Dialogue Analysis: Units, relations and strategies beyond the sentence: Contributions in honour of Sorin Stati's 65th birthday [Reprint 2011 ed.] 9783110949872, 9783484750135

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Beiträge zur Dialogforschung

Band 13

Herausgegeben von Franz Hundsnurscher und Edda Weigand

Sorin Stati

Dialogue Analysis: Units, relations and strategies beyond the sentence Contributions in honour of Sorin Stati's 65th birthday

Edited by Edda Weigand In collaboration with Eckhard Hauenherm

Max Niemeyer Verlag Tübingen 1997

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Dialogue analysis: units, relations, and strategies beyond the sentence : contributions in honour of Sorin Stati's 65th birthday / ed. by Edda Weigand. In collab. with Eckhard Hauenherm. - Tübingen : Niemeyer, 1997 (Beiträge zur Dialogforschung ; Bd. 13) NE: Weigand, Edda [Hrsg.]; Stati, Sorin: Festschrift; GT ISBN 3-484-75013-8

ISSN 0940-5992

© Max Niemeyer Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Tübingen 1997 Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeichemng und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Printed in Germany. Druck: Weihert-Druck GmbH, Darmstadt Buchbinder: Industriebuchbinderei Hugo Nadele, Nehren

Table of Contents

Preface

IX

The General Problem

1

Edda Weigand The Unit beyond the Sentence

3

Liana Pop Un continuum: de la phrase au phrasage A la recherche d'unites dans le discours

13

Specific Aspects

27

Carla Bazzanella Repetition in Pre-school Children's Narratives

29

Alessandro Capone Invito alio Studio del Dialogo

43

Silvana Contento/Stefania Stame Scripts and Transcriptions in Dialogue Analysis

53

Frantisek Danes Observations about the Sound Shape of Spontaneous Discourses

65

Gerd Fritz Coreference in Dialogue

75

VI Ernest W.B. Hess-Lüttich Gotthelf s Didactic Dialogues: The Uli Novels and Films

89

Franz Hundsnurscher Repetition Reconsidered

107

Liliana Ionescu Ruxändoiu Pre-exchanges as a Conversational Strategy

121

Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni Le traitement des actes de langage en analyse des conversations: l'exemple du remerciement

129

Danielle Laroche-Bouvy La conscience des normes au cours de Γ interaction verbale

145

Anne Lefebvre Heteroreprise et mimetisme

151

Bernd Naumann IRCs — schriftliche Sonderformen von Mehrpersonengesprächen

161

Etienne Pietri Le Dialogue et la Traduction

179

Annely Rothkegel Globale und lokale Aspekte der Dialogstruktur

185

Jackie Schön De ce qui, dans le dialogue, defie la grammaire: l'exemple du datif ethique

195

Andra Serbanescu Switches from Yes/No-questions to WH-questions

207

Milena Srpovä L'expressivite et la relation entre participants de communication interlinguale et interculturelle

215

νπ Maxim /. Stamenov Going beyond the Sentence or What Does it Take to (Re)Construct the Subject?

223

Graziella Tonfoni CPP-TRS: A Universal Grammar for Communicative Interaction

233

Henriette Walter Le dialogue ä la television

251

Henning Westheide Book Reviews between Scholarship and Business — An Investigation of Dutch and German Book Reviews in the Press

257

Bibliography of the Works of Sorin Stati

269

List of Contributors

277

Preface

The topic of this volume was suggested by Sorin Stati as the topic of a Round Table of IAD A organized in 1995 at the university of Bologna. It refers on the one hand to the central problem of "Dialogue Analysis" which is to discover a new, communicatively functioning unit after having left behind the unit of the sentence which can be considered the unit par excellence of structural linguistics. On the other hand, it includes the manifold units, relations, and strategies, i.e. the specific problems of dialogue analysis. The Round Table was intended to make a scientific contribution in honour of Stati's 65th birthday in 1997. It was organized as a discussion of the central problem, based on the paper by Weigand, and was accompanied by other papers on more specific aspects. This is reflected in the table of contents of this volume. Additionally, some other papers on problems of Dialogue Analysis were included which were written in honour of Stati's 65th birthday. A volume in honour of Sorin Stati, the President of IADA, creates an opportunity for us to look back on the "history" of our "International Association of Dialogue Analysis". It was the idea of Franz Hundsnurscher and myself, in the first half of the 80s, to organize a conference on Dialogue Analysis. This idea was realized in the first conference on Dialogue Analysis at the university of Münster in 1986, followed by a second conference in 1988 in Bochum. Sorin Stati was invited to the Bochum conference at the suggestion of Luigi Torchio. He then organized the third conference on Dialogue Analysis in 1990 at the university of Bologna. Here the decision was taken to found an international association because it had become obvious that the topic of Dialogue Analysis covered a new essential field in linguistics which was being studied by many scholars in linguistics and adjacent disciplines and which could give us the key for reconsidering the linguistic methodology of the 20th century. The decision to found an international association was confirmed by the many activities organized by LADA in the following years of which I will mention only the major conferences on Dialogue Analysis which took place in 1992 in Basel, in 1994 in Paris, and in 1996 in Prague. The next will be organized in 1998 in Birmingham. Stati's ideas and personal engagement were very important for the growth and health if IADA. We remember with pleasure and thanks the magnificent framework he

χ gave to the activities of the association organized in the wonderful city of Bologna where the members and friends could feel they were members of one great family and where it became evident that, beyond different scientific schools, DIALOGUE means science based on humanity and cross-cultural understanding. From Stati's own scientific work I will mention here only his central books dealing with Dialogue Analysis: "II dialogo" in 1982 and "Le transphrastique" in 1990. For the many other publications which cover various fields of syntax, semantics and pragmatics, the reader is referred to the bibliography at the end of this volume. Some important dates of his life are: He was born in Bucarest in 1932, February, 1, began his scientific and didactic career very early at the university of Bucarest where he became ordinary professor of general linguistics in 1970. After having been invited to lecture at the university of Padova in 1971, he decided to stay in Italy where he taught Romanian language and literature and linguistics in general in Padova, Venezia and Messina. In 1981 he became ordinary professor of applied linguistics at the faculty of "lettere" in Bologna. At present, he is teaching linguistics at the university of Bologna and Forli. In 1979 he received the "doctorat d'Etat" at the Sorbonne. He has been visiting professor at a number of European universities and is active in many linguistic societies and editorial boards. In 1993 he became honorary member of the Academy of Romania and correspondent member of the Institute of the Academy of Science of Bologna.

It is a great honour for me to express — on behalf of all members and friends of I AD A — our thanks and best wishes for his scientific and personal future.

Münster, October 1996

Edda Weigand

The General Problem

Edda Weigand

The Unit beyond the Sentence

1. The sentence as a turning point in modern linguistics 2. The importance of the unit question 3. Text, discourse 4. Utterance, speech act 5. The sequence of action and reaction 6. The minimal dialogic action game 7. Consequences References

1.

The sentence as a turning point in modern linguistics

The central problem of our Tavola Rotonda in honour of our President Prof. Stati refers to the decisive question of what we can take as the unit of description when we have gone beyond the sentence. This is indeed the question pragmatic linguistics has to solve in order to prove useful in a communicative framework. Moreover, it is precisely the question where Dialogue Analysis has to start and where Dialogue Analysis alone can give a satisfactory answer. With the limit of the sentence we refer to the critical point which divides the history of modern linguistics into two parts: the study of language as a system of signs and the study of language as language in use. Within a system of signs we may distinguish different types of signs according to different expression types: phonological, syntactic and suprasegmental ones and we may investigate their interplay within the syntactic unit of the sentence. When it became evident that even in such a system there are certain signs which refer either to the communicative situation or to the linguistic text beyond the limit of the sentence, we were confronted with the necessity of transcending the unit of the sentence and of including the situation in which language is used. This is what we have called the pragmatic turning point in modern linguistics. In order to understand precisely what the pragmatic turning point involves we have to recognize that our object of study has changed. We can no longer stick to traditional methodology and describe language use as sign system embedded in the situation of use. We have to look for a new methodology which is appropriate for the new paradigm. Stati (1990) has called the new object "le transphrastique" (1990) thus relating it to the sentence, "la phrase", and including all that has to be accounted for beyond the

4

Edda Weigand

sentence. Beyond the sentence, however, there is the world. How else could we express the complexity we are confronted with? It is no longer only the linguistic dimension which must be analysed, we have to include other dimensions as well in order to understand what goes on in language use. These dimensions may be summarized as the pragmatic perspective, according to Verschueren (1987). A perspective alone, however, does not take us nearer to the solution of our problem. We need an analytic key with explanatory force in order to structure "le transphrastique".

2.

The importance of the unit question

In order to know what kind of unit we are looking for beyond the sentence, we should first ask why we have taken the sentence as our unit par excellence. It is the supposed independence, the seeming autonomy that distinguishes the sentence among other formal units such as phonemes or morphemes. The sentence represents the whole within which the signs and their relationships can be studied. With the insight that there are relationships between elements of consecutive sentences, for instance, between noun phrases and pronouns, as well as between linguistic and situational elements, for instance with deictic expressions, the search for units beyond the sentence began. Within the limits of the sentence there were no problems in distinguishing linguistic units because these units were abstract or formal units defined within the construct of a sentence. Beyond the limit of the sentence it was no longer possible to follow the linguistic line of a sequence of phonemes only. Beyond the sentence we were faced with the world. One could try to solve this problem by declaring that it is no longer relevant and that one could analyse the communicative world by picking out single aspects, for instance, information-processing, without the framework of an independent unit. This however means that we give up our concept of science as rational explanatory activity. We need an independent, autonomous unit within which as minimal functioning whole the interplay of the parts can be studied. There is no point in isolating parts, for instance, grammatical categories or sentence types, without knowing the framework within which they are able to function. Trying to arrive at the illocution by starting from the sentence (like Rosengren 1992/93) cannot be the right approach. The question of the minimal functioning whole is imperative; it delineates the framework for further investigations. Two guidelines are known: -

The dividing line for our independent unit beyond the sentence cannot be a formal one.

The Unit beyond the Sentence

-

5

Such a unit implies an appreciation of what is going on in the communicative situation, i.e. an appreciation of language action. The Action Principle, I think, is the first fundamental principle on which a description of language use has to be based. It is precisely the opposition of linguistic signs and communicative action which is responsible for the much higher complexity we have to address once we have gone beyond the limit of the sentence. At this limit the paradigm of language as a sign system comes to an end.

Against the background of these preliminary assumptions I will now discuss some candidates for an independent unit in the paradigm of language use.

3.

Text, discourse

The first proposal for such a unit was the text as a sequence of sentences or discourse as text beyond the sentence, thus contrasting sentence linguistics and text linguistics. The difficulties with which the first stages of text grammar (cf. Harweg 1968 and Greimas 1970) had to struggle made it clear that the question of what makes a sequence of sentences a text, cannot be explained on the syntactic or semantic level. In contrast to the sentence, which is formally limited as a unit, the text resisted any formal separation. Thus, as Stati described it in his book "Le transphrastique", the terms text and discourse moved from the traditional structural side of a linguistic object to the pragmatic side of language in use. The question of an independent unit however remained unresolved even if for the first time the concept of the pragmatic purpose of a text came to the fore. It was recognized that it is the pragmatic purpose that establishes the coherence of a text, but characterizing the purpose as pragmatic is still not sufficient for explaining its leading role in structuring language use nor for isolating an independent unit. In the last analysis, the text does not represent an autonomous linguistic level. There are important aspects, as we shall see, which can be dealt with only in a more comprehensive autonomous unit. As a consequence, discourse analysis, the current variant of textlinguistics, abandoned the question of an independent communicative unit, regarding according to Tannen (1989, 7) "the goal of a homogenous 'discipline' with a unified theory" as "pointless". Nevertheless, van Dijk (1985) tried to establish discourse analysis as a unified pan-discipline; however, he followed a methodological procedure which can be understood only as an extreme form of mere eclecticism (cf. Frawley 1987 and Weigand 1994a).

6

4.

Edda Weigand

Utterance, speech act

Whereas text and discourse can be considered as units proceeding along the horizontal line of a sequence of sentences, there is another direction in which the new pragmatic notion of language use can be analysed, the vertical direction from the expression side to the functional side. In this direction we are looking for the linguistic unit with which we may perform an action, and we have called this unit the "utterance". The answer to the question of how we can isolate an utterance is clear: As long as we are looking for formal criteria, we are on the wrong track. Utterances can be isolated only by referring to their purpose (Weigand 1994b, 127). Thus we have arrived at the concept of a speech act which is indeed a serious candidate for our unit. It is the position we know from orthodox speech act theory, and it is the position of Hundsnurscher (1980) when he established the model of dialogue grammar. With the speech act we are no longer confronted with the problem of separating a sequence of sentences. We may refer to the purpose and thus segment the unit of the utterance which is not only a linguistic unit but presupposes the communicative situation and includes the dimension of action. This is what I would call the pragmatic position of single speech acts. The pragmatic perspective which opened up in the communicative situation has changed our notion of language. It is a necessary perspective or dimension but not sufficient because it still does not provide us with an analytic explanatory key for structuring language use. Relying on the situation allows us to include visual means. We not only use our ability to speak, we also use our ability to see and to perceive, for instance, in deictic utterances. Nevertheless, we could accept the utterance as pragmatic unit only if we are convinced that language use represents an addition of single speech acts all of the same illocutionary type. One main argument against such a position comes from the fact that there are utterances bound to a specific position in the sequence such as, for instance, (1) You are right. We immediately know that this utterance can only be used reactively even if we do not know its position in a concrete dialogue. We know this because of functional reasons. Here it becomes clear that the single speech act cannot be the communicatively autonomous unit we are looking for.

5.

The sequence of action and reaction

With the insight that there are utterances that can be used exclusively within the sequence and other utterances that can initiate the sequence, we have taken the first step in discovering how language use is structured. It is nothing more than a first step as

The Unit beyond the Sentence

7

long as it remains merely on the utterance side by classifying utterances according to the formal feature [isequence-dependent]. In a strict sense, this feature is misleading insofar as it implies that there would be utterances independent of the sequence. But even initiative utterances are not independent. Only if we succeed in clarifying functionally what it means that an utterance may be initiative or has to be used as reaction, can we find the central structuring principle of language use. I have explained the formal feature [±sequence-dependent] on a functional basis as making versus fulfilling a pragmatic claim thus characterizing the initiative action by making a claim, the reaction by fulfilling the same pragmatic claim (Weigand 1989). The pragmatic claims we have to distinguish in order to define speech acts are claims to truth and claims to volition (Weigand 1991). Thus we have arrived at the mutual dependency of the individual acts which I have called the Dialogic Principle DP (Weigand 1995). In contrast to the classical notion of action by Aristotle who considers the single action as independent, in communicative language use as collective action the single actions are mutually dependent on each other. Consequently, our utterance (1) has to be described as reactive action of acceptance that fulfils the pragmatic claim to truth of a preceding representative speech act, for instance: (2) A: Language use is always dialogic. B: You are right. The pragmatic purpose or the pragmatic claim as such still does not structure a sequence of actions. It is making and fulfilling the same pragmatic claim that allows us to isolate a unit on a dialogic interactive level and to indicate the beginning and the end of a discourse. With the Dialogic Principle we have found a functional principle of structure on the level of action comparable to the syntactic construction that made the sentence a seeming independent unit. Now one might object that the DP is valid only for dialogic texts in which speaker change occurs. Even texts without speaker change, which are formally monologic, are on a functional level dialogically oriented texts. But it is not only this general dialogic orientation of every text that leads us to understand language as dialogue. The single speech act itself has changed and reflects in its internal structure the DP, being either an initiative illocutionary speech act or a reactive perlocutionary one. Only by recognizing pragmatic purposes as dialogically dependent purposes, have we discovered the central key notion which is able to structure and explain language use. Sometimes we find a description of language use according to a three-part sequence, for instance, with Sinclair (1992) or Roulet (1992). In my opinion it does not contradict the basic two-part sequence insofar as the three-part sequence can be re-

Edda Weigand

8

analysed as two two-part sequences. Moreover, the three-part sequence is achieved only by structural segmentation and classification and is not functionally based. Moreover, it neglects the principle that there cannot be a reaction without a corresponding action (cf. Weigand 1995). One might think we could be content with the DP of the mutual dependency of the individual acts which signifies the two-part sequence of action and reaction as minimal communicatively autonomous unit. This, indeed, was the position in my book of 1989. Today, however, I think this position can no longer be considered sufficient. We have to include further aspects and thus to enlarge the unit we are looking for.

6.

The minimal dialogic action game

First, I think, we have to be more precise and ask whether there is indeed an independent concept of action and reaction. Actions presuppose the acting human being. Thus the framework that comprises human beings and their actions in the communicative situation has to be the action game. Only the minimal dialogic action game can be considered as an independent unit based on the interactive sequence of action and reaction. Within the action game we can without difficulty deal with aspects that transcend the linguistic level, for instance, practical actions and visual means. The DP as a principle on the functional level includes not only sequences of utterances but practical actions as well. For instance, the pragmatic claim to volition which characterizes the directive speech act (3) Shut the door! can be fulfilled by a practical action. Visual means like gestures and facial expressions play an important role in language action, as Naumann (1994), for instance, illustrated by analysing oral examinations referring to a notion of dialogue as action game. The text, I have already mentioned, is not autonomous by itself; it is only the linguistic component within the action game. With the unit of the action game we achieve a natural understanding of language as a human ability which consists not only of the ability to speak but includes other abilities as well. In the same way as we rely on the situation, on the visual things, we also use our ability to think and to draw inferences. In this connection we find an interesting example in a paper by Stati (1994): (4) I want to see your father. — He's asleep.

9

The Unit beyond the Sentence

Trying to explain the relation between the initiative and the reactive utterance, Stati assumes a Zero-connector. He thus restricts himself to the linguistic level only. Apparently, the syntactic relation between the noun phrase your father and the pronoun he is not considered to be essential for indicating why the two utterances are related to each other on the level of meaning. There is no explicit linguistic device connecting the two utterances in this respect. Yet they are connected. The reactive utterance He's asleep. relies on our ability to draw inferences: Sleeping and talking with someone are incompatible. Thus the reaction can be understood either as negative consent to the preceding claim to volition or as undecided, waiting for an insisting directive speech act: Please wake him up. In any case, it is a clear example that dialogic action cannot be described on the linguistic level only. It is inferences, here, that connect the two utterances. The minimal functioning whole within which the parts may be described is the action game with human beings at the centre who naturally use all their abilities as communicative means in order to come to an understanding. Other examples relying on our ability to draw inferences are indirect speech acts or specific procedures like irony. In this case, however, inferences play a role in understanding how utterance side and functional side are correlated. Besides, we have examples concentrating on cognitive or emotional elements in language action like: (5) You are playing with the Game-boy again. They may be interpreted as mere statement, as delighted surprise, as reproach or complaint depending on judgements, preferences, norms and emotions not only on the level of standard language use but including also individual valuations and habits of the interlocutors in the action game. These are all cases which make clear that the linguistic level alone is not sufficient. Instead, we have to start from human beings at the centre of the action game. Seeking the minimal communicatively functioning whole we have arrived at the minimal dialogic action game. The interactive purpose of the action game is pursued with communicative means which derive from our human abilities to speak, to see and to think. Stati's requirement of structuring "le transphrastique" can now be understood as the task of distinguishing minimal dialogic action games which, in my opinion, comprise, on a fundamental level, representative, directive, explorative and declarative action games (Weigand 1994a, 1995): (6)

REPRESENTATIVE DIRECTIVE EXPLORATIVE DECLARATIVE