens (2006)

Answer 18

o Corpus: reviews and editorials
o Problems with both models of analysis (Renkema and Pander Maat)
 Poor agreement between independent codes in intensifier identification
 Assigning intensifiers to categories easier
o Based on this they said there was a need for a new analytical scheme
 More definitive description of intensification
 More specific demarcation of categories

Question 19

new model: LIM

Answer 19

(Language Intensity Model)
o Intensifier = a text element that can either be omitted from a statement or replaced by another phrase with the same result: a less forcefully evaluative statement

Question 20

19 categories of LIM

Answer 20

 Intensifying prefix: meaningful element placed before word
 Intensifying adverb: word adding meaning to an action
• Degree: extent to which a property applies
• Frequency or quantity: how often something happens
• Modality: denotes subjective attitude
• Used as adjective: adjective used as adverbial
• Other
 Intensifying numeral: cardinals, ordinals, fractions
 Intensifying adjective: modifies meaning of noun (property or state)
 Intensifying noun: word expressing independent entity
 Intensifying verb: a word that can be conjugated
 Intensifying stylistic devices
• Fossilized imagery: when figurative meaning is dictionary meaning
• Original imagery: not in dictionary meaning
• Repetition: more forceful through repetition
• Hyperbole: more emphasis through exaggeration
 Other stylistic devices
 Syntactic intensifiers: syntax makes expression more forceful
• Also ellipsis (…)
 Typography: layout, font type, font size etc.

Question 21

van Mulken & Schellens (2006): three research questions and answers

Answer 21

o Reliability: does LIM work well for annotators/scholars?
 Answer: no, intercoder reliability too low
 Problems
• Overcoding: coder makes assessments too quickly
• Undercoding: intensity is overlooked
• Differences in interpretation
 But categorization good
o Test validity: does LIM find differences between reviews and editorials?
 Significant difference between genres
 Editorials
• More adverbs of degree
• Fossilized imagery
 Reviews
• More prefixed
• More adjectives
• More original imagery
 No difference in total number of intensifiers
o Ecological validity: do readers perceive differences in texts with and without intensification?
 Answer: yes
 Language users notice the difference between intensification and subjectification
 Many categories do both (intensification and subjectification)
 Answer found by doing an experiment
• See slides for description of experiment

Question 22

van Mulken & Schellens (2006): conclusion

Answer 22

o Intensifiers intensify and make evaluative statements more subjective
o Readers are sensitive to intensifiers, but coders find them difficult to identify
o Other criteria for validity of interpretative data
o New model needed?
 Less complex?

Question 23

van Mulken & Schellens (2006): limitations

Answer 23

 Two coders did not agree
• Are more coders needed?
 In study 2 participants from a science department
• Do they have knowledge of intensifiers?