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Jenny A. THOMAS*
The goal of this paper is two-fold. My first aim is simply to describe the systematic way in which a
range of pragmatic features were employed by the dominant’ participant in a series of ‘unequal
encounters’ in order to restrict severely the discoursal options of the subordinate participant. The
features in question are: (i) IFID’s (illocutionary force indicating devices); (ii) metapragmatic
comments, ‘upshots’ and ‘reformulations’, and (iii) appeal to felicity conditions.
My second aim is to argue that we can only satisfactorily explain the effectiveness of these tactics
by bringing together insights from both conversational analysis and recent work in interpersonal
pragmatics. In so doing, we go some way towards overcoming the limitations of conversational
analysis, single-utterance based pragmatic analyses and the problems inherent in ‘speech-act’
descriptions of discourse, and move towards a model of discourse-organisation with greater
predictive and explanatory power.
1. Introduction
Levinson (1983) suggests, rightly in my view, that in recent years the most
substantial insights into the way in which discourse is organised have come, not
from linguists, but from the work of conversation analysts such as Sacks,
Schegloff and Jefferson and others working in the ethnomethodological tra-
dition. However, impressive as the conversation analysts’ work is in terms of
rigorous empirical observation and absence of premature formalisation, its
predictive power is limited and explanatory power totally lacking. Much of
what conversational analysis presents as purely structural configurations (adja-
2 The term ‘social distance’ (Leech (1983: 126)) is the opposite of Brown and Gilman’s (1960)
‘solidarity factor’. It is best seen as a composite of psychologically real factors (status, age, sex,
degree of intimacy, etc.) which together determine the ‘overall degree of respectfulness’ within a
given speech situation.
3 Taken from a BBC TV documentary series Police. filmed over several months with the Thames
Valley Police force.
4 Some of the magistrates’ courts examples are taken from Harris (1980). the rest I collected from
Lancaster magistrates’ court.
J. Thomas / Towards a dynamic pragmatics 161
teenage girls who had been caught playing truant and who subsequently lied
about their actions, and to two Ph.D. supervisions. The names of all the
participants have been changed.
There are, of course, many markers of asymmetrical discourse, from the
‘power semantic’ of Brown and Gilman (1960) and Ervin-Tripp (1972) to more
recent work dealing with interruptions, turn-taking, turn length, etc. Many
such features (linguistic, discoursal, paralinguistic, kinesic, etc.), have been
identified by others at Lancaster engaged in research on the use of language in
‘unequal encounters’ (cf. Candlin (1982) Fairclough, Makosh and Spencer
(1982) and Fairclough (this issue: 739-763)) but I intend to concentrate here
on those concepts which I myself developed in order to describe particular
strategies employed by the ‘powerful’ participant in an interaction and which
seem to enable him/her to keep the upper hand. I shall begin my brief outline
of the features in question with the clearest examples I have of the way they
operate, taken from a variety of unequal encounters, before going on to show
why they are effective.
The pragmatic features I shall describe were striking in the speech of all the
dominant participants and entirely absent from the speech of the subordinate
participants. I have called them collectively ‘metapragmatic acts’,s because in
each case the dominant participants make explicit reference to the intended
pragmatic force of their own or their subordinate’s utterances. The categories I
have established should not be seen as theoretical constructs, designed to
impose order on data, like those set up by British discourse analysts, such as
Sinclair and Coulthard. Rather they should be seen as an attempt to describe
features systematically employed and responded to by participants in con-
versations (cf. Schegloff and Sacks (1974: 237)). The first two sets of strategies
are closely related, and should be seen as differing from one another in degree,
rather than in nature. They are: (a) IFID’s (Illocutionary Force Indicating
Devices); (b) Metapragmatic comments, ‘Upshots’ and ‘Reformulations’, and
(c) Appeal to felicity conditions.
What each of these features has in common is that, by its use, the dominant
participant effectively denies his/her interlocutor the possibility of escaping into
indirectness and ‘pragmatic ambivalence’ - of leaving the precise illocutionary
intent of an utterance diplomatically unclear.
Accounting for indirectness, discoursal indeterminacy (see Thomas (forth-
coming)) and pragmatic ambivalence is, of course, a central concern of
pragmaticists, whereas discourse analysts, particularly Sinclair, Coulthard and
others of the ‘Birmingham School’, appear to regard these phenomena
as inconvenient and untidy and have largely ignored them. Conversational
analysts (e.g. Atkinson, Heritage, Jefferson), on the other hand, whilst re-
cognising them as problems for participants in interactions, are unable either to
5 I use the term ‘metapragmatic’ in the same sense as Giv6n (1984), meaning ‘pragmatic reflection
on pragmatics’.
768 .I. Thomas / Towards a dynamic pragmatics
account for them or to explain how participants cope with these uncertainties,
since they refuse to seek explanations beyond the exchange system itself.
Linguists who have discussed indirectness and ambivalence in relation to
politeness phenomena (notably Brown and Levinson (1978) Lakoff (1974) and
Leech (1977, 1980 and 1983)) have noted that for reasons of politeness or
expediency, it is often in the interests of both speaker and hearer to allow the
force of an utterance to remain imprecise:
E.xample 1
A: I was wondering if you could come over here this evening between live
and six, because I’m rather tied up in the early days of next week?
B: I havent’t got the car any more.
on record with the intended pragmatic force of his own utterance, or by forcing
his interlocutor to do so. The subordinate interlocutor is obliged not only to
produce a contingently relevant response (the adjacency pairs which conver-
sational analysts describe), but also, because of the power relationship
obtaining between the speaker and hearer, a polite response. In the examples I
shall give, the clash between the propositional and the interpersonal is such
that this compromise is not possible: the subordinate must either directly
contradict his/her superior (and risk aggravating the confrontation), or s/he
must back down and lose the argument (or at best remain silent).
(i) Be quiet!
and
As Leech (1980: 70-71) points out, (ii) differs from (i) only in making
explicit its own speech act force, thereby removing any polite ambivalence and
giving the utterance a ‘sledge-hammer’ effect:
“If, for example, the speaker (of ii) is an officer speaking to an N.C.O., he makes it clear, by
formally expressing the illocutionary force of his utterance, that he is speaking in his authority as
an officer whereas (i) could implicitly have this force, (ii) makes, the hearer understand that this
force. and no other is intended.”
6 For the purposes of this paper I am using Leech’s (1983) cost-benefit scale, although it is not, in
my view, unproblematical. For example, it is often not possible to assign a speech act to the
category of ‘costly to speaker’ or ‘costly to hearer’ - a speech act such as criticising a colleague
might be embarrassing (and thereby ‘costly’ and ‘face-threatening’) to both participants, and might
benefit both parties or neither.
770 J. Thomas 1 Towards a dynamic pragmatics
Example 2
(Police Inspector addressing detective constable)
. . . you have come very close to formal discipline and I’m warning you, Barry,
that this is not the way to go on at all and if it happens again or anything like
it . . .
Example 3
(Headmaster addressing child)
I advise you very very seriously to keep away from this Maggy, right?
Example 4
(Inspector to police constable in Police Data)
. . . it probably sounds a bit cruel but I’m going to be honest with you . . .
Example 5
(Inspector to police constable in Police Data)
. . . let me make it very very clear to you because I shan’t hold my punches ...
.It is interesting to note that it now becomes discoursally infelicitous (in that
it would not be an informative addition to the discourse, thereby violating the
Maxim of Quantity) for the constable to say: ‘That’s really cruel’, even though
J. Thomas / Towards a dynamic pragmatics 771
Example 6
(Headmaster to schoolgirl who has been playing truant)
I warned you, I always find out.
Example 7
(Inspector to police constable)
. . .well there you are Barry I’ve spelt it out to you I’ve left you in no doubt at
all how you stand...
Example 8
(Headmaster to schoolgirl who has been playing truant)
That’s just a friendly word of advice, all right?
Example 9
(Magistrate to Defendant)’
It’s straight question, Mr H
The advantage for the speaker of leaving the force of an utterance unclear
has often been demonstrated. An ambivalent utterance allows a speaker to
carry out a face-threatening act and still have an escape route (in the form of a
plausible alternative interpretation of that utterance) if his/her right to perform
that act should be challenged:
“A communicative act is done off record if it is done in such a way that is not possible to attribute
only one clear communicative intention to the act. In other words, the actor leaves himself an ‘out’
by providing himself with a number of defensible interpretations; he cannot be held to have
committed himself to just one particular interpretation of his act.” (Brown and Levinson
(1978: 216))
act in the first place (e.g. in normal circumstances, one cannot felicitously give
orders to total strangers, but it is perfectly permissible to ask them questions).
This is well-illustrated by an incident at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre,
Stratford-on-Avon, during a performance of Richard III. One member of the
audience, incensed by the fact that her neighbour kept rustling chocolate
wrappers, turned to her and asked whether she could eat more quietly. At the
interval, the following exchange took place:
Example 10
A: How dare you tell me to eat more quietly!
B: I didn’t tell you to, I asked if you could. If you can’t, there’s nothing more
to be said.
“(. .) changes one’s normative status in a certain way; one sticks one’s neck out or goes out on a
limb.”
The interesting point for the pragmaticist, then, is a point which the
conversational analyst resolutely refuses to address: why a speaker should take
unnecessary risks. From the data I have examined, it is clear that it is only
when a speaker is certain of not being challenged or of being able to withstand
a challenge should it occur, that s/he ventures an IFID or this first (speaker-
oriented) form of MPC.
This is because the MPCs we have examined so far are risky for the speaker.
In making his/her utterance unambivalent, the speaker goes out onto a limb
and is exposed to a challenge to his/her authority. But speaker-oriented MPCs,
like IFIDs, are very effective if they work, and they usually do. Indeed, on the
basis of the data I have examined, I would claim that these uses of IFIDs and
S-MPCs can be taken as markers of unequal discourse, normally indicating
that the speaker is absolutely sure of his/her power (generally an institu-
tionally-sanctioned power) over the addressee.8 In this they differ somewhat
from the tactics which are described below (addressee-oriented MPCs, upshots
and reformulations) which, although they are highly effective strategies in
themselves, can only be judged as markers of unequal discourse in relation to
their perlocutionary effect as revealed in the subsequent discourse (cf. Ochs
(1979: 50): i‘The assessment of control may be carried out by examining first,
* There are, of course, occasions (e.g. in a quarrel) where people use such stratagems without any
power back-up, although even here one could argue that they signal the S’s claim to such power
(moral or otherwise).
J. Thomas / Towards a dynamic pragmarics 773
the extent to which the first move imposes a relevant response . . . and second,
the extent to which the initiator actually succeeds in securing the expected
response”).
In the second (addressee-oriented) sort of MPC (A-MPC) the dominant
speaker forces the addressee to take risks, by refusing to allow the subordinate
participant to retreat into ambivalence. This occurs in its simplest form when
the dominant speaker presents the subordinate participant with possible
pragmatic interpretations of an utterance and makes him/her choose (e.g. Are
you asking me or telling me?).
Example 11
(Supervisor to Ph.D. student)
Student: It’s not that you’ve misunderstood but that I don’t think your
account is particularly clear.
Supervisor: Are you retracting?
A more subtle form of blocking these addressee’s bolt hole, one much favoured
by dominant speakers, is by the use of what I have called ‘upshots’ and
‘reformulations’ (Thomas (1984)). Heritage and Watson (1979) use the terms
‘gists’ and ‘formulations’ to describe tactics used by participants in a conver-
sation to disambiguate or to check that they have understood. What Heritage
and Watson are basically concerned with, however, is linguistic disam-
biguation, i.e. getting straight the facts of what was said rather than what was
meant (cf. Thomas (1983)). What I am interested in is pragmatic disambigua-
tion: the strategies used by participants to clarify communicative intent. In my
‘unequal encounters’ data, what frequently happens is that the dominant
speaker presents the hearer with an ‘upshot’ (a brief summary by the dominant
speaker of a long contribution by the subordinate) or a ‘reformulation’
(presentation of H’s utterance in unambivalent terms), in response to which H
is required to make clear (example 12) or simply to confirm (example 13) the
intended pragmatic force of his/her utterance:
774 J. Thomas / Towards a dynamic pragmatics
Example 12
(Police Data)
Constable: I’ve never nad any comment other than that.
Inspector: Are you saying that nobody’s brought your shortcomings to your
notice?
For the constable to say ‘no’ at this juncture would mean abandoning his
strongest card (he had been arguing that his demotion was unfair because he
had been given no indication that his work was in any way unsatisfactory). To
say ‘yes’, on the other hand, would imply criticism of the way in which his
superiors have carried out their job ~ in Labov and Fanshel’s terms (1977) an
‘aggravated challenge’ to their competence. He takes one of the few options
open to him by hinting that no-one has told him recently that his work was not
up to standard and then expressing his emotions:
Example 13
(Court Data, reconstructed from Solicitor’s notes, Lancaster Magistrates’
Court, December 1983)
The defendant, a young man, was unrepresented. He was accused of resisting
arrest and hitting a police officer. He admitted that he had hit the policeman,
but later claimed in mitigation that the policeman had hit him first.
Court Official: How do you plead - guilty or not guilty?
Defendant: (Silence)
Court Official: Did you do it or not?
Defendant: Well, I did hit him, yes.
Court Official: So that’s ‘guilty’ then.
Defendant: Yes, sir.
Example 14
(Police Data)
Constable: My D.S. (Detective Sergeant) was telling me just how well things
have gone and the jobs that I’ve had under my belt I’m so pleased
I really am sir I’ve never had such a good time for basic police
work as I’ve had in the last.. .
J. Thomas / Towards a dynamic pragmatics 775
Inspector: You say that you’re working to the er er er the proper standard, is
that right?
Constable: Well er I’ve never had any comment other than that (my
brackets, JT)
Once again, the Constable is unable to say ‘yes’ to the Inspector Y question
without violating the ‘Modesty Maxim’ (Leech (1983)) and implying that the
Inspector is. wrong.
Example IS
Constable: (makes very long complaint about what the Inspector has said) . .
and I’m afraid sir I’m just absolutely staggered.
Inspector: yeah well yes well what you’re basically saying is that urn . . . all
these people are wrong but Barry you are right
Constable: no you know I can’t take them on sir.
Example 16
(Taken from a Ph.D. Supervision)
Student: . . . but it’s not like that that’s not that’s just not the way people
talk no-one talks like that really well maybe it’s the way middle-
class academics talk to people they’ve never seen before.
Supervisor: what you’re saying then is Lamb is a bourgeois, Lamb is a
hypocrite.
(10 seconds’ silence)
Student: I didn’t mean to be rude
Supervisor: Didn’t you?
Example I7
(Police Data)
Inspector: Are you suggesting there’s a bit of a conspiracy to put the skids
under you?
Constable: . . . conspiracy, I can’t say that, Sir.
Example 18
(Ph.D. supervision)
Supervisor: You see, I have stated my considered opinion.
Student: No, it was a bilious, ill-considered opinion.
Supervisor: My very carefully considered opinion and if you choose to disre-
gard your supervisor’s opinion that’s up to you.
(5 seconds silence)
Student: (sniffs) all right.
Example 19
(Police Data)
Constable: (Makes very long complaint about what the Inspector has said) . . .
and I’m afraid sir I’m just absolutely staggered.
Inspector: Yeah well yes well what you’re basically saying is that urn
Detective Inspector Jessop is wrong, Detective Inspector er Fuller
is wrong er Acting Superintendant until recently Chief Inspector
Button is wrong Chief Inspector Pullen is wrong. All these people
are wrong but, Barry, you are right.
Constable: No. You know I can’t take them on, Sir.
Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson (1974) have shown how speakers can, to a
greater or lesser degree, pre-determine their interlocutor’s contribution by the
use of ‘pre-sequencing’ and adjacency pairs. Thus a greeting will elicit a
responding greeting, an offer a rejection/acceptance, etc. What conversational
analysis alone cannot explain, is why one slot filler should be preferred above
another.
Pragmatics, by appealing to regularities and motivations which lie outside
the exchange system itself, but within a more general theory of human
778 J. Thomas / Towards Q dynamic pragmatics
Example 20
(BBC Radio 4, 2-3-1984)
Interviewer: Are you saying that Mr. Brittan, the Home Secretary, is in
some way flouting the conventions of the European
Commission!
R. McClaren, M.P. :I am indeed suggesting that.
Example 21
(BBC Radio News, shortly after the banning of trade unions at the General
Communications Headquarters - the British Government’s ‘monitoring centre’
in Cheltenham)
Conservative M.P.: I don’t deny that the Government is right to put security
at the top of their priorities... But on the other hand they
could have handled it better.
Interviewer: Are you saying they cocked it up?
Conservative M.P.: You said that. What Z said was . . .
Example 22
(BBC Television discussion on the part played by the chairman of British
Airways prior to its de-nationalisation) lo
Labour M.P.: Urn what I would say is that uh I think he’s trying to play the
ends up against the middle. What he wants is to get his hands
on as much of the good bits as he possibly can for his company
in order to make as much for uh a er presumably himself and
er the other people who’ve got shares in his company.
Example 23
(Israeli television news interview with a Government minister)
Interviewer: Are you saying, Minister, that someone in television is trying to
prevent you from stating your case? Didn’t you succeed in
appearing on the news this week?
Minister: Let me explain. You recorded me. You conducted an interview.
On Friday I received a message that for some reason it was all
unsuitable for showing. Seems odd to me.
(Later)
Interviewer: Are you saying that television has it in for you?
Minister: God forbid, Elisha, don’t identify yourself with television.
So far I have tried to show that the model of discourse I am proposing has a
degree of explanatory and predictive power which is absent from conventional
conversational analysis. I am also arguing that the devices which I have
described differ crucially from the categories established by, for example,
Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) in that they reflect the ability of the participants
in asymmetrical discourse to predict the effect of MPAs, and the way in which
they take advantage of the structures which the exchange system makes
available, in order to achieve their goals. It is because powerful speakers know
that MPAs will work that they employ them so systematically.
I want to continue this line of argument in urging the development of a
‘dynamic pragmatics’. Levinson (1981) rightly points to the post hoc assign-
ment of a unique illocutionary force as a major (perhaps insuperable) problem
for speech act theory. Pragmatic force (like discourse value - see Thomas
(1985)) is at best ambivalent and potentially n-ways multivalent (see Thomas
(ibid.)). What Levinson fails to point out is that this represents a problem
not just for the analyst but also for the participants in discourse, who
are themselves forced constantly to re-assess their interlocutor’s goals and
intentions as the discourse develops. Conversation, as Candlin (personal
communication) has pointed out, involves the interactants in the gradual
reduction of uncertainty.
The dynamic pragmatics I am proposing involves taking into account not only
the various pragmatic parameters (power, size of imposition, etc.) and the role
780 J. Thomas / Towards a dynamic pragmatics
of a speech event in a given institution, but also the situation of the utterance
in the discourse. For example, one of the headmaster-truant interactions
begins :
Headmaster: You know that I now know where you went, don’t you?
Girl : We were in the woods.
Headmaster: You went to Simon Connolly’s house.
Example 24
(A is an eighteen-year old University student and B is her mother. She can be
seen as being in a subordinate position by virtue of being a dependent and the
non-owner.)
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