week 8- Ritual Communication and Small Talk

Question 1

what did laver say about greetings

Answer 1

Greetings have potential to threaten:

POSITIVE FACE (esp of the speaker) as they hope to be warmly received

NEGATIVE FACE (esp of the hearer) as their time and space are being encroached upon by the new person

Question 2

what did laver say about partings

Answer 2

Partings have potential to threaten:

POSITIVE FACE (esp of the hearer) as the person leaving will not want to offend them by terminating the talk but will want to communicate their affiliation with them

NEGATIVE FACE (esp of the hearer) as they may actually want to continue the interaction

Question 3

Types of Small Talk in Greetings

Answer 3

1. Neutral Statements About factors common to both participants Often abbreviated, they signal their own phaticity e.g. ‘nice day’, ‘frost tonight’
2. Self-oriented statements Relate to the speaker’s situation e.g. ‘hot work this’, ‘I do like a breath of fresh air’
3. Other oriented statements Refer to the hearer’s situation e.g. ‘how’s things?’, ‘how’re the kids?’
   (Laver, 1981)

Question 4

Functions of Small Talk in Greetings

Answer 4

1. Propitiatory Function – to defuse the potential hostility of silence in situations where speech is conventionally anticipated
2. Initiatory Function – allows the participants to cooperate in getting the interaction comfortably under way… demonstrating by signals of cordiality and tentative social solidarity their mutual acceptance of the possibility of an interaction taking place
3. Exploratory Function – allows the participants to feel their way towards the working consensus of their interaction

Question 5

Functions of Small Talk in Partings

Answer 5

1. Mitigatory Function • Addressed to hearer’s negative face; often setting the reason for terminating the encounter e.g. ‘I’m sorry, I have to meet Irene’ ‘I’d better not keep you any longer’ ‘must go’
2. Consolidatory Function • Addressed to the hearer’s positive face; esteem for hearer implied e.g. ‘it was great to see you’ ‘hope you feel better soon’

Question 6

give an example of small talk at work (positive politeness)

Answer 6

Context: Jon and May pass on the stairs

J: [hello hello] haven’t seen you for a while

M: [hi] well I have been a bit busy

J: must have lunch sometime

M: yeah good idea give me a ring

(Examples from Holmes, 2000: 49)

Question 7

features of Phatic communion / small talk

Answer 7

• Neutral topics and orientation
• Safe, uncontentious, non-face threatening
• Liminal moments (greetings, partings, in the lift, at the bus stop, before start-up of task-oriented talk e.g at meetings)
• ‘everyone has to lie’ (Sacks, 1975) –how are you? Fine, thanks. -Nice dress! Thanks. In phatic communion, the ritual is important, not necessarily sincerity

Question 8

discuss small talk about the weather

Answer 8

Weather talk is a ‘false first topic’; specifically a ‘transitional first topic’. It has the potential to move talk along from the paired opening sequences (greetings, ‘how are you’s’) into topical talk (Sacks, 1992)

Question 9

The Social Functions of Small Talk

Answer 9

The weather is suitable for small talk as it is a shared, background environmental concern
• As people’s paths cross, we discuss the various weather conditions we are experiencing
• The weather is often in flux and its very ‘predictable unpredictability’ is reason to discuss it
• We may also assume that our interlocutors will share our assessment of the weather and we may seek their alignment

Question 10

Strategies for ‘weather talk’

Answer 10

• The weather in passing
• The weather as shared experience
• The weather ‘mattering’ (when weather impacts on our lifestyle choices)
• The weather as commodity (esp. relevant in travel agency encounters)

Question 11

what is CDA

Answer 11

• ‘Critical discourse analysis is concerned with discourse as the instrument of power and control as well as with discourse as the instrument of the social construction of reality’ (van Leeuwen, 1993)
• [It] sets out to reveal the ‘role of discourse in the (re)production and challenge of dominance’ (van Dijk, 1993)

Question 12

how did Weber define power?

Answer 12

• Weber (1969)

as ‘the ability of one actor (media, university etc.. an entity who acts) in a social relationship to impose their will on another’

Question 13

categories of power

Answer 13

• Practical
– Physical actions, violence, skill, money, goods or services
• Mental
– Level of education, access to knowledge/ideas, using knowledge to influence others
• Positional
– Power gained from a position in a hierarchy
• Personal
– Personality, nurturing vs. caring

Question 14

what is power in interaction

Answer 14

• Conversations are human interactions where power is encoded
• All discourse is ideological (participants bring their world view and status to conversation)
• All conversations are potentially “unequal encounters”
– Language encodes world views and status
– Language develops a power relationship

Question 15

power to

Answer 15

• A general human capacity to bring about change
• Both individuals and collectivities (e.g. governments) have this capacity
+ realisation of personal and collective goals

• hindering of other individuals’ achievement of goals for the sake of hindering
  INTERACTIONALLY DETERMINED / AVAILABLE TO ALL

Question 16

power over

Answer 16

• An asymmetrical relation between people
• Having power over others means being able to get them to do what you want them to do, including things they otherwise would not do
• One person has power over another person when the two stand in a relationship of dominance and submission – In institutional (e.g. the military) or non institutional (e.g. a hostage situation) settings – between friends or between enemies – legitimately or illegitimately
MORE RELIANT UPON EXTERNAL FACTORS

Question 17

Fairclough’s power in vs. power behind discourse

Answer 17

• Power can be conceptualised as:
• Asymmetries between participants – Power in discourse
• Unequal capacity to control how texts are produced, distributed and consumed – Power behind discourse
• (Fairclough 1995)

Question 18

What might give power in interaction?

Answer 18

‘Interpersonal Asymmetry’
• gender e.g. how do genders talk? Stereotypes
• age
• physical size/strength
• membership of groups (in-group/out-group/ majority/minority issues)
• historical/cultural convention
• institutional status or processes (e.g. gatekeeping- undermining someone by commenting on something like a grammatical mistake)
• knowledge/ expertise/wit
• class/wealth
• fame/celebrity

Question 19

Power in private talk

Answer 19

• Power can be hidden in face to face encounters: power holders systematically avoid too much overt marking of their power: – ‘I need you to stay late today…’
vs.
– ‘Sorry to ask you this, but I wonder if you might possibly stay on a few minutes late today to finish putting together this report, Janet?’ – ‘Of course Mrs Brown’
- Hide power in lots of words of cover in politeness to make it seem as though its their choice

Question 20

Status markers that determine power

Answer 20

• Agenda setting and topic management
• Turn-taking, holding and seizing the floor
• Forms of address
• Phatic tokens
• Utterance types and language
• Directives

Question 21

differences in audience address

Answer 21

• I
– Indicates intimacy, straightforwardness or openness
• You
– Suggests familiarity and openness
• We
– Inclusive: Suggests membership of a group with the speaker
– Exclusive: Separates the speaker’s group from the audience

Question 22

how does power affect phatic talk

Answer 22

• More powerful speakers tend to initiate and restrict phatic talk
– They also define the ‘acceptable’ subjects for conversation

Question 23

domestic anecdote of power

Answer 23

• family sat around dinner table
• wife serves up food, husband asks ‘is there any ketchup [mustard/pickle/chutney] Vera?’
• understood by all family members to mean not ‘I don’t know if there’s any ketchup in the house, please enlighten me’, but ‘I want ketchup on my food, please fetch it for me’ (Cameron, 2012)
• Empty talk to indicate power

Question 24

Power in institutional talk

Answer 24

In institutional contexts (the school, university, etc.) ‘the constraints derive from the discourse type which is being drawn upon’
– Directive speech acts: orders and questions (doctor, training)
– Comply and answer (students, being trained)
• Once a discourse type has been settled on, its conventions apply to all (including more powerful participants)
– But ‘more powerful participants’ may be able to treat conventions in a cavalier way, as well as to allow or disallow varying degrees of latitude to less powerful participants

Question 25

what is ideology

Answer 25

• Broadly: A system of ideas, ideals, and ways of conceptualising that are characteristic of certain groups (humans, nations, communities, families)
• Van Dijk states that ideologies are “interpretation frameworks” which can help people organise “sets of values” in society

Question 26

Traits of ideologies

Answer 26

– are often taken for granted and seen as ‘commonsense’
– are not always (or even usually) based in scientific reality
– are most powerful when invisible, when discourses have been naturalised and become part of our everyday lives (Janks 1997)
• Social interaction > Cognition > Memory

Question 27

what are some common ideologies?

Answer 27

• Political ideologies: Liberalism, Conservatism, Socialism, Fascism, Totalitarianism, Anarchism, Religious Fundamentalism
• Capitalism: The production of capital and consumption of surplus value as a life goal
• Patriotism: To love, support and protect one’s country and its people
• Marriage and family: The ‘right way’ to live is to have an opposite-sex spouse and children
• Male superiority: Men are more suited to positions of power, and more suited to decision making at work and at home

Question 28

Dominant ideologies around the world

Answer 28

• Many dominant ideologies are extremely culturally specific. For example:
– Christian fundamentalism in the US
– Shariah law in some Muslim countries
– Individual freedom in the Netherlands
• Dominant ideologies are central to people’s belief systems. It is often difficult or impossible to challenge them effectively.

Question 29

ideology goggles

Answer 29

The pair of goggles you’re wearing changes the way you see the world. They help you to interpret information and situations, and to make decisions

Question 30

what is representation?

Answer 30

• Representation is the ability of texts to draw upon features of the world and present them to the viewer, not simply as reflections, but more so, as constructions
• Hence, the images do not portray reality in an unbiased way with 100% accuracy, but rather, present ‘versions of reality’ influenced by culture and people’s habitual thoughts and actions. (O’Shaughnessy & Stadley 2002)

Question 31

how may a newspaper represent an ideology?

Answer 31

newspapers may promote the dominant ideology of patriotism through their representation of nationality, ethnicity, immigration, etc

Question 32

what is hegemony

Answer 32

leadership or dominance, especially by one country or social group over others.
Dominant ideologies are considered hegemonic.
• The hegemonic model says that the ruling classes maintain their power through control of ideas and culture, rather than by force
• In hegemony, the ruling classes govern by consensus: they control the way the media represents the world so as to influence the way people think about the world, and the ruling classes

Question 33

Examples of hegemonic values

Answer 33

• The police are always right
• Youths are disruptive and dangerous
• Mass immigration is undesirable
• Poor people are lazy and deserve their hardship
• It’s important to wear fashionable clothes

Question 34

discuss stereotypes

Answer 34

• Stereotypes are characters in a media text who are ‘types’ rather than complex people
• Stereotypes are often defined by their role: – ‘bad cop’, ‘nice old lady’ • Children’s media texts often use stereotypes so young audiences can identify quickly with the characters
• Stereotypes are negative because they are too reductive. Many are considered offensive, e.g. ‘drunken Irishman’, ‘fanatical Muslim’, ‘overemotional woman’