eJournals Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 42/2

Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik
0171-5410
2941-0762
Narr Verlag Tübingen
Es handelt sich um einen Open-Access-Artikel der unter den Bedingungen der Lizenz CC by 4.0 veröffentlicht wurde.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Language users are able not only to recognize the illocutionary force of their interlocutors’ utterances, but also to name these illocutions. Expressions such as apology or compliment are part of their everyday vocabulary and are used to talk or write about speech acts. Such metapragmatic terms occur frequently in discourse and serve a range of communicative functions. Not only are they used to perform or report speech acts, they are also used to clarify or challenge a speaker’s intentions. It seems that each of these functions correlates with specific grammatical properties. The present paper focuses in particular on the forms and functions of meta-illocutionary expressions. A qualitative analysis of their communicative functions is based on fictional material, whereas corpus data are employed to exemplify a quantitative analysis of the frequencies and distributions of meta-illocutionary expressions and the constructions they are used in.
2017
422 Kettemann

Is that a threat?

2017
Klaus P. Schneider
Is that a threat? Forms and functions of metapragmatic terms in English discourse Klaus P. Schneider Language users are able not only to recognize the illocutionary force of their interlocutors’ utterances, but also to name these illocutions. Expressions such as apology or compliment are part of their everyday vocabulary and are used to talk or write about speech acts. Such metapragmatic terms occur frequently in discourse and serve a range of communicative functions. Not only are they used to perform or report speech acts, they are also used to clarify or challenge a speaker’s intentions. It seems that each of these functions correlates with specific grammatical properties. The present paper focuses in particular on the forms and functions of meta-illocutionary expressions. A qualitative analysis of their communicative functions is based on fictional material, whereas corpus data are employed to exemplify a quantitative analysis of the frequencies and distributions of meta-illocutionary expressions and the constructions they are used in. 1. Introduction The purpose of this paper is to introduce an approach to metadiscourse which is specifically focused on metapragmatic terms employed by language users to talk and write about speech acts, or, more technically, about the illocutionary force of utterances. The type of metapragmatic terms focused on in this paper is a subdivision of everyday vocabulary and includes verbs such as apologize, threaten and invite, and nouns such as apology, threat and invitation as well as occasional adjectives and adverbs such as apologetic(ally). Words such as these can be referred to collectively as the meta-illocutionary lexicon (= MIL). With this particular focus, the present approach differs from other analytic approaches to metapragmatics, metadiscourse, and metacommunication which consider, for instance, aspects of (im)politeness (e.g. Culpeper 2011), humour (e.g. AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 42 (2017) · Heft 2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Klaus P. Schneider 226 Ruiz-Gurillo 2016), and a wide range of further discursive features and communicative practices that have been examined in many different contexts including e.g. physics lectures (Smith/ Liang 2007), courtrooms (Carranza 2008) and public hearings (Unuabonah 2017). The present approach is similar to the “metacommunicative expression analysis” championed by Jucker and Taavitsainen (2014). These authors are also interested in meta-illocutionary expressions such as compliment, their aim is, however, a different one. Their type of analysis was developed to overcome one of the biggest problems in corpus-based speech act analysis. While several large machine-readable corpora are grammatically annotated and, hence, grammatical phenomena such as a particular word class or clause type can be searched for with a mouse click, pragmatically annotated corpora are still extremely scarce and, hence, pragmatic phenomena such as a particular speech act cannot easily be searched for (for an overview of the current state of pragmatic corpus annotation, cf. Archer/ Culpeper forthcoming). To employ large machine-readable corpora in the study of speech act realizations, Jucker and Taavitsainen (2014) suggest searching a corpus for e.g. the form compliment, since this form will often co-occur with a realization of a compliment. The type of analysis outlined in the present paper, on the other hand, serves a different purpose altogether. The following example is chosen to illustrate the differences between the two approaches. (1) “Sorry, the bus took forever; I should have taken the Tube,” Iona apologises. (Guo 2015: 187) This example, taken from a contemporary British novel (cf. Chapter 3), includes the meta-illocutionary verb apologise, which co-occurs with the realization of an apology. While Jucker and Taavitsainen (2014) would be interested in the latter (e.g. the account typical of apologies for time offences), the present approach concentrates on the former, specifically on the form and function of apologises, which is employed in its 3 rd person singular present simple form, co-occurs in a “meta-utterance” (cf. Hübler/ Bublitz 2007) with direct speech in the position of a verbum dicendi, classifying the utterance in the direct speech as an instance of a particular speech act and serving a reporting function (cf. Chapter 4). This example illustrates that the different communicative functions that meta-illocutionary expressions serve in metadiscourse correlate with specific grammatical properties of these expressions. The key questions addressed in this paper therefore are: (a.) Which functions do metaillocutionary expressions serve in metadiscourse? , (b.) Which formal features do they display in each of these functions? , and (c.) With what frequencies and distribution do they occur? In Chapter 2, the present approach to the meta-illocutionary lexicon is situated in the context of metapragmatics. In the next three chapters, an exploratory study is presented. After describing the methods employed in Is that a threat? 227 Chapter 3, Chapter 4 includes a qualitative investigation of the communicative functions of metapragmatic terms. It is shown how these functions correlate with specific grammatical choices. Chapter 5, on the other hand, contains a quantitative analysis of one particular construction, namely Is that an X? , to illustrate the gains of searches in big data for an understanding of the uses of meta-illocutionary vocabulary in everyday discourse. Chapter 6, the conclusion, includes a summary of the results and addresses some perspectives for future research on the metaillocutionary lexicon. 2. Metapragmatics and the meta-illocutionary lexicon Currently, there is extensive scholarly discussion about metapragmatics, often in the broader context of metalanguage, metacommunication and, more recently, metadiscourse (for an overview, cf. Culpeper/ Haugh 2014: 235-263, also Haugh forthcoming), and there are several often radically different interpretations of the term. As Hübler (2011: 107) aptly observes: “The term ‘metapragmatics’ is slippery, many meanings have been ascribed to it, too many perhaps.” It is not easy to provide even a general definition of metapragmatics, by analogy to the definitions of metalanguage as ‘language about language’, of metacommunication as ‘communication about communication’ and metadiscourse as ‘discourse about discourse’, since ‘pragmatics about pragmatics’ does not seem to make very much sense, unless it is interpreted as a “metatheory of pragmatics” (Hübler 2011: 126-129); yet this interpretation is more abstract and not analogous to the standard interpretations of metalanguage, metacommunication and metadiscourse given above. An alternative definition of metapragmatics as “the use of language about the use of language” (Culpeper/ Haugh 2014: 237), apparently based on the general textbook definition of pragmatics as the study of language use, is not very helpful either, because it is not clear how language use should be understood in any specifically pragmatic way, given that other disciplines in linguistics and beyond also examine language use. The slipperiness of the term metapragmatics results, at least in part, from the large number of competing conceptualizations of pragmatics itself, which has been defined in broad and narrow terms, e.g. “as the study of language use, meaning in context, communicative functions of utterances, speaker intentions, hearer interpretations, participant practices, talk-in-interaction, relational work, displays of identity, and so on” (Schneider 2017: 316). Therefore, it is not surprising that the term metapragmatic expressions also has multiple meanings. Watts (2011), for instance, defines metapragmatic expressions as “linguistic expressions that lie beyond the level of the propositional structure of utterances and are used in a number of ways to position the speaker and the hearer with respect Klaus P. Schneider 228 to those utterances” (Watts 2011: 56). What Watts has in mind here are, first and foremost, discourse markers such as anyway, well, you know, and I mean, which he refers to elsewhere as expressions of procedural meaning (Watts 2003), and which he distinguishes from metadiscursive expressions, “positioning the speaker or the interlocutor outside the ‘world’ of the discourse by commenting on it in the here-and-now of the interaction” (Watts 2011: 56-57). As Watts’ examples show, such metadiscursive expressions may be freely-formulated utterances which are not an immediate part of, but commenting on, e.g. a conversational narrative. For further uses of the term metapragmatic expressions, the reader is referred to, e.g., Smith/ Liang (2007), Liu/ Ran (2016), and Unuabonah (2017). For the purposes of the present study, metapragmatic terms is narrowly defined, based on the literal meaning of pragmatics, derived from Greek pr - gma for ‘action’. In this sense, they are expressions used to refer to linguistic action. Specifically, they are employed to label speech acts or, more technically, to categorize utterances as ‘instantiations’ of particular illocutions (cf. Hübler/ Busse 2012: 1). Metapragmatic expressions of this particular type are therefore more unambiguously (but much less commonly) called meta-illocutionary expressions or, for short, MIEs. Examples include promise, request and compliment. MIEs are lexical items belonging to the so-called metacommunicative lexicon and as such part of the metalanguage of ordinary language users. MIEs, thus defined, can be subsumed under pragmatic acts and activities as one of three subsets distinguished by Culpeper and Hardaker (2016: 126) within the metacommunicative lexicon, the other two subsets being inferential acts and activities (e.g. hint, imply, sarcasm) and evaluative acts and activities (e.g. friendly, rude, aggressive). MIEs are, however, only a subdivision of pragmatic acts and activities, as these include not only e.g. metaillocutionary verbs such as apologise and threaten, but also verbs not used for attributing illocutionary force such as joke and tease (cf. also Jucker/ Taavitsainen 2014: 12). The term meta-illocutionary expressions as it is defined here covers a different range of phenomena from apparently competing terms. First of all, MIEs do not, strictly speaking, include the category verba dicendi, if this category is narrowly defined to include only such verbs as speak, shout or whisper, which merely denote that something was uttered or how it was delivered, but not with what intention. Secondly, the term MIEs is preferred over the term performative verbs because some metaillocutionary verbs cannot be used performatively, e.g. threaten and insult (cf. section 4.1 below). For this reason, Mey (2001) uses the more general term speech act verbs, which is, however, not adopted here because there are not only meta-illocutionary verbs but also meta-perlocutionary verbs (e.g. intimidate) as well as meta-illocutionary nouns (e.g. threat, apology, invitation). In some cases, meta-illocutionary verbs and nouns have the same form, e.g. request, offer, promise and compliment. More importantly, Is that a threat? 229 verbs and nouns may have the same functions as will be demonstrated in Chapter 4. Finally, MIEs is a more adequate term since the acts referred to by verb or noun do not only occur in speech but also in writing, e.g. a written apology or a letter of complaint. In summary then, MIEs are verbs and nouns (and occasionally also adjectives or adverbs such as apologetically) used to talk about verbal communicative acts in spoken or written discourse, specifically to name, perform, negotiate or discuss these acts. 3. Methods employed For the investigation of the meta-illocutionary lexicon presented in this paper, a mixed-method approach is adopted which combines qualitative and quantitative analysis. The qualitative analysis is aimed at establishing communicative functions of meta-illocutionary expressions in everyday interactions and at identifying typical function-to-form mappings, i.e. how the communicative functions correlate with specific grammatical forms and constructional choices. The quantitative analysis, on the other hand, is focused on the relative frequencies and distribution of metaillocutionary expressions and the various forms and constructions in which they are used. The data examined in the qualitative part of this study were collected by employing the philological method (Jucker 2009), i.e. extracted manually from fictional literature. Jucker (2009) classifies this method as a ‘field’ method, which means that fictional data have essentially the same status as naturally occurring discourse which is audiotaped, video-taped, recorded as ethnographic field notes or included in large machinereadable corpora. The criterion for classifying the philological method as a field method is that fiction is not written for the purposes of research in linguistics, but comes into existence without the involvement of researchers, by contrast to experimental data elicited by using e.g. production questionnaires, role-plays or interviews. There is, however, no denying that written representations of spoken discourse such as dramatic dialogue and direct speech in prose fiction differ from everyday conversation and other genres of naturally occurring spoken discourse because they do not as a rule include phenomena collectively referred to as ‘normal nonfluency’ (Short 1996: 176), i.e. hesitation, backchannelling, interruptions, overlap, and so on. Therefore, if the focus of linguistic analysis is specifically on such phenomena, then employing the philological method and using fictional data is unsuitable. If, however, the focus is on metaillocutionary expressions, as in the present study, then fictional material can be used as it is assumed that the communicative functions of MIEs and the corresponding forms and constructions are essentially the same in fictional and naturally occurring discourse (cf. Schneider 2011: 16-18 for some discussion of these issues). The material analysed in the present Klaus P. Schneider 230 study was taken from works of contemporary English prose fiction, published between 1990 and 2015 and listed in the References. The results of the qualitative analysis are presented in Chapter 4 below. The quantitative analysis, which complements the qualitative analysis, is based on corpus data. In general, corpus linguistic methodology, which is today’s dominant methodology in most areas of linguistics, cannot easily be used in research in pragmatics (cf. O’Keeffe forthcoming). This is due to the fact that corpora can only be searched for forms, but not for communicative functions such as illocutions, and pragmatic annotation in corpora is still extremely rare (cf. Archer/ Culpeper forthcoming). For the present study, however, corpora can be searched for metaillocutionary expressions in their various grammatical forms and in specific constructions. Any corpus can be selected for this purpose; for this paper, the big data included in the internet were chosen to exemplify the overall approach advocated here. Illustrative results are presented in Chapter 5. 4. Communicative functions of meta-illocutionary expressions Four functions are tentatively suggested here which meta-illocutionary expressions may serve in (spoken) discourse. For lack of better terms, I call these functions performing, reporting, commenting, and problematizing. No claim is made that this account is exhaustive, but in the light of the data used these seem to be salient and frequent functions. Even from a small collection of occurrences of MIEs in context specific structural patterns emerge which seem to correlate with distinct communicative functions. I will now characterize and discuss in turn each of the four functions identified. 4.1 Performative function In the performative function, an expression naming a speech act is employed to actually perform this speech act. In this case, the MIE is a verb which surfaces in the realization of the speech act, in a particular type of construction. In the following example, the MIE is the verb promise, used to perform an act of promising. (2) ‘Look, Neil, I promise you that libel action will never come to court.’ (Phyllis D. James, Devices and Desires, 1990: 63) In this function, the MIE makes explicit the illocutionary force of the utterance in which it occurs (cf. Austin 1962: 149). The MIE is, in other words, an illocutionary force indicating device (= IFID). This is not a new insight, as the reference to Austin (1962) shows. Since the early days of speech act theory, the so-called performative formula has been regard- Is that a threat? 231 ed as a test for identifying the illocutionary force of an utterance. The format of this formula is I (hereby) VERB you, i.e. “the first person singular present indicative active form” (Austin 1962: 149). The verb in example (2) is unhedged, which is typical, in general, of written, and especially formal, communication. In spoken, and less formal, communication, an invitation, for example, would be issued with a hedged performative. In such a context, a speaker would say I’d like to invite you to my birthday party, rather than I invite you to my birthday party or even I hereby invite you to my birthday party, unless this was said in jest. Similarly, requests are also often realized by employing a hedged performative. An explicit performative such as I ask you to leave the room sounds very harsh, or authoritative, and seems to require a power differential between the interactants with the speaker in the more powerful position. A hedged version, I’d like to ask you…, would be more common between equals (cf. Blum-Kulka et al. 1989a). A more indirect performative strategy involves the deployment of the May I …? construction, as in May I ask you to leave the room? or May I invite you to my birthday party? This indirect performative strategy, which literally is permission seeking (cf. Trosborg 1995: 205), is used for realizing polite directives such as polite requests and so-called commissive-directives such as e.g. invitations, offers and suggestions, entailing not only obligations for the speaker, but also the speaker’s attempt to direct the addressee’s behaviour (cf. Hancher 1979). Pure commissives, by contrast, appear to be realized predominantly by employing unhedged performatives. For instance, I’d like to promise… does not work as a promise. Expressive speech acts, on the other hand, can also be performed by using meta-illocutionary nouns, e.g. Congratulations! Unlike performative directives, which are hedged by non-imposing speakers, performative expressives are upgraded to attend to the addressees’ face wants, e.g. Huge apologies about this, […] (Guo 2015: 91). Given the explicit nature of performative realizations, which makes it easy for hearers or readers to identify the illocutionary force of an utterance, the performative strategy lends itself to deceiving and manipulating hearers or readers. Here are three examples in which the MIE employed actually camouflages the true intentions of the speaker or writer: (3) I warn you! (4) I suggest you clean the kitchen now. (5) I would like to invite you to review the following article: Example 3 is not a warning, which would be in the addressee’s interest, but a threat (cf. König 1977: 22), which is an aggressive speech act in the speaker’s interest. The meta-illocutionary verb warn, unhedged and with matching intonation, is conventionally used to perform threats (threaten, like the verb insult, cannot be used performatively). Examples 4 and 5 are Klaus P. Schneider 232 both requests, and not a suggestion and an invitation, respectively. The performative used in example 6 is closely related to the indirect requesting strategy termed suggestory formula (Blum-Kulka et al. 1989a), which involves formulaic constructions such as How about …? and Why not…? , otherwise used to realize suggestions, which are, like warnings and invitations, and unlike threats and requests, in the interest of the addressee. Example 5 typically occurs in emails in which publishers or editors try to persuade scholars to review an academic article (Bardovi-Harlig 2016). To sum up, MIEs in the performative function are prototypically verbs used in a construction in which speakers or writers pronominally surface as the grammatical subject in the first person, followed by the verb in its present simple indicative active form. Verbs may be unhedged or hedged, depending on the illocutionary type the speech act belongs to and the relationship between the interactants. Meta-illocutionary nouns can also be used in the performative function, although they seem to occur much less frequently. Whenever meta-illocutionary verbs or nouns are used in the performative function, they both name the speech act they are used in and help to perform it in the specific constructions available for the purpose. Explicit naming can, however, also be employed in a camouflaging strategy to manipulate the addressee. 4.2 Reporting function This function is probably less complex than the performative function since there are, as a rule, no immediate interactional intricacies such as camouflaging or the motivation for hedging. In the reporting function, MIEs are used in assertive acts to inform hearers or readers that a particular speech act was performed in the more or less distant past or what the illocutionary force of an utterance was in the understanding of the speaker or writer. Reporting MIEs are prototypically verbs in their simple past tense form, used in indirect speech (as in example 6) or with direct speech, in the position of a proper verbum dicendi (as in example 7), and employed to categorise the respective speech as the occurrence of a particular speech act. (6) … he promised he wouldn’t leave them. (7) ‘Bloody cheek! ’ complained Oliphant. (Phyllis D. James, Devices and Desires, 423 (6) and 428 (7)) In either case, the MIE could be replaced by a less informative verb of saying (e.g. … he said he wouldn’t leave them), merely asserting that something had been said, but not what it was in terms of illocution or speaker intention. MIEs in the reporting function are typically used in narratives, either in prose fiction or in conversational narrative, where the writer or speak- Is that a threat? 233 er wishes to share an experience with the addressee who was not present in the situation reported. While in this particular communicative function meta-illocutionary verbs usually take the simple past tense, they may take the simple present, if the narrator employs a device traditionally known as historical present in order to create a sense of immediacy or to foreground particular events. Example (1), discussed in the introduction, is a case in point. As a rule, the grammatical subject of a reporting MIE refers to a third person. However, when narrators report their own speech acts, they naturally use the first person singular pronoun, as in example (8). (8) I suggested we did the filthiest stuff first, lavatories, bathroom, kitchen, clearing the rubbish, […] (Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth, 2013: 91) The next example illustrates two further variations. One is that the metaillocutionary verb may also occur in the present perfect. In this case, the speech act reported is of immediate relevance to the situation of reporting and may directly affect the addressee. Perhaps this particular subtype of the reporting function could be termed updating function. The second variation is that the MIE merely asserts that a particular speech act was performed, but what exactly was said is not reported. (9) ‘We’ll be six, incidentally. I’ve invited Adam Dalgliesh.’ (Phyllis D. James, Devices and Desires, 1990: 77) To sum up, MIEs in the reporting function are typically verbs in their past tense form which are used in constructions with third person subjects (nominal or pronominal, usually singular). The MIEs occur in assertive acts reporting utterances as direct or indirect speech, and ascribe an illocutionary force to these utterances. First person subjects appear in selfreports. Speech acts are reported in narratives, which may be either prose fiction or conversational narrative. Simple past may be replaced by simple present to create a sense of immediacy (historical present), or it may be replaced by present perfect if the reported speech act is of direct relevance at the moment of reporting. What exactly was said may be irrelevant, and thus not mentioned, in those particular reports. 4.3 Commenting function The commenting function is typically expressed by using a metaillocutionary verb in its first person singular present progressive form. An utterance including such a verb is a retrospective comment by a speaker on a previous act by this same speaker, usually in this speaker’s last turnat-talk, with the comment serving the purpose of explicating the illocutionary force of the earlier utterance to explain the speaker’s intention Klaus P. Schneider 234 behind it. This is illustrated in the following example, which was posted to the website “British Problems” in 2013. (10) I live outside the UK so when I say “With all due respect” nobody realises I’m insulting them. (http: / / www.reddit.com/ r/ britishproblems) More specifically, in face-to-face interaction the commenting function is commonly realized by employing the constructional pattern I am not Xing, I’m Y-ing, in which X and Y are two different meta-illocutionary verbs. This particular pattern is used in situations in which a speaker thinks their interlocutor has misinterpreted the speaker’s illocution. In this type of situation, the speaker rejects the illocution attributed by the interlocutor by negating the respective meta-illocutionary verb and contrasting it with the verb labelling the speaker’s desired interpretation. Consider the following example. (11) A. I did that. B. I’m glad you have the courage to admit it. A. I’m not admitting it, I’m telling you that I did it. (Hatcher 1974: 204-205, quoted in König 1977: 22) It seems that the constructional pattern is not only used for clarifying comments, but also, and perhaps more frequently, for manipulative purposes in comments which could be called defensive denial. In this case, the hearer correctly identifies the speaker’s illocution, but the speaker, realizing that their original illocution is face-threatening, tries to minimize this face-threat by strategically reinterpreting their original illocution as a less face-threatening one. The following example serves as an illustration. (12) […] I’m not apologising - I’m only saying that up to now I’ve been under orders.” (J.T. McIntosh, Born Leader, 2013: eBook) In this example, the denied action of apologising threatens the speaker’s own face. By contrast, frequently heard (elliptical) Just saying… is commonly used to strategically deny or mitigate an act threatening the hearer’s face. What is implied in such cases could be glossed as I’m not complaining/ criticizing, etc. In sum, in the commenting function, meta-illocutionary verbs are used in their present progressive form. The default case is that the verb refers to the speaker’s own illocutionary act and, hence, the grammatical subject surfaces as the personal pronoun in the first person singular. By using this construction, speakers explicate the illocutionary force of their earlier utterance. A particularly conspicuous construction is I am not Xing, I’m Y-ing, in which the speaker contrasts the illocution wrongly attributed by the interlocutor with the speaker’s intended illocution. Com- Is that a threat? 235 ments of this type may be used for mere clarification or for strategic manipulation. 4.4 Problematizing function The last function discussed in this chapter is the problematizing function. In this function, meta-illocutionary nouns, rather than verbs, are used, as a rule in the singular and characteristically in a Yes/ No-question (Is/ was this/ that an X? ). The following example includes a question of this type. (13) [Desmond Pepperdine to his pregnant wife Dawn] ‘I’m going to be fussing over you. You won’t have a minute’s peace.’ […] She gave her new laugh (half an octave deeper) and said, ‘Promise? ’ ‘Promise.’ (Martin Amis, Lionel Asbo: State of England, 2013: 181) The first occurrence of the noun promise (with question intonation) can be interpreted as an ellipsis of the interrogative construction Is/ was this/ that an X? , functioning as a request for confirmation that the interlocutor’s illocution has been correctly understood; alternatively, it could be interpreted as requesting a promise. In either case, there seems to be an element of uncertainty or even fear that the interlocutor’s intention may not be the one desired. Further examples suggest that the construction Is/ was this/ that an X? is not, or not just, used to request confirmation that the interlocutor’s illocution has been correctly identified, but, perhaps more frequently, to challenge this illocution or, more precisely, the interlocutor’s right to perform the speech act identified in the given situation. Example (14) is a case in point. (14) ‘In the interests of the station I think you should drop it.’ ‘Is that an order? ’ ‘I’ve no power to compel you and you know that. I’m asking you.’ (Phyllis D. James, Devices and Desires, 1990: 71) This exchange takes place between two police officers who talk about an investigation. While the second part of the initial utterance is phrased like a piece of advice (I think you should), which, by definition, would be in the interest of the addressee, it is prefaced by an appeal to higher interests (In the interests of the station). The illocutionary force literally displayed in this initial utterance is challenged by the second speaker, who employs the interrogative under inspection to show that he understands the first speaker’s utterance as a ‘camouflaged’, i.e. indirect, realization of an order, while at the same time expressing disbelief or annoyance about the fact that an order has been performed. So in this example, the con- Klaus P. Schneider 236 struction Is/ was this/ that an X? is employed to reject a face-threatening act, denying the interlocutor the right to perform such an act addressed to the speaker in the given situation. In his response to the question Is that an order? , the first speaker reframes the perceived order as a less face-threatening request by using the verb ask in the present progressive characteristic of the commenting function (cf. section 4.3 above). While all three meta-illocutionary terms occurring in example (14) can be employed to label directives, ask is much weaker than compel or order and is used between equals and not downwards in a hierarchical relationship. The construction Is/ was this/ that an X? and the meta-illocutionary nouns used in this construction are analysed in more detail in the following chapter. 5. Frequencies and distribution of the construction Is that an X? The qualitative analysis in Chapter 4 has shown that metapragmatic expressions may serve different communicative functions, and that these functions correlate with specific structural patterns. A salient pattern emerging from the data that correlates with the problematizing function (cf. section 4.4 above) is the interrogative construction Is/ was this/ that an X? , with a meta-illocutionary noun in the position of X. This interrogative can be used to request confirmation of an addressee’s illocutionary force attribution, but can also be used to explicate and reject an interlocutor’s face-threatening act, as in the following example (cf. also example 14 in section 4.4). (15) ‘I’m not the one going about poking my nose into places where it’s liable to get cut off.’ Quirke gave an incredulous laugh. ‘Is that a threat, Mal? ’ (Benjamin Black, Christine Falls, 2006: 131; original emphasis) That threat is stressed and Quirke’s question accompanied by incredulous laughter shows that Quirke has well understood his interlocutor’s intention, but cannot believe that Mal dares to threaten him, thus indicating that Mal, in Quirke’s view, is not in a position to do so. In this case, then, the interrogative is not aimed at eliciting confirmation of the illocution attributed, but at challenging the interlocutor and questioning, or denying, his right to perform a threat. One aim of the corpus-based quantitative analysis was to establish which meta-illocutionary nouns are used with what frequencies in the final position, X, of the interrogative construction. For this purpose, twelve nouns were chosen which name frequent and socially significant speech acts that have received much attention in research (cf., e.g., Al- Is that a threat? 237 fonzetti 2013, Ambroise 2013, Oishi 2013 and Walker 2013). These nouns are (in alphabetical order): apology, command, complaint, compliment, insult, invitation, offer, order, request, suggestion, threat, warning In a preliminary analysis, two further variables were identified, namely the copula in the initial position and the demonstrative in the second position of the construction, with the respective variants Is/ Was and this/ that, resulting in the four constructional variants Is this an X? , Is that an X? , Was this an X? , and Was that an X? These four constructional variants, each with the twelve meta-illocutionary nouns selected for the purpose, were searched for in the internet employing a Google search. Table 1 (below) summarizes the results of this internet search. Was that Is that Was this Is this TOTAL Request 6,120,000 3,660,000 1,520,000 454,000 11,754,000 Order 5,060,000 2,700,000 435,000 319,000 8,514,000 Warning 3,930,000 1,760,000 354,000 385,000 6,429,000 Suggestion 2,960,000 1,220,000 1,060,000 452,000 5,692,000 Threat 1,560,000 2,750,000 386,000 349,000 5,045,000 Command 1,800,000 636,000 737,000 394,000 3,567,000 Complaint 203,000 1,870,000 963,000 468,000 3,504,000 Compliment 322,000 341,000 213,000 404,000 1,280,000 Offer 363,000 511,000 157,000 167,000 1,198,000 Invitation 358,000 316,000 204,000 179,000 1,057,000 Insult 350,000 350,000 152,000 113,000 965,000 Apology 359,000 326,000 132,000 111,000 928,000 TOTAL 23,385,000 16,440,000 6,313,000 3,795,000 49,933,000 Rank I II III IV Share 46.8% 32.9% 12.6% 7.6% 100% Table 1: Frequencies of the constructional variants and the metaillocutionary nouns. Table 1 provides the following insights. First, the twelve metaillocutionary nouns selected for this part of the study occur with high frequencies, their occurrences amounting to an overall frequency of approximately 50 million altogether. Second, the respective frequencies of the individual meta-illocutionary nouns differ markedly, ranging from approximately 12 million occurrences in the case of request as the noun most frequently used in the interrogative construction to less than 1 million occurrences each in the case of insult and apology, with the latter appearing with the lowest frequency of all twelve nouns. Third, the frequencies of the four constructional variants also differ considerably. Was that…? alone accounts for almost half of all occurrences at 46.8%, and Is that…? accounts for approximately one third. The remaining two variants Klaus P. Schneider 238 Was this…? and Is this? , on the other hand, occur with frequencies of only 12.6% and 7.6%, respectively. While this is the overall trend, individual meta-illocutionary nouns diverge from this trend. For instance, Is that…? appears more often than Was that…? with compliment, offer, and especially threat. In the case of complaint, to give another example, otherwise dominant Was that…? occurs much less frequently (with just over 200,000 occurrences) than any of the remaining three constructional variants (at close to 2 million, 1 million and half a million occurrences, respectively). In general, however, all findings suggest two hierarchies, namely Was > Is, and that > this. It has been suggested (Stephan Gramley, pers. comm.) that Was and that are distancing devices used in confrontational discourse in which the construction under inspection is employed to challenge the interactional partner, and that such challenging occurs more often than the purely informative use of the construction by which speakers wish to clarify whether they have properly understood their interlocutor’s intention, and in which the non-distancing alternatives Is and this seem to be preferred. This would explain the relatively higher frequencies of Was and that vis-à-vis Is and this. These hypotheses have yet to be tested empirically, however. The comparatively low overall frequencies of the nouns apology and insult in the interrogative construction can perhaps be explained with reference to the nature of apologies and insults. Apologies are overwhelmingly realized by using the IFID sorry, at least in informal discourse, as has been shown in recent corpus-based speech act research (cf. Lutzky/ Kehoe 2017). Hence it should be clear in most situations that an apology was performed. Similarly, insults can be assumed to be realized predominantly in unambiguous terms and, thus, clarification is not required. Furthermore, the nouns invitation, offer, and compliment, which do not occur markedly more frequently than apology and insult, name cooperative speech acts to the benefit of the addressee that are often ritually performed by employing a small set of easily recognizable formulaic routines (cf., e.g., Manes and Wolfson’s (1981) groundbreaking analysis of American English compliments) and therefore requests for clarification appear unnecessary. By contrast, the nouns appearing in the upper half of Table 1 refer to speech acts which are often performed by using indirect realization strategies, most prominently requests (cf., e.g., Blum-Kulka et al. 1989a). More importantly, these acts are mostly to the speaker’s benefit and are all threats to the addressee’s negative face. Hence, they are likely to be challenged more frequently than, e.g., compliments, which attend to the addressee’s positive face wants. A close look at the contexts is, however, required to substantiate these assumptions. Is that a threat? 239 6. Conclusion The present paper presents an exploratory study of the meta-illocutionary lexicon, which includes mostly verbs and nouns such as request, compliment and insult which are employed by ordinary language users in everyday discourse to name and talk about speech acts and explicitly negotiate speaker intentions and hearer understandings. With a focus on functionto-form mappings, the basic tenet is that each communicative function in which meta-illocutionary expressions may occur correlates with specific grammatical forms and constructional patterns. The study comes in two parts. The first part is a qualitative analysis in which four communicative functions of meta-illocutionary expressions are identified as well as the constructions typically available for their realization. The second part includes a quantitative analysis exemplifying a corpus-based approach in which the relative frequencies of constructional variants can be established as well as the distribution of metaillocutionary expressions in these variants. In the qualitative analysis, four communicative functions are distinguished and correlated with typical constructional choices as follows: Function Interactional goal Typical construction Example Performative Performing a particular speech act 1 st ps. sg. present simple of metaillocutionary verb I apologize for any inconvenience. Reporting Communicating that a particular speech act was performed 3 rd ps. sg. past simple of metaillocutionary verb … he promised he wouldn’t leave them. Commenting Clarifying the illocution of one’s own speech act Juxtaposition of two meta-illocutionary verbs in 1 st ps. sg. present progressive: negating the first, affirming the second I'm not apologizing, I'm stating a fact. Problematizing Questioning (the legitimacy of) the interlocutor’s illocution Yes/ No question with metaillocutionary noun Is that a threat? Table 2: Communicative functions of meta-illocutionary expressions and correlating constructions The suggested quantitative approach is exemplified with a corpus search for the variants of the construction typically used to realize the problematizing function. From a Google search in the internet, involving twelve different meta-illocutionary nouns and yielding approximately fifty million occurrences, a clear preference hierarchy emerged: Klaus P. Schneider 240 Was that > Is that > Was this > Is this an X? Both parts of this exploratory study require elaboration. The communicative functions of meta-illocutionary expressions should be examined in more detail to gain a more differentiated picture. There is evidence that functional subtypes exist which are realized by employing structural variants of the constructions typically used to realize the respective function. Additionally, it may be not only possible, but necessary to identify further communicative functions. Systematic study of the occurrences of metaillocutionary expressions in large corpora will bring to light further frequent constructional patterns used for specific functions. Furthermore, each recurrent construction (e.g. Is/ was this/ that an X? ) should be searched with many more meta-illocutionary expressions than just the twelve nouns chosen for demonstrative purposes in Chapter 5. Also, a range of different corpora should be included in the analysis, especially corpora permitting the investigation of regional, social and historical variation in the use of meta-illocutionary verbs and nouns, for instance differences between Australian and Canadian English, old and young speakers, 21 st century and 19 th century English, and moreover differences between speech and writing, different domains and genres, and perhaps individual writers of prose fiction. 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