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INGLESE I PRAGMATICS AND DISCOURSE
GRAMMAR OF ENGLISHNESS
There are some unwritten rules used by English people in most occasionally conversation:
- To overcome people’s natural reserve
- To avoid awkward moments in a conversation Every culture expresses its peculiar things in different ways, and the grammar of Englishness refers to the fact that English people have a predominant negative face, based on the idea of privacy. We have three type of speak/talk:
- Greeting-weather-speak: when you meet someone for the first time and you speak about weather, because it always changes and so you always have new comments. Weather is also a neutral subject, you don’t have a particular opinion about it (as in politics or religion for example) ex: nice day, isn’t it? (reciprocity rule: if I say something I expect you say something else).
- Grooming talk: it includes introductory rituals, it’s composed by
- Rules of introduction (introduction rituals such ash weather talk and greetings, “how are you? What’s up?” (crystallized response: fine, thanks.)
- The awkwardness rule: shaking hands is inappropriated, hugs and kisses are informal, a simply hello is general the rule (simple but respectful)
- The no-name rule: you should avoid to mention yourself, your name, so it’s better to wait to take the initiative
- Gossiping: it’s the invasion of someone’s else privacy. We have two reactions, different between women and men: women reacts with surprise and animated comments (ex. No? really? Oh my god!) and men over emphasize their opinions.
- The guessing game rule: when I want to know something about yourself but I shouldn’t ask you directly, I use other questions. Ex: so, do you work in the neighbourhood? Yes, at the hospital. Ah, so you’re a doctor! No, I’m a nurse.
- The reciprocal discourse rule: when you say something about yourself and I am authorized to say something about me, following the principle of symmetry or balance.
- Bonding talk: language is used to create a positive context to facilitate interaction. Men and women behave in different ways: there is female bonding (they start with an opening compliment, followed by a counter compliment or a compliment with embarrassment, for ex: I like your haircut! “thanks, yours is very nice too” “oh no, my hair are terrible!”) Accepting compliments without counter compliment is impolite and arrogant. Then there is male bonding, the “mine’s better than yours rule”, they start with competitive rituals, but they provide an argument for the conversation. You say something countering the statement challenging the first assertion, for ex. “I like this beer” “you should try this one”.
COMMUNICATION: is every single type of message that needs to be communicated. It depends on the channel through we send the message: oral and written. Oral is highly context based, so you should pay attention to the context; Written is little context based, they don’t need the context to make sense. Oral text can be distinguished into:
- Formal text: formed by cultural elements (rehearsed: you have your speech ready), for ex when you break with your boyfriend.
- Informal text: it’s very spontaneous, it depends on what your interlocutor has just said. (unrehearsed: you don’t have your speech ready). Written text can be distinguished into:
- Public (formal): you have in your mind a general idea of the audience.
- Private (informal): you know what is written in this text. To self (diary) and to others (letters). PRAGMATICS AND DISCOURSE.. Pragmatics and discourse analysis are approaches to studying languages relation to contextual background features. There are three types of context:
- situational context: what you see around you, the immediate physical co-presence, the situation where the interaction is taking place at the moment of speaking. What speakers know about what they can see around them. Example: is that your pen? No, my pen is this. (it depends on the context).
- background knowledge context: it refers to all the actions that we refer to because they are stored in our life. This context is subdivided in two other parts: cultural knowledge (things that are accessible to us because they are culturally shared, by a population, by a group of people etc.) and interpersonal knowledge (accessible only to a restrict group of people, it’s acquired through previous verbal interactions).
- co-textual context: the context of the text itself (what speakers know about what they have been saying). REFERENCE : the act of using language to refer to entities in the context. Reference can be:
- Ambiguous: occurs when the pronoun can refer to more than one antecedent.
- Remote: occurs when a pronoun is so far away from its antecedent that the relationship is unclear
- Vague reference: occurs when a pronoun refers to a word that is only implied, not stated. The first type of reference is called EXOPHORA, or EXOPHORIC REFERENCE, and it’s the use of a pronoun or other word to refer to someone or something outside the text.
Perlocutionary level: to surprise the interlocutor Austin thought that the illocutionary level isn’t explicit and clear to be understood, for ex. “I’ll be back” can be a promise or a warning. Searle (1976) classifies speech acts and divides them in macro-classes:
- REPRESENTATIVES: by which the speaker explains something that he believes to be true, his own interpretation of reality. Verbs like describe, claim etc.) Ex: I think Paul is a very smart boy (I really think he’s smart)
- COMMISSIVES: acts which express the intention of performing action in the future: verbs like promise, offer, refuse etc. Ex: Mum, I promise you that I’ll tidy my room in 10 minutes
- DIRECTIVES: they have the purpose of making the hearer do something. Verbs like order, suggest, command, etc. Ex: I suggest you to tidy all that mess before mum arrives
- EXPRESSIVES: acts which state what the speaker feels. They manifest psychological states in relation to social circumstances: the speaker expresses his feelings in a given content in respect of what’s around. Verbs like apologise, congratulate, regret (dispiacersi). Ex: I’m very sorry: it was not my intent to make your phone fall from the desk”.
- DECLARATIVES: expressions which change the state of things (declare, resign(licenziarsi), pronounce etc.). Ex: I hereby pronounce you man and wife. FELICITY CONDITIONS.. In order for speech acts to be appropriately performed, certain felicity conditions have to be met. Searle defined five types of felicity conditions:
- GENERAL CONDITION: participants must hear and understand the language, otherwise they generate utterances which don’t make a sense and which aren’t speech acts. Ex: excuse me, how do I get to the station? (you have to understand what your interlocutor has just said because otherwise you cannot respond to his question).
- PREPARATORY CONDITION: participants must know what they are talking about and they must share context and conventions, otherwise that’s not a conversation. Ex: what are you wearing on Saturday night?
- PROPOSITIONAL CONDITION: the act must be feasible (fattibile) ex: if a political authority declares the independence of a nation from another, then this declaration must turn into a concrete action, otherwise is only a state.
- SINCERITY CONDITION: participants must not lie or play. Ex: I will help you during maths test. (you can say this statement only if you really have the intention to do it).
- ESSENTIAL CONDITION: speakers must be committed to what they say. Ex: I declare you under arrest for murder. (Only if a policeman says this, not an actor in a movie). DIRECT VS INDIRECT SPEECH ACTS.. DIRECT is when the form and the function coincide
INDIRECT : sentences where the form doesn’t correspond to the function, it’s different or opposite. An example of indirect speech act is the phrase “ come to lunch some day!”, because it’s an imperative and so it may sounds as an order, but in reality it’s an invitation. Someone using an indirect speech act wants to communicate a different meaning from the apparent surface meaning: the form and the function aren’t directly related. SPEECH ACTS AND SOCIETY Indirect speech acts in many languages and culture constitute one of many forms of politeness. In England indirectness is associated with politeness for example. The ways of expressing speech acts vary from culture to culture: in India, saying a person “how fat you are” means congratulating him or her on their appearance, since weight is a sign of prosperity and health, in a country where there is malnutrition. In Britain saying these words means criticising a person (his physical appearance), since the fashion and diet food industries have conditioned many people, thinking that “slim is beautiful”. LIMITATIONS OF SPEECH ACT THEORY
- One utterance can fall into more than one macro-classes;
- Some sentences don’t have enough semantic content, so they are difficult to be classified: they often have the function of avoiding silence, in order to make all speakers feel comfortable; ex: so there you go/ you know
- Backchannels: responses that show that the hearer is listening and encourage a speaker to continue, such as “was it?” “really?” (they aren’t speech acts. They have a social function, but they aren’t speech acts).
- Incomplete sentences (don’t constitute speech acts): a lot of what we say in everyday speech is left unfinished either because we have no need to complete the sentence or because we’re interrupted. MACRO-FUNCTIONS There are two main macro-functions of talk: Brown and Yule (1983) describe them as transactional and interactional functions:
- TRANSACTIONAL FUNCTION: language serves in the expression of content and the transmission of factual information (serve per comunicare informazioni);
- INTERACTIONAL FUNCTION: is that function involved in expressing social relations and personal attitudes, showing solidarity and maintaining social cohesion; ex: speakers who share a common point of view are speaking with an interactional purpose. It’s important to remember that much of everyday human interaction is characterised by the primarily interpersonal rather than the primarily transactional use of the language. For example: two strangers are standing at the bus-stop in an icy wind, one says to the other “my goodness, it’s so cold!”; in this case the primarily intention isn’t that of conveying information but that of being friendly and talking. Most talk has a mixture of the two functions: at the extreme end of the transactional is the language used when a policeman is giving directions to a traveller, and a doctor is telling a nurse how to
LIMITATIONS OF IRF MOVES
Irf reflects the traditional teacher-centred classroom: the teacher can have long turns, the students short turns in response but cannot interrupt. LIMITATIONS OF EXCHANGE STRUCTURE THEORY There is an asymmetrical power relationship: one has all the initations and the hearer has the role of providing answers (all the responses). This concept is applicable in many contexts, like doctor- patient interactions, quiz shows, interviews etc. This theory is applicable in contexts where questions are task-oriented: there’s a specific answer (so not for occasional and everyday conversation). It handles large number of participants but with predetermined roles. CONVERSATION ANALYSIS Conversation is discourse mutually constructed and negotiated in time between speakers and it’s usually informal and unplanned. Cook said that talk may be classed as conversation when: ❖ It’s not primarily necessitated by a practical task; ❖ There isn’t unequal power between the participants; ❖ Turns are quite short and it’s not a monologue; ❖ Talk is primarily for the participants, not for an outside audience; (this is why classroom transactions, doctor-patient interviews and quiz shows aren’t conversations). Many linguistics wouldn’t agree with Cook on the fact that talk isn’t primarily necessitated by a practical task, claiming that the most of what we say is outcome oriented (even the most casual of conversation have an interactional function). Other linguistics wouldn’t agree on the fact that there isn’t unequal power between the participants, pointing out that in all exchanges there is unequal power, in varying degrees. There are some analytical tools for conversation analysis: ✓ TURN TAKING : in most cultures only one person speaks at a time but all cultures have their own preferences as to when a new speaker can start or overlap and interrupt the previous, or when speakers can pause and for how long. For example Latin Americans have pauses of a fraction of a second and it’s socially acceptable to interrupt and overlap, North American Indians expect a two-second pause between turns and in Japan it’s unacceptable to interrupt. Generally, a speaker can start his turn when a speaker finishes to talk or when the relevant information has been given and hearers predict that the turn is about to be completed. This happen on the base of TRP (transition relevant place), a point in a conversation where a change of turn is possible. There are two possible problematic cases: interruption (before the trp, when speakers don’t want to wait until the trp) and overlap (after the trp, but before the speaker has finished to speak). In the orderly classroom/doctor-patient exchange and quiz-shows there are neither overlaps nor interruptions because of the power structure and the conventions: students aren’t supposed to
interrupt the teacher, although they have to wait until their turn; quiz contestants have to wait until they are asked to speak. In any culture, if the pause is intended to carry meaning, analysts call it an attributable silence (for those who don’t know each other well, a long, non-attributable silence can feel awkward). ✓ ADJACENCY PAIRS : a given initiating act presupposes a certain type of response (ex when you say hi to somebody). Adjancency pairs handle the relation between acts: the utterance of one speaker makes a certain response of the next speaker. The acts are ordered with a first part and a second part and they’re categorised as question-answer, offer-acceptance and so on. This is known as preference structure: each first part has a preferred and a dispreferred response. The pairs are endless, some examples are: a question has the preferred response of an answer, offer- acceptance, invitation-acceptance, a greeting-a greeting, proposal-agreement etc. There are also dispreferred responses: not expected, which tend to be refusals and disagreements. Ex: are you coming with me tonight? No, I can’t An absence of response can be taken as the hearer not having heard, not paying attention or simply refusing to cooperate. ✓ SEQUENCES: conversations can be organized in sequences:
- pre sequences , they prepare the ground for a further sequence and signal the type of utterance to follow. Ex: I’ve got two tickets for Madonna’s concert (pre-invitations) or “are you busy right now?” (pre-requests)
- insertion sequences : placed between an adjacency pair. Ex: “can you tidy your room?” “this video game is fantastic, I’m winning” “good, your room” “yes, mum”. The answer about the video game isn’t a response to the first but its irrelevance can be interpreted as implying that the son is refusing to tidy his room. This dispreferred response turns into an insertion sequence, since the mother repeats his request and this time gets something that constitutes an acceptance.
- opening and closing sequences : are usually greetings. Example of opening sequence: “Hi, how are you? How was the party last night?”. Example of closing sequence: “Goodbye, see you later, see you soon!”. COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE Verbal exchanges, whether interviews or conversations, tend to run more successfully when the participants follow certain social conventions.
- MAXIM OF QUANTITY: this maxim accounts for the level of information of the exchange, because speakers should be as informative as required and they should give neither too little information nor too much.
- MAXIM OF QUALITY: speakers are expected to be sincere, they should provide information that they believe to be true. They shouldn’t say anything that they believe to be false or anything for which they lack evidence. Ex: “where did you go last night?” we have two possible cases, felicitous (“I went to the cinema with some friends”, if you really went there) and infelicitous (“I went to the cinema with some friends” instead you went out for dinner with a girl). Some speakers like to point to the fact that they’re only
Different cultures, countries and communities have their own way of observing and expressing maxims for particular situations. For example in Britain it’s not acceptable to say “we’ll call you in about two weeks” and then not call, since it would be considered a violation of the maxim of quality, whereas in some countries this is a normal way of flouting the maxim and saying: “we’re not interested”. An other example is that of Usa, where at the question “how are you” everybody expect the response “fine, thanks”, nobody will reply with a full description of their states of health, because it would violate the maxim of quantity. Sperber and Wilson (1995) say that all maxims can be reduced to the maxim of relation: o The maxim of quantity can be expressed as “give the right amount of relevant information”; o The maxim of quality “give sincere relevant information”; o The maxim of manner “give unambiguous relevant information”. RELEVANCE THEORY Exchanges can work on the base of one maxim, that of relevance. Sperber and Wilson propose Relevance Theory and said that the hearers have to select the relevant features of context and recognise whatever speakers say as relevant to the conversation. Limitations= if we only focus on relevance we may have some problems, because everything implies something that isn’t said, since every utterance depends on associations and background knowledge, for ex: “what’s the time?” may mean “ don’t you think we should getting ready to go now?” or “you’re boring me”. In order to respect relevance theory, speakers have to be maximally relevant as they can. POLITENESS In pragmatics, when we talk about politeness, we don’t refer to the social rules of behaviour, but to the choices that are made in language use, the linguistic expressions that give people space and show a friendly attitude to them. So, we refer to the linguistic choices expressions which are used by speakers to transmit a specific idea of themselves. On the base of the linguistic choices, speakers give their interlocutor a specific idea of the type of person they are. Speakers, when engaged in communication, are primarily concerned with how they are perceived by other participants and try to create and maintain a specific image of themselves for the scope and the purpose of the communicative exchange. In this context, we have to take in consideration the face, that is the presentation of the self to the others. The impression that you want to give can be distinguished in two main classes: o POSITIVE FACE: it’s the attitude of the speaker who is motivated by the desire to be liked, appreciated; this face shows an open and friendly attitude. o NEGATIVE FACE: it’s the attitude of the speaker that is motivated by the desire not to be imposed upon, but to respect and to be respected; this speaker wants to be independent
and he doesn’t want his actions imposed by others. This face shows a more formal attitude towards the participants. Examples: you need to know what time is it. You say: tell me the time, please (positive face); could you tell me what time is it, please? (negative face). You want to go to your favourite fish restaurant. “don’t go to the fast food, let’s go to the fish restaurant!” (positive face) “do you want to come with me to the fish restaurant?” (negative face) The choice of the face depends both on the personal character of the speaker (if you are fear with other people, as like if you’re shy, you will probably use a negative face), but also on a specific situation. It’s important to remember that to every face correspond different lexical choices. POSITIVE FACE: what you say and the way you say it shows other people that you are someone likeable person, you have consideration towards the others, you’re interested in them and you’ll not make fun of them. NEGATIVE FACE: what you say and the way you say it shows other people that you deserve to be respected and you don’t want to give your interlocutors the impression of being too close to your interlocutors. Two requisites for a felicitous social interaction:
- Principle of respect (the parts are expected to maintain the face);
- Principle of consideration (the parts are expected to respect the face of other participants). FACE-THREATENING ACT (FTA) When either respect or considerateness (or both) are violated, we refer to a communicative act performed by a speaker that doesn’t respect either the hearer’s need of space (negative face) or their desire for their self-image to be upheld (positive face) or both. Fta can be avoided?? If possible, fta can be avoided, but there are cases where it isn’t possible and you have to perform linguistic acts: damaging the positive face of the interlocutor (apologies, excuses, disagreement etc.) or damaging the negative face of the interlocutor (offers, commands, orders, requests). In these situations you can avoid the fta and shift topic or do the fta in a way that doesn’t sound too threatening. POLITENESS STRATEGIES
❖ MAXIM OF GENEROSITY: you do something useful for your interlocutor (offers and invitations) ex: you must come and have dinner with us. (this invitation is presumed to be polite for two reasons: it implies costs to self and implies benefits to other). ❖ MAXIM OF APPROBATION: you express your appreciation about objects and events (Dear Mary, I want to thank you so much for the Christmas present, it’s very beautiful!). ❖ MAXIM OF MODESTY: it focuses on the speaker and minimizes praise of self and maximize dispraise of self. You want to sound modest: you know that you’re going to say something that could sound rude or embarrassing to your interlocutor, so you present yourself as not being particularly smart in that context. ❖ MAXIM OF AGREEMENT: It minimizes disagreement and maximizes agreement between self and other. Speaker expresses his judgement about the hearer’s point of view, in terms of what’s right, expected. Ex: A:“English is a difficult language to learn” B: “oh yes, but grammar is quite easy”. B doesn’t agree with what A said, but he doesn’t expresses his disagreement strongly to be more polite. His/her answer minimizes his disagreement, using partial agreement. ❖ MAXIM OF SYMPATHY: minimizes antipathy and maximizes sympathy between self and other. You want to let the interlocutor think that you’re very close to what he feels. Ex: “I was sorry to hear about your father” (it can be interpreted as a condolence, an expression of sympathy for misfortune), it’s different from “I was sorry to hear about your father’s death”. (impolite). LEECH’S MAXIMS Leech defines politeness as a type of behaviour that allows participants to have a social interaction in an atmosphere of relative harmony. Hedging (girarci attorno): er, could you, ehm, perhaps close the window? Pessimism: I don’t suppose you could close the window, could you? Indicating deference (rispetto): excuse me sir, would you mind if I asked you to close the window? Apologizing: I’m terribly sorry to disturb you, but could you close the window? Impersonalizing: the management requires all windows to be closed. NB! Politeness isn’t the same as deference, which is a polite way that expresses distance from and respect for people of higher status, and doesn’t usually includes an element of choice. We have to remember that politeness is influenced by the context:
- SITUATIONAL CONTEXT: politeness is influenced by the size of imposition, the greater the imposition, the more indirect the language is. Ex: to borrow a large sum of money: “I couldn’t borrow thirty dollars, could I?” and to borrow a small slum: “give me 5 cents”. Then, politeness is influenced by the formality of the context.
- SOCIAL CONTEXT: the choice of the politeness formulation depends on the social distance and the power relation between speakers. When there is social distance, there is more indirectness, where there is less social distance, there is less indirectness. The variables that determine social distance are degree of familiarity and differences of status, roles, age, gender, education and occupation.
- CULTURAL CONTEXT: language differentiates one culture from another. For example travellers may find that the british put more emphasis on negative politeness than other cultures do, otherwise in Cuba friends shouldn’t show any distance at all, and say “thank you” for a cup of coffee can cause offence as it appears to put up barriers.
LIBRO 2: PERSUASION AND POLITENESS IN ACADEMIC TEXTS
Academic discourse is one of the many textual realizations of specialized discourse. Specialized discourse (an expert communication) can be defined as “the specialist use of language in contexts which are typical of a specialized community”. Expert communication depends on:
- The type of user
- The domain of use
- The special application of the language in a given setting These conditions are necessary for this type of discourse to develop.
- THE USERS (THE COMMUNITY) Specialized discourse users are members of a specialized community, that is a community of discourse and practice made up of experts and future experts in a given domain. Communities of discourse are groups of individuals sharing purposes and common interests and using standard channels of intercommunication. It’s possible to distinguish between: ▪ Global communities: groups of like-minded individuals. Ex: the case of a society of stamp collectors sharing an interest in the stamps of a given country. They can be all over the world but what is important is that they can communicate through the use of textual genres which have recognizable structures. ▪ Local communities: made up of people who regularly work together and whose sense of common roles, purposes and discourses are influenced in their situational context. Ex: the case of colleagues in the same workplace sharing the same offices, the same floor etc. and developing a special kind of discourse to deal with matters relevant to their workplace. Is specialized discourse an expert to expert form of communication? Specialized communities have developed ways to educate the non-experts. Novice members are initiated through analysis of written texts and teaching, and through processes of apprenticeship (tirocinio). There are: ✓ OTHER EXPERTS: they discuss in a way which is typical and appropriate to the discipline, through the use of a specialized terminology; ✓ FUTURE EXPERTS: they are non-experts but trained to become such; ✓ NON-EXPERTS: to provide information in a way which is neither typical nor appropriate to the content but simplified. (only the first two types of communication involve a specialist use of language).
Conciseness: it refers to the expression of concepts in the shortest possible way. It can be realized/obtained through the use of acronyms (nato, north atlantic treaty organization) and abbreviations (cv, curriculum vitae). The result is a language poor, with repetitions and without emotional emphasis. So: ➢ NON SPECIALIZED DISCOURSE: vague details, useless details, use of questions, phrasal verbs, use of imperatives, polysemous terms, personalization (first and second person). ➢ SPECIALIZED DISCOURSE: conciseness, omission of phrasal verbs, no questions, no personalization, no emphasis and judgement, referential precision, monoreferentiality, repetitions, textual cohesion, transparency, parataxis, nominalizations, abbreviations, acronyms, no generic terms, text schematization, neologism (nuove parole, ex. Webinar, seminario su internet) and compound-noun (parole composte, such as bus stop, mother in law, football etc.). ACADEMIC DISCOURSE It’s a variety used in the academic world, it’s a specialized discourse. It communicates specialized knowledge, it’s for specialized audience (the academic community) which decodes the content. The academic community includes experts (high domain expertise) and novices (they will acquire competences). THE DOMAIN: scholarly communication can be divided in: ❖ Hard knowledge sciences: they focus on empirical truths, they present experimental data and demonstrable things. For example natural sciences and technology, such as physics and biology. ❖ Soft knowledge sciences: they deal with negotiable truths, they focus on human behaviour. Discourse contructs the knowledge. For ex: humanities and social sciences, philosophy, sociology. USE OF THE LANGUAGE Swales proposes a model called CARS (creating a research space). It consists of three moves: ❖ Establishing a territory: the centrality of a given topic; ❖ Establishing a niche ❖ Occupying the niche: authors outline the purpose of the research. It’s possible to outline three different principles: ➢ TEXT ORIENTATION: 3 types:
- Knowledge oriented: the truth is presented as self-evident or that results from dynamics between different parts of the text (markers like therefore, consequently etc.)
- Reader oriented: the truth is presented as a shared knowledge between writer and audience through personalization (we all know) and epistemic modality markers (it’s clear that.., as we will see etc.)
- Writer oriented: the value of a claim emerges from judgements and evaluations expressed by the author (unfortunately, correct etc). ➢ LEVEL OF INFORMATIVENESS: it depends on: ▪ Degree of explicitness (all information is presented and lexicaled) or implicitness (information is left to be inferred or taken for granted). ▪ Linearity of the presentation (old information precede and introduce new informations) ▪ Digression/redundancy (new information are dispersed with or followed by relexicalations of old information). ➢ LEVEL OF SOLIDARITY AND COOPERATION: it depends on: ▪ Inclusive (questions meant to respond to the reader’s voice within the text) and exclusive strategies (the use of passives and exclusive first person pronouns) ▪ Defensive (anticipating and responding to possible criticism) and assertive strategies (non ammettono critiche). GENRES IN ACADEMIC COMMUNICATION In academic discourse there are two groups of typical genres: ✓ Primary genres: they are for experts and they are intended for publications or public speech events. There are written genres (theses, essays) and oral genres (conference presentation, thesis discussion etc.); ✓ Secondary genres: they are for novices and they have a pedagogical and educational function. There are written genres (lecture, notes, textbooks) and oral genres (tutorial, seminars); Besides these two genres there are others which are indeed used within academia but are neither accessible to all community members nor are of an argumentative nature. (they are called interstitial or peripheral genres, they include mainly evaluative texts and promotional texts). SCHOLARLY VALUES AND THE EXPRESSION OF AFFILIATION The role of scholars within the academic community depends on the combination of four different functions:
- The research function: performed by academics in their role of researchers and relevant to the creation of knowledge;
- The educational function: performed by scholars as teachers and relevant to the transmission of knowledge;
- Service function: scholars produce competences which are politically and economically useful. They applicate knowledge.
- Institutional function: performed by academics as staff members. The credibility of a researcher/research depends on values: ✓ SCIENTIFIC VALUES: objectivity, replicability (the analysis is expected to be replicable in its methodology) and collegiality;
THE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS TEMPLATE
There is a standard format with a restricted number of options. There are three moves and every move is subdivided into two steps: MOVE 1: ESTABLISHING ANCESTRY (stirpe) Step 1: pointing to parent texts or events considered source of inspiration Step 2: thanking their agents MOVE 2: GIVING CREDITY Step 1: acknowledging support from institutions or individuals Step 2: claiming responsibility for errors or omissions MOVE 3: ANTICIPATING FUTURE INTERESTS Step 1: specifying editorial developments Step 2: providing an address for correspondence PERSONALIZATION IN ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS o MARKEDLY PERSONAL: use of the first person (I, my, mine), it manifests the author’s persona and his/her personal emotions. o MARKEDLY IMPERSONAL: through the use of passives: the object/people acknowledged are transformed into subjects. o UNMARKEDLY PERSONAL: the author uses the plural (we, us, our) for reasons of modesty. o UNMARKEDLY IMPERSONAL: the author uses the third person or his/her proper name to refer to himself/herself. This strategy conveys detachment. (distaccamento). Acknowledgements can be:
- Explicit: the emotions of the author are openly verbalised through references to feelings of gratitude.
- Implicit: there’s no reference to feelings or emotions of gratitude, it’s mentioned the type of assistance and the institutions/individuals. CO-AUTORSHIP: the result of a joint effort (lavoro d’insieme) by a group of scholars. Co= joint Autorship = profession of writing a book TYPICAL TEXT-INTERNAL RESOURCES ARE:
- CITATIONS: to emphasize what you’re saying. Since you want your interlocutor to agree with you, you have to present yourself as being credible.
- BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES: placed at the end of the text, they have the main purpose of providing full details as to the piece of work mentioned within a text (name of the author, title of the text, year and place of publication). They aim to improve the author’s credibility and testify his/her competence in the literature.
SCIENTIFIC VALIDITY
Academic authors are expected to appear as experts and so they have to choose how to deal with the targeted audience and how the authors approach with the subject of the research. The combination of this two aspects is reflected in the PRINCIPLE OF AUTHORIAL ETHOS OR STANCE. AUTHORIAL STANCE (presa di posizione dell’autore): refers to the author’s textual persona and his/her ideological orientation. According to the stance theory, the writer’s self-image combines three aspects: o Evidentiality: the degree of credibility or evidence. o Relation: constructions of relationships with the audience. o Affect: the writer’s assessment/judgement about the information. EXAMPLE: “as we all know is clearly false” As all we know = relation with the reader Clearly = a degree of credibility, evidence False = judgement These three variables (affect, relation, evidentiality) can be realized through: o Reader-oriented orientation: expressing relation and evidentiality, the author manifests solidarity towards the reader. (motivated by the need to appear polite, modest and the desire to anticipate potential criticism). o Writer-oriented orientation: expressing affect which reflects the author’s personal feelings. PERSONALIZATION: first and second person strategies. First person plural (we): it has two functions:
- A reader inclusive function: the author establishes a common ground with the reader, it implies cooperation and requires an active role on the part of the reader.
- A reader exclusive function: the author refers only to himself, excluding the audience of readers. This is a mitigating strategy, in fact, by using “we”, the author rhetorically shares the responsibility with other member of the academic community. SECOND PERSON INTERACTIONAL STRATEGIES (collaborative function) A direct appeal to the reader (use of imperatives and questions) are “reader in the text” strategies. They bring the reader into the discourse. They enhance (intensificano) the sense of inclusion and cooperation. APPEAL TO THE READER: It’s realized through:
