The Discourse of Indirectness: Cues, Voices and Functions 9027207771, 9789027207777

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The Discourse of Indirectness Cues, voices and functions

edi t ed by Zohar Livnat Pnina Shukrun-Nagar Galia Hirsch

John Benjamins Publishing Company

The Discourse of Indirectness

Pragmatics & Beyond New Series (P&bns) issn 0922-842X Pragmatics & Beyond New Series is a continuation of Pragmatics & Beyond and its Companion Series. The New Series offers a selection of high quality work covering the full richness of Pragmatics as an interdisciplinary field, within language sciences. For an overview of all books published in this series, please see benjamins.com/catalog/pbns

Editor

Associate Editor

Anita Fetzer

Andreas H. Jucker

University of Augsburg

University of Zurich

Founding Editors Herman Parret

Jef Verschueren

Robyn Carston

Sachiko Ide

Sandra A. Thompson

Thorstein Fretheim

Kuniyoshi Kataoka

John C. Heritage

Miriam A. Locher

Jacob L. Mey

University of Southern Denmark

Belgian National Science Foundation, Universities of Louvain and Antwerp

Belgian National Science Foundation, University of Antwerp

Editorial Board University College London University of Trondheim University of California at Los Angeles

Susan C. Herring

Indiana University

Masako K. Hiraga

St. Paul’s (Rikkyo) University

Japan Women’s University Aichi University

Universität Basel

Sophia S.A. Marmaridou University of Athens

Srikant Sarangi

Aalborg University

Marina Sbisà

University of California at Santa Barbara

Teun A. van Dijk

Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona

Chaoqun Xie

Zhejiang International Studies University

Yunxia Zhu

The University of Queensland

University of Trieste

Volume 316 The Discourse of Indirectness. Cues, voices and functions Edited by Zohar Livnat, Pnina Shukrun-Nagar and Galia Hirsch

The Discourse of Indirectness Cues, voices and functions

Edited by

Zohar Livnat Bar-Ilan University

Pnina Shukrun-Nagar Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Galia Hirsch Bar-Ilan University

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia

8

TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

doi 10.1075/pbns.316 Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress: lccn 2020032624 (print) / 2020032625 (e-book) isbn 978 90 272 0777 7 (Hb) isbn 978 90 272 6056 7 (e-book)

© 2020 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Company · https://benjamins.com

This book is dedicated to Prof. Elda Weizman in recognition of her outstanding lifelong contribution to the study of indirectness. Her pioneering work, bridging multiple research domains – including cross-cultural pragmatics, translation theory, political and media discourse, and corpus studies – has influenced numerous developments in the understanding of the concept. This book is an expression of our profoundest gratitude to Prof. Elda Weizman, who has been a constant inspirational force driving the writing of several chapters of this volume.

Table of contents Introduction Zohar Livnat, Pnina Shukrun-Nagar & Galia Hirsch

1

Part I. Cues for indirectness: The inferential view Irony, humor or both?: The model revisited Galia Hirsch

19

“My refrigerator is as much in the dark as I am”: Metaphorical irony in context Zohar Livnat

39

“Hero, genius, king and Messiah”: Ironic echoing in pro-ethos and anti-ethos readers’ comments on Facebook posts Pnina Shukrun-Nagar

59

Part II. Voices in the text: The dialogic-intertextual view Indirectness and co-construction: A discourse-pragmatic view Jacob L. Mey Whose line is it anyway? Three pragmatic cues for distinguishing between the implied-author and narrative voices: The case of Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome Talli Cedar

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Anne Frank’s Diary – The Graphic Adaptation as a case of “indirect translation”: Integrating the principle of relevance with Bakhtinian concepts 119 Rachel Weissbrod & Ayelet Kohn Part III. (In)directness as an effective choice: The functional view Indirectness and effectiveness of requests in professional emails: A case study Hassan Atifi & Michel Marcoccia Directness and indirectness in a presidential debate Luisa Granato

145 167

 The Discourse of Indirectness

“The hon. Gentleman says this is rubbish; it is absolutely true”: The strategic use of references to truth in Prime Minister’s Questions Anita Fetzer

203

“Do you condemn?”: Negotiating power relations through (in)direct questions and answers design in ethno-political interviews Zohar Kampf

231

Index

253

Introduction Zohar Livnat1, Pnina Shukrun-Nagar2 & Galia Hirsch1 1Bar-Ilan

University / 2Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Indirectness has been a key concept in pragmatic research for over four decades. It is widely acknowledged that indirectness is basic to the way in which utterances convey meaning, and that a variety of meaning-making processes fall under this term. Thus, the notion of indirectness as a technical term does not have an agreedupon definition and remains vague and ambiguous. Traditional pragmatic theories (Searle 1969; Grice 1975) regarded utterances as having a basic propositional content, termed ‘literal meaning’ in Searle’s work on indirect speech acts and ‘what is said’ in Grice’s work on conversational implicatures. These theories view indirect meaning as a deviation from the basic content of the utterance, or describe indirectness in terms of a gap between the utterance’s literal meaning and the speaker’s intention. Thus, an indirect utterance is considered to convey something more than or different from its literal meaning (Brown & Levinson 1987). Indirectness is created by the speaker through the utterance’s design, and if the hearer recognizes it as an intentional act of implying meaning other than the literal one, the latter might try to infer the implied speaker’s meaning. Over the years, various critiques of Grice’s and Searle’s ‘Standard Pragmatic View’ (Gibbs 1999) have been put forward; some related to the problematic nature of the notion of literal meaning itself (e.g. Ariel 2002; Recanati 2002, 2004), which makes the distinction between literal and indirect meaning theoretically difficult to sustain. Moreover, according to Leech (1983) and Levinson (1983), the assumption that literal meanings exist necessarily means that almost all utterances are indirect to some extent (Levinson 1983: 264), since they hold some shades of meaning that are derived from the context, rather than just from the words themselves. Another way of capturing the difference between direct and indirect meaning views it from the addressee’s perspective, emphasizing the process of interpretation. While in Speech Act Theory, the focus is on the actions performed by the speaker, Grice presents a more reciprocal view of communication, which he conceives as a cooperatively rational activity performed by both participants (Dynel 2018). In Relevance Theory, however, the focus moves to the interpretation process itself. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.316.int © 2020 John Benjamins Publishing Company

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Relevance Theory, at least in its early version (Sperber & Wilson 1986), claimed that the degree of an utterance’s (in)directness can be calculated by the amount of cognitive effort required by the addressee to interpret it. This view implies the possibility of drawing an indirectness scale or categorizing strategies on the basis of the inferential process involved, as suggested for instance by Blum-Kulka et al. (1989), based on the three-fold differentiation between direct, conventionally-indirect and unconventionally-indirect strategies (Brown & Levinson 1987 following Searle 1975). Referring to the cognitive perspective in general terms, the question of whether the meaning of an utterance is direct or indirect depends on both the speaker’s intention and the addressee’s interpretation and evaluation, which is in part the result of a culturally relative judgement. Thus, we are still left with the problem of whether indirectness per se exists other than in the minds of the participants (Grainger & Mills 2016). Moreover, challenges to the primacy of the speaker’s intentionality are presented, both from the Conversation Analysis perspective (Schegloff 1988; Walker et al. 2011) and linguistic anthropologists (e.g. Rosaldo 1982; Duranti 1988), who have described cultures in which the intention to convey meaning is not as primary as in the west (Kiesling 2010). Despite the centrality of indirectness to the notion of implicature, its discussion is not prevalent in contemporary literature on implicature, and most of its appearances in current pragmatics can be found in the rich and rapidly growing literature on (im)politeness. In Brown and Levinson’s view, politeness is suggested as an explanation for the use of conventional speech-act formulas (1987: 182; Searle 1975). The need to be polite and save the other’s face is viewed as a reason or justification for not fulfilling Grice’s Maxims in certain circumstances. Following this, some scholars argue for a direct linkage between the notion of indirectness and some of the conventional formulas that are used to perform the speech acts of requests and commands (Grainger & Mills 2016: 39). Specifically in the study of requests, indirectness was viewed as a less face-threatening strategy, since it allows the addressee to refuse or avoid the request without being considered impolite. Culture-dependent variations in using (in)direct linguistic patterns have been discussed, for example, by Katriel (1986), Blum-Kulka et al. (1989), de Kadt (1998), Ogiermann (2009), Silverstein (2010), Morgan (2010), Philips (2010) and Grainger et al. (2015). This line of study and its findings emphasize that conventional meanings and forms develop within communities of practice in a specific context and sometimes at a very local level (Kadar 2013). These studies also give rise to further explanations for the use of indirectness. Off-record indirectness and requestive hints (Ervin-Tripp 1976; Weizman 1989) require a large amount of shared background knowledge, and thus reaffirm closeness between participants and underline common ground (Sifianou 1993/2008). They “appear to be a prime example of the kind of communicative abbreviation that appears in high s­ olidarity,

Introduction

closed networks of communication” (Ervin-Tripp 1976: 44). Moreover, when offrecord indirectness is preferred by a certain social group and dispreferred by others, “it is a resource available to speakers for constructing their identity” (Terkourafi 2011a: 2864). Insights from studies on the use of direct and indirect forms in various cultures and contexts, as well as their use by children, also challenge the assumption that directness is the default use of language and that it is indirectness that should be explained (Terkourafi 2011b: 2871). Against this view of indirectness in the context of politeness theory, others have suggested a broader framework in which this concept might be investigated. Even Grainger and Mills (2016), who are mostly interested in politeness, claim that “indirectness is an element in many aspects of different types of utterances and speech acts (for example, expression and contradiction of opinions, suggestions for future actions, tentative promises, and so on)” (p. 40). Elaborate models describing indirectness from a very broad perspective have been proposed by Brenneis (1986) and Kiesling and Johnson (2010). Brenneis’s (1986) model identifies four kinds of indirectness: (a) text-centered indirectness occurs when there is ambiguity or opacity in the denotation of an utterance that requires a hearer to supply significant interpretation strategies to understand its denotation; (b) voice-centered indirectness depends upon ambiguity concerning who is responsible for the message; (c) audience-centered indirectness occurs when the conventionally indicated addressee is not intended or interpreted to be the ultimate recipient of the talk; (d) event-centered indirectness refers to instances where the event’s occurrence itself is a significant message, which is in fact the most important message to be conveyed. Kiesling and Johnson (2010) define “indirection” as any use of language that is ‘unconventional’ in a particular community. Like Brenneis (1986), they also argued that at least four types of indirection could be recognized, and that these accomplish the indirection through different means: (a) stance indirection occurs when forms conventionally associated with one kind of social relationship are used to create a different, sometimes opposite one, as when distancing or powerindicating forms are used to create solidarity; (b) topic indirection occurs when there is a ‘shadow’ topic for which the current topic is a conduit; (c) participation indirection is a category very similar to Brenneis’s (1986) audience-centered indirectness; (d) production indirection occurs when speakers use forms that might momentarily change their identity, away from their perceived authentic one. Such indirection occurs in situations in which speakers use forms canonically associated with social personae they are clearly not currently inhabiting. It seems relevant to distinguish here between indirectness (or indirection) and vagueness. A vague message involves unclear content or information, sometimes in a way that is unrepairable by the context, while in indirect messages there is a content that can be grasped and understood, at least theoretically, through

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implication that involves contextual clues. According to the Gricean approach, a vague message leads to an implicature only if it is understood as an intended flouting of the Cooperative Principle, specifically the Maxim of Manner. Thus, it is essential to base even a broad concept of indirectness on a solid definition that distinguishes between indirectness and other phenomena. The following section is aimed at providing such an approach. 1.  Conceptualizing indirectness in this book As a holistic framework, indirectness is examined in this book as a way of communicating meaning that is inferred from textual, contextual and intertextual meaning units, which are called here ‘cues.’ This term was originally used by Dascal and Weizman (1987); Weizman and Dascal (1991) to denote various contextual and textual devices that attest to the existence of pragmatic indirectness and trigger its interpretation process (see below). In this framework, we extend the meaning of ‘cue’ to include dialogical and intertextual codes, such as polyphonies and intertextual links, too. Emphasis is placed on the way in which indirectness serves the representation of diverse voices in the text, and this is examined through three main prisms: (1) the inferential view focuses on textual and contextual cues from which pragmatic indirect meanings might be inferred; (2) the dialogic-intertextual view focuses on dialogic and intertextual cues according to which different voices (social, ideological, literary, etc.) are identified in the text; and (3) the functional view focuses on the pragmatic-rhetorical functions fulfilled by indirectness of both kinds. All of the papers integrate the three prisms (or at least two of them) in the analysis of indirectness. The covert voices identified in the texts are varied. They include voices of individuals and groups; voices associated with social, political and literary genres; voices of the powerful and powerless; voices expressing solidarity, alignment, confrontation, challenge and more. These can elaborate on and enrich the utterance’s meaning, as well as convey its opposite or reflect a different point of view, as is the case with ironic echoing (Sperber & Wilson 1981). 1.1  The inferential view The first prism focuses on the covert pragmatic meanings that may be conveyed by textual and contextual cues, and the cognitive process that may enable the addressees to identify and interpret these cues in a given text. This prism is based on theories that stress general assumptions and expectations regarding the linguistic behavior of both the speakers – as the producers of texts – and the recipients who read or hear them.

Introduction

Inspired mainly by Grice’s theory as it is expressed in his various writings, Dascal and Weizman (1987); Weizman and Dascal (1991) based their notion of indirectness on a threefold distinction between sentence meaning, utterance meaning and speaker’s meaning. The sentence meaning contains the “aspects of meaning that are context-invariants” (p. 27); the utterance meaning “corresponds to what a speaker conventionally meant by this utterance,” and the speaker’s meaning “may go beyond what he conventionally meant” (pp. 36–37). Following Grice (1968), Dascal (1983: 40) maintained that when the speaker’s meaning does not coincide with the utterance meaning, the hearer is triggered to look for indirect interpretation. According to Dascal, the context makes two main contributions: it serves to determine the utterance meaning, which is mainly a “disambiguation of sentence meaning” (p. 35), and it is crucial in establishing the speaker's meaning. Dascal and Weizman (1987); Weizman and Dascal (1991) suggested that contextual knowledge is activated at two different stages of the interpretation process, and for distinct purposes: at one stage, speakers use the context to detect an interpretation problem, at which time the contextual knowledge is labeled ‘cue;’ at the second stage, they exploit the context to solve the interpretation problem, and the information is now labeled ‘clue.’ Two types of contextual information are involved: on the one hand, ‘extra-linguistic’ knowledge related to the addressee’s beliefs about the world; on the other hand, ‘meta-linguistic’ knowledge related to his or her beliefs about the use of language. Each type of knowledge has three levels: specific – ad-hoc features of the situation, conventional – accepted scripts and schemata, and general – information about background phenomena. The advantage of this approach is that the terms ‘cues/clues’ are general enough to indicate the existence of various covert meanings that are central to different theories (Weizman 2008, 2011; Weizman & Dascal 2005). In relation to Grice’s theory, for example, the flouting of a conversational maxim may be viewed as a cue that triggers a search for indirect meaning, whereas in regard to Bakhtin’s dialogism theory, polyphonic words may be seen as fulfilling this function. In the present volume, we see this elaborate view of cues and clues as serving to explain the identification and interpretation of local phenomena that involve indirect meaning, such as metaphor, irony and humor (see contributions by Hirsch, Livnat, and Shukrun-Nagar). Some other articles demonstrate the potential of linguistic cues to trigger conversational implicatures (Fetzer), as well as to detect two essential levels of an entire literary text (Cedar). 1.2  The dialogic-intertextual view The second prism deals with the shades of meanings, nuances and connotations constructed by diverse dialogical interactions between speakers, words and contexts, as well as intertextual links. This prism is mainly based on Mikhail

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M. Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism and, following it, Julia Kristeva’s theory of intertextuality. Bakhtin (e.g. 1981, 1986) viewed language as a complex dialogic system in which meanings are dynamically constructed through interactions between linguistic signs (word, utterance, text) and their present, as well as past and future, other occurrences, signified objects, addressers, addressees, contexts and co-texts. He stressed that the significant and powerful expression of dialogicity – as a reflection of social structures and ideological struggles – is not found in the external level of the text, but in the deepest levels of the words and utterances, both when producing an utterance and when interpreting it. According to Bakhtin (1981, 1986; Bakhtin/Medvedev 1978; Bakhtin/Volosinov 1983), the linguistic meaning of an utterance is merely theoretical, while its actual, true meaning is shaped by three major factors: first, the circumstantial (social, historical, ideological) contexts as interpreted by the speaker; second, the linguistic cotexts by which the words are framed and their meaning reconstructed; and third, the speakers themselves, in the confrontation between their inner worlds, both in the act of representing a particular object by particular words and in the act of hearing or reading the words chosen. Bakhtin emphasized that both the addresser and the addressee actively respond to other linguistic representations by other speakers in the past, present, and future. He also stressed that the diverse vivid dialogical interactions and confrontations may be reflected in the coexistence of competing social and ideological discourses of different groups of speakers (polyglossia), as well as in an utterance of a single speaker penetrated by foreign voices of other speakers (polyphony). Influenced by Bakhtin, Kristeva (1984, 1986) coined the term ‘intertextuality’ (later altered to ‘transposition’) to denote the permutation of semiotic units to linguistic ones. According to her approach, pre-existing cultural, historical, social and psychological meanings are encoded in linguistic signs, turning them into semiotic polyvalences. This means that linguistic signs may simultaneously belong to a number of semiotic systems, and thus hold, along with their linguistic meanings, other semiotic (ethical, social, political, and more) meanings. Intertextuality scholars following Kristeva extensively discussed the nature of the object of the intertextual link – whether it is a concrete text or the general discourse (the general lexicon or specific genre, register, sociolect and more). They also attempted to provide an explanation for the nature of the intertextual interpretive process that may lead to deciphering semiotic polysemy. While Barthes (1974, 1981) sees it as a purely productive reading, in which the readers themselves produce the polysemic meaning of the text by searching for its secondary, connotative meanings, Genette (1997) refers to para-textual clues that authors may intertwine in their texts in order to lead the readers to identify intertextual links. Fairclough

Introduction

(1995) explains the intertextual interpretive process as unraveling the thicket of genres and discourses interwoven throughout the text and shared in its production. It is accepted that readers possess the knowledge required to successfully decipher intertextual codes in the text, although gaps in knowledge and experience between the addresser and addressees may lead to misunderstanding (Still & Worton 1990; Riffaterre 1980, 1990). It is also well accepted that there are means – which we call here intertextual cues – that attest to intertextual links and trigger the interpretation of their meanings (Hatim & Mason 1990; Riffaterre 1980, 1990). The intertextual cues discussed in the literature are mostly lexical (expressions, connotations, collocations, clichés, stereotypes, and formulations known from other texts or the general discourse) and textual (quotes, echoing, allusions, plagiarism, paraphrases, themes, and textual organization). However, other – grammatical, syntactical and meta-textual – cues have been noted as well (e.g., modality, negation constructions, givenness marking, presuppositions, use of conventions of a particular genre or register and more) (Fairclough 1992, 1995; Frow 1990; Genette 1997; Hatim & Mason 1990; Jenny 1982; Lemke 1985; Riffaterre 1977, 1978, 1984). The dialogic prism facilitates the understanding of indirectness also as an elusive concept, a dynamic and controversial product of diverse interpretations for diverse interactions. It thus encourages the exposure of different social, ideological, literary and other voices – critical voices of power and authority, voices representing diverse addressers and addressees, and even the speaker’s own hidden voices that subvert her official voice. The papers in this volume discuss a variety of voices represented in diverse genres in varying degrees and different modes of indirectness. These include ideological-political voices (Fetzer, Granato, Livant, Shukrun-Nagar), as well as social (Fetzer, Mey, Kamp), historical (Weissbrod and Kohn), institutional (Atifi and Marcoccia, Fetzer) and literary (Cedar, Hirsch) voices of diverse kinds. The different voices are brought into the texts by diverse speech acts (Atifi and Marcoccia, Fetzer, Granato, Kamp, Shukrun-Nager), as well as by other devices such as irony – both in general (Hirsch, Livnat) and specifically through ironic echoes (Shukrun-Nagar), humor (Hirsch, Livnat), polyphonies (Shukrun-Nagar, Weissbrod and Kohn), references (Fetzer), verbal and non-verbal interactions between interlocutors (Mey), and finally – stylistic-duet, absurd and lip-service (Cedar). 1.3  The functional view The third prism has to do with the interpersonal, interactional and social functions fulfilled by indirectness. Various theoretical concepts determine the basis for analyzing indirectness through this prism: Face (Goffman 1967), positioning and

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power relations (Davies & Harré 1990; Weizman 2008), distance and proximity, hegemony and otherness (Van Dijk 2000), evaluation and criticism, support and challenge (Labov & Fanshel 1977). As mentioned above, in relation to directive speech acts, face-work is frequently performed by using indirect forms of speech, which assumingly have a mitigative and softening effect. In general terms, politeness theory suggests a close connection between directness and threat. However, many studies have shown that the picture is much more complex and that the choice between direct and indirect forms of language can fulfil varied functions and be indicative of the speaker’s different social goals, depending on cultural specificities, as well as differences between texts and circumstances in the same culture. For instance, while the choice of direct forms might express solidarity in certain societies (Katriel 1986), the fact that the participants share common ground and background knowledge might also be expressed by using indirect and inexplicit wording (Sifianou 1993/2008). From a different perspective, indirectness might also be connected to identity work (Terkourafi 2011a) and demonstrate distance or asymmetric power relations, having to do with questions of authority (Matsumura & Chinami 1999). Other perspectives on indirectness suggest that the use of indirect forms such as irony is closely connected to power relations, challenge, evaluation and criticism (e.g. Weizman 2008; Livnat & Dori Hacohen 2013; Dynel 2018). However, irony targeted to a third party can also create solidarity with an addressee who is not the victim of the irony (Myers-Roy 1981; Hartung 1998), thus emphasizing the otherness of the third party. In the present volume, this prism is discussed in relation to politeness theory (Atifi & Marcoccia), identifying context-specific preferences and conventionalization of indirect forms of speech at the very local level, as suggested by Kadar (2013). Other frameworks in action are: the use of direct and indirect addressivity to express proximity or distance (Granato); expressing distance, solidarity and alignment, as well as re-affirming power relations and otherness by means of a speech act of condemnation or a demand to condemn (Kampf); and challenging the credibility of a political opponent, while at the same time indirectly praising that of one’s own party (Fetzer). The critical and evaluative effect of irony is discussed in Shukrun-Nagar’s and Livnat’s papers, also in a context of confrontation between different stances. 2.  Structure of the book The combination of the three prisms presented combines the natural interface of pragmatics and discourse analysis with the fields of philosophy, rhetoric, ­sociology, translation and communication; and enables a multiplicity of points of

Introduction

view regarding the indirect representation of voices in texts. This multiplicity is evident in the present volume not only because it encompasses articles written by scholars from various fields of research, but also within the contributions themselves – in the theoretical and methodological diversity they offer. The book is organized according to the three prisms. However, we do not view this division as exclusive. The various contributions were categorized according to the most salient prism they present, although in each of them, the other aspects (or at least one of them) are evident as well. The result is aimed at providing a comprehensive framework for the discussion of the production and interpretation of indirect meanings of different degrees and types. 2.1  Cues for indirectness: The inferential view In Galia Hirsch’s theoretical contribution to this volume, the notion of cues and clues serves to explain the identification and interpretation of irony and humor as cases of indirect speaker’s meaning, and moreover – the differentiation between both textual-discursive phenomena. In addition to the distinction based on a combination of various potential cues supplied by competing pragmatic approaches, the model described emphasizes two salient aspects that differentiate between irony and humor: creativeness and criticism, thus involving the functional view as well. Zohar Livnat’s paper expands on current theoretical approaches to irony by presenting a further type of metaphorical irony and its interpretation process. Metaphor and irony are considered cases of indirect utterances whose interpretation is based on various cues. Basing the analysis on examples from the Israeli public discourse, the article brings to light a particular type of metaphorical irony, in which the text encourages retention of both readings of the metaphor in order to grasp the speaker’s intention. The dialogic-contextual and functional aspects are reflected in this contribution through the echoic interpretation of irony. In this view, irony involves the presence of a voice other than the speaker’s, a voice from which the speaker distances herself. This is what creates the criticizing effect of irony; however, Livnat argues that her examples in the given political and communicational context contain the potential for entertainment, in addition to criticism. In Pnina Shukrun-Nagar’s contribution, echoic mention is viewed as a central cue for irony. Through irony, different voices are brought into the text and indirectly evaluated by the speaker. She analyses readers’ comments on Benjamin Netanyahu’s Facebook posts, where confrontations between his supporters and critics are also expressed through ironic echoes; hence showing how readers’ comments from both political camps contain a complex network of echoes, some of which echo previous echoes themselves. Thus, the readers’ comments function as turbulent polyphonic (Bakhtin, 1981, 1986) arenas that confront the echoing voice with the echoed ones, as well as different political voices echoed in the same

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utterance or even the same word. The paper demonstrates how ironic echoes of accusations and compliments function as a tool to either enhance or damage both the ethos of Netanyahu and the positive face of the commenters themselves. 2.2  Voices in the text: The dialogic-intertextual view In his article, Jacob Mey looks at pragmatic indirect meaning as a fluid interaction between several interlocutors, which enables the authentic integration of other voices. Mey’s paper focuses on what he defines as “pragmatic indirectness” (as opposed to “semantic indirectness”) – the co-textual and contextual meaning constructed by the active collaboration of the participants in a communication event. In his view, this kind of indirect meaning is inevitably the process and result of a “pluricentric act,” a verbal and non-verbal interaction between several interlocutors, the center of which is dynamic and fluid. This type of interaction enables the interlocutors to adapt to the other communicators, including those with different cultural or social backgrounds, and integrate their voices into the text, not just by reporting what they say but also by representing their point of view authentically. Talli Cedar’s contribution distinguishes between the voices of the impliedauthor, narrator and diverse characters, identifying each of them according to the above mechanism and pragmatic cues for indirectness, following the concepts of footing and narrative entities. In her work, contextual cues do not serve to detect the two levels of a local indirectness, but rather the two essential levels of an entire literary text: the voice of the implied-author and the narrative voices in a literary text. Cedar proposes a mechanism consisting of three pragmatic cues for the identification of critical voices in a literary text: stylistic-duet, absurd and lip-service. She thus demonstrates that this method of interpretation can reveal not only dialogues between different social voices, but also the critical voice of the impliedauthor in relation to society. Rachel Weissbrod and Ayelet Kohn discuss a contemporary graphic adaptation of Anne Frank’s Diary (first published in 1947), using the notion of indirect translation (Gutt 2000), which refers to an adaptation that “interpretively resembles” the source text in respects that are relevant to the target audience in its new context. The adaptation involves turning the original written text into a multimodal work, modifying the dimensions of time and space, and extending the original polyphony by presenting new voices: those of the editor and illustrator, and the voice of the original author herself, which was partly silenced due to the censorship of the diary’s early versions. These modifications help serve to meet the expectations of a new generation of readers, and thus add the variety of addressees to the other voices present in this multi-dimensional text: voices of different characters – realistic and imaginary, present and excluded, old and new, looking

Introduction

forward and looking back – as well as voices of different times, spaces, norms and languages. 2.3  (In)directness as an effective choice: The functional view In the framework of politeness study, Hassan Atifi and Michel Marcoccia discuss the speech act of request as it is used in a professional institutional setting and in a specific medium – email messages. Focusing primarily on the action dimension of the digital discourse and situating their work in the field of pragmatics of computer-mediated communication, they describe strategies for the formulation of the requests. Taking into account the choice of the medium and the context of the communication, they show that the use of a particular communication device can change the formulation of speech acts to some extent. Luisa Granato’s analysis of a presidential debate prior to elections demonstrates the candidates' use of direct and indirect addressivity to express proximity to or distance from the audience and the other candidate. From a socio-pragmatic perspective, with special attention to the micro- and the meso-levels of the interaction, the paper studies direct and indirect expressions and examines the necessary resources for the interpretation of the indirect formulas on the part of the addressees. The analysis shows that directness is the preferred choice for the realization of the ideational function of language, while in the realization of the interpersonal function, candidates make different strategic choices. In her study of Prime Minister’s Questions, Anita Fetzer compares references to truth with references to fact and references to reality by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. She demonstrates how the use of references to truth can function as an inference trigger that indirectly invites implicatures about non-truth and insincerity. It thus functions as an argumentative tool and a rhetorical resource in a dispute, and carries considerable face-threatening potential. Moreover, references to truth are used strategically to challenge the credibility of the political opponent while at the same time indirectly praising that of one’s own party, and their indirectness allows the speaker to act at face level in accordance with the rules of conduct of the speech event. A different connection to social functionality in the political sphere is demonstrated in Zohar Kampf’s contribution, which focuses on ethno-political interviews of two participants: Jewish-Israeli journalists in the role of interviewers and Arab-Israeli parliament members and mayors in the role of interviewees, and on public speech acts of condemnation and a demand to condemn. The analysis demonstrates how the interviewers’ efforts to exercise interactional and social power by pushing their interviewees to adopt a consensual stance are rejected by ­resorting to indirect answer designs. Indirect responses from the interviewees are



 Zohar Livnat, Pnina Shukrun-Nagar & Galia Hirsch

an interactional resource, which allows them to reject the patriotic model suggested by interviewers in the context of political conflict. The speech act of condemnation itself expresses criticism towards and distancing from the violation of a law, a norm, or a code of behavior, thus implicitly conveying solidarity and alignment with the social group that upholds this norm or code of behavior, whereas the demand put forward by interviewers representing the hegemonic voice to perform an act of condemnation publicly hides presuppositions about who is obliged to condemn what, and why, and is thus related to the notion of otherness.

References Ariel, Mira. 2002. “The Demise of a Unique Concept of Literal Meaning.” Journal of Pragmatics 34 (4): 361–402.  https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(01)00043-1 Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich. 1986. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich, and Pavel Nikolaevich Medvedev. 1978. The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: A Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich, and Valentin Nikolaevich Volosinov. [1930] 1983. “Literary Stylistics.” In Bakhtin School Papers (Russian Poetics in Translation 10), ed. by Ann Shukman, 93–152. Oxford: RPT Publications. Barthes, Roland. 1974. S/Z: An Essay. New York: Hill & Wang. Barthes, Roland. 1981. “Theory of the Text.” In Untying the Text (A Post-Structuralist Reader), ed. by Robert Young, 31–47. London: Fontana Press. Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, Juliane House, and Gabriele Kaspar (eds.). 1989. Cross Cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies. Norwood: Ablex. Brenneis, Donald. 1986. “Shared Territory: Audience, Indirection and Meaning.” Text 6 (3): 339–347.  https://doi.org/10.1515/text.1.1986.6.3.339 Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511813085 Dascal, Marcelo. 1983. Pragmatics and the Philosophy of Mind: Language and Thought. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/pb.iv.1 Dascal, Marcelo, and Elda Weizman. 1987. “Contextual Exploitation of Interpretation Clues in Text Understanding: An Integrated Approach.” In The Pragmatic Perspective, ed. by Jef Verschueren, and Marcella Bertucceli-Papi, 31–46. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/pbcs.5.08das Davies, Bronwyn, and Rom Harré. 1990. “Positioning: The Discursive Production of Selves.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 20 (1): 43–63. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5914.1990.tb00174.x De Kadt, Elizabeth. 1998. “The Concept of Face and its Applicability to the Zulu Language.” Journal of Pragmatics 29: 173–191.  https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(97)00021-0

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Duranti, Alessandro. 1988. “Intentions, Language, and Social Action in a Samoan Context.” Journal of Pragmatics 12: 13–33.  https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(88)90017-3 Dynel, Marta. 2018. Irony, Deception and Humour: Seeking the Truth about Overt and Covert Untruthfulness. Boston/Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.  https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501507922 Ervin-Tripp, Susan. 1976. “Is Sybil there? Some American English Directives.” Language in Society 5: 25–66.  https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500006849 Fairclough, Norman. 1992. Discourse and Social Change. Great Britain: Polity Press. Fairclough, Norman. 1995. Media Discourse. New York: Arnold. Frow, John. 1990. “Intertextuality and Ontology.” In Intertextuality: Theories and Practices, ed. by Michael Worton, and Judith Still, 45–55. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Genette, Gérard. 1997. Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press. Gibbs, Raymond W. 1999. “Speakers’ Intuitions and Pragmatic Theory.” Cognition 69: 355–359. Goffman, Erving. 1967. Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Interaction. New York: Anchor Books. Grainger, Karen, and Sara Mills. 2016. Directness and Indirectness across Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan.  https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137340399 Grainger, Karen, Zainab Kerkham, Fathia Mansor, and Sara Mills. 2015. “Offering and Hospitality in Arabic and English.” Journal of Politeness Research 11 (1): 41–70. https://doi.org/10.1515/pr-2015-0003 Grice, Paul H. 1968. “Utterer’s Meaning, Sentence-Meaning, and Word-Meaning.” In Philosophy, Language, and Artificial Intelligence, 49–66. Springer: Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2727-8_2 Grice, Paul H. 1975. “Logic and Conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts, ed. by Peter Cole, and Jerry L. Morgan, 41–58. New York: Academic Press. Gutt, Ernst-August. 2000. Translation and Relevance: Cognition and Context. Manchester: St. Jerome. Hartung, Martin. 1998. Ironie in der Gesprochenen Sprache. Eine Gesprachanalytische Untersuchung. Westdeutscher Verlag: Opladen. Hatim, Basil, and Ian Mason. 1990. Discourse and the Translation. London and New York: Longman. Jenny, Laurent. 1982. “The Strategy of Form.” In French Literary Theory Today, ed. by Tzvetan Todorov, 34–63. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kadar, Daniel Z. 2013. Relational Rituals and Communication. London: Palgrave. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230393059 Katriel, Tamar. 1986. Talking Straight: Dugri Speech in Israeli Sabra Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kiesling, Scott F. 2010. “Introduction: Rethinking Indirection and the Indexical Cycle.” Journal of Pragmatics 42 (2): 279–282.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2009.06.001 Kiesling, Scott F., and Elka Ghosh Johnson. 2010. “Four Forms of Interactional Indirection.” Journal of Pragmatics 42 (2): 292–306.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2009.06.004 Kristeva, Julia. 1984. Revolution in Poetic Language. New York: Columbia University Press. Kristeva, Julia. 1986. The Kristeva Reader. New York: Columbia University Press. Labov, William, and David Fanshel. 1977. Therapeutic Discourse. London: Academic Press. Leech, Geoffrey N. 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.

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Lemke, Jay L. 1985. “Ideology, Intertextuality, and the Notion of Register.” In Systemic Perspectives on Discourse 1, ed. by James D. Benson, and William S. Greaves. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex Publishing Corporation. Levinson, Stephen C. 1983. Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511813313 Livnat, Zohar, and Gonen Dori-Hacohen. 2013. “The Effect of Irony in Radio Talk-Back programs in Israel.” In The Pragmatics of Political Discourse: Explorations Across Cultures, ed. by Anita Fetzer, 193–217. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.228.11liv Matsumura, Yoshiko, and Kyoko Chinami. 1999. “Politeness in Japanese Conversations between People with Different Social Ranking: A Discourse-Based Review of Brown and Levinson (1987).” Presented at the International Symposium for Linguistic Politeness, Bangkok, 7 December 1999. Morgan, Marcyliena. 2010. “The Presentation of Indirectness and Power in Everyday Life.” Journal of Pragmatics 42 (2): 283–291.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2009.06.011 Myers-Roy, Alice. 1981. “The Function of Irony in Discourse.” Text 1 (4): 407–423. https://doi.org/10.1515/text.1.1981.1.4.407 Ogiermann, Eva. 2009. “Politeness and In-Directness across Cultures: A Comparison of English, German, Polish and Russian Requests.” Journal of Politeness Research 5 (2): 189–216. https://doi.org/10.1515/JPLR.2009.011 Philips, Susan U. 2010. “Semantic and Interactional Indirectness in Tongan Lexical Honorification.” Journal of Pragmatics 42 (2): 317–336.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2009.06.005 Recanati, François. 2002. “Literal/nonliteral.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 25: 264–274. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-4975.00048 Recanati, François. 2004. Literal Meaning. Cambridge University Press. Riffaterre, Michael. 1977. “Semantic Overdetermination in Poetry.” PTL: A Journal for Descriptive Poetics and Theory of Literature 2: 1–19. Riffaterre, Michael. 1978. Semiotics of Poetry. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press. Riffaterre, Michael. 1980. “Syllepsis.” Critical Inquiry 6 (4): 625–638. https://doi.org/10.1086/448071 Riffaterre, Michael. 1984. “Intertextual Representation: On Mimesis as Interpretive Discourse.” Critical Inquiry 11 (1): 141–162.  https://doi.org/10.1086/448279 Riffaterre, Michael. 1990. “Compulsory Reader Response: The Intertextual Drive.” In Intertextuality: Theories and Practices, ed. by Judith Still, and Michael Worton. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Rosaldo, Michelle Z. 1982. “The Things We do with Words: Ilongot Speech Acts and Speech Act Theory in Philosophy.” Language in Society 1(2): 203–237. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500009209 Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1988. “Presequences and Indirection: Applying Speech Act Theory to Ordinary Conversation.” Journal of Pragmatics 12: 55–62. https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(88)90019-7 Searle, John R. 1969. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139173438 Searle, John R. 1975. “Indirect Speech Acts.” In Syntax and Semantics Vol. 3: Speech Acts, ed. by Peter Cole, and Jerry L. Morgan, 59–82. New York: Academic Press. Silverstein, Michael. 2010. “‘Direct’ and ‘Indirect’ Communicative Acts in Semiotic Perspective.” Journal of Pragmatics 42 (2): 337–353.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2009.06.003

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Sifianou, Maria. 1993/2008. “Off-record Indirectness and the Notion of Imposition.” Multilingua 12 (1): 69–79. Reproduced in Intercultural Discourse and Communication, ed. by Scott F. Kiesling and Christina Bratt Paulston, 217–225. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1515/mult.1993.12.1.69 Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 1981. “Irony and the Use-Mention Distinction.” In Radical Pragmatics, ed. by Peter Cole, 295–318. New York: Academic Press. Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 1986. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell. Still, Judith, and Michael Worton. 1990. “Introduction.” In Intertextuality: Theories and Practices, ed. by Judith Still, and Michael Worton. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Terkourafi, Marina. 2011a. “The Puzzle of Indirect Speech.” Journal of Pragmatics 43 (11): 2861– 2865.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2011.05.003 Terkourafi, Marina. 2011b. “Why Direct Speech is not a Natural Default: Rejoinder to Steven Pinker’s ‘Indirect Speech, Politeness, Deniability, and Relationship Negotiation.’” Journal of Pragmatics 43 (11): 2869–2871.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2011.05.006 Van Dijk, Teun A. 2000. “New(s) Racism: A Discourse Analytical Approach.” In Ethnic Minorities and the Media, ed. by Simon Cottle, 33–49. Buckingham, UK & Philadelphia, USA: Open University Press. Walker, Traci, Paul Drew, and John Local. 2011. “Responding Indirectly.” Journal of Pragmatics 43: 2434–2451.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2011.02.012 Weizman, Elda. 1989. “Requestive Hints.” In Cross Cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies, ed. by Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, Juliane House, and Gabriele Kaspar. Norwood: Ablex. Weizman, Elda. 2008. Positioning in Media Dialogue: Negotiating Roles in the News Interview. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/ds.3 Weizman, Elda. 2011. “Conveying Indirect Reservations through Discursive Redundancy.” Language Sciences 33 (2): 295–304.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2010.10.006 Weizman, Elda, and Marcelo Dascal. 1991. “On Clues and Cues: Strategies of Text Understanding.” Journal of Literary Semantics 20 (1): 18–30.  https://doi.org/10.1515/jlse.1991.20.1.18 Weizman, Elda, and Marcelo Dascal. 2005. “Interpreting Speaker’s Meaning in Literary Dialogue.” In Dialogue analysis IX. Dialogue in Literature and the Media, Part I: Literature, ed. by Anne Betten, and Monica Dannerer, 61–72. Tübingen: Niemeyer. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110946062.61

part i

Cues for indirectness The inferential view

Irony, humor or both? The model revisited Galia Hirsch

Bar-Ilan University This contribution revisits the difference between irony and humor taking into account new approaches shedding light on the complicated relationship between irony and humor (Dynel 2013; Gibbs, Bryant & Colston 2014; Garmendia 2014; Kapogianni 2011; Piskorska 2014; Yus 2016). In previous research (Hirsch 2011a, 2011b), the differentiation between irony and humor was established based on a comparative model, which distinguished between cues for irony and cues for humor through pragmatic analysis of source texts and their translations. In view of some of the new accounts (Dynel 2013; Kapogianni 2011; Piskorska 2014), the study purports to adapt the model, incorporating the concept of surrealistic irony and concluding that differences in the use of explicitation strategies in translation are still a decisive tool in setting the boundaries between irony and humor. Keywords:  irony, humor, translation, literature, criticism, echoic mention, non-sense

1.  Introduction The aim of this paper is to revisit the difference between irony and humor in light of new publications addressing the complicated relationship between irony and humor (Dynel 2013; Gibbs, Bryant & Colston 2014; Garmendia 2014; Kapogianni 2011; Piskorska 2014; Yus 2016). In previous research, the differentiation between irony and humor was established based on a comparative model, which distinguished between cues for irony and cues for humor through pragmatic analysis of source texts and their translations, building on the elaboration of existing pragmatic models and concepts drawn from translation theory (Hirsch 2011a, 2011b). The model, that distinguished between irony and humor in the context of literary texts, was elaborated in the PhD thesis, Between Irony and Humor: A Pragmatic Model Based on Textual Analysis of Literary Works and their Translations, https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.316.01hir © 2020 John Benjamins Publishing Company

 Galia Hirsch

carried out under the supervision of Prof. Elda Weizman. Both the analysis of irony and humor, as well as the comparison between source and translated text, were pragmatically oriented and multidisciplinary; the textual analysis revealed how the analysis of translation may be used to corroborate pragmatic analysis, and vice versa. Although, a “general consensus prevails both in folk knowledge and in academic literature that irony tends to promote humor” (Dynel 2014a: 542); the model (Hirsch 2011a, 2011b) was established at a time where a clear-cut differentiation between the two phenomena was scarce, apart from one extensive examination performed by Hidalgo Downing and Iglesias Recuero (2008), which maintained that humor and irony were both context-sensitive, but that with the latter it was easier to claim the intention was the literal sense (pp. 435–347). Since then, the boundaries and diffusion of the two pragmatic phenomena were addressed from different theoretical standpoints, applying diverse methodological approaches (for an extensive review, see Dynel 2014a), culminating with a special issue of the journal Humor (27), offering new insights into the linguistic characteristics of humorous irony. In light of the new and interesting insights offered, the present discussion purports to elaborate on the original model purposed (Hirsch 2011a, 2011b), and to further validate its distinctions through the analysis of a literary source text: the story “Romance in the Roaring Forties” from Guys and Dolls – a 1932 book of short stories by Damon Runyon – and its Hebrew translations: “Lehayei Hakala” from Barnashim Vahatikhot (Tr: Karmi 1987) and “Ahava Bishnot Harba’im Hasoarot” from Hush Humor Vesipuriom Aherim (Tr: Meltzer 2016). The paper is organized as following: first, the original model is summarized (Section 2); followed by a brief and by no means exhaustive presentation of new relevant approaches (Section 3); proceeding to an application of the new insights to a pragmatic analysis of source text and translation (Section 4); concluding with the model revisited in light of the previously presented theories (Section 5). 2.  The original model The original model distinguished between irony and humor, based on the belief that while irony and humor might share similar qualities, circumstances or functions, they are different pragmatic phenomena (Hirsch 2011a). It took as a point of departure Dascal and Weizman’s model of text-understanding (Dascal & Weizman 1987; Weizman & Dascal 1991), and their elaborate view of cues and clues, which is useful to explain the identification and interpretation of local phenomena that involve indirect meaning, such as irony and



Irony, humor or both? 

humor. Their approach views irony as a case of indirect speaker’s meaning (Dascal & Weizman 1987; Weizman 2001), much like humor (Dascal 1983: 96–97); the interpretation of which presupposes both the detection of cues indicating the computed utterance meaning is not a plausible candidate for being the speaker’s meaning and a search for clues that contribute to the reconstruction of an alternative speaker’s meaning. This process is based on the interrelations between textual patterns and contextual knowledge. Following Weizman (2008), the model (Hirsch 2011a, 2011b) took into account various competing theories, and viewed them as theory-based accounts of potential cues. This way, a combination of a number of cues defined a given utterance as either ironic or humorous. The cues for irony included the flouting of Gricean maxims (Grice 1975, 1978), the violation of the sincerity condition underlying the felicitous performance of a speech act (Haverkate 1990), and the detection of echoic mention (Sperber & Wilson 1981; Wilson & Sperber 1992) or of a pretense to be an injudicious person speaking to an uninitiated audience (Clark & Gerrig 1984). Cues for humor included script opposition and the violation of expectations (Raskin & Attardo 1994), punch lines (Oring 1989), word play (Alexander 1997) and non-sense (Jeffers 1995; Ziv 1984). In that manner, a blatant flouting of any of the maxims composing Grice’s Cooperative Principle was viewed by the model as a possible cue for a search for an ironic interpretation of the text. Grice views irony as a case of conversational implicature, triggered by a blatant flouting of the maxim of quality (Try to make your contribution one that is true), one of the four sub-categories distinguished in what he labels “The Cooperative Principle,” an unconscious agreement between the speakers to make their contribution to a conversation “such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange” (Grice 1975: 26). Others (for instance: Colston 2000), following him, have proposed that irony could also be conveyed by the flouting of the other maxims [“Make your contribution as informative as required” but not “more informative than is required” (quantity), “Be relevant” (relevance) and “Be perspicuous” (manner) (Grice 1975: 26–27)]. Another cue for the assignment of an ironic meaning was found in the framework proposed by Haverkate (1990), who proposes to analyze irony on the level of the illocutionary force rather than on the level of the proposition, taking the theory of speech acts as a frame of reference (p. 86). Haverkate considered the violation of the sincerity condition underlying the felicitous performance of a speech act to be a necessary condition for ironic interpretation (p. 100). An ironic interpretation of a given utterance was further supported by Sperber and Wilson’s Echoic Mention theory (Sperber & Wilson 1981; Wilson & Sperber 1992). In this line, the addresser implicitly mentions a true or imagined

 Galia Hirsch

­ roposition, thought, or accepted convention, while expressing a derogatory attip tude towards it. Irony detection therefore involves the addressee’s recognition of that attitude and that the proposition has been mentioned rather than used. Sperber and Wilson’s echoic mention theory also helps locate the target of the irony since they claim that “an ironical remark will have as natural target the originators, real or imagined, of the utterances or opinions being echoed” (1981: 314). Accordingly, the echoic mention theory may be regarded as providing not only a cue for ironic interpretation, but also an essential clue, leading towards the interpretation of the ironic meaning (Weizman 2001, 2008). Although the difference between the two approaches has been accentuated (Wilson 2006); for the purpose of the model, Echoic Mention Theory (Sperber & Wilson 1981; Wilson & Sperber 1992) and Pretense Theory (Clark & Gerrig 1984) – arguing ironic interpretation presupposes a speaker pretending to be an injudicious person speaking to an uninitiated audience with the intention for the addressee of the irony to discover the pretense and attitude (Clark & Gerrig 1984: 121) – do not differ greatly from one another. Just as the different pragmatic approaches to irony provided the model with cues for the ironic interpretation of an utterance, humor research supplied other cues, and a combination of these cues defined an utterance as humorous. An essential cue for humor was incongruity, which according to Attardo (1997) corresponds to the “script opposition” – a concept presented by Raskin (1985) in his famous Semantic Script Theory of Humor (SSTH)1 – and the existence of two compatibly opposed scripts in the addressee’s mind in some stage of the interpretation process. The script is the semantic information surrounding the words in the utterance or evoked by them, and it represents the native speaker’s knowledge of the world (Raskin 1985: 81). The script opposition is often based on the difference between the actual and the non-actual, the real and the unreal, the possible and the impossible, the normal and the abnormal (Raskin 1985: 108– 111). The first and more accessible script creates certain expectations, and those are disconfirmed when the second script is activated and the opposition resolved (Attardo 1997). Another cue for humor was what Jeffers denominates “non-sense,” not a lack of sense but a different sense, which is characteristic of the humoristic text. She claims that humor initiates a reading that rejects the usual logic and truth and replaces them with another kind of logic: non-sense (Jeffers 1995). Ziv also attributes the same special logic to humor (which he calls “local logic”), combining

.  Note that Raskin defines his theory not as an incongruity theory, but only as an approach that seems compatible with it.



Irony, humor or both? 

realistic and non-realistic features, and claims that logic requires the addressees’ cooperation and frees them from the boundaries of rational thinking (Ziv 1984). A typical structure of a humorous utterance was perceived as another cue for the identification of humor. Such structure is found for example in jokes, which are usually short and restricted to a single scene, culminating suddenly with the punch line, “a device that triggers the perception of an appropriate incongruity” (Oring 1989: 351), in which the surprise is usually delivered (Raskin 1985: 33). Verbal humor in its narrow interpretation, namely instances such as word games, puns and any other form of language play, provided the model with another cue for the distinction between irony and humor. Not every humorous use of language is necessarily an instance of verbal humor in this sense: e.g. a joke revolving around logic is indeed a case of humor, but not of verbal humor. Verbal humor is different because it pivots around linguistic mechanisms (Alexander 1997: 13–14). The model, which was first applied to literary works and their translations, consisted of two stages. In its first stage, it defined a given utterance as either ironic or humorous based on a combination of cues supplied by the above mentioned pragmatic theories. The pragmatic analysis was corroborated by the second stage of the model, which drew on translation studies, primarily on the notions of explicitation (Dimitrova 2005; Vinay & Darbelnet 1958) and of obligatory- and non-obligatory shifts (Toury 1995). Explicitation refers to the process of making what is implicit in the original explicit in the translation (Klaudy 2003), for example by adding explanatory phrases, spelling out implicatures or inserting connectives to “help” the logical flow of the text and to increase readability (Shuttleworth & Cowie 1997: 55). Following Toury (1995), who views explicitations and implicitations as different kinds of shifts, the general notion of “shift” (Catford 1965: 73–82), was used to differentiating between the two types: explicitating (namely explicitations) and non-explicitating shifts. The analysis, therefore, comprised three stages: (1) cues for irony and humor were identified in the source texts, their functions in context were described, and a distinction was made between the cues; (2) the same procedure was applied to the translations; (3) source texts and translations were compared in terms of discourse patterns and their functions.2 The application of the second stage of the model, which compared source and translation, added another criterion for the distinction: translations of humor yielded more non-explicitating shifts, while ironic occurrences resulted in more

.  For an elaboration on the stages and the differences in the use of explicitation strategies when translating irony and humor, see Hirsch (2011a; 2011b).

 Galia Hirsch

explicitations in translation. Although this finding merits further research, it can be interpreted as indicating that when trying to achieve perlocutionary equivalence, while the explicitation of humor may override its function altogether, the explicitation of irony does not, since the implied criticism is not eliminated. This finding further strengthens the claim that irony is inherently critical, whereas humor is not necessarily so. In summary, according to the model, the combination of several cues defines a given utterance as either ironic or humoristic, and the analysis of the translation is used to corroborate the pragmatic analysis. Apart from the distinction between the typical cases, the model further provided tools to identify occurrences that include cues for both interpretations. These cases, which are often referred to in research as humorous-ironies or ironic humors, were considered to be located on a continuum between the two extremes. 3.  New research on the relationship between irony and humor In the same vein as the account proposed – which views various theories as possible providers of cues and clues for ironical (or humorous) interpretation (Hirsch 2011a, 2011b) – Garmendia (2014) mentions several cues that facilitate the identification of irony. Likewise, Yus (2016) sustains that multiple sources can assist in the identification of irony, sometimes simultaneously and others subsequently. Yus (2016), relying on Sperber and Wilson’s theory of relevance (1981), views echoic mention and an attitude of dissociation or rejection of the opinion echoed, as essential cues for irony (p. 220). Many jokes tend also to be echoic, for instance those featuring different voices; however, spontaneous humor is usually original and as such cannot be considered a mention of a previous use (Goatly 2012: 271– 273). According to Yus (2016), there are cases of dissociative irony which are also humorous, so long as the speaker makes known his humorous intentions (Yus 2016: 224–226). Somewhat differently than Yus (2016), Garmendia (2014) considers echoic mention to be just a frequent cue to the clash between content and intention, and not an essential one (p. 650); for her, the essential condition for ironic utterances is criticism. The notion that irony typically conveys pertinent evaluative meaning is also supported by Dynel (2013). According to her, the two inseparable traits of irony are negative evaluative judgement and an overt untruthfulness, which is conceptualized as the flouting of the Gricean first maxim of quality (Dynel 2013, 2014b). Overt untruthfulness is deemed by Dynel (2013) as characteristic of both irony and humor, but humor does not necessarily convey an implicit evaluation (p. 293). In non-humorous irony, the resolution coincides with the hearer’s



Irony, humor or both? 

r­ ecognition of the speaker’s implied meaning and its necessary evaluative judgement (Dynel 2013: 296), while humorous irony must leave some of the incongruity unresolved (p. 305). According to Garmendia (2014), the ironic incongruity between the content and the addresser’s actual communicative intentions is resolved when the addressee realizes the addresser has not truthfully uttered this literal meaning. The resolution of this incongruity may create humor as a side effect (pp. 652–653). Similarly, Piskorska (2014) and Gibbs et al. (2014) see both irony and humor as built on incongruity, but, to Gibbs et al. (2014), irony is based more on the violation of expectations than on the incongruity between what is said and what is implied (p. 586). The social aspect of humor is also stressed by Gibbs et  al. (2014), claiming that it is an important regulatory component of indirect social communication, and therefore it should not be considered just the pragmatic function of irony (Gibbs et al. 2014). Irony itself has been shown to entail a social function just as well (Myers Roy 1981; Kothoff 2003; Livant and Dori-Hacohen 2013). Gibbs et al. (2014) do consider humor to be sometimes the result of irony, as do Kotthoff (2003), ­Piskorska (2014) and Garmendia (2014: 654), who admits, nonetheless, that there are some unusual cases of non-humorous irony. In Dynel’s (2013) framework, irony can sometimes promote humor or be humorous when the addressee experiences cognitive safety. In the case of sarcastic irony, it can be explained with superiority theories of humor, in which the speaker uses the utterance in order to boost their ego and amuse the hearer at the expanse of another: the target (p. 307, p. 312). For Yus (2016), irony may have humorous intentions or effects: the more creative and surprising the utterance, the more likely it is to generate humor (Yus 2016). The idea of creativity as a quintessential feature of humor, as opposed to the use of more formulaic conventional utterances in some cases of non-humorous ironies, is also addressed by Piskorska (2014). Many researchers (Kothoff 2003: 1393; Kapogianni 201l; Dynel 2013) indeed claim that conventionalized ironic utterances will not be humorous. Creativity is therefore associated with most humorous ironies, especially surrealistic irony, as long as it is not conventionalized (Dynel 2013). Surrealistic irony is what Kapogianni (2011) understands as an utterance employing a strikingly unrealistic, unexpected and unappropriated question or assertion, which differs from the classical irony in that it is does not involve some kind of meaning reversal, is less context dependent, and thus not easily cancellable (Kapogianni 2011). Based on Kapogianni (2011), Dynel (2013) characterizes surrealistic irony as a type of irony displaying overt untruthfulness by flouting the first maxim of quality but involving no meaning negation. Surrealistic irony usually displays inherent absurdity, an internal incongruity, conveying a meaning

 Galia Hirsch

that is non-realistic (Dynel 2013: 301, 306). Note that absurdity was categorized by the model as mostly pertinent to humor (Hirsch 2011a), and indeed both Kapogianni (2011) and Dynel (2013, 2014b: 628) claim that surrealistic irony shows close affinity with absurd humor. As opposed to surrealistic irony, though, absurd humor does not involve a negative evaluation of the preceding turn and does not conduce an implicature (Dynel 2014b: 628–629). This coincides with Jeffers’ claim (1995) that, as opposed to humor, irony initiates a reading that aims to arrive at some sort of logic or truth. It seems, therefore, that most authors agree that irony and humor share many traits, but they tend to identify irony with a more prominent, negative, critical, attitude (Yus 2016; Garmendia 2014; Dynel 2013), and view humor as more creative (Yus 2016; Dynel 2013, 2014b; Piskorska 2014) – associating the notion of creativity with its element of surprise and unpredictability (Piskorska 2014). It is a small wonder, thus, that the concepts of irony and humor have been so intertwined in literature. The notions of creativity and criticism themselves are quite subjective and context dependent: having to do with the situation and the interlocutors’ background, contextual knowledge, assumptions, conceptions of the world, and many other subjective variables. In other words, how can one objectively judge creativity? Beside the point that even though innovativeness is more typical of humor, it is often used as the criterion to mark the difference between conventionalized and non-conventionalized irony. Dynel (2013), provides a partial answer by claiming that creativity is achieved by using innovative style, vivid imagery or stylistic features involving implicitness (p. 304). However, it seems that the only way to add to the model the notion of creativity, along with further support to the claim that criticism is typical of irony, is to apply these notions to an actual text. 4.  Textual analysis In order to reassess the notions of irony and humor in full texts, the analysis focused on a short story from the famous Broadway tales, Guys and Dolls (1932) – Alfred Damon Runyon’s (1880–1946) short stories of New York in the Roaring Twenties and Great Depression, written in an original conversational slang. The story, “Romance in the Roaring Forties,” describes the wedding one of Runyon’s famous characters, the gangster Dave the Dude, arranged for the woman he was infatuated with, after he had accepted the fact that she was in love with another man, Waldo Winchester, the newspaper writer. The story was translated to Hebrew twice: first by Eliezer Karmi – who invented a whole new terminology in order to address the peculiarities of Runyon’s Broadway slang – with the name of



Irony, humor or both? 

“Lehayei Hakala” (Here’s to the Bride); and recently by Muli Meltzer, who named it “Ahava Bishnot Harba’im Hasoarot” (Love in the Roaring Forties). Following Toury’s (1995: 65–66) approach – which relies mainly on the analysis of the primary products of the translators’ behavior, namely the actual translations – this section will analyze these two literary translations into Hebrew. The translations are separated by time and the influence of different translational norms (Toury 1995), and in many senses are representative of their periods. However, the focus of this investigation is not detecting the norms governing them through their comparison; but, as will be subsequently demonstrated, understanding the nature of the humorous and ironic occurrences, so abundant in this story, through the analysis of their different translations. Note that only a few of the most salient examples are presented here, but the mechanisms undelaying them are repeated throughout the story. 4.1  Macro-analysis My aim is not only to study the various occurrences of irony and humor, but also to treat the text as a whole; or in other words, to establish where it relies more on each at both the macro and the micro level. At the macro-level, the text, like all other stories in this compilation, provides several cues for humor. A humorous framing, which is a typical joke-like structure, is considered a cue for the distinction between irony and humor in the original model (Hirsch 2011a). According to Oring (1989), forms of expressions found in many current jokes are contemporary settings and present-tense narration (p. 360). The perpetual use of present tense, which is one of the most famous traits of Runyon’s jargon, is consistent throughout the story. It could be viewed as influenced by norms of oral storytelling, and such style is known to make vivid the events recounted (Fludernik 1996: 587); notwithstanding, it also provides the text a joke like atmosphere. The structure of this story – and of all other stories in this book – is also reminiscent of a large-scale joke in the sense that it is requires a cognitive process aiming at understanding and solving an incongruity, thus restoring balance (Ziv 1984: 96). Just like the process of uncovering the truth while reading detective fiction, one tries to solve the incongruity of the joke trying to foresee the twist in the end. All the stories in Guy and Dolls contain an element of surprise in the end, which is similar to a joke’s punchline. For example, in “Blood Pressure” the narrator’s high blood pressure inexplicably drops after a night of tumultuous encounters; and in the “The Snatching of Bookie Bob” it is his docile wife who orders his kidnapping. “Romance in the Roaring Forties” ends with the discovery that the narrator is responsible for the turn of events:

 Galia Hirsch

I see Mr and Mrs Dave the Dude the other day, and they seem very happy. But you never can tell about married people, so of course I am never going to let on Dave the Dude that I am the one who telephones Lola Sapola at the Marx Hotel, because maybe I do not do Dave any too much of a favour, at that. (p. 165)

Some of the other stories portray a less happy ending, such as “Dark Dolores” drawing her enemies or the avenging of the death of “The Lily from St. Pierre.” In these cases, the ending can be regarded as more ironic than humorous, namely irony of fate or situational irony. Another differentiation suggested by the model is between humor and situational irony based on the “tragedy criteria”: if the results of an event recounted could be severe for one of the entities involved, it would be defined as situational irony; however, if the situation provoked mere amusement, it might be regarded as humorous (Hirsch 2011c). The current short story, which ends in “nothing worse […] than getting […] married up,” (p. 159), as Runyon puts it, seems to be built around humor, providing the satisfaction of solving the incongruity, at least at the macro-level. At the micro-level, there are some cases which seem to entail more cues for irony, while others portray more cues for humor, a differentiation which is supported by the translations. The most problematic distinction was between occurrences which could either be surrealistic irony or absurd humor: those seemed to be located at the continuum between the two phenomena. 4.2  Micro-analysis: Irony The story analyzed presents many instances of irony, the majority of which seem to be cases of understatement and overstatement, in which, as Kapogianni (2011) explains “the intended meaning is reached through movement towards the upper or lower part of a scale” (p. 20). An example of understatement is found at the beginning of the story, where the gangster Dave the Dude discovers that Billy Perry, the dancer he has been courting to no avail, actually favors the newspaper writer, Waldo Winchester:

(1) a. what does he see but this Waldo Winchester and Miss Billy Perry kissing each other back and forth friendly.  (p. 154) b. Ma hu roe im lo et Waldo Winchester veet Miss Billy Perry mitnashkim halokh vashov betsura yedidutit lemadai.  (Karmi, p. 34)  Gloss: what does he see if not Waldo Winchester and Miss Billy Perry kissing(reciprocally) back and forth in a manner quite amicable. c. Ma hu roe im lo et Waldo Winchester veet Miss Billy Perry mahlifim beineihem neshikot biyedidut raba meod.  (Meltzer, p. 12)  Gloss: what does he see if not Waldo Winchester and Miss Billy Perry exchanging between themselves kisses very much amicably.



Irony, humor or both? 

Based on contextual knowledge, the reader probably knows the physical contact between the two parties is much more than friendly; and therefore can identify the cue leading to an ironic interpretation of the text: the flouting of the Gricean maxim of quality (Try to make your contribution one that is true) (Grice 1975: 26). In the search for other cues for irony, we may attribute the attempt to describe the event as friendly to Miss Billy Perry and Waldo Winchester, who probably would have liked to hide their romance from Dave the Dude. This echoic mention (Sperber & Wilson 1981; Wilson & Sperber 1992) also provides the clue for the target of the irony: the two lovers are being criticized for hiding the truth. Cues for humor were not found in this occurrence; however, the translations provide another cue to the categorization of this instance as ironic: a non-obligatory explicitation. Karmi’s translation adds the word “lemadai” (quite), which is almost a conventionalized implicature marker, there reinforcing the speaker’s attitude and thus the ironic interpretation of the utterance (Hirsch 2011b). Unlike the original and the first translation, Melzer’s translation contains the Hebrew words “raba meod” (very much), which make the ironic nature of the sentence more explicit, further convincing the reader of the target text that the kisses were much more than amicable. In the next example of irony, the narrator hears about the abduction of Waldo Winchester by David the Dude, and assumes this would have grave consequences, since the latter is a newspaper writer and would surely be missed.

(2) a. I am trying to think up some place to go where people will see me, and remember afterwards that I am there in case it is necessary for them to remember. (p. 157) b. Ani menase leha’alot beda’ati makom kolshehu lalekhet lesham, kedei sheezrahim rabim kekhol haefshar roim oti bo vezokhrim leahar miken sheani shoretz beineihem, bemikre shyehe tsorekh lehaviam leha’id al kakh.  (Karmi, p. 37)  Gloss: I try to bring to mind some place to go there, so that many citizens as possible see me there and remember afterwards that I swarm between them, in case that there is a need to bring them to testify on that. c. Ani menase lahshov al eizeshehu makom sheani uhal lalekhet elav kedei sheanashim yiru oti, veahar-kakh yizakharu sheani sham bemikre sheyihye lahem tsorekh lehizakher. (Meltzer, p. 17)  Gloss: I try to think about some place that I could go to so people will see me, and later will remember that I am there in case they have a need to remember.

The irony here is based on the flouting of the Gricean maxim of quantity – “Make your contribution as informative as required” but not “more informative than is required” (Grice 1975: 26–27). The narrator does not provide the information why

 Galia Hirsch

it would be necessary for many people to remember where he was at that specific time, but the readers can infer that he is probably concerned because a crime was committed, and he does not wish to appear involved in it. The narrator also flouts the maxim of quality (Grice 1975: 26–27), since the “need” to remember where he was is his and not the people’s. This way the narrator echoes (Sperber & Wilson 1981; Wilson & Sperber 1992) those naïve enough not to understand that the need is actually his, making them the butt of criticism. The first translation supplies another cue to the categorization of this example as ironic: the scenario the narrator fears, which is not detailed in the original, or in the second translation, is semantically explicitated (Hirsch 2011b) with the use of the word “leha’id” (to testify), which can only relate to criminal procedures. The explication, nonetheless, cancels the flouting of the maxims of quantity and quality, along with the echoing of the naïve, and thus eliminates the cues for irony. Cues for humor were not found in this occurrence. 4.3  Micro-analysis: Humor The analysis of the following examples seems to prove that they are cases of nonironic humorous instances, since they present mostly cues for humor and not for irony. The second layer of the original model – namely, the translations – mostly supports that categorization. Consider for instance the first humorous example, which describes Miss Billy Perry’s reaction towards the courting intents of the gangster Dave the Dude. She returns all his gifts, an act which is considered unusual in the Broadway underworld.

(3) a. This is considered most surprising all along Broadway, but people figure the chances are she has some other angle.  (p. 153) b. Davar ze nehshav le’esek mafti’a beyoter bekhol rahavei haBroadway, ulam haezrahim basviva magi’im leklal maskana sheyesh la shitot aherot lekabalat hahafatsim halalu.  (Karmi, p. 33)  Gloss: this thing is considered a most surprising business all over the Broadway, alas the citizens around arrive at the conclusion that she has other methods to receive those artifacts. c. Hadavar nehshav meod-meod mafti’a berahavei haBroadway, aval hahevre mesha’arim sherov hasikuyim ze sheyesh la eize tihnun aher.  (Meltzer, p. 12)  Gloss: the thing is considered very-very surprising all over the Broadway, but the guys suppose most chances are that she has some other plan.

The humor in this instance is created when the narrator presents the opinion of the Broadway citizens as the correct one, as opposed to Miss Billy Perry’s actions,



Irony, humor or both? 

which by most societies’ standards would be regarded as the more moral choice. In this case, the script opposition is based on the difference between the normal and the abnormal (Raskin 1985: 108–111), as the acceptance of gifts from men is presented as the normal thing to do, and their rejection – abnormal, as opposed to common beliefs. This technique of presenting the views of the underworld of the Broadway as common ground is repeated throughout Runyon’s stories, contributing to the sense of absurdity, namely non-sense or local-logic (Jeffers 1995; Ziv 1984), in them and to their innovative style. The first translation presents another cue for the labeling of this instance as humorous, which is a non-explicitating shift. While the original vaguely states that the girl “has some other angle”; Karmi’s translation adds that she has other methods of receiving gifts, which was not necessarily implied in the original. This shift is non-obligatory, since Hebrew language does not require such a choice – a fact that is sustained by Meltzer’s translation, which chooses to stay closer to the original by saying that “she has some other plan.” The next example is of a different kind of humor that pivots around the language itself. The owner of the nightclub in which Miss Billy Perry works reproaches her for not finding a rich man, using a very particular linguistic style.

(4) a. “Well, I do not see any Simple Simon on your lean and linger.” This is Miss Missouri Martin’s way of saying she sees no diamond on Miss Billy Perry’s finger,  (pp. 155–156) b. “Uvkhen, eyneni roa shum mehtsabim shel mamash al evaraikh.” Vezohi darka shel Miss Missouri Martin lomar la sheyna roa shum taba’ot yahalom al etsbe’oteha shel Miss Billy Perry,”  (Karmi, p. 36)  Gloss: well, I do not see any inorganic mineral of substance on your limbs. And that is the way of Miss Missouri Martin to say that she does not see any rings of diamond on the fingers of Miss Billy Perry. c. “Tov, any lo roa yoter miday natsnatsim al hagafrurim shelakh.” Zohi kamuvan haderekh shel Miss Missouri Martin lomar shehi lo roa shum yahalom al haetsba’ot shel Miss Billy Perry,” (Meltzer, p. 16)  Gloss: Well, I don’t see too many sparkles on your matches. This is of course the way of Miss Missouri Martin to say that she doesn’t see any diamond on the fingers of Miss Billy Perry.

One of the most prominent characteristics of Runyon’s literature is his use of nonliterary vocabulary, obtained through his acquaintance with the underworld’s slang. Runyon did not necessarily coin all jargon words of his characters, but his humor depends greatly upon their use. Du Bose (1953) claims this humor is based on a juxtaposition of the protagonists’ noble character and their naiveté expressed by their use of argot (p. 127). In other words, among other mechanisms, the humor builds on the incongruity between the character’s actions and the register used.

 Galia Hirsch

In this particular example, Miss Missouri Martin uses rhyming slang: “Simple Simon” – “a diamond, especially one in a tie-pin (US 1928; Partridge 2015) – and “Lean and linger” – “a finger” (US 1929; Dalzell & Victor 2014). Even though Runyon was not the first to coin these terms, they were not known to many readers when his stories appeared (Du Bose 1953), and their use in this sentence is both surprising and creative – a prominent feature of humor, as has been argued. In the original, the verbal humor is centered on the phonological level, because it consists of alliteration – the repetition of consonants (Alexander 1997: 33). Both translations do not resort to this sort of word play, but simply choose unconventional expressions to refer to the terms “diamond” and “finger”: Karmi – “mehtsabim shel mamash al evaraikh” (inorganic mineral of substance on your limbs); and Meltzer – “natsnatsim al hagafrurim shelakh” (sparkles on your matches). The result is a non-explicating shift of the original, which is also a cue to the categorization of this example as humorous. 4.4  Micro-level: Surrealistic irony or absurd humor The Following examples are suspected to be located at the continuum between the two extremes, because they exhibit traits of both irony and humor. The irony they show seems to be of the surrealistic type; since it employs a strikingly unrealistic, unexpected and unappropriated question or assertion, and does not involve some kind of meaning reversal (Kapogianni 2011). The cues for humor encountered are what Jeffers (1995) denominates “non-sense” – not a lack of sense but a different sense – and Ziv (1984) calls “local logic”: combining realistic and nonrealistic features. Example number 5 presents the non-realistic claim that Miss Missouri Martin, the owner of the nightclub where Miss Billy Perry dances, can predict the future:

(5) a. because Miss Missouri Martin, […], tells everything she knows as soon as she knows it, which is very often before it happens.”  (p. 153) b. “keivan sheMiss Missouri Martin zo, […], mesaperet kol davar vedavar miyad im hivad’o la, ad kedei kakh shelifrakim hi mesaperet al mikrim od lifnei shehem mitrahashim klal ve’ikar.  (Karmi, p. 33)  Gloss: because this Miss Missouri Martin, […], tells every single thing as soon as it is revealed to her, so much that sometimes she tells about cases even before they happen whatsoever. c. Ki bederekh klal Miss Missouri Martin, […], mesaperet kol davar shehi yoda’at myad berega shehi yoda’at oto, vel’itim krovot meod ze lifnei shehu mitrahesh.  (Meltzer, p. 13)  Gloss: because usually Miss Missouri Martin, […], tells everything that she knows as soon as she knows it, and many times it is before it happens.



Irony, humor or both? 

This is an absurd statement which manifests cues to both irony and humor. It criticizes Miss Missouri Martin for gossiping about events that did not really occur, echoing her assurance that they will indeed happen in the future. The criticism and the echoic mention (Sperber & Wilson 1981; Wilson & Sperber 1992) provide cues and clues for the ironic interpretation of this utterance. Furthermore, the suggestion that a person knows about affairs without them happening is impossible, and thus it flouts the Gricean maxim of quality (1975), supplying another cue for irony. The humor in this case is based on the script opposition between the possible – having some information about actual events taking places – and the impossible – prophesying the future (Raskin 1985: 108–111). Referrring to clairvoyance as feasible represents also the dream like logic inherent to humor (Jeffers 1995; Ziv 1984). The framing of this example, reminiscent of a joke culminating with a punchline – “which is very often before it happens” – triggers an additional humorous interpretation of this utterance. Therefore, since it contains cues for both irony and humor, it can be placed it on the continuum between the two extremes. In the last example, Dave the Dude finds himself consoling Miss Billy Perry after Waldo Winchester’s menacing wife interrupts their wedding ceremony and drags her husband away with her.

(6) a. All I wish is for your happiness, but I do not believe you can ever be happy with this scribe if he also has to have his lion tamer around. Maybe if you wait until we can drown her, or something–  (p. 164) b. Ulam eyneni mamain me’olam sheat yekhola lihyot meusheret im katvan-itonim shemealefet-arayot misug ze tluya lo al tsavaro. Ulay im at mehaka ad sheanu matslihim lehatbi’a ota Lola Scapola banahar, o mashehu me’eyn ze – –  (Karmi, pp. 45–46)  Gloss: but I do not believe ever that you can be happy with a newspaperscribe that a lion-tamer of this kind is hung to him on his neck. Maybe if you wait till we succeed in drowning that Lola Scapola in the river, or something of the kind… c. Aval ani lo maamin sheat yekhola ey-pa’am lihyot meusheret im hakatvanchic haze, im hu hayav shetihye lo basviva mealefet haarayot shelo. Ulay im tihye lakh savlanut ad shenatbi’a ota, o mashehu –  (Meltzer, p. 27) Gloss: but I don’t believe that you can ever be happy with this little scribe, if he must have around his lion tamer. Maybe if you have the patience till we drown her, or something…

The occurrence starts with the character stating the obvious: that Billy Perry would not be able to live happily with the writer and his wife. Indeed, such an arrangement would not result in happiness in most cases. Moreover, this is an

 Galia Hirsch

ironic understatement of the situation, as is clear to the reader from the description of the wife’s sturdy built and violent jealous nature. The protagonist then proceeds to present an absurd notion as perfectly acceptable: the suggestion of drowning the wife as a means to solve the problem. His offer presents cues for both non-sense humor (Jeffers 1995; Ziv 1984) and surrealistic irony. In terms of humor, the script opposition is built upon the gap between conventional solutions to marital problems, such as divorce, and the solution of murder presented here as perfectly acceptable. It is also a case of surrealistic irony, because it employs a strikingly unexpected and unappropriated proposal (Kapogianni 2011). The ironic interpretation of this utterance is aided by the first translation explicitating the place of drowning – “banahar” (in the river) – which was not specified in the original. Like the former two occurrences presented here, most examples of surrealistic irony found in the story all contained humorous traits, suggesting that all surrealistic ironies involve some sort of humor. 5.  Concluding remarks: The model revisited The pragmatic analysis of Runyon’s story reveals three types of utterances: nonhumorous ironies (Examples 1 and 2), non-ironic humors (Examples 3 and 4) and utterances located on the continuum between the two extremes (Examples 5 and  6) – in which cues based on pragmatic studies of both irony and humor could be discovered. The model, which views various theory-based accounts as potential cues for both phenomena, was first applied to examples extracted from the source text, “Romance in the Roaring Forties,” searching for a combination of cues that would define a given utterance as either ironic or humorous. In the two non-humorous ironic occurrences, the cues for irony included the flouting of the Gricean maxim of quality (1, 2) and maxim of quantity (2), along with the detection of echoic mention (1, 2), which also provided a clue to locate the target of the irony. In the examples analyzed, the ironic criticism was directed towards the naïve: the people who do not understand that the need for an alibi is actually the narrator’s (2), or the two lovers who believe they would be able to hide the truth from the notorious gangster. The examples of non-ironic humors presented the cues of script opposition (3, 4), non-sense (3), and verbal humor which pivots around linguistic mechanisms (4). The application of the first stage of the model to the clear-cut cases was corroborated by the second stage: the analysis of the translated texts. The nonhumorous ironies contained an additional cue: a non-obligatory explicitation at



Irony, humor or both? 

least in one translation (2), if not in both (1, 2); while the non-ironic humorous examples presented the cue of a non-explicitating shift either in both translations (4) or just in the earlier one (3). This finding validates previous results showing that in translation, instances of irony tend to promote more explicitations, while humorous utterances translated invoke more non-explicitating shifts. It can be interpreted as indicating that while the explicitation of humor may override its function altogether, the explicitation of irony does not necessarily do so, since the implied criticism is not eliminated. This interpretation coincides with the conclusions presented above, evincing that most researchers consider irony to be more critical. Humor, most scholars mentioned agree, tends to be more creative. Indeed, the utterances which proved to belong to the realm of humor were those where Runyon applied most his innovative linguistic style. Even though Runyon did not necessarily coin all argot terms in his stories, their particular use has been both surprising and original. An example of which would be number 4, where the verbal humor was centered on the phonological level, consisting of alliterations. The textual analysis thus supported the addition the new accounts provided to the original model, centering on the notions of negative evaluation and creativeness. Among other cues primarily used for differentiation between irony and humor, the critical aspect of irony was accounted for in the application of Sperber and Wilson’s echoic mention theory, which helps locate the target of the irony as the originator of the utterance echoed. The creativity inherent to humor is also related to another cue described above: humor entails a special kind of logic, not a lack of sense but a different one. Nonetheless, in the original distinction, the importance of these two salient characteristics of irony and humor, criticism and creativity respectively, was not sufficiently accentuated. The model has not only distinguished between typical cases, but also provided an explanation for occurrences located on a continuum between the two extremes, viewing them as including cues for both interpretations. Such are the cases of humorous-ironies or ironic humors analyzed in this contribution (5, 6), featuring cues for both irony – criticism, echoic mention, flouting or understatement – and humor – non-sense and a framing reminiscent of a joke. The irony in these examples was of the surrealistic type, expressing strikingly unrealistic, unexpected and unappropriated ideas, such as presenting divination (5) or murder (6) as valid possibilities or solutions. Based on the extracts analyzed here and on others in the same story, it seems that surrealistic irony presents a special case which can hardly be devoid of traits of humor. The very definition of surrealistic irony and non-sense humor explains this affinity. Non-sense humor presents a surprisingly different, dreamlike, logic; and surrealistic irony is built on strikingly unrealistic, unexpected or unappropriated

 Galia Hirsch

speech acts. Instances of surrealistic irony would thus find their place somewhere on the continuum between the two extremes. This contribution proposed an enhanced theoretical model, which differentiates between irony and humor, and provides tools to analyze typical cases as well as occurrences that include cues for both interpretations. In addition to all other cues primarily used, the model revisited, taking under consideration all new accounts described above, emphasizes two main characteristics for the differentiation: criticism belongs to the realm of the ironic and innovation is more inherent to humor.

References Primary sources Runyon, Damon. 1932. Guys and Dolls. Penguin Books. Runyon, Damon. 1987. Barnashim Vahatikhot (Tr: Eliezer Karmi). Tel Aviv: Mizrahi. Runyon, Damon. 2016. Hush Humor Vesipuriom Aherim (Tr: Muli Meltzer). Tel Aviv: Sifrei Aliyat Hagag.

Secondary sources Alexander, Richard J. 1997. Aspects of Verbal Humour in English. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen. Attardo, Salvatore. 1997. “The Semantic Fundation of Cognitive Theories of Humor.” Humor 10: 395–420.  https://doi.org/10.1515/humr.1997.10.4.395 Catford, John C. 1965. A Linguistic Theory of Translation: An Essay in Applied Linguistics. London: Oxford University Press. Colston, Herbert L. 2000. “On Necessary Conditions for Verbal Irony Comprehension”. Pragmatics & Cognition 8(2): 277–324. Clark, Herbert H., and Richard J. Gerrig. 1984. “On the Pretense Theory of Irony.” Journal of Experimental Psychology/General 113 (1): 121–126.  https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.113.1.121 Dalzell, Tom, and Terry Victor. 2014. The Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. Routledge.  https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315754772 Dascal, Marcelo. 1983. Pragmatics and the Philosophy of Mind. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/pb.iv.1 Dascal, Marcelo, and Elda Weizman. 1987. “Contextual Exploitation of Interpretation, Clues in Text Understanding: An Integrated Model.” In The Pragmatic Perspective, ed. by Jef Verschueren, and Marcella Bertuccelli-Papi, 31–46. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/pbcs.5.08das Dimitrova, Birgitta Englund. 2005. Expertise and Explication in the Translation Process. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.64 Du Bose, La Rocque. 1953. “Damon Runyon’s Underworld Lingo.” The University of Texas Studies in English 32: 123–132.



Irony, humor or both? 

Dynel, Marta. 2013. “When Does Irony Tickle the Hearer? Towards Capturing the Characteristics of Humorous Irony.” In Developments in Linguistic Humour Theory, ed. by Marta Dynel, 298–320. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/thr.1.14dyn Dynel, Marta. 2014a. “Linguistic Approaches to (Non)humorous Irony.” Humor 27 (4): 537–550. https://doi.org/10.1515/humor-2014-0097 Dynel, Marta. 2014b. “Isn’t it Ironic? Defining the Scope of Humorous Irony.” Humor 27 (4): 619–639.  https://doi.org/10.1515/humor-2014-0096 Fludernik, Monika. 1996. “Linguistics and Literature: Prospects and Horizons in the Study of Pprose.” Journal of Pragmatics 26: 583–611.  https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(95)00062-3 Garmendia, Joana. 2014. “The Clash: Humor and Critical Aattitude in Verbal Irony.” Humor 27 (4): 641–659.  https://doi.org/10.1515/humor-2014-0094 Gibbs, Raymond W. Jr., Gregory A. Bryant, and Herbert L. Colston. 2014. “Where is the Humor in Verbal Irony?.” Humor 27 (4): 575–595.  https://doi.org/10.1515/humor-2014-0106 Goatly, Andrew. 2012. Meaning and Humor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511791536 Grice, Paul H. 1975. “Logic and Conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts, ed. by Peter Cole, and Jerry L. Morgan, 41–58. New York: Academic Press. Grice, Paul H. 1978. “Further notes on logic and conversation”. In Pragmatics 9, ed. By Peter Cole, 113–127. New York: Academic Press. Haverkate, Henk. 1990. “A Speech Act Analysis of Irony.” Journal of Pragmatics 14: 77–109. https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(90)90065-L Hidalgo Downing, Raquel, and Silvia Iglesias Recuero. 2008. “Humor e ironía: una relación compleja.” In Dime cómo ironizas y te diré quién eres: una aproximacion pragmatica la ironía, ed. By Leonor Ruiz Gurillo, and Xose A. Padilla García, 423–455. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Hirsch, Galia. 2011a. “Between Irony and Humor: A Pragmatic Model.” Pragmatics and Cognition 19 (3): 530–561.  https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.19.3.07hir Hirsch, Galia. 2011b. “Explicitations and Other Types of Shifts in the Translations of Irony and Humor.” Target 23 (2): 178–205.  https://doi.org/10.1075/target.23.2.03hir Hirsch, Galia. 2011c. “Redundancy, Irony and Humor.” Language Sciences 33: 316–329. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2010.11.002 Jeffers, Jennifer. 1995. “Beyond Irony: The Unnamable’s Appropriation of its Critics in a Humorous Reading of the Text”. The Journal of Narrative Technique 25(1): 47–66. Kapogianni, Eleni. 2011. “Irony via ‘surrealism.’” In The Pragmatics of Humour across Discourse Domains, ed. by Marta Dynel, 51–68. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.210.05kap Klaudy, Kinga. 2003. Languages in Translation: Lectures on the Theory, Teaching and Practice of Translation. Budapest: Scholastica. Kothoff, Helga. 2003. “Responding to Irony in Different Contexts: On Cognition in Conversation.” Journal of Pragmatics 35: 1387–1411.  https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(02)00182-0 Livnat, Zohar, and Gonen Dori-Hacohen. 2013. “The Effect of Irony in Radio Talk-Back Programs in Israel.” In The pragmatics of political discourse: Explorations across cultures, ed. by Anita Fetzer, 193–217. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.228.11liv Myers Roy, Alice. 1981. “The Function of Irony in Discourse.” Text 1 (4): 407–423. https://doi.org/10.1515/text.1.1981.1.4.407

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Oring, Elliot. 1989. “Between Jokes and Tales: On the Nature of Punch Lines.” Humor 2 (4): 349– 364.  https://doi.org/10.1515/humr.1989.2.4.349 Partridge, Eric. 2015. A Dictionary of the Underworld: British and American. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315696300 Piskorska, Agnieszka. 2014. “A relevance-Theoretic Perspective on Humorous Irony and its Failure.” Humor 27 (4): 61–685.  https://doi.org/10.1515/humor-2014-0095 Raskin, Victor. 1985. Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Dordrecht: Reidel. Raskin, Victor, and Salvatore Attardo. 1994. “Non-Literalness and Non-bona-fide in Language: An Approach to Formal and Computational Treatments of Humor.” Pragmatics and Cognition 2 (1): 31–69.  https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.2.1.02ras Shuttleworth, Mark, and Moira Cowie. 1997. Dictionary of Translation Studies. Manchester: St. Jerome Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 1981. “Irony and the Use-Mention Distinction.” In Radical Pragmatics, ed. by Peter Cole, 295–318. New York: Academic Press. Toury, Gideon. 1995. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.4 Vinay, Jean Paul, and Jean Darbelnet. 1958. Stylistique comparée du franÇais et de l’anglais: Méthode de traduction. London-Toronto-Paris: Didier. Weizman, Elda. 2001. “Addresser, addressee and target: Negotiating roles through ironic criticism”. In Negotiation and Power in Dialogic Interaction ed. by Edda Weigand, and Marcelo Dascal, 125–137. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Weizman, Elda. 2008. Positioning in Media Dialogue: Negotiating Roles in the News Interview. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/ds.3 Weizman, Elda, and Marcelo Dascal. 1991. “On Clues and Cues: Strategies of Text Understanding.” Journal of Literary Semantics XX (1): 18–30. Wilson, Deirdre. 2006. “The Pragmatics of Verbal Irony: Echo or Pretence?.” Lingua 116: 1722– 1743.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2006.05.001 Wilson, Deirdre, and Dan Sperber. 1992. “On Verbal Irony”. Lingua 87: 53–76. Yus, Francisco. 2016. Humor and Relevance. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ziv, Avner. 1984. Humor and Personality. Tel Aviv: Papyrus. (In Hebrew).

“My refrigerator is as much in the dark as I am” Metaphorical irony in context Zohar Livnat

Bar-Ilan University This paper focuses on a particular type of metaphorical irony in which both readings of a metaphor have to be processed in order to grasp the speaker’s intention. Two ways in which the text encourages retention of both readings of metaphorical expressions are discussed: (1) Metaphorical expressions that refer to two different referents, whose comparison by the author requires keeping both readings in mind; (2) Two kinds of contextual clues assigned to a single referent or topic. The examples are amusingly sophisticated, but at the same time express a critical stance on controversial issues. The metaphorical irony enhances the critical, evaluative aspect of the text as it contributes to its entertaining effect. Keywords:  metaphorical irony, figurative language, Implicature, literal meaning, Grice, Relevance Theory, Retention/Suppression Hypothesis

1.  Introduction Irony and Metaphor are two types of trope widely discussed from various aspects since antiquity (e.g. Quintilian 1920–1922; Muecke 1969; Burke 1969). Being indirect forms of communication, both have two potential readings, a literal, direct one as well as an implied, indirect (ironic or metaphorical) one. In both the pragmatic literature as well as the psycholinguistic-experimental literature of the last few decades, they are occasionally discussed together or in comparison, as different types of figurative language (Gibbs 1984; Winner 1988) that might be seen as flouting the first part of the Maxim of Quality (Grice 1975), later called the Maxim of Truthfulness (Sperber & Wilson 2004): “Do not say what you believe to be false.” (Grice 1975: 46). How similar these two tropes really are is an unsolved question. Relevance theorists (Sperber & Wilson 1981; Wilson & Sperber 2012) argue against the

https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.316.02liv © 2020 John Benjamins Publishing Company

 Zohar Livnat

assumption, implied in Grice’s account, that metaphor and irony can and should be treated the same way, based first and foremost on the intuition that the comprehension of irony requires more sophisticated mind-reading abilities than the comprehension of metaphor (Reimer 2013: 30). Theoretically, they consider irony a case of “metarepresentation,” namely the embedding of one proposition within a higher-level proposition. Since metaphor is not a case of metarepresentation, in this respect, it is a simpler type of indirectness. This implication was argued to be confirmed by experimental evidence from the literature on autism, child development and right hemisphere damage, which shows that the comprehension of irony correlates with second-order metarepresentational abilities, while the comprehension of metaphor requires only first-order abilities (for references, see Sperber & Wilson 2004, footnote 33). Reimer (2013), however, argued that the experimental studies that claimed to discredit Gricean accounts of irony and metaphor are misleading. Moreover, by reassessing the Gricean account, she claims that it in fact predicts this difference. Although metaphor and irony are mentioned in Grice’s model as two independent cases of flouting the cooperative principle, Grice also demonstrated how these two figures might be intertwined in a single utterance: It is possible to combine metaphor and irony by imposing on the hearer two stages of interpretation. I say You are the cream in my coffee, intending the hearer to reach first the metaphor interprétant ‘You are my pride and joy’ and then the irony interprétant ‘You are my bane.’ (Grice 1975: 53)1

This kind of combination between the two figures was called by Colston and Gibbs (2002) metaphoric irony. They propose the following example: You are an assistant to a teacher at an elementary school, and the two of you are discussing a new student. The student did extremely poorly on her entrance examination. The teacher said to you “This one is really sharp.”

In this case, “the teacher’s utterance has both metaphoric and ironic meaning in that she provides a metaphor to describe the student’s abilities yet makes this remark with ironic intention.” (Colston & Gibbs 2002: 68). Dynel (2016) described metaphorical irony as a case in which the speaker’s intended meaning originates in two independent maxim floutings, and thus

.  Musolff (2017: 128–129) claims that the metaphoric interpretation of You are the cream in my coffee as You are my pride and joy is Grice’s idiosyncratic interpretation, while according to the original context, its more plausible meaning is something like ‘You are a necessary ingredient of my life.’ Thus, the meaning-inverted interpretation would not be ‘bane’ but ‘unnecessary’ or ‘useless.’



“My refrigerator is as much in the dark as I am” 

involves two distinct implicatures, “one piggy-backed on the other” (p. 261). Reviewing the little research on this phenomenon (Yamanashi 1998; Stern 2000; Bezuidenhout 2001; Livnat 2004; Camp 2006, 2012), she argues that the few examples discussed by these scholars do not show the full spectrum of the types of irony and metaphor and consequently the analyses did not fully address the complexity of their integration in a single utterance. One aspect of this complexity is the question of scope: Some scholars (Popa 2009, 2010; Camp 2012) maintain that the scope of metaphor is narrower than that of irony: while the former depends on lexical items, the latter operates globally, namely on the propositional level. My aim in the present paper is to expand this view by presenting an additional type of metaphorical irony and discuss its interpretation process, basing my analysis less on untruthfulness, as in Dynel’s approach (2016), which references Gricean thought, but more on echoic interpretation, namely the approach of Relevance Theory. My analysis of examples from the Israeli public discourse will support the assumption that the process of interpreting irony and metaphor does not necessarily involve ruling out the literal meaning. From a functional point of view, I attribute special importance to the potential of irony to be critical and negatively evaluative, a potential that has been widely discussed by scholars of irony from different perspectives (Muecke 1969; Grice 1978; Sperber & Wilson 1986; Haverkate 1990; Lapp 1992; Hutcheon 1994; Garmendia 2010; Dynel 2014b; Weizman 2015; Weizman & Dori-Hacohen 2017; Hirsch, this volume; Shukrun-Nagar, this volume).

2.  Ruling out or retaining the literal meaning In the framework of his Conversational Implicature model, Grice (1975) proposed a rational way of thinking that might lead the interpreter to derive a conversational implicature. The logic involved in interpreting ironic utterances is as follows: It is perfectly obvious to A and his audience that what A has said or has made as if to say is something he does not believe, and the audience knows that A knows that this is obvious to the audience. So, unless A’s utterance is entirely pointless, A must be trying to get across some other proposition than the one he purports to be putting forward. This must be some obviously related proposition; the most obviously related proposition is the contradictory of the one he purports to be putting forward. (Grice 1975: 53)

A similar so-called two-step process was understood to be described by Grice in order to explain the logic required for understanding metaphorical meaning: Examples like You are the cream in my coffee characteristically involve categorial falsity, so the contradictory of what the speaker has made as if to say will, strictly

 Zohar Livnat

speaking, be a truism; so it cannot be THAT that such a speaker is trying to get across. The most likely supposition is that the speaker is attributing to his audience some feature or features in respect of which the audience resembles (more or less fancifully) the mentioned substance. (ibid.)

These suggested interpretation processes, which Reimer (2013: 29) calls an “armchair philosopher’s thought-experiment,” were criticized by cognitive linguists for implying a two-step processing model in which the literal meaning of an utterance has to be tested and rejected before a figurative interpretation is considered. (Wilson 2009: 11). Thus, it was understood as involving the following two steps: (a) ruling out the literal meaning on the basis of inappropriateness; (b) finding an alternative, more appropriate meaning and choosing it as the one reflecting the speaker’s intentions (see Giora 2003: 66). The underlying assumption is that the literal reading must be rejected in order to make room for the conversational implicature, thus literal meaning is substituted by an indirect one. Looking back to the case of metaphorical irony You are the cream in my coffee, the two-stage metaphor-then-irony process is explicit in Grice’s description of the interpretation of metaphorical irony cited above, and might be reconstructed as follows: Utterance: You are the cream in my coffee. Stage 1 Step a: Literal meaning (a) is ruling out as representation of the speaker’s meaning Step b: It is substituted by a metaphorical meaning Conversational Implicature 1 leads to metaphorical reading (b): You are my pride and joy. Stage 2 Step a: Metaphorical reading (b) is ruling out as representation of the speaker’s meaning Step b: It is substituted by and ironic reading Conversational Implicature 2 leads to ironic reading (c): You are my bane. Dynel (2016) adopts Grice’s two-stage hypothesis and assumes that when irony and metaphor are interpreted in the same utterance, the order of interpretation is fixed: “Irony-related overt untruthfulness can be elucidated only after underlying metaphorical meaning […] is understood” (p. 267–268). She prefers the term “metaphorical irony” and not “ironic metaphor,” a term suggested by Popa (2010), due to the strength of this order of interpretation and the fact that it is irony that makes use of metaphor, rather than the other way around. In Weizman and ­Dascal’s (1991) terms, the incompatibility between the indirect interpretation



“My refrigerator is as much in the dark as I am” 

of the metaphor (Conversational Implicature 1) and the context serves in this case as a cue for the need to continue the interpretation process and move to stage 2. However, the ‘ruling out’ hypothesis that was applied to Grice’s approach was widely criticized in the pragmatic literature for various reasons. Empirically, a great deal of experimental evidence suggests that literal interpretations do not have to be tested and rejected before figurative interpretations are considered (Sperber & Wilson 2004; see, for example, Gibbs 1994; Noveck et al. 2001; Glucksberg 2001). Regarding the interpretation of irony, many theoretical approaches do not accept the substitution assumption. First, it is argued that this procedure does not explain the negative evaluation that is involved in irony (Dews & Winner 1995) or the overtones of mockery and ridicule included in it (Martin 1992: 78). It is difficult to explain how a mere substitution creates these additional meanings or effects. Moreover, the explanation given by some scholars to how irony is interpreted and to its discursive functions assumes that both readings of the utterance, the direct as well as the indirect one, are kept in the addressee’s mind while interpreting it. For instance, Kotthoff (2003) argues that irony does not erase what is said, but rather communicates the difference between what is said and what is implicated. Winner (1988) also believes that “in ironic statements the relation between what is said and meant is a relation of opposition between a positive and a negative tone” (p. 9). According to Kotthoff, what constitutes the most relevant message of ironic utterance is the gap between two different evaluative perspectives (2003: 1392), which she suggests calling the “Ironic gap.” Due to the focus on the difference between what is said and what is meant, the utterance creates an ironic gap that serves to emphasize the differences between the two perspectives. Both of them are displayed so that the ironic gap between them can be computed by the audience. One of irony’s effects is to highlight the tension, or the gap, between the beliefs and ideologies of the participants, as exemplified by Livnat and Dori-Hacohen in radio phone-in conversations (2013, Example 6). Martin (1992) suggests viewing irony as an utterance that includes negation, and that might be understood in the framework of possible worlds and universes of beliefs: what is true in one possible world may be false in another. These worlds do not cancel each other out – on the contrary: The interpretation of the utterance is based on it being understood as true and false at the same time in two possible worlds. When it is raining, the ironic utterance “What a nice day for a picnic!,” which expresses disappointment at the fact that the speaker’s expectations of a nice day were not fulfilled, is understood as false in the actual world, but is at the same time understood as true in another possible world, in which the speaker’s expectations of a nice day are fulfilled. The crucial point for my argument is that this view does not assume that the interpretation process of ironic utterance involves ruling out the literal meaning.

 Zohar Livnat

According to Giora and Fein’s Retention/Suppression Hypothesis (1999) regarding the interpretation process of figurative language, some meanings which are activated in the first phase of the interpretation process, may indeed not be retained after their activation, since they cannot integrate with contextual information (Giora 2004: 37) i.e. they are incompatible with the context. They might be suppressed if they are intrusive to the utterance interpretation or simply fade away. However, if a meaning activated initially is instrumental in constructing the intended interpretation, it might be retained for further processing even if not considered contextually compatible in the first phase (ibid.: 87). This assumption explicitly or implicitly underlies several theories of irony: According to Giora (1995), the literal meaning of irony is required since it functions as a reference point relative to which the actual situation is assessed. Irony retains both the explicit and implicated messages, so that the difference or contrast between them may be computed. As mentioned above, the same is true for Kotthoff ’s concept of ‘ironic gap’ (Kotthoff 2003; Giora & Kotthoff 1998). Giora (2003: 87) adds that according to the assumptions of the Pretense Theory of irony (Clark and Gerrig 1984), the literal meaning is required in order to appreciate the pretense, and that the Tinge Hypothesis (Dews et al. 1995; Dews and Winner 1995, 1997, 1999) also assumes the retention of the literal meaning for the purposes of diluting or muting the criticism. Interpreting irony as a viewpoint phenomenon, Tobin and Israel (2012) see the original viewpoint (the ironized) as subordinated to a higher viewpoint (the ironic), thus the two mental spaces are required for interpretation. As for metaphor, Giora’s Graded Salience Hypothesis (Giora 1997) predicts the same for metaphors and idioms: meanings conducive to the interpretation of the intended meaning, whether contextually compatible or incompatible, would be retained for further processing (Giora 2003: 121). Further support for the need for retention of the literal meaning of metaphors (among other linguistic phenomena) comes from the field of Cognitive Linguistics. The standard Conceptual Metaphor model (Lakoff & Johnson 1980) suggests a mental process of mapping across two inputs. From this perspective, the interpretation process of the metaphorical utterance “That surgeon is a butcher” requires a substitution of the literal meaning of butcher with its metaphorical one. However, this substitution does not explain the negative evaluation conveyed by the metaphor in this case. In contrast, Blending Theory (Fauconnier & Turner 2002) suggests a more complex model, in which the two mental spaces (the surgeon’s work and the butcher’s work) are used as inputs that give rise to a complex integration network. This network includes not only these two mental spaces but also two additional ones: a generic space and a blended space, which are not projected from either of the input spaces alone. New meanings emerge in the blended space



“My refrigerator is as much in the dark as I am” 

as a result of the comparison of the properties of the surgeon and the butcher. Here, the contrast or incompatibility between some of these properties, such as the skills required and the goals of the surgeon and butcher, is what gives rise to a negative assessment of the surgeon (Grady et al. 1999; Evans & Green 2006). In other words, the critical evaluation created in the blended space is the result of a comparison of the two input spaces. Following others that have proposed accounts of irony within Mental Space Theory (Coulson 2005; Kihara 2005, Tobin & Israel 2012), I consider the concept of blending relevant to the analysis of ironic utterances as well. Interestingly, Turner and Fauconnier (1995), in analyzing an example of blending in a literary metaphor taken from Shakespeare’s King John, connected metaphor and irony by referring to “ironic tension": “The scene is profoundly ironic exactly because of the ‘ironic tension’ in the blended space between the discordant image schemas. Without the blend there would be no tension; without the tension there would be no irony.” (p. 187). Their example demonstrates “a paradox,” “a blend of contraries” or “impossibilities” that become possible only in the blended space (ibid.). Tobin and Israel (2012) consider the existence of two distinct viewpoints a critical feature of irony. In their account, irony involves a specific kind of arrangement of these two – a “dynamic reconstrual in which attention ‘zooms out’ from the focus content of a mental space to a higher viewpoint from which the original Viewpoint Space is reassessed.” (p. 28). Thus, I assume that the evaluative meaning of ironic utterances is an additional effect that is achieved by comparing two points of view. The ironic gap is actually a gap between two mental spaces, and the utterance emphasizes the differences between them. The critical evaluation, here as well as in the case of metaphor, is thus a result of computing two levels of the utterance together, or, as suggested by Tobin and Israel (2012: 31), of “a dynamic blended construal of an event from two distinct viewpoints.” These two viewpoints might contradict one another or clash, which might create a sharp irony that is suitable for political and social criticism, among other things. 3.  Analyzing metaphorical irony In this section, I discuss examples of metaphorical irony, in which the intended meaning of the utterance is achieved by both levels of the figurative utterance – the literal meaning as well as the figurative one. The literal reading of metaphors, which is activated in stage 1, remains available for processing in stage 2, where the literal reading of ironic utterances is also needed to interpret the “ironic gap.”

 Zohar Livnat

The examples are taken from the Israeli print and online press, from personal columns of publicists known for their witty and critical style. Like other genres of contemporary mass media (e.g. Dori-Hacohen and Livnat 2015), these columns, usually published in the newspapers’ weekend supplements, combine the expression of social and political criticism with entertainment. The combination of criticism and entertainment sets a natural scene for utterances that involve both irony and humor. Since I consider the critical, negative evaluation to be the most important effect that these texts aim to achieve, I prefer to address this phenomenon in the present context by means of the term humorous irony (Dynel 2014a) rather than the alternative ironic humor (e.g. Gal 2018). In other words, I consider it a subcategory of irony rather than of humor. I will analyze a few cases of metaphorical irony with specific characteristics, in order to demonstrate how an ironic expression might be shaped by means of both readings of the metaphorical utterance. In these examples, both literal and metaphorical readings are somehow compatible with clues provided by the text or the context. In the first two examples (3.1), each reading is relevant to another referent. In the other examples (3.2), the two readings are applied to the same referent at the same time by manipulating the context. 3.1  Comparing two referents In the examples I analyze in this section, the ironic utterances include a comparison of two referents. The comparison, forced or at least encouraged by the author by his design of the utterance, is made possible only by computing both meanings of the metaphor. This is a sufficient motivation for the reader to keep the literal meaning in mind and not allow it be suppressed or fade away on the basis of being incompatible with the context.

(1) Context: From time to time, the Israeli media report on a religious halakhic ruling (psak halaxa) handed down by various rabbis on different subjects, for example regarding what is permitted or forbidden on Shabbat, which is the Jewish day of rest when work of any kind and various other activities – such as turning lights on or off – are forbidden. Most of these halakhic rulings are relevant only to the members of the observant community, who lead their lives in accordance with them. However, the secular public, which often finds it difficult to grasp the full meaning of these halakhic rulings, considers them ridiculous and believes that they represent outdated values disconnected from modern life. The secular media collaborate with this view, reflect and enhance it by spotlighting halakhic rulings on matters that appear bizarre and ridiculous to the unbelieving public. In particular, the secular public tends to ridicule contemporary technologies developed specifically to circumvent the limitations and difficulties created by



“My refrigerator is as much in the dark as I am” 

halakhic rulings. Thus, for example, in wake of the prohibition on activating electrical appliances on Shabbat, a special mechanism has been invented to enable the operation of an elevator on Shabbat and to prevent the lights of a refrigerator from being automatically turned on when the door is opened (see below). In the case in point, the media reported that the then Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi OvadiaYosef, issued a halakhic ruling declaring that it is forbidden to pick one’s nose on Shabbat. Naturally, this item led to a wave of derisive reactions, following which, the text in Example 1 was written. The author is the late Uri Orbach, a well-known religiously observant journalist who at the time wrote a regular column in a newspaper that addressed the general public, and went on to become a member of the Israeli Parliament. beshabat ani lo tofes zvuvim, lo xotex neyar tualet, lo poteax mitriya, lo soxet smartutim, lo korea otiot bearizot shel maaxalim, vehamekarer sheli xashux kamoni.  (Uri Orbach, Yediot Ahronot, January 23, 1998) On Shabbat, I don’t catch flies, don’t tear toilet paper, don’t open an umbrella, don’t wring out dishcloths, don’t tear the letters on food wrappers and my refrigerator is as much in the dark as I am.

Orbach enumerates genuine examples of actions that are forbidden to religious Jews on Shabbat, reporting, perhaps ironically that he observes all of them, adding that consequently, he intends to uphold the new ruling too. The irony in this utterance is based on two readings of the word dark (in the original Hebrew wording it is the adjective: xashux), the literal meaning and the metaphorical one. In the Israeli public discourse, the metaphoric use of xashux refers to the fundamentalist views taken by Orthodox Jews. The two readings of the word are what makes it possible to compare the two referents, the refrigerator and the speaker. Both can be lit (or enlightened) or in the dark (or unenlightened), but while the speaker is metaphorically enlightened or unenlightened, the refrigerator is literally lit up or dark (referring to the type of refrigerator whose lights are not automatically turned on when its door is opened on Shabbat). The phrase “as much […] as” forces the reader to find a way to compare these two referents, which in other contexts would not be comparable. This example is easily interpreted by the Echoic Mention theory of irony (Sperber & Wilson 1981; Wilson & Sperber 1992), according to which an ironic utterance is viewed as an echo of another real or imagined utterance, thought or belief, whether uttered by another specific or non-specific speaker, the speaker herself at a different time and place, or even the general public, holding an accepted view. Verbal irony consists of echoing a tacitly attributed thought or utterance with a tacitly dissociative attitude (Sperber & Wilson 2004). The speaker ­generally

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­ istances herself from the originator of the echoed utterance, which gives the d irony its evaluative or even critical value (Weizman 2000). Here, the metaphorical reading (being unenlightened) echoes the position taken not by the speaker himself but by someone else, the one who is the victim of the irony (Weizman 2001). Assuming that the author does not perceive himself as unenlightened, it is perhaps possible to apply the untruthfulness explanation here and to claim that the process of exposing the speaker’s intention begins with identifying a flouting of the maxim of truthfulness. However, it seems more likely to believe that the word unenlightened is identified not necessarily as untrue but more obviously as belonging to someone other than the speaker. It is thus an echoic mention of others, meaning something like: “All these prohibitions I apply to myself present me (in someone else’s eyes) as unenlightened.” The incompatibility between the speaker’s own perspective and the view indirectly applied to others leads the reader to understand that he is expressing reservations with this view, and thus identifies the negative evaluation and criticism conveyed by the utterance. This example demonstrates the possibility of understanding a metaphor in two ways at the same time. I argue that this is crucial for the design of irony in this case. The speaker could have used an ironic utterance in which he is the only referent; he could have referred to himself as being “in the dark” as in (1a): (1a) True, people who are unenlightened like me don’t pick their nose on Shabbat.

In (1a) too, we understand, based on contextual knowledge, that the description “in the dark” does not reflect the speaker’s own position but rather, that of someone else, who is the target of his criticism. In other words, (1a) is also an ironic utterance, one that targets the same victims – those that believe that the speaker is unenlightened. It demonstrates a clash of viewpoints in the same way as does Example (1). Thus, in order to obtain an ironic effect, it is not essential for the metaphorical expression to be understood in its literal meaning too. I argue, however that it is not incidental that Example (1) is designed by manipulating both readings of in the dark (xashux). The metaphor is what enables the comparison between the speaker and his refrigerator. This comparison is not only surprising, creative, and thus humorous (Hirsch, this volume), but also contributes to the critical effect of the utterance by connecting the echoed negative evaluation of the speaker by others to a specific behavior (using a certain kind of refrigerator) that the speaker finds completely reasonable according to his own beliefs. In that way, the clash between the viewpoints is enhanced.

(2) Context: In 2005, the Israeli government carried out a unilateral move called ‘the Disengagement’ in the context of which the Israeli army withdrew from the Gaza Strip, all Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip were



“My refrigerator is as much in the dark as I am” 

dismantled and all Israeli residents were evicted. Most of the Israelis lived in the southern Gaza Strip in an area known as Gush Katif. This unilateral step evoked powerful public opposition, which culminated with the army being required to evacuate the residence with force. Under legislation passed by the Knesset, evacuated settlers were to be compensated for the loss of their homes, lands and businesses. Following the disengagement, settlers were temporarily relocated to hotels, sometimes for as long as half a year, before moving into temporary housing in mobile homes, before they could build proper homes. By June 2014, about 60% of the evacuees were still living in these mobile houses. The delay in finding suitable solutions for all the evacuees aroused considerable anger with the government. Dan Halutz, the chief of staff of the Israeli army during the Disengagement, had retired and entered civilian life shortly before the publication of the text in ­Example 2. The phrase going home in colloquial Hebrew has a metaphorical meaning – leaving one’s job or position. xalutz holex habaita. sheze omer shematzavo harbe yoter tov mikama anashim shegorshu migush katif.  (Gonen Ginat, Hatzofeh, January 19, 2007) Halutz is going home. Which means that he is far better off than some of those people who were expelled from Gush Katif.

In the first sentence, it would seem that the phrase going home should be interpreted according to its metaphorical reading, since that is the most accessible meaning in the context of a newspaper item; it is less reasonable in this context to note the chief of staff literally going to his home. However, in the next sentence, the author compares Dan Halutz with the residents of Gush Katif following the disengagement (which the author refers to in terms of expulsion). In view of the public criticism of how the government mishandled the relocation of the residents of Gush Katif and its failure to find suitable housing solutions for them, the expression going home is more likely to be interpreted literally: The people evacuated from Gush Katif are literally homeless, which is why they can’t go home. The situation of the former chief of staff is compared to theirs and designated as being “better,” thus implying the author’s criticism of how the residents of Gush Katif were treated. Note that the unfortunate situation of the residents of Gush Katif is not explicitly described in the sentence, but is rather implied by the comparison. In order for the comparison to be possible, the reader must understand the first sentence in its literal meaning too: Halutz left his job (the figurative meaning) but Halutz has a physical house to go home to, and that’s where he’s going (the literal meaning). Halutz is “going home” both metaphorically and literally, while the people of Gush Katif have no home to go to in the literal sense.

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When analyzing the ironic nature of the text, we look for the victim targeted by the criticism. The chief of staff, who in the context of his position was responsible for the IDF’s part in the evacuation of Gush Katif, is indirectly responsible for the plight of the homeless residents of Gush Katif. But unlike them, he is not suffering; he can go home. He then is the victim of the irony. He is a type of a victim that Muecke (1969) referred to as being in an ironic situation but unaware of it (p. 32). The victim of the irony is unaware that his own words are betraying him, which creates an ironic situation for the viewer. According to Muecke (1969), in irony there is always some contrast between two levels – contradiction, mismatch or inconsistency. Among other things, what is stated openly can contradict what is implied by the words (p. 58). In this example, the victim of the irony might be the chief of staff who says, “I’m going home,” without being aware of the literal meaning of his words, and without being aware that their meaning exposes the injustice that he indirectly caused to the people of Gush Katif. The problem with this interpretation is the negative connotation of this phrase, which is frequently used by the press when someone is being fired or leaves because he or she was failed to fulfil expectations. Thus, another, more plausible possibility is that this is an echo of the press itself, of journalists who are equally unaware that their words call attention to the injustices caused to the people of Gush Katif. This example, like the previous one, contains an expression of comparison, “he is far better off than,” that encourages the reader to find a way to compare the two referents. In order to interpret it, a possible move by the interpreter would be to go back to the first sentence and process its literal meaning. Such a move would enable the reader to infer that comparing the two referents would be possible based on the literal meaning of going home. The utterance is thus interpreted by going back to a part of it that has already been given an appropriate interpretation, and to reinterpret it on the basis of a different meaning of the words, in this case the literal meaning of a figure of speech. Without retention of the literal meaning of going home, the comparison is impossible and the utterance as a whole makes no sense. 3.2  One referent, double context Unlike the examples analyzed above, the ones in this section demonstrate an ironic, critical interpretation that is based on a pendulum movement between two readings of metaphors, while each time a different interpretation – literal or metaphorical – is emphasized. This is achieved by creating a double context that invites a literal interpretation alongside the metaphorical one.

(3) Context: This example is taken from a column about Yitzhak Rabin, an Israeli politician who began his career as a military officer and chief of staff of the IDF, and continued in politics as Israel’s prime minister and defense minister. As a politician, he was perceived by the public as someone whose positions



“My refrigerator is as much in the dark as I am” 

on political issues were neither decisive nor one sided. As prime minister in 1974–1977, with the start of Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria, he objected to this settlement and dubbed the settlers “a cancer in the body of Israel’s democracy.” On the other hand, as defense minister during the first intifada (1987–1993) – a period of violent uprising against Israeli rule on the part of the Palestinian residents of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip – he was quoted as having informally ordered the soldiers, “To break their arms and legs.” At the time when this text was published, Rabin was defense minister in a government headed by Shimon Peres (the “Blazers” mentioned in the text is an epithet for a group of young politicians, protégés of Peres at the time). After Rabin was elected to a second term as prime minister in 1992, he initiated negotiations with Syria and the Palestinians that culminated with the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, for which Rabin was subsequently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1995, he was assassinated by a supporter of the far-right wing for signing the Oslo Accords, that is, because he was too much of a leftist. This text predates the Oslo Accords, but appears to already reference the lack of clarity regarding Rabin’s political positions. omrim shehu netz, aval zohi kamuvan shtut: bateva ein shum netz shemaxzik et harosh bezavit kazot. […] histakalti etmol berabin: zehu ish marshim, baal shinayim tovot, shelefi xishuvay mesugal lisxov al hagav xamisha-shisha bleizerim veasara sarim usganey sarim lemerxak shel shalosh shanim, lo xashuv beeizo memshala.  (Doron Rosenblum, xadashot, July 6, 1990) They say he’s a hawk, but that’s nonsense, of course; no hawk in nature holds his head at that angle […] Yesterday I looked at Rabin: He is an impressive man with good teeth, who according to my calculations can carry five or six Blazers and ten ministers and deputy ministers on his back for three years in whatever government.

Metaphorical interpretation is required already at the beginning of the text regarding the word hawk – the name of the bird metaphorically used to refer to a rightwing political position that prefers the path of war to the path of peace. Since the context of the entire column is political, the more accessible meaning of hawk is metaphorical, and therefore, the later utterance that “this is of course nonsense” is understood as reflecting the writer’s position that Rabin is not a political hawk. Against this political mental space, in the next sentence a second mental space is designed. Hints of a new context are dropped, first by means of the word nature (the phrase in nature (bateva) in Hebrew usually refers to the context of animal behavior), and then by noting the physical feature of the position of the head. In light of this context, the literal reading of the word hawk, referring to a bird known as a hawk, is underscored. The mention of the position of the head is not coincidental – it references a familiar feature of Rabin’s body language in his public appearances. Further in the text, the phrase “an impressive man with good teeth” is a physical description that bolsters the literal reading, and consequently also

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the more accessible meaning of the phrase “can carry […] on his back” will be the literal meaning related to physical strength. However, the expression “to carry someone on one’s back” (lisxov al hagav) also has a metaphorical meaning: The person being carried on the back is exploiting the success of the one carrying him, achieving it together with him without making any effort on his own. This meaning comes up later because of the phrase “carry on his back for three years,” since the time description of three years implies that this does not refer to literal “carrying.” The pendulum movement between the two contexts and between the two metaphorical expressions – the hawk, to carry someone on one’s back – does not allow the reader to choose one of them, but requires that she keeps both readings in mind at the same time. This duality serves the criticism in the utterance, which mocks Rabin’s equivocal political positions. The expression “in whatever government” also refers to Rabin’s ambiguous political positions, which seemingly would allow him to join any government, right or left. The duality designed by the author might be interpreted as a blend of two mental spaces. In the blended space, evaluative meanings might emerge. The blending of two contexts in such a sophisticated manner is surprising, creative and humorous. In terms of humor theory, it might be described as “two-scripts” humor (Raskin 1985; Attardo & Raskin 1991), thus, contributing not only to the text’s critical aspect but to its entertaining aspect as well. Two readings of metaphorical expressions are needed to uncover the intended meaning in Example 4 too. This text is especially interesting for our case since it involves a meta-linguistic discussion between two imaginary speakers about the meaning of a metaphor.

(4) Context: The text describes an imaginary dialogue between two people (we don’t know who they are), speaking between themselves about a work meeting held between two political leaders – Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni. 1. A: ma beemet haya bapgisha hazot beyn barak leveyn tzipi livni? 2. B: tire, kodem kol – hayta ximiya. 3. A: ma ze omer, beetzem? gam behiroshima uvenagasaki hayta ximiya. 4. B:  ze omer shesarera bapgisha xamimut. hayiti omer afilu xom. omrim shetzipi lo hizia kaxa meaz oto erev shebo nista leshaxzer et livuy hatupim le“paranoid” shel Black Sabbath begirsat haofaa sheba Ozzy Osbourne hitzit et zkano shel hametofef Bill Ward vegaram lo kviyot midarga shlishit. (Doron Rosenblum, Haaretz online, July 24, 2010) 1. A: What really happened in that meeting between Barak and Tzipi Livni? 2. B: Look, first of all, there was chemistry. 3. A: What does that mean, actually? There was chemistry at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, too.



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4. B: It means that it was warm at the meeting. Even hot, I would say. Some say that Tzipi hadn’t sweat like that since the evening when she tried to reprise the percussion accompaniment to Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid,” in the concert version where Ozzy Osbourne set fire to drummer Bill Ward’s beard and caused him third-degree burns.

In Hebrew, like in English, the word chemistry has a metaphorical meaning that refers to an emotional connection between two people. When a meeting between two people is involved, as in turn 2 of this text, the more accessible meaning of the word chemistry is metaphorical. However, a challenge to the metaphorical reading appears already in the next turn. Following the metaphorical use of chemistry by the imagined speaker B in turn 2, the imagined speaker A challenges her for using this word by asking: “What does that mean, actually”?, and suggests a context in which the accessible reading is the literal one. The chemistry at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the two Japanese cities hit by the USA’s nuclear bombs, is interpreted as referring to an atom bomb. As a reply, the imaginary speaker B in the last turn tries to explain the word chemistry using words like warm and hot, both of which also have a metaphorical and literal meaning. Thus, at this stage, the reader is still suspended between the two possible readings suggested by the imaginary speakers. However, in turn 4, the mention of set fire and burns directs the reader to the literal meaning of heat. In other words, speaker B’s words (chemistry, warm), which initially could be understood metaphorically as referring to the social relationship between Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni, are interpreted at this stage literally. To make the process even more complex, the verb sweat (hizia) has, in addition to its literal meaning, a figurative meaning in colloquial Hebrew – to experience distress, as from anxiety. This metaphorical interpretation is relevant to relations between people and to social and professional meetings. Looking at the whole text, the reader can recognize an interesting contrast between the positive value of the metaphorical expressions – chemistry and warmth in a relationship between people – and the negative value of the literal expressions and their context – an atom bomb, setting someone on fire and burns. This blend of “contraries” is reminiscent of the one in Turner and Fauconnier’s (1995) example (above vs. below, p. 187), which according to the authors creates the “ironic tension.” Example (4) as a whole might be seen as more humorous than ironic, especially turn 4 of speaker B. The humor might be understood on the background of the fact that Tzipi Livni has been seen a number of times at rock concerts where she appeared to be quite enthusiastic. Note that speaker B herself in turn 4 drops her metaphorical uses (chemistry, and perhaps warmth and heat) in favor of literal uses such as set fire and burns.

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However, I suggest that the irony is evident mainly in turns 1–3, in relation to the metaphorical expressions. In this part of the text, two mental spaces blend and create a critical evaluation. The arrows of the author here seemed to be aimed at those who describe meetings between politicians in terms of chemistry and warmth. This conclusion is also implied by the question in the second line: “What does that mean, actually?” which implies that describing a relationship in terms of chemistry doesn’t really say much. Perhaps a description of this kind is useful for certain types of speakers – media consultants, public relations people and pundits – in order to avoid having to provide an explicit description of what happened at a meeting and its results, and perhaps even to conceal the fact that there were no practical results. If that is the case, those people are the victims of the irony. Taking into account a broader context, this type of interpretation fits in well with the fact that the journalist, Doron Rosenblum, often aimed his irony at speakers from these categories and mocked the way they manipulate language. Thus, the text is interpreted not only as humorous, but also as critical and evaluative. This example is similar to the previous ones in that the literal meaning of the metaphors cannot be suppressed, but here, the meta-linguistic discussion between the speakers themselves does not allow the literal meaning to disappear from the reader’s consciousness. 4.  Conclusions This paper focused on a particular type of metaphorical irony in which both readings of a metaphor have to be processed in order to grasp the speaker’s intention. I discussed two ways in which a text encourages retention of both readings of metaphorical expressions. Examples 1–2 presented metaphorical expressions that refer to two different referents. While treated disconnectedly, each referent naturally invites a different reading – literal or metaphorical. However, their co-presence in the text, and especially their comparison which is almost forced by the wording, requires retention of both readings. This manipulation promotes ironic interpretation that involves a critical evaluation of one of the referents (Example 2) or of another victim (Example 1). In Examples 3–4 the author uses a different strategy. There is only one referent or one topic to which the text refers, but the author suggests two kinds of contextual clues, each kind leading the reader to a different reading of the metaphorical expression. This double context creates humor of the kind of two-scripts (Raskin 1985; Attardo & Raskin 1991), but at the same time might promote ironic interpretation that conveys critical evaluation.



“My refrigerator is as much in the dark as I am” 

Theoretically, my focus on a meaning that is based on computing the gap between the literal and the figurative readings is compatible with theories that do not assume that the interpretation process of figurative language requires ruling out the literal meaning. These theories predict that the literal meaning would be retained at least under certain conditions when it is needed to complete the interpretation process. The analysis I provided presents two such contexts. Methodologically, the analysis supports the claim that it is essential for the study of irony to take into account authentic utterances in diverse natural contexts. Each context can shed light on the function of further discursive nuances. In the present paper, the focus was on carefully planned and edited journalistic texts, whose degree of complexity, which approximates that of literary texts, provides an abundance of textual and contextual clues for the interpretation of irony. I analyzed only a few examples, but they are not idiosyncratic; they come from three different authors, and further examples of the same kind can be found in other columns in the Israeli media. They are amusingly sophisticated, but at the same time express a critical stance on controversial issues that are familiar to the readers either from their general knowledge or from the continuing focus placed on them by the journalists. Since the critical aspect is characteristic of this genre, the experienced reader anticipates it and finds it even when the clues are subtle. The metaphorical irony, the interpretation of which is sophisticated and complex, enhances the critical, evaluative aspect of the text along with contributing to its entertaining effect.

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Giora, Rachel, and Helga Kotthoff. 1998. Report on the Research Project: The Graded Salience Hypothesis of Irony. Lion Foundation. University of Tel Aviv/University of Konstanz. Glucksberg, Sam. 2001. Understanding Figurative Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195111095.001.0001 Grady, Joseph, Todd Oakley, and Seana Coulson. 1999. “Blending and Metaphor.” In Metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics, ed. by Raymond W. Gibbs, and Gerard J. Steen, 101–124. ­Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.175.07gra Grice, Paul. 1975. “Logic and Conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics, Vol 3: Speech Acts, ed. by Peter Cole, and Jerry Morgan, 41–58. New York: Academic Press. Grice Paul. 1978. “Further Notes on Logic and Conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 9: Pragmatics, ed. by Peter Cole, 113–127. New York: Academic Press. Hatcheon, Linda. 1994. Irony’s Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony. London & New York: Routledge.  https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203359259 Haverkate, Henk. 1990. “A speech act analysis of irony.” Journal of pragmatics 14 (1): 77–109. Hirsch, Galia. This volume. “Irony, Humor or Both? The Model Revisited.” Kihara, Yoshihiki. 2005. “The Mental Space Structure of Verbal Irony.” Cognitive Linguistics 16 (3): 513–530.  https://doi.org/10.1515/cogl.2005.16.3.513 Kotthoff, Helga. 2003. “Responding to Irony in Different Contexts: On Cognition in Conversation.” Journal of Pragmatics 35: 1387–1411.  https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(02)00182-0 Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Lapp, Edgar. 1992. Linguistik der Ironie. Tubingen: Gunter Narr verlag. Livnat, Zohar. 2004. “On Verbal Irony, Meta-Linguistic Knowledge and Echoic Interpretation.” Pragmatics and Cognition 12 (5): 57–70.  https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.12.1.05liv Livnat, Zohar, and Gonen Dori-Hacohen. 2013. “The Effect of Irony in Radio Talk-Back Programs in Israel.” In The Pragmatics of Political Discourse: Explorations across Cultures, ed. by Anita Fetzer, 193–217. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.228.11liv Martin, Robert. 1992. “Irony and Universe of Belief.” Lingua 87: 77–90. https://doi.org/10.1016/0024-3841(92)90026-F Muecke, Douglas C. 1969. The Compass of Irony. London: Methuen & Co. Musolff, Andreas. 2017. “Irony and Sarcasm in Follow-ups of Metaphorical Slogans.” In Irony in Language Use and Communication, ed. by Angeliki Athanasiadou, and Herbert L. Colston 127–143, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.1.07mus Noveck, Ira A., Maryse Bianco, and Alain Castry. 2001. “The Costs and Benefits of Metaphor.” Metaphor and Symbol 16: 109–21.  https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2001.9678889 Popa, Mihaela. 2009. Figuring the Code: Pragmatic Routes to the Non-Literal. PhD Dissertation, University of Geneva. Popa, Mihaela. 2010. “Ironic Metaphor Interpretation.” Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics 33: 1–17. Quintilian. 1920–1922. The Institutio oratoria of Quintilian. With an English trans. by H. E. ­Butler. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Raskin, Victor. 1985. Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster: D. Reidel. Reimer, Marga. 2013. “Grice on Irony and Metaphor: Discredited by the Experimental Evidence?” International Review of Pragmatics 5: 1–33.  https://doi.org/10.1163/18773109-13050101 Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 1981. “Irony and the Use-Mention Distinction.” In Radical pragmatics, ed. by Peter Cole, 295–318. New York, NY: Academic Press.

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Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 1986. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 2004. “Relevance Theory.” In Handbook of Pragmatics, ed. by Laurence Horn, and Gregory Ward, 607–632. Oxford: Blackwell. Stern Josef. 2000. Metaphor in Context. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Tobin, Vera, and Michael Israel. 2012. “Irony as a Viewpoint Phenomenon.” In Viewpoint in Language: A Multimodal Perspective, ed. by Barbara Dancygier, and Eve Sweetser, 25–46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139084727.004 Weizman, Elda. 2000. “Irony in News Discourse.” In Raphael Nir Jubilee Book – Studies in Communication, Linguistics and Language Teaching, ed. by Ora Schwarzwald, Shoshana BlumKulka, and Elite Olshtain, 237–248. Jerusalem: Carmel Publishing House. [In Hebrew.] Weizman, Elda. 2001. “Addresser, Addressee and Target: Negotiating Roles Through Ironic Criticism.” In Negotiation: The Dialogic Question, ed. by Edda Weigand, and Marcelo Dascal, 125–137. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.214.11wei Weizman, Elda. 2015. “Irony in and through Follow-ups.” In The Dynamics of Political Discourse: Forms and Functions of Follow-ups, ed. by Anita Fetzer, Elda Weizman, and Lawrence Berlin, 259–173. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.259.07wei Weizman Elda, and Marcelo Dascal. 1991. “On Clues and Cues: Strategies of Text-Understanding.” Journal of Literary Semantics XX/1: 18–30. Weizman, Elda, and Gonen Dori-Hacohen. 2017. “Commenting on Opinion Editorials in Online Journals: A Cross-Cultural Examination of Face Work in the Washington Post (USA) and NRG (Israel).” Discourse. Context & Media 19: 39–48. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2017.02.001 Wilson, Deirdre. 2009. “Irony and Metarepresentation.” UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 21: 183–226. Wilson, Deirdre, and Dan Sperber. 1992. “On Verbal Irony.” Lingua 87: 53–76. https://doi.org/10.1016/0024-3841(92)90025-E Wilson, Deirdre, and Dan Sperber. 2012. Meaning and Relevance. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139028370 Winner, Ellen. 1988. The Point of Words: Children’s Understanding of Metaphor and Irony. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Yamanashi. Masa-Aki. 1998. “Some Issues in the Treatment of Irony and Related Tropes.” In Relevance Theory: Applications and Implications, ed. by Robyn Carston, and Seiji Uchida, 1–22. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.37.15yam

“Hero, genius, king and Messiah” Ironic echoing in pro-ethos and anti-ethos readers’ comments on Facebook posts Pnina Shukrun-Nagar

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev This paper discusses readers’ comments on posts written by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on his Facebook page in November 2017. It focuses on the use of ironic echoes (Sperber & Wilson 1981) of compliments and accusations, including multi-stage ones, to either enhance or damage Netanyahu’s ethos as a successful leader. It is argued that Netanyahu’s supporters use ironic echoes of accusations by his critics in order to enhance his ethos, whereas his critics use ironic echoes of compliments to Netanyahu in order to damage it. Moreover, It is argued that both the construction and de-construction of Netanyahu’s ethos are intertwined with the self-enhancement of the positive face (Brown & Levinson 1987) of commenters from one political camp, alongside the threat to the positive face of their rivals. Keywords:  irony, ironic echoes/echoing, multi-stage echoes, face, Facebook, online readers’ comments, accusation, condemnation, compliment

1.  Introduction The paper addresses ironic echoes of compliments and accusations in readers’ comments on posts written by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on his Facebook page in November 2017. Netanyahu’s Facebook page is very active. He usually posts at least once a day, and each post receives dozens to hundreds of comments, both supportive and critical. In many of the comments, the commentators use echoes. Netanyahu’s critics echo both Netanyahu and his supporters ironically, while his supporters echo Netanyahu positively, as they echo his critics ironically. Some of these echoes will be termed here “multi-stage echoes” - echoes of previous echoes. It is argued that ironic echoes (Sperber & Wilson 1981) serve to either enhance or damage Netanyahu’s ethos. Following Kohn and Neiger (2007), these echoing comments will be defined “pro-ethos comments” and “anti-ethos comments” https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.316.03shu © 2020 John Benjamins Publishing Company

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respectively. Specifically, I argue that Netanyahu’s critics use ironic echoes of his self praise as well as compliments by his supporters, in order to damage his ethos, while Netanyahu’s supporters use ironic echoes of accusations and condemnations by his critics in order to enhance his ethos. In addition, it is argued that both Netanyahu’s critics and supporters use these ironic echoes also to threaten the positive face (Brown & Levinson 1987) of their political opponents, as they enhance their own. It is shown that the three pragmatic-rhetorical functions of ironic echoes are intertwined. This means that the construction of Netanyahu’s ethos influences and at the same time is influenced by the self-positioning and external-positioning of commenters from both political camps. 2.  Ethos, face and positioning The construction of a positive ethos has been identified as the main purpose of politicians’ posts (Lehti 2011: 1612). Ethos was first presented by Aristotle (1356a, 1378a) as one of the three modes of persuasion, alongside logos and pathos. It is related to the way in which a speaker presents himself in his speech, mostly that he is worthy of his audience’s trust. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969: 319) defined ethos as “the impression which the speaker, by means of his words, gives of himself.” They pointed out that despite the great importance of a positive ethos, the speaker “is very seldom permitted to achieve this by singing his own praises” (ibid.), and that self-praise is often perceived as out of place and ridiculous (ibid.: 320). Thus, self-praise is rarely conducted by means of direct boasting – the speaker’s expression of pride in his actions (Searle 1976: 12) – and may be framed indirectly through speech acts such as a complaint, apology and invitation, as well as assertions that include no evaluation, or even include negative evaluation (Dayter 2016: 136). This holds for the current corpus as well. Inspired by Kohn and Neiger (2007), and following Weizman and DoriHacohen (2017), the rhetorical-philosophical term “ethos” will be used here more broadly to represent the public image of public figures, specifically regarding their apparent potential to fulfill their professional duty. Thus, Netanyahu’s ethos is viewed here as his apparent potential to serve as a successful leader according to his assumed qualities and skills. It will be demonstrated here that in some cases, damage to Netanyahu’s ethos involves a threat to the positive face of his supporters, while enhancement of his ethos involves a threat to the positive face of his critics.



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According to Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory (1987), a positive face is the desire of each individual to be valued and recognized for his/her needs and desires, while a negative face is the desire to maintain autonomy, and be free to act independently and undisturbed. Brown and Levinson (ibid.: 65) claim that “certain kinds of acts intrinsically threaten face, namely those acts that by their nature run contrary to the face wants of the addressee and/or the speaker.” Speech acts that threaten mainly the positive face of the addressees are those that show that the speaker has a negative evaluation of some aspects of the addressee’s positive face (e.g., expression of disapproval, criticism, contempt and accusations or, alternately, contradictions and disagreements) or that the speaker doesn’t care about the addressee’s positive face (e.g., expression of violent, out-of-control emotions, mention of taboo topics) (ibid.: 66–67). Speech acts that threaten the negative face of the addressee are those which assume a future act of the addressee (e.g., request, warn), a positive future act of the speaker toward the addressee (e.g., offer, promise), or some desire of the speaker toward the addressee or his/her goods (e.g., compliment, and expression of feelings such as envy, admiration, hatred, anger) (ibid.: 65–66). As to the speakers – there are speech acts that directly damage their positive face (e.g., apologies, acceptance of compliments, confessions), and speech acts that directly damage their negative face (e.g., expression of thanks, acceptance of thanks, apologies and offers, excuses) (ibid.: 67–68). Speakers may use politeness strategies to reduce the threats to face or repair damage (face work). Positive politeness aims to strengthen the common ground, closeness and intimacy between the interlocutors, and is conducted, for example, by means of nicknames, expressions of agreement and empathy. Negative politeness aims to respect the differences between the interlocutors and emphasize the individuality and independence of each, and is conducted by means of respectful terms of address, apologies, recognition of the addressee’s efforts and so on (ibid.: 68–71). The choice of a speaker whether, how and to what degree to save or threaten the face of his/her addressee depends on the social distance between them, their relative “power” and “the absolute ranking of impositions in the particular culture” (ibid.: 74). In this chapter, both Netanyahu’s ethos and the the commenters’ positive face will be analyzed as the result of their self- or external positioning. Goffman (1974) noticed that each person fulfills diverse “roles” in diverse situations (e.g., at home vs. at work), each of which evokes different expectations and involves different norms of behavior. Following him, Davies and Harré (1990) developed the concept of “positioning” to denote a dynamic process in which a person positions himself/herself or another interlocutor in relation to other

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i­nterlocutors in accordance with their social or interactional roles. The interlocutors may be positioned as having rights and obligations at either the social or discursive level, symmetrically or asymmetrically, implicitly or explicitly, in terms of power, dominance, authority, self-confidence and more1 (Harré & Gillett 1994; Harré & van Langenhove 1999; Weizman 2008). 3.  Netanyahu and his Facebook page Born in 1949, Netanyahu served in the army for four years as a combat soldier and commander of an elite unit. In 1979, he established the Jonathan Institute for the Study of Terrorism in honor of his brother, Yoni Netanyahu, who was killed in 1976 in the line of duty while in command of a military operation. From 1982 to 1984, he served as Israel’s deputy chief of mission in Washington and from 1984 to 1988, as its ambassador to the UN. In 1988, he joined the right-center Likud party, and in 1993 was elected its chair. Netanyahu has served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Finance, among other key positions. He served as prime minister from 1996 to 1999, and has been Israel’s prime minister since 2009.2 Netanyahu, like many other Israeli politicians, has a very active Facebook page. In general, politicians’ Facebook pages are considered a hybrid dynamic public sphere that undermines “the ontological divisions between the public and the private, the official and the informal, the mediated and unmediated experience” (Kopytowska 2013: 382). Netanyahu’s page corresponds with this characterization: He usually publishes at least one or two posts a day, in which he shares his views, plans and activities, and to a lesser degree, also more private topics related his personal life and family, in which he positions himself as an ordinary person (Shukrun-Nagar 2019).3

.  The rights and obligations of the interlocutors may also be implied by the speech acts they perform. See Sbisà 1984. .  https://he-il.facebook.com/pg/Netanyahu/about/?ref=page_internal; https://www.gov.il/ he/Departments/People/benjamin_netanyahu. .  It is generally assumed that politicians do not write all the posts published on their Facebook pages themselves. This might be concluded from the differences between the various posts, specifically the fact that only some of them are characterized by personal or idiolectical writing. In regard to Netanyahu – this fact was even officially declared (e.g. https://www.mako. co.il/weekend-articles/Article-7efc37152fa9931006.htm). However, readers’ comments show that, nonetheless, politicians are perceived as being responsible for any post published on their Facebook pages.



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Most of Netanyahu’s posts serve to construct his positive ethos as an important, successful and highly accomplished leader, especially in the political, security and economic sphere. For example:4 –– I gave a speech today to dozens of leaders from all across Africa. Relations between Israel and Africa have never been stronger! (28/11/2017) –– The index of inequality in the State of Israel is declining – the lowest since 2001! This is another important result of our policy. (13/11/2017) –– The Israeli economy is strong – we will continue to manage it responsibly. (22/11/2017) –– Within a few years, we will double the population of Migdal Haemek. We are continuing to build the State of Israel! (06/11/2017) Posts of this kind have led to diverse emotional readers’ comments, both for and against Netanyahu. 4.  Pro-ethos readers’ comments vs. anti-ethos readers’ comments Bakhtin (1981) emphasized that every utterance is dialogical due to its expectation of a response. On Facebook, this expectation finds clear and overt expression in the section provided for readers’ comments following each post. Posts written by Israeli politicians often elicit dozens to hundreds of comments, some of which prompt many other comments from other readers or at times, from the politicians themselves.5 As a rule, readers’ comments meet the definition of follow-ups – “communicative acts (or dialogue acts), in and through which a prior communicative act is accepted, challenged or otherwise negotiated by ratified participants in the exchange or by third parties” (Weizman & Fetzer 2015: XI; see also Fetzer, .  All the readers’ comments and press segments discussed in the article, as well as most of Netanyahu’s posts, were originally written in Hebrew and translated into English by Dr. Hannah Komi. In the translation, an attempt was made to reflect both the linguistic nature of the original text (register, genre) and its pragmatic nuances. In cases of discrepancy, the translation was accompanied by comments. The Netanyahu posts that were originally written in English are presented as such (in brackets after the quotation). Due to the length of the Hebrew sections, transcripts are provided only when the Hebrew words/expressions bear a special color that cannot be fully reflected in the English translation. .  Some Israeli politicians tend to respond to several readers’ comments, but most of the overt dialogues take place between the readers themselves. According to Atifi and Marcoccia (2015: 121), this holds true for the Facebook sites of French politicians as well.

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­ eizman & Berlin 2015). Johansson (2015: 88) stresses that recontextualization W is an inherent component of follow-ups. She perceives it as a communicative act in which “an object of discourse or parts of it from a prior context” are embedded in the ongoing one, involving “stancetaking, positioning and negotiation of new meaning.” This view is in line with the perception of Bakhtin (1981, 1989) and, following him, Kristeva (1984, 1986), according to which both the prior and current cotexts and contexts of linguistic signs wield considerable influence on their meanings. Rhetorically, recontextualization is particularly significant in quotations and echoes, as demonstrated in various types of political and media discourse (e.g., Fetzer 2015; Granato & Parini 2015; Shukrun-Nagar 2009) and as will be demonstrated here too. Readers’ comments on politicians’ posts correspond with Kohn and Neiger’s (2007: 324) description of readers’ comments on the online press: “a onetime response forum […], a kind of cross between a chat and [an online] forum that allows many people to express their opinions in the public arena.”6 Readers’ comments on politician’s posts also correspond with another characterization of readers’ comments in online media as described in the research literature (e.g., Dori-Hacohen 2016; Dori-Hacohen & Shavit 2013; Kohn & Neiger 2007; Johansson 2015; Weizman & Dori-Hacohen 2017) – disagreements among readers are often expressed in their comments in emotional and ironic terms, at times to the point of verbal violence, so readers do not engage in real dialogue, but rather entrench themselves in their positions. This characterization is especially striking in the readers’ comments on Netanyahu’s Facebook posts. Netanyahu’s posts serve as a launching pad for stormy and emotional battles between his supporters and critics. A large part of this battle is related to Netanyahu’s ethos. Similar to the findings in the online press, according to which “ethos-oriented comments either support or challenge the personality of the columnist” (Weizman & Dori-Hacohen 2017: 42), readers’ comments on Netanyahu’s posts serve either to support his positive ethos or challenge it. In Kohn and Neiger’s (2007) terms, this means that they are either “pro-ethos comments” or “anti-ethos comments.” The pro-ethos comments serve also to enhance the positive face of Netanyahu’s supporters and threaten those of his critics, while the anti-ethos comments serve also to enhance the positive face of his critics and threaten those of his supporters. Netanyahu’s supporters often extol him directly, with effusive compliments and praise – expressive speech acts (Searle 1969, 1976; Searle & Vanderveken

.  Translated from Hebrew by Dr. Hannah Komy.



“Hero, genius, king and Messiah” 

1985: 211–216) that focus on the addressee’s feelings and express a positive affective stance toward him (Carretero et al 2015: 187; Kampf & Danziger 2019).7 These are examples of comments on a post published on November 24, 2017:8 –– Good Sabbath to you, the one and only Prime Minister of our generation –– You are a genius, Mr. Prime Minister. I am proud of you and trust you. Thank you Mr. Prime Minister… –– King Bibi may you have a peaceful and blessed Sabbath –– Top gun! What power and fortitude. I support you and encourage you! May you have a peaceful Sabbath, Benjamin! –– King of the world –– A giant of a leader by any standard Such pro-ethos comments trigger remarks from Netanyahu’s critics directed at challenging Netanyahu’s ethos and threatening the positive face of his supporters. These in turn elicit “punitive” comments on the part of Netanyahu’s supporters aimed at enhancing Netanyahu’s ethos and threatening the positive face of his critics. The challenge to Netanyahu’s ethos or the positive face of commenters from both political camps contains the two types observed in comments on op-ed columns (Weizman & Dori-Hacohen 2017, following Toulmin and Plantin): adhominem comments, which “usually pertain to the columnist’s incompetence and partiality, which impinge on his role as a journalist,”9 and ad-personam comments, which “are usually extremely personal or simple slurs” and “do not contribute to the argumentation” (ibid.: 42); they are thus more face-threatening (ibid.: 44). Both types of comments will be examined, with a focus on those in which the anti-ethos effect is achieved by means of ironic echoing.

.  Compliments and praises may be considered as different expressive speech acts, since only a compliment involves a direct attributing to an addressee (Kampf & Danziger 2019), however this distinction is not relevant for this research. References see in Kampf and Danziger 2019; Ronan 2015. .  The comments were written by different commenters. Their names have been eliminated in order to maintain their privacy. The bold lettering is mine. It served to highlight the compliments and praise for Netanyahu. Although the compliments and praise may seem exaggerated, there is no indication for their being unauthentic or ironic. In fact, in Netanyahu’s page this manner of speech in favor of Netanyahu is quite frequent. .  In this case – Netanyahu or the commenters that are being challenged.

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5.  Ironic echoing in reader’s comments Following a pragmatic model of text-understanding developed by Dascal and Weizman (Dascal & Weizman 1987; Weizman & Dascal 1991), and the echoic mention theory (Sperber & Wilson 1981; Wilson & Sperber 1992), Weizman (2000, 2008) sees echoes with which the speaker demonstrates reservation as one of the cues for indirect ironic meaning, alongside cues such as conversational implicatures conveyed by a blatant flouting of the maxim of quality (Grice 1975, 1978),10 the pretense of a speaker that s/he is “an injudicious person speaking to an uninitiated audience” (Clark and Gerrig 1984: 121), and the violation of the sincerity condition required to perform a felicitous speech act (Haverkate 1990). Without addressing the question of whether any irony necessarily derives from echoing, as Sperber and Wilson argue (Sperber & Wilson 1981; Wilson 2006; Wilson & Sperber 1992), I will focus on examples in which echoing is a single or central cue for irony. According to Sperber and Wilson (1981; Wilson 2006; Wilson & Sperber 1992), echoing is the representation of not a possible or actual state of affairs, but rather another representation – a possible or actual utterance, opinion or thought of a real or imagined source. The echoing speaker may express, to different degrees of explicitness, various attitudes towards an echoed utterance. These “range from acceptance or endorsement of its descriptive content […] through questioning, puzzlement or desire for confirmation […] to various shades of skepticism, mockery or rejection” (Wilson 2006: 1730). In the case of irony, the speaker dissociates himself/herself from the echoed utterance, suggesting it is “more or less obviously false, irrelevant or under-informative” (ibid.: 1731). While it has been argued that the echoed person is the target of the irony (Sperber & Wilson 1981) and thus his/ her identification may serve as a clue to the interpretation of indirect meaning (Weizman 2000, 2008), it has already been shown that the target of the irony is not always the one being echoed (Hirsch 2017 among others). In her study on news interviews, Weizman (2008) demonstrated that the use of irony may serve to position the speaker (the interviewer or interviewee) as “antagonistic to the target of criticism, at least on aspects related to the criticism” both in the social sphere and the interactional arena (ibid.: 76). Similar findings emerged in a study on irony in online readers’ comments to politicians’ Facebook posts (Shukrun-Nagar 2020). Interestingly, it was found that when irony was used

.  Blatant flouting of other maxims may also produce ironic implicatures, as has been demonstrated (e.g. Hirsch 2011 a, b; Livnat 2004; Shukrun-Nagar 2019, 2020) and as will be shown here.



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by columnists in online newspapers, it was perceived by Israeli commenters as a threat to both their face and that of the columnist (Weizman 2015: 181). It was also found that when irony was used by the readers of online newspapers, it intensified the threat not only to the positive face of the journalist, but to his negative face as well, since readers “limit his or her freedom of (discursive) actions, and thus invade his or her territory” (Weizman & Dori-Hacohen 2017: 44). Nevertheless, irony may not be considered homogeneous in its effects – “we have a dual attitude toward irony, or toward those who use it: on the one hand, it provides humor and insight and suggests intelligence, wit, and perceptivity; on the other hand, it can be hurtful and suggest, if not deceit, at least nonstraightforwardness and perhaps untrustworthiness” (Myers Roy 1981: 410). At times, this duality stems from the identity of the target of the irony. When the irony is directed towards a third party (i.e., not the direct addressees), it may serve to build solidarity between the addresser and addressees and enhance the addressees’ positive face (Myers Roy 1981: 414; Weizman 2008: 106; Weizman 2015: 190). In line with these findings, It will be shown that both the pro-ethos comments and the anti-ethos comments regarding Netanyahu serve the commenters to construct solidarity within their political camp. 6.  Ironic echoing in comments by Netanyahu’s supporters One of the prevalent accusations against Netanyahu in the public discourse in recent years is that Israel is suffering from political isolation [bidud medini] as a result of his policies. This accusation, which is now only rarely heard, was very common in the Israeli media, with the exception of those identified with the rightwing camp. The following, for example, was written by senior commentator Barak Ravid in the leftist Haaretz on December 18, 2014:11 The feeling last night was like that of the same political tsunami against Israel against which former Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned several years ago. But in truth, the process is more like the melting of glaciers. This is a process that is taking place in the European Union and has accelerated since July 2013 – when the sanctions against the settlements were imposed. Once in a while, one of the glaciers is loudly shattered, but typically it is a daily erosion of Israel’s international standing. Netanyahu’s political conduct in the last six years when he served as prime minister contributed decisively to this process […] Netanyahu does not really have

.  https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/.premium-1.2515355. The emphasis in the quotation is mine.

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a solution to the deep political isolation that Israel has encountered under his tenure as prime minister.

Such columns were answered by counter-arguments in the media, media criticism sites and social media. The column cited above, for example, received the following response on the media criticism website Presspectiva:12 In Haaretz, Israel is in “deep political isolation.” And in reality? […] Relations with Europe are complex, not necessarily worse for Israel than they were before the Netanyahu years. Relations with America are stronger than ever, as are relations with the close and important allies of the United States – Australia and Canada. Relations with the leading countries of South America have developed dramatically, as have relations with the most important country in Africa. And above all, especially striking are the first-time Israeli political breakthroughs eastward toward the emerging civilizations of India and China, and the intersection of interests that have led to the thawing of deep and long-standing hostility between Israel and the powerful Sunni Arab states in the region. Is this what “deep political isolation” looks like?

Naturally, both accusations against Netanyahu and counter-reactions in his favor are prevalent on his Facebook page. At times Netanyahu himself relates to the accusations of isolation, especially when he presents his political achievements. Here, for example, is a post from July 4, 2017 followed by a video of Netanyahu speaking at a conference of the rightist-religious newspaper Makor Rishon: For years, the media have been telling you about “political isolation.” This evening the Prime Minister of India will be paying us a historic visit and we will lead the cooperation between Israel and India to new heights. My policy is to bring the State of Israel to unprecedented political breakthroughs – and only competition will bring Israel’s huge success story to the media.

In November 2017, Netanyahu published several posts about meetings he held with leaders of various countries around the world, for example: –– A brief update from London, before my meeting with British Prime Minister Theresa May. (November 4, 2017)

.  Hanan Amiur, December 25, 2014. https://presspectiva.org.il/%D7%91%D7%94%D7 %90%D7%A8%D7%A5-%D7%99%D7%A9%D7%A8%D7%90%D7% 9C-%D7%9E%D7%A6%D7%95%D7%99%D7%94-%D7%91%D7%91%D7%9 9%D7%93%D7%95%D7%93-%D7%9E%D7%93%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%A2%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%A7/



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–– I met today with Moldovan Prime Minister Pavel Filip and congratulated him on 25 years of good relations between our countries. We will continue to deepen our economic cooperation and expand our trade. (November 9, 2017; originally in English) –– Today I met with Ecuadorian Minister of Foreign Affairs Maria Fernanda Espinosa in order to strengthen cooperation between our two countries in the areas of technology, agriculture, water and other fields. (November 22, 2017; originally in English) –– I am on my way to a series of political meetings in Africa and will return to Israel tonight. A brief update from me to you (November 28, 2017) Posts such as these, which attest Israel’s diplomatic relations with other countries, were followed by comments in which Netanyahu’s supporters echo his critics’ prevalent accusations, for example:

(1) Isolation

(November 15, 2017)



(2) Political isolation 

(November 15, 2017)



(3) This isolation is really a pleasure … 

(November 15, 2017)



(4) Keep on isolating us we’re in the right direction



(5) Aren’t we in a state of isolation? 



(6) Excellent, keep up the isolation until the left explodes  (November 22, 2017)



(November 15, 2017) (November 15, 2017)

In the co-texts of Netanyahu’s posts that attest to the lack of isolation, echoing the accusation of isolation creates an ironic effect. This effect is increased due to the blatant flouting of the maxim of quality (Grice 1975, 1978) (Examples 1–3) and the violation of the sincerity condition (Haverkate 1990) or pretense (Clark & Gerrig 1984) in the performance of a request (4–5) and question (6). Netanyahu’s accusers echoed in these comments, including politicians, journalists and commentators on social networks, are of course the targets of the irony. The echoing of their accusations against Netanyahu (e.g., in columns and readers’ comments) replaces their former self-positioning as accusers with a new externalpositioning as those accused of falsifying facts. As a result, Netanyahu’s ethos as a successful leader in the diplomatic arena is reconstructed. Moreover, since Netanyahu himself often ironically echoes the accusations against him that he is causing Israel to be politically isolated (see his quote above), the ironic echoing in Examples 1 to 6 may be perceived as two-stage echoing – Netanyahu’s supporters echoing Netanyahu’s echoing of his accusers. According to this understanding, it is even more pronounced that his supporters position themselves as Netanyahu’s ideological allies and that they share a common ­adversary,

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both in the discourse and in reality. This means that these comments by the supporters serve at the same time to reconstruct the positive-ethos of Netanyahu, to threaten the positive-face of his critics and to enhance their own positive-face. The following examples demonstrate other common echoes in comments by Netanyahu’s supporters. On October 23, 2017 Netanyahu delivered a speech in the Knesset [Israel’s parliament], in which he dubbed his critics hamutsim – a Hebrew word that means both “sour” and “pickles.” As he put it in his speech: The industry of despondency persists, and has respected representatives in this house and in the media. There has recently been an innovation, a new industry, the pickle industry [anaf ha-hamutsim] […] Today they say – there is a feeling of sourness [hamitsut] among the public. Netanyahu goes around with a sour face [be-panim hamutsot]. They can’t decide whether I am sour [hamuts] or arrogant or both.

The word hamutsim (as well as its grammatical inflections) was originally used in Hebrew as an adjective meaning sour. This meaning is also used in the compound phrase melafefonim hamutsim [lit. sour cucumbers], which means pickles. In a semantic process of ellipsis, the noun melafefonim [cucumbers] is often omitted, with the adjective hamutsim alone indicating the meaning of the original compound phrase melafefonim hamutsim, i.e., pickles. According to Netanyahu’s above quote, by using the term hamuts(im) meaning sour, he is echoing his critics’ condemnation of him and his policies. Thus, hamutsim as a nickname for Netanyahu’s critics is actually a metonymy – those who used the metaphor to condemn Netanyahu have now become its target. The metaphorical meaning of hamutsim as sour people is preserved, conveying the message that the criticism against Netanyahu is not justified, but is rather due to the fact that his critics are negative people in general. The elliptical use of hamutsim as pickles makes the ridicule of these people even more pronounced. The following examples demonstrate a three-stage echoing in which Netanyahu’s supporters echo his use of hamutsim (either as sour or pickles), which, as noted, itself echoes his critics’ former use of this term against him. At times, the metaphoric use of hamutsim (meaning pickles) is revived by using other metaphors from the same semantic field (underlined in Examples 10 and 11).

(7) After this, the pickles/sour [people] will say that that we’re in a state of “isolation”….  (November 22, 2017)



(8) Netanyahu, you forgot to tell the pickles/sour [people] that you’re also the reason there’s no rain.  (November 24, 2017)



(9) Go to the Ayalon highway and see the traffic jams. The pickles/sour [people] are stuck in the traffic jams.  (November 22, 2017)



“Hero, genius, king and Messiah” 

(10) And while the Prime Minister did all this – Ehud Barak stewed (hitbashel) for another week on the pickle shelf [madaf ha-hamutsim].  (November 17, 2017)13 (11) All the pickles are invited to dance, inside or outside the can [kufsa] … your choice.  (November 17, 2017)

Here too, the echoing of Netanyahu echoing his critics reproduces his ironic view toward them, further strengthening it in the given co-texts, since it presents the criticism of Netanyahu as unfounded in view of the major achievements he reported. The outcome is thus the same as in Example 1–6: the threat to the positive-face of Netanyahu’s critics is viewed as an expression of solidarity and support for Netanyahu, both in discourse and in reality. Thus, it also serves to position Netanyahu’s supporters as his allies in his struggle, reconstruct his damaged ethos and enhance the positive-face of the supporters themselves. 7.  Ironic echoing in comments by Netanyahu’s critics In this section, I will discuss comments in which Netanyahu’s critics ironically echo what they perceive as Netanyahu’s self-praise or compliments expressed by his supporters. On Fridays, Netanyahu often publishes a post in which he lists his actions over the previous week. For the most part, these posts contain brief texts such as the following: –– Wrapping up another week of action [asiya]. Shabbat Shalom! (November 17, 2017). –– Wrapping up another week of action. (November 24, 2017). These posts are followed by videos in which Netanyahu reviews his activities and those of his government that week in various political arenas (government decisions, visits abroad, meetings with leaders, etc.), and sets out future plans. Such posts and others that attribute a list of achievements to Netanyahu evoke many anti-ethos ironic comments among his reviewers, for example: (12) He works full time… he doesn’t sleep… makes in his pants because he has no time to go to the bathroom… Hero, genius, king and Messiah…

.  Ehud Barak served in several senior positions in Israel, including prime minister from 1999 to 2001 on behalf of the leftist Israel Achat party. Although he has not served as a Knesset member in recent years, he has remained active in the public-political arena.

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There is no one who can replace him… never has been and never will be… billions of years have been worthwhile only because of the existence of Bibi [Netanyahu’s nickname]. He was… He is… He shall be…

In this comment, the echoing of Netanyahu’s self-positioning and the echoing of his external positioning by his supporters are intertwined. The comment begins with an echo of Netanyahu’s positioning as an accomplished leader who devotes all his time to the people and the state – a positioning found both in Netanyahu’s posts and in his supporters’ comments: “He works full time… [hu oved ful taim] He doesn’t sleep … makes in his pants [oseh ba’mikhnasa’im] because he has no time to go to the bathroom…” In this echo, there is a blatant flouting of what Grice (1975) terms the maxims of quantity, quality and manner. The exaggeration and the use of the informal, vulgar expression “makes in his pants” [oseh ba’mikhnasa’im] make the description absurd, and ridicules the way in which Netanyahu describes his dedication to his duties as prime minister. In what comes next, the commenter is echoing supporters’ comments that reflect blind adulation of Netanyahu. This includes, first, the use of superlatives – “Hero, genius, king and Messiah..”; second, the presentation of Netanyahu as irreplaceable, which in itself echoes Netanyahu’s self-positioning: “There is no one who can replace him never has been and never will be”; and third, an extremely emotional glorification of Netanyahu, part of which echoes a familiar religious song of praise to G-d called “Lord of the Universe” [adon olam]: “Billions of years have been worthwhile only because of his existence… He was… He is… He shall be…”14 The victims of the irony in this comment are both Netanyahu and his supporters, who share Netanyahu’s positioning as an exalted leader who is comparable in his abilities to God and has no human replacement. This means that the damage to Netanyahu’s ethos is inevitably combined with the threat to the positive face of his supporters. In a video from November 17, 2017 (following the post that states “Wrapping up another week of action. Shabbat Shalom!”), Netanyahu announced a new grant called “a heating grant” [ma’anak himum], a one-time grant of NIS 555, available to the needy elderly on a one-time basis each October. His announcement on this issue ended in the words: “I want them all to be warm and cozy in the winter.” This post provoked many anti-ethos ironic comments against Netanyahu, for example:

.  Echo of “He was and He is and He will be in glory.”



“Hero, genius, king and Messiah” 

(13) A heating grant? One of your best, a one-time grant of NIS 500 for the needy elderly is a joke. (14) You want the elderly to be warm and cozy… You are so sweet!! How many years have you been prime minister? It just occurred to you?

These comments share the same pattern, first echoing Netanyahu’s statement, then echoing Netanyahu’s supporters’ potential compliments regarding this statement and finally, presenting the commenter’s critical position on the grant in question in a relatively overt manner. In Example 13, the commenter echoes the term “heating grant” [ma’anak himum] used by Netanyahu. However, while Netanyahu presents the granting of money as an important and useful move, in the comment, this term is followed by a question mark: “A heating grant?” In view of Netanyahu’s previous statement, one cannot assume that the commenter expects an answer to his question, so the question may be perceived as a blatant flouting of the maxim of quantity (Grice 1975, 1978) and also a violation of the sincerity condition required to perform a felicitous question (Haverkate 1990). In light of all this, the echoing question may be interpreted as an ironic reservation with both the statement and the act itself. In Example 14, the commenter echoes the emotional motivation that Netanyahu attributed to his actions: “I want them all to be warm and cozy in the winter.” The commenter changes the first person to second person and echoes Netanyahu’s emotional statement almost precisely: “You want the elderly to be warm and cozy.” Such an act of mirroring the recipient’s statement might be acceptable in certain contexts (e.g., when speaking to young children), but since it is directed at the prime minister, the assertion may be perceived as a blatant flouting of the maxims of manner and quality (Grice 1975, 1978) as well as pretense (Clark & Gerrig 1984). Thus, in this example, too, the ironic interpretation of the echoing is supported by additional cues. As noted, after echoing Netanyahu, the commenters echo his supporters: “One of your best” [echad ha-gdolim shelkha] (13); “How sweet you are!!” [eize matok ata!!] (14). In both examples, irony is marked not only by the echoing itself, but also by violation of the sincerity condition required to perform a compliment (Haverkate 1990). In Bakhtinian terms (Bakhtin 1981, 1986), in both cases the echoing of supporters functions as a turbulent polyphonic arena in which the echoed flattering voice of the supporters clashes with the echoing critical voice of the commenters toward them and Netanyahu.15

.  Bakhtin (ibid) uses “polyphony” to denote a clash between two rival voices in a single utterance, at times even one word.

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The polyphony is especially pronounced in Example 14, in which the commenter continues with his previous register shift (“You want the elderly to be warm and cozy”) and again echoes a typical appeal to a child – “You are so sweet!!”. This register shift may be considered a blatant flouting of the maxim of manner (Grice 1975, 1978). In this way, it serves to position the commenter as well as Netanyahu’s supporters, who seemingly tell Netanyahu “You are so sweet!!,” as adults, and accordingly, positions Netanyahu as a child who expects them to express enthusiasm for him. For this reason, the violation of the sincerity condition required to perform a compliment (Haverkate 1990), which appears in both examples, is more striking in Example 14, as is the pretense (Clark & Gerrig 1984) that can be attributed to the commenter. As stated, the last parts of the two examples more overtly reflect the commenter’s critical stance toward Netanyahu’s act – accusing him of inappropriate treatment of the needy elderly. Example 13 includes a judgmental assertion that implies the accusation that Netanyahu is disparaging the elderly: “a one-time grant of NIS 500 for needy elderly is a joke,” while Example 14 includes two rhetorical questions: “How many years have you been prime minister?” and “It just occurred to you?,” the combination of which implies that Netanyahu should have assisted the elderly much earlier than he did. Thus, the victims of the irony in these examples are both Netanyahu and his supporters – Netanyahu for praising his own belated and insufficient action to help a needy population (which can be seen as a lack of awareness, hypocrisy or deceit), and his supporters for complimenting Netanyahu “automatically,” without any critical judgment. The damage to Netanyahu’s ethos is increased by the threat to his supporters’ positive face, and vice versa. Examples 15 and 16 are comments on the post: –– “We inaugurated Highway 31 in the south of the country, we are connecting Israel !” (November 23, 2017) The post is followed by a video in which Netanyahu is seen giving a speech in front of a picture of a large interchange, at the top of which the phrase “Connecting Israel” ends with a picture of the Israeli flag. Netanyahu describes the contribution of the new road, stating that it “abolishes the concept of the periphery.”16 Here are two of the readers’ comments to the post:

.  The concept of periphery is both geographical (remote areas in Israel) and sociological (economically and socially weak populations which usually leave in remote areas).



“Hero, genius, king and Messiah” 

(15) He is connecting roads and dividing the people. Where is the applause [kapayim17]???? (16) …Applause… [kapayim]

In Example 15, the commenter echoes Netanyahu’s statement, “Connecting Israel,” but makes two fundamental changes. First, he changes “we are connecting” to “he is connecting,” thereby granting Netanyahu exclusive responsibility for the action. Second, he changes “Israel” to “roads,” thereby greatly reducing the scope and importance of the achievement. Furthermore, while the commenter attributes personal responsibility to Netanyahu for what might be considered a small and marginal achievement – “connecting roads,” he also attributes responsibility to him for a major and central failure – “dividing the people.” In so doing, he presents Netanyahu’s self-positioning – as an important and successful leader – as false, ironically positioning him as a failed leader. However, the more ironic echoing is found in the second part of Comment 15, “Where is the applause????”, as well as in Comment 16: “…Applause …” Both echo the request made by Minister of Culture Miri Regev (then MK) to applaud her during an election speech for her party and its leader Netanyahu, on December, 17, 2012:18 The Likud Beitenu party is talking about values.19 The State of Israel, a Jewish state with Jerusalem as its capital for eternity. Applause [kapayim]! The next prime minister will be Netanyahu. The Likud Party will remain in power […].

The rhetorical value of echoing Regev is derived from two pronounced characteristics often attributed to her in the Israeli public discourse:20 She is considered a blind follower of Netanyahu, and is perceived as vulgar in her behavior. In both examples, the multiplicity of punctuation – question marks (15) and ellipses (16) – enhances the ironic effect by pointing to both the demand that the public applaud and the assumption that it will do so. Consequently, these ironic echoes have three victims: first, Netanyahu, for surrounding himself with unswervingly loyal and unsophisticated supporters

.  Kapayim is a highly emotive, lower register ellipsis of mehiyot kapayim. .  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcwcPmoyBtE. .  The “Likud Beitenu” was an electoral alliance between the center-right Likud party and the right-wing Yisrael Beitenu party in 2012–2014. .  These characteristics are reflected, for example, in readers’ comments on her posts (https://www.facebook.com/miri.regev.il/) as well as on news items regarding her (e.g., https://www.haaretz.co.il/magazine/.premium-1.6632908).

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who glorify his ethos with no real justification; second, politicians such as Miri Regev, for demonstrating blind loyalty to Netanyahu and encouraging voters to do the same; and third, Netanyahu’s supporters, for being captivated by his selfpositioning and external positioning by blindly loyal supporters such as Regev as an accomplished leader, which is reflected in applauding him when asked to do so. This means that Netanyahu and his supporters – both politicians and commenters – are all accused of constructing an artificial and unjustified ethos for him. Once again, the damage to Netanyahu’s ethos is directly connected to the threat to the positive face of his supporters. Example 17 is a comment on this brief post: –– Today I met with Ecuadorian Minister of Foreign Affairs Maria Fernanda Espinosa in order to strengthen cooperation between our two countries in the areas of technology, agriculture, water, and other fields. (November 22, 2017; originally in English) The post is followed by a photograph showing Netanyahu and the Ecuadorian minister shaking hands. This is one of the readers’ comments: (17) Ecuador = a powerful country. If I don’t have a significant country, Ecuador is fine with me.

The comment begins with the equation “Ecuador = a powerful country.” This equation initially appears to be the commenter’s assertion, yet turns out to be part of the echoing of Netanyahu’s supposed thoughts – the way in which he is supposedly planning, in a manipulative manner, to position himself as a successful leader. This ironic echoing positions Netanyahu as a manipulator and a demagogue visà-vis his addressees, and thus damages his ethos. Again, this damage is combined with a threat to the positive face of Netanyahu’s supporters, since they may be seen as naïve and as having poor judgment, which apparently enables Netanyahu to manipulate them. 8.  Conclusion An examination of readers’ comments on Netanyahu’s posts has shown that commenters use ironic echoes as a rhetorical tool to enhance or damage Netanyahu’s ethos, as they enhance their own positive face and threaten those of commenters from the opposing camp. Netanyahu’s supporters ironically echo two kinds of accusations against him that are widespread among his critics – specific accusations of causing Israel’s political isolation, and general accusations of responsibility for “sourness” in the



“Hero, genius, king and Messiah” 

country. These echoes are embedded in linguistic co-texts that seemingly indicate that the accusations are false and malicious. In this way, the echoes threaten the positive face of Netanyahu’s critics and, in addition, enhance Netanyahu’s ethos as a successful leader who continues his important work despite those who unjustifiably challenge him. By virtue of taking Netanyahu’s side and uniting their voices with his voice, Netanyahu’s supporters position him as a leader worthy of complete trust and full support. At the same time, from their point of view, they also enhance their own positive face as those who take part in Netanyahu’s struggle against his critics and perhaps even as those who enable him to continue to lead the country. Moreover, echoes of accusations against Netanyahu by his supporters may be considered multi-stage echoes that echo similar echoes carried out first by Netanyahu himself. According to this understanding, these echoes may make an additional contribution to Netanyahu’s ethos and the positive face of his supporters. That is, they serve first to position Netanyahu as the one who sets the stage for his supporters in their shared confrontation against the rival camp, and second to position Netanyahu’s supporters as his loyal allies as well as his spokespeople in his just struggle against those who slander him. Netanyahu’s critics, on the other hand, in most cases ironically echo his selfpositioning and external positioning by his supporters as a super-leader. The echoing of Netanyahu mainly includes his descriptions of total dedication to fulfilling his duties as prime minister, extraordinary achievements for the benefit of the people and the state and tangible contributions to weakened populations (residents of the periphery, the elderly). In addition, Netanyahu is echoed as ostensibly planning to present a minor achievement as an extremely important one, and as defining his critics as “sour (people)/pickles.” Politicians who are close to Netanyahu are echoed as asking to applaud him when he presents his achievements, while the echoes of Netanyahu’s “regular” supporters mainly include manifestations of blind adulation and unwavering, uncritical support of Netanyahu. This results in a harshly ironic picture according to which Netanyahu is a manipulative leader who sees himself as superior, and misleads his supporters with unjustified boastfulness. At the same time, his supporters are portrayed as attributing Netanyahu with divine qualities, warm concern for voters as well as closeness to them, which is why they follow him blindly. The ironic criticism is amplified by the use of additional means in both the echoes and the co-texts in which these echoes are embedded: blatant flouting of various maxims, violation of the sincerity condition and pretense. Since Netanyahu’s relationship with his supporters is portrayed as an improper dominant-submissive, manipulator-manipulated and exploiter-exploited relationship, both the echoing of Netanyahu and of his supporters has a dual effect:

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damage to Netanyahu’s ethos and a threat to the positive face of his supporters. Indirectly, the outcome is an enhancement of the positive face of Netanyahu’s critics: They position themselves as observing the situation from above with utter disdain and understandable and justified “sourness,” thus becoming the ones who are actually superior. Readers’ comments, then, contain a complex network of echoes, in which the commenters express not only their authentic voices, but also other voices, some of which already contain echoes of other voices. The various simultaneous voices are treated differently by the commenters who echo them – with support, appreciation and even admiration for some, and ironic reservation to the point of contempt for others. Bakhtin (1989: 126) perceived polyphony as inherent to irony because it contains different voices that confront one another not on the overt level of discourse, but within the boundaries of a single linguistic unit. In the comments examined, the struggle between commenters who belong to rival political camps is particularly tempestuous in terms of its polyphonic manifestations, first, in the confrontation between the echoing voice and the voices that it echoes, and second, between different echoed voices in the same utterance, at times even in the same word.

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Dascal, Marcelo, and Elda Weizman. 1987. “Contextual Exploitation of Interpretation Clues in Text Understanding: An Integrated Model.” In The Pragmatic Perspective, ed. by Jef Verschueren, and Marcella Bertuccelli-Papi, 31–46. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John ­Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/pbcs.5.08das Davies, Bronwyn, and Rom Harré. 1990. “Positioning: The Discursive Production of Selves.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 20 (1): 43–63. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5914.1990.tb00174.x Dayter, Daria. 2016. Discursive Self in Microblogging: Speech Acts, Stories and Self-Praise. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.260 Dori–Hacohen, Gonen. 2016. “The ‘Tokbek’ as an Israeli Term for Talk: The Potential for Democratic Carnival and Defective Democratic Reality.” Israel studies in language and society 9 (1–2): 164–183. (Hebrew) Dori–Hacohen, Gonen, and Nimrod Shavit. 2013. “The Cultural Meanings of Israeli Tokbek (Talkback Online Commenting) and their Relevance to the Online Democratic Public Sphere.” International Journal of Electronic Governance 6 (4): 361–379. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJEG.2013.060649 Fetzer, Anita. 2015. “‘When You Came into Office You Said That Your Government Would Be Different:’ Forms and Functions of Quotations in Mediated Political Discourse.” In The Dynamics of Political Discourse: Forms and Functions of Follow-ups, ed. by Anita Fetzer, Elda Weizman, and Lawrence Berlin, 245–273, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John ­Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.259.10fet Fetzer, Anita, Elda Weizman, and Lawrence Berlin (eds.). 2015. The Dynamics of Political Discourse: Forms and Functions of Follow-ups. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John B ­ enjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.259 Goffman, E. 1974. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Granato, Luisa, and Alejandro Parini. 2015. “Online Follow-ups as Evaluative Reactions to Two Visits of the Argentinian President to the United States.” In The Dynamics of Political Discourse: Forms and Functions of Follow-ups, ed. by Anita Fetzer, Elda Weizman, and Lawrence Berlin, 141–169, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.259.06gra Grice, Herbert P. 1975. “Logic and Conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts, ed. by Peter Cole, and Jerry L. Morgan, 41–58. New York: Academic Press. Grice, Herbert P. 1978. “Further Notes on Logic and Conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics 9: Pragmatics, ed. by Peter Cole, 113–127. New York: Academic Press. Harré, Rom, and Grant Gillett. 1994. The Discursive Mind. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Harré, Rom, and Luk van Langenhove (eds.). 1999. Positioning Theory: Moral Contexts of International Action. Oxford: Blackwell. Haverkate, Henk. 1990. “A Speech Act Analysis of Irony.” Journal of Pragmatics 14: 77–109. https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(90)90065-L Hirsch, Galia. 2011a. “Redundancy, Irony and Humor.” Language Sciences 33: 316–329. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2010.11.002 Hirsch, Galia. 2011b. “Between Irony and Humor: A Pragmatic Model.” Pragmatics and Cognition 19 (3): 530–561.  https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.19.3.07hir Hirsch, Galia. 2017. “Who is the Victim? When the Addresser of the Echoed Utterance and the Target of the Irony Differ.” Text & Talk, 37 (2): 189–211. https://doi.org/10.1515/text-2017-0003

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Johansson, Marjut. 2015. “Bravo for This Editorial!: Users’ Comments in Discussion Forums.” In Follow-Ups in Political Discourse: Explorations across Contexts and Discourse Domain, ed. by Elda Weizman, and Anita Fetzer, 83–107. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John ­Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.60.04joh Kampf, Zohar, and Roni Danziger. 2019. “‘You Dribble Faster than Messi and Jump Higher than Jordan’: The Art of Complimenting and Praising in Political Discourse.” Journal of Politeness 15 (1): 1–23.  https://doi.org/10.1515/pr-2016-0044 Kohn, Ayelet, and Motti Neiger. 2007. “To Talk and Talkback: The Rhetoric of the Talkback in Israeli On-line Newspapers.” In On-line Newspapers in Israel, ed. by Tehila Altshuler, 321– 350. Jerusalem: The Israeli Democratic Institute and Ben-Gurion University. (Hebrew) Kopytowska, Monika. 2013. “Blogging as the Mediatization of Politics and a New Form of Social Interaction: A Case Study of “Proximization Dynamics” in Polish and British Political Blogs.” In Analyzing Genres in Political Communication, ed. by Piotr Cap, and Urszula Okulska (eds.), 379–421. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.50.15kop Kristeva, Julia. 1984. Revolution in Poetic Language. New York: Columbia University Press. Kristeva, Julia. 1986. The Kristeva Reader. New York: Columbia University Press. Lehti, Lotta. 2011. “Blogging Politics in Various Ways: A typology of French Politicians’ Blogs.” Journal of Pragmatics 43: 1610–1627.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2010.11.017 Livnat, Zohar, 2004. “On Verbal Irony, Meta-Linguistic Knowledge and Echoic Interpretation.” Pragmatics and Cognition 12 (1): 57–70.  https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.12.1.05liv Myers Roy, Alice. 1981. “The Function of Irony in Discourse.” Text 1 (4): 407–423. https://doi.org/10.1515/text.1.1981.1.4.407 Perelman, Chaïm, and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca. 1969. The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Ronan, Patricia. 2015. “Categorizing Expressive Speech Acts in the Pragmatically Annotated SPICE Ireland Corpus.” ICAME Journal 39: 25–45.  https://doi.org/10.1515/icame-2015-0002 Searle, John R. 1969. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: ­Cambridge University Press.  https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139173438 Sbisà, Marina. 1984. “On Illocutionary Types.” Journal of Pragmatics 8: 93–112. https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(84)90066-3 Searle, John R. 1976. “A Classification of Illocutionary Acts.” Language in Society 5 (1): 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500006837 Searle, John R., and Daniel Vanderveken. 1985. Foundations of Illocutionary Logic. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Shukrun-Nagar, Pnina. 2009. “Quotation Markers as Intertextual Codes in Electoral Propaganda.” Text and Talk 29 (4): 459–480.  https://doi.org/10.1515/TEXT.2009.024 Shukrun-Nagar, Pnina. 2019. “‘Well, Yair? When Will You Be Prime Minister?’: Different ­Readings of Ordinariness in a Politician’s Facebook Post as a Case in Point.” In The Construction of Ordinariness across Media Genres, ed. by Anita Fetzer, and Elda Weizman, 103–129. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.307.05shu Shukrun-Nagar, Pnina. 2020. “The Right to Speak and the Request to Remain Silent: Who Own Politicians’ Facebook Pages”? Israel Affairs 26 (1): 26–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/13537121.2020.1697483 Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 1981. “Irony and the Use-Mention Distinction.” In Radical Pragmatics, ed. by Peter Cole, 295–318. New York: Academic Press.



“Hero, genius, king and Messiah” 

Weizman, Elda. 2000. “Irony in News Discourse.” In Raphael Nir Jubilee Book: Studies in Communication, Linguistics and Language Teaching, ed. by Ora Rodrigue-Schwarzwald, Shoshana Blum-Kulka, and Elite Olshtain, 237–248. Jerusalem: Carmel. (Hebrew) Weizman, Elda. 2008. Positioning in Media Dialogue. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/ds.3 Weizman, Elda. 2015. “Irony in and through Follow-ups: Talk and meta-Talk in Online Commenting in the Israeli context.” In The Dynamics of Political Discourse: Forms and Functions of Follow-ups, ed. by Anita Fetzer, Elda Weizman, and Lawrence Berlin, 173–194, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.259.07wei Weizman, Elda, and Marcelo Dascal. 1991. “On Clues and Cues: Strategies of Text Understanding.” Journal of Literary Semantics XX (1): 18–30. Weizman, Elda, and Dori-Hacohen, Gonen. 2017. “On-line Commenting on Opinion Editorials: A Cross-Cultural Examination of Face Work in the Washington Post (USA) and NRG (Israel).” Discourse Context Media 19: 39–48.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2017.02.001 Weizman, Elda, and Anita Fetzer (eds.). 2015. Follow-ups in Political Discourse: Explorations across Contexts and Discourse Domain. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.60 Wilson, Deirdre. 2006. “The Pragmatics of Verbal Irony: Echo or Pretence”? Lingua 116: 1722– 1743.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2006.05.001 Wilson, Deirdre, and Dan Sperber. 1992. “On Verbal Irony.” Lingua 87: 53–76. https://doi.org/10.1016/0024-3841(92)90025-E

part ii

Voices in the text The dialogic-intertextual view

Indirectness and co-construction A discourse-pragmatic view Jacob L. Mey

University of Southern Denmark (emer.) Indirectness in language can basically be understood in two different ways: on the one hand, there is the indirectness that is associated with the meaning (either literal or ‘indirect’) of the speaker’s words; on the other hand, we have the indirectness that is specific for the discourse, understood as the textual work of co-constructing meaning. The first kind of indirectness is a semantic-contextual one; the other kind (while also relying on the context for its interpretation) is a pragmatic one, as it involves the active collaboration of the interactants in language use. It is this latter understanding of indirectness, in particular as it concerns the ‘voices’ of the interactants and their access to the underlying ‘indirect’ meanings of the discourse that will be the subject of my contribution. Keywords:  indirect speech acts, egocentric vs. pluricentric acts, pragmatic acts, adaptability, co-locution, context and co-text, voice, textual collaboration, (free) indirect discourse, ‘erasure’

1.  Introduction: Two kinds of indirectness? Classical speech act theory and the models for linguistic interaction that derive from it, respectively take it as their main ‘whipping boy’ (Prügelknabe) basically operate with a variant of the time-honored Saussurean (1916) model of communication: two ‘talking heads’ sending, respectively receiving, signals emanating from the sender’s brain to the recipient’s, via suitable physical/corporeal devices such as tongues and ears (Mey 1985: 12; orig. Saussure 1949 [1916]: 27). In speech act theory, the ‘point’ of the act is in the speaker’s intention, which leads to a classification of ‘illocutionary acts’ in accordance with this intention. There is a (small) allowance for personal interpretation of certain acts, as in Searle’s ‘indirect speech acts,’ said to depend on the context of use and the common understanding of a situation (often typified by the act, in a circular move); but on the whole, such indirectness is considered an aberration in relation to the standard model. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.316.04mey © 2020 John Benjamins Publishing Company

 Jacob L. Mey

On another view, it is postulated that in principle, all speech is ‘indirect,’ that is to say, it takes its ‘direction’ not from the single speaking head (nor even from the hearing ditto); rather, it arises in a situation of cooperation between (not necessarily two) users of language, in ‘acts’ that are no longer just speech activities, but include a whole bevy of what earlier used to be called the ‘extra-linguistic’ components of speech, comprising also the other users that are involved in the act. I have suggested to replace (or better complement) the notion of ‘speech act’ with that of ‘pragmatic act’ – called pragmatic acts “because they base themselves on language as constrained by the situation, not as defined by syntactic rules or by semantic selections and conceptual restrictions. Pragmatic acts are situation-derived and situation-constrained; in the final analysis, they are determined by the broader social context in which they happen, and they realize their goals in the conditions placed upon human action in that context” (Mey 2001: 228). 2.  Egocentric vs. pluricentric acts Speech acts, as envisaged in classical theory, are ‘egocentric’ acts, originating in, and oriented toward a single speaker/hearer, as in the Saussurean model of communicating, the ‘talking heads’ (Mey 1985: 12, originally Saussure 1949: 27), vs. pluricentric acts, involving several interactants (in acts that not just are of speech). Being pluricentric involves the notion of a center that is not located in one single speaker or hearer; one could call it a dynamic, floating point of reference, oscillating between the various participants in the communication situation. And not only that: the communication is not restricted to the sounds we make when using verbal language; an integrating part of any communication is the non-verbal language that accompanies the verbal structures and sometimes even replaces, or at least complements, our words. But how does this relate to the indirectness that is the topic of the present article? All communication is a matter of adapting ourselves to the situation in which we find ourselves (on adaptation and adaptability, see Mey 2009: 7–13). In conversation, the main object is not to ‘get one’s point across,’ ‘cover an event,’ or ‘express an opinion;’ the important thing is to ‘get oneself across to the other(s),’ to enter the world of one’s interactants, to make them understand one from their point of view. My late brother, who was a successful businessman and vice-president of a major international company, once told me about his way to have a fruitful business interaction. He would try and imagine what the other party could have to say in objection to his own point of view. In other words, he second-guessed his opponents’ reaction, and then introduced it into the discussion, by voicing the objection as if it were his own. Put differently, he adapted to the point of view of his



Indirectness and co-construction 

interlocutors and indirectly established a common platform for discussion. This kind of indirect adaptation is crucial not only for business relations, but in any everyday interaction between people with different cultural or social backgrounds. What indirectness does in pluricentric communication is to take the brunt off the individual interactants’ possibly unfamiliar or unexpected linguistic and other behavior. Rather than issuing an order, one may suggest, propose, intimate, question, or even use body language to let one’s interlocutors know where the conversation could fruitfully move. Rather than formulating an assertion or stating one’s own point of view (indirectly, by suggesting to ‘Look here…’), one could use a ’What if…’ formula, leaving a ‘blank space’ for the others to join in and come up with alternative suggestions or proposals. By adapting to the common interactional situation, instead of trying to define the interaction according to one’s own hand-me-down feelings and judgments, one could steer the course of the interaction in many, mostly indirect ways. As a parent and teacher of many years, my most important communicative discovery was that in education and teaching, the direct way is never the most successful one. ‘Directing by indirectness’ should be the motto for any successful, especially pluricentric, type of interaction. By using an indirect, adaptive modus operandi, “we enter through the other person’s door, but come out through our own,” as Ignatius Loyola expressed it pithily five centuries ago in his Spiritual Exercises and elsewhere.1 3.  Adapting to pluricentricity: On facts and ‘indirect speech’ Basically, all adaptability consists in adapting oneself to, or even wholesale adopting, pluricentricity. This is what I assume also Kiesling and Johnson have in mind when they talk of a “community understanding of meaning” (2010: 292). One could call this a ‘fitting into the context,’ achieved more specifically by actively opening up the text (or more broadly, the communication) to other interactants in order to achieve this common understanding. The active component of this ‘opening up’ communication is precisely our willingness to adapt to other communicators, and not only to those that are ‘like us.’ Clearly, neither the linguistic or narrative understanding of context as the more or less loosely described, immediate surroundings (the ‘co-text’), or even as the wider, general ‘context’ of an utterance or episode (as it is done in text linguistics or in narrative modeling), can be said to be fully satisfactory. While it is certainly

.  E.g. in his instructions to Fathers Paschase Broët and Alfonso Salmerón, on their departure as apostolic delegates to Ireland, early September 1541. (Ep. 1: 363)

 Jacob L. Mey

true that “the context is everything,” as a popular apophthegm has it, we need to be more explicit about what we mean by ‘context,’ especially when indirectness is involved. But our adaptation can go too far, notably when facts are adapted to the context. Scientists reporting on their findings are said to be delivering ‘factual’ information, as the late Freeman Dyson has remarked; 2014); or, “Just let the facts speak for themselves,” as it is often said in popular presentations. However, contrary to the common admonition to ‘let the facts speak,’ facts don’t speak unless endowed with a voice: the reporter’s. The delivery of the factual information has to factor in the deliverer, just as all reporting has to take the reporter into account. On this view, a level of indirectness is introduced (involuntarily, but unavoidably): that of the erased reporting voice and its vanishing owner, the reporter. Just as all reporting in some way is ‘indirect’ (a reported fact is by definition first of all a reporter’s fact), this so-called factual information is in reality a second level fact, and, compared to the actual fact, of necessity less factual. In particular, generalizing from this observation, many supposedly factual statements are pseudo-factual because they suppress the speaking ‘voice.’ Adding a real or imagined ‘parenthetical’ voice to a statement (like ‘as s/he said,’ ‘as I have shown earlier,’ or ‘as now should have been made clear,’ especially if provided by the person referred to as ‘s/he’ or ‘I’), may indeed clarify the situation to a certain degree. But erasing the speaker’s voice, by making him/her into a simple ‘reference’ or by appealing to the unknown, often unnamed higher authority to whom this is now ‘clear’ (see Bakhtin 1994), does not make the problem go away: the erased voice comes back with a vengeance and claims its due respect by interpellating the indirect interloper (see my discussion of Dyson’s remarks in Mey 2018). ‘Indirect’ speech, as seen most clearly in the case of ‘free indirect discourse’ relies on the volitional acceptance of what we are told, of what is being (re-)presented as another world’s or person’s actual state of affairs. But since most of these cases are at home in the world of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘willfully suspended disbelief,’ we readily go along with the indirectness. Conversely, much of the news as indirectly reported in the media should rightfully be relegated to the domain where it belongs: the fictional universe of literary fantasy and artistic creativity – as seen clearly in the case of classical instances of ‘free’ indirect discourse; see Mey 2000: 102–103). Elsewhere, I have discussed the enigmatic phenomenon of the ‘indirect speech act,’ and raised the question how it can be that “our speech acts more often than not are executed by verbal expressions having very little to do with the literal interpretation of those expressions, but rather much with their conventional interpretation” (Mey 2001: 219). As Kiesling & Johnson put it, “all language use is potentially ‘indirect’ depending on the ‘hearer’ and the cultural ‘rules’ for ­interpretation”



Indirectness and co-construction 

(2010: 293). For example, if I try to get rid of the loquacious party horror, by telling him or her “Thank you for sharing this” (on hearing a totally uninteresting item of gossip or other information), this is not a proper act of ‘thanking,’ but an indirect way of telling the person in question that she or he is a bore, and ‘please take yourself off ’ elsewhere. The quasi-canonical’ act of ‘thanking’ serves here as an indirect act of ‘putting somebody down.’ As such it has been situationally defined and (not least) culturally accepted; in a culture other than the interactants’ own, the act may result in misunderstanding, consternation, or even offense. Compare also that, according to many standard accounts, an indirect request may replace a direct one if the requester either feels embarrassed with, or obliged to avoid, a direct, possibly confrontational situation. As Félix-Brasdefer remarks (discussing the case of Mexican-American speakers), “in order to minimize the threat and to avoid the risk of losing face, there is a preference for indirectness on the part of the speaker issuing the request to smooth the conversational interaction” (2005: 66). 4.  The dialectics of context When considering ‘context’ in its widest sense, it helps to think outside of the box, by placing one’s attention on other centers of (inter)action than the usual, humandirected ones, however indirect (and literally in-human) these latter may appear to be. As Cooren has pointed out, the context may involve not just animate (typically human), but also non-human, even inanimate partners: “we need to conceive of communication as involving not only humans but also various beings that emerge in interaction” (Cooren 2015: 2). Consider the case of a non-human agent, the common spider, such as it lives in our homes and yards, often to the great irritation and endless frustration of homemakers and gardeners and yard workers. Spiders seem to be everywhere, and they never go away, even if we destroy their webs as often as we can. What I find most interesting about spiders is how they find ways and means to construct their webs in the most (for us) unlikely places, the inaccessible nooks and crannies of the environment. Looking at a spider’s agency in web construction, it strikes me how they exploit the local environment, their context. Most important for the spider is to establish an initial attachment to that context: a point to which to fasten the first thread, supposed to support the entire coming construction. However, such a point of attachment is useless without its counterpart, a point to which the connecting ‘bridge’ is going to be secured. The spider is essentially an opportunist: as long as there is a surface or protuberance or excrescence or protruding tree limb that will serve, the spider immediately seizes

 Jacob L. Mey

the opportunity, helped by natural forces (such as a gentle breeze or the draught caused by an animal or human passing by). The opportunistic spider is not choosy: it establishes a communicative bond with who-/whatever there is to collaborate with in the common agency of building a web. The point to make here is that the material character of the diverse affordances (wall, tree, door post, etc.) is not relevant to the spider’s activity: whatever offers an attachment point will do. When the web is done, we admire the artistic symmetry of its ‘ground plan,’ but we often forget about that initial thread which invisibly supports the whole construction. This is precisely what, to its own demise, the spider did in the Danish author Johannes Jørgensen’s (1916) fable: it forgot where it came from and what supported it; when it decided to eliminate a particularly offensive, old and ugly, dust-covered thread in its web, it made the whole web come down. Indirectness is key, too, in language-based ‘webbing’: in conversation, one does not start out with a ‘pre-fab’ notion of how to say things or enact agency; one catches the ‘flow’ of the discourse and inserts one’s ‘threads’ (by some called ‘speech acts,’ by others ‘turns’) into the ongoing web where it seems most suitable, and preferably more by indirectly maneuvering than by making an assertion directly, without regard for the contextual opportunities that make our conversational contributions effective. While waiting for an opportunity to appear, one’s ‘direction’ may (again, opportunistically) change: the Conversation Analytic ‘turn transitional point’ is not so much a fixed ‘point’ as an element in a constant flow which allows for a suitable insertion. Such elements are often what I will call ‘announcers’ of indirect discourse: think of parenthetical expressions like ‘as to what so-and-so just said…,’ ‘by the way, that makes me think of ’…,’ or ‘incidentally, I just came across the following:…,’ and so on. Discourse is a bit like a circus performance on the trapeze or the line: the way the performer’s movements are inserted in the context of the top and side attachments (trapeze, line, net) is essential for a particular acrobatic turn to succeed. Similarly in discourse, an indirect contribution, by not being univocally and strictly defined as to its ‘drift,’ is often more likely to succeed than is an apodeictic statement or face-threatening speech act. Maneuvering the Scyllae and Charybdes of conversation is like weaving a spider’s web: at any given moment, the direction of the constructive flow may change, and the more indirect and fluid my contribution, the more successfully it will insert itself in the discursive stream. Indirect discourse is typically a political agency: finding ways and means to effect that what is locally possible (which is not always the same as what is globally needed). And, like in the case of the spider, one’s acts are not restricted to a particular brand of human or (in)animate agency: when Shakespeare apostrophizes the “unkind



Indirectness and co-construction 

winter wind,”2 or Shelley (1817) addresses “Ozymandias, King of Kings,” whose half-hidden sculptured remnants in the desert sand we observe, they indirectly comment on our own and our fellow humans’ current conditions. One often wonders how poets manage to find their ‘attachments’ and construct their ‘webs,’ as dictated by the conventions of poiesis such as rhyme and meter. How to foresee which vowel-consonant combination will fit the thought that I have in my head, as well as the pre-existing conditions of the verse line? The answer lies in the very indirectness of my agency, which will allow me to vary opportunistically among the possible choices of rhyming words and fitting notions that also will suit the rest of my line or stanza. And the less we can see the ‘traces’ of the agentive forces, the points and lines of ‘attachment’ of the web, the better the entire production will succeed; the attachments themselves are only indirectly relevant for the poetic impression and the aesthetic experience. What is important is the end result: the successful ‘poetic web’ (Mey 1993, 2000). 5.  The dynamics of discourse It is often taken for granted that discourse by nature is direct, inasmuch as its locution represents the ‘voice,’ the spoken words uttered by some living or known to be deceased speaker. By metaphoric extension, such discourse may not only represent a certain speech, pronounced by a particular orator (like Pericles) at a certain time and on a certain occasion, but even sound as the ‘voice of the nation’ or ‘the court of history’ (Bakhtin 1994). Such inanimate (or should we say ‘exanimate’?) discourses, like Pericles’ in Thucydides’ Historiai, have achieved a venerated stance among the contemporary and modern promoters of the author’s historical accounts, as they had among both ancient and later readers, down through the ages and into our times (witness the sizable number of treatises lucubrated by various French 19th century authors under the title Les discours chez Thucydide). Even

.  “Blow, blow, thou winter wind. Thou art not so unkind As man’s ingratitude. Thy tooth is not so keen, Because thou art not seen, Although thy breath be rude. Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, That dost not bite so nigh As benefits forgot”

(As you like it, Act II, Scene 7)

 Jacob L. Mey

among our own days’ politicians and pundits, from lightweight commentators and fleeting politicos to serious professorial bloggers, like Tuft University’s Daniel Drezner (on Posteverything 2018), the consensus is that a ‘Thucydides Redux’ can serve as a suitable backdrop for today’s global military, economic, and political conundrums. Still, as the spider example has illustrated, discourse should not be seen as a free-standing or arbitrarily collected set of words. Discourse, either direct or indirect, not only presupposes a ‘discoursant’ (or several), trying to make sense of the ‘world at our feet’ (Hougaard 2018); it involves also looking for attachments in that world. One such attachment is, obviously, the person or persons addressed (directly or indirectly) in the discourse; more generally, it is the ‘world at one’s feet.’ That world, just as the world at the mercy of our discourse, is not just a passive receptacle, a container to be filled with phrases (even though many current politicians’ discourse could make us believe just that). A dis-course deserving of its name is based on interaction: the (originally Latin) prefix ‘dis-’ not being used to signify a non-functionality (as does the other ‘dis-,’ like in dis-ability,’ which hearkens back to the Greek dys-, as in ‘dys-functional’). The prefix in ‘discourse’ is rather like the Latin ‘dis-,’ when conveying a sense of ‘to and fro,’ ‘back and forth,’ of ‘going over’ a topic in various separate moves in order to shed light on the matter from many different angles. That is to say that discourse in principle connotes an activity, from locutor to inter-locutor, making the others into ‘co-locutors,’ together building up the discoursal locution in ‘colloquy’ with the other interactants. An important consequence of viewing all, including indirect, discourse as a ‘co-locution’ is that no discourse can be considered final unless one takes into account both the ‘attachment points’ of the locution and its originators, and the way the discourse itself evolves and changes due to the input of the interactants. The old adage In omnibus rebus respice finem (‘in all things, consider the end,’ Thomas a Kempis 1418, ch. I: 24) holds also here; but the ‘end’ itself is less a static endpoint than an evolving ‘con’-clusion, taking into account all the various aspects of the trajectory traversed by the co-locutors. In other words, the ‘end’ is a cooperative effort between speakers and hearers, between individuals and society, between discoursants and their ‘attachments,’ comprising all the (often indirect and mostly invisible) features that color a particular locutor’s input and place it in a suitable context by bringing it ‘to the point,’ or ‘à propos,’ as one could call it, in order to fit in with the general trend of the locutionary effort. (See Mey 2000: 134–144 and footnote 44 on Bakhtinian ‘dialogism’ (1994), and Mey 2000: 144 on the notion of ‘textual collaboration’ as elaborated by Voloshinov 1973). But there is another facet to the ‘end’ of discourse, and it is especially in this other sense that discourse can be called ‘indirect.’ Straight, canonical speech acts are relatively rare (except in philosophers’ handbooks and linguistic treatises);



Indirectness and co-construction 

we prefer an indirect approach to a direct one (some even prefer indirectness to direct discourse for purely esthetical reasons, as did the Dutch 19th century author Lodewijk van Deyssel, who once remarked that he “preferred to err elegantly, rather than being bourgeois-like in the right,” 1898: 254). The point to insist on here is that indirectness pervades the whole discursive trajectory, such that the final, definitive meaning of the discursive collaboration is not revealed except post factum. In other words, the co-agency’s success is defined by the end result, in accordance with Thomas a Kempis’ principle, quoted above.3 To capture the double aspect of ‘finality’ in discourse, I suggest to make a distinction between the finality that is defined at the outset of the discourse or action, where the end still is seen as occurring in some future time, not yet realized through factual (mostly egocentric) activities: ‘finis ante factum.’ On the other hand, we have a finality of ‘result,’ the ultimate reckoning, ‘when all is said and done,’ in our (pluricentric) discourse. This is what I will call the post-factual goal, the goal ‘at the end of the day,’ as the saying goes; the ‘finis post factum’ is a goal realized by collaborating in agency, by ‘picking up agents as you go,’ in cooperation with often opportunistic or unexpected other agents, implicitly or explicitly involved in the interaction (not even excluding inanimate agents, see Cooren 2015). To sum up, one could use the words spoken by the brazen Rajasthani entrepreneur, owner of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: “everything will be alright in the end, so if it’s not alright, it’s not yet the end” (Sonny Kapoor, played by Dev Patel, from the eponymous film, based on Moggach 2011). 6.  Indirectness and discourse: the discoursants’ voices In general, our evaluation of what is called ‘indirect discourse’ (see Mey 2000: 72–73, 99–100) is based on comparing what we personally have registered with our senses by listening to a speaker, with what we know from placing the ­discourse in a ­familiar or trustworthy environment. The Athenian statesman Pericles’ (essentially indirect) discourses, as recorded in Thucydides’ Historiai, are inserted into our reader

.  The principle was elaborated and refined by St. Ignatius Loyola in his Exercises, stating that even indifferent worldly aims may be subsumed under a higher ‘end,’ thereby themselves becoming of higher value, or even ‘sanctified.’ Often formulated as ‘the end justifies the means,’ the principle has been attributed to such strange bedfellows as St. Ignatius and Karl Marx; its true meaning is that indifferent means obtain their justification from a higher intention on the part of the user; not that bad means can be ‘sanctified’ by postulating a higher end when using them. (On conventionalized indirect speech, commonly called ‘hinting,’ see Mey 2001: 136, 215).

 Jacob L. Mey

a­ wareness the way (we believe) they happened to be delivered: specifically where and when they were held ‘historically,’ namely on the Athenian agora during the lulls in the Peloponnesian wars of the fifth century B.C. A century earlier, the Pythagoreans had justified their doctrines by referring to the discourse of their founder, by indirectly quoting the great Syracusean philosopher’s discourse; they used to pronounce the famous formula, autòs épha ‘[he, Pythagoras] did say [so] himself,’ in order to end all controversy. And across the centuries and millennia, their way of settling a debate by appealing to an indirect discourse has often been revived, for instance to impress such imagined luminaries as Adrian Leverkuhn in chapter 12 of Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus. Be all this as it may, even pace licentia poetica, the very expression ‘he said it himself ’ contains the seeds of a contradiction which pervades every discussion about indirectness in discourse. Because only very few of the then living, and certainly none of the next hundreds of generations, including ourselves, have been able to actually hear the words of great masters like Pericles or Pythagoras, every reference to their discourse must of need be indirect. Even using a formula like ‘he himself has said,’ although supposedly representing a proper, ‘direct’ locution, nevertheless is merely a quote, a second-hand reproduction of the original saying, and therefore represents an indirect discourse. Acknowledging this ‘indirectness’ as an inherent quality of every quoted discourse (inasmuch as it always is tainted by the voices of the discoursants) imparts at the same time a great degree of ‘repetitive’ freedom for the repeater (‘if so and so said so, and another so and so repeats it, why shouldn’t I do the same’), and a great danger of leading one’s listeners astray, by willfully distorting the putative (but not directly ascertainable) ‘true’ meaning of the original discourse (to say nothing of the more modem complications having to do with copyrights and plagiarism). Indirectness in discourse is evidently a problem with all ‘sacred sources’ and holy texts, even to the extent that for some followers, not even a short quote from the prophet’s original discourse can suffer to be translated into another idiom, on the pains of being ‘betrayed’ – the extreme case of the translator operating as a ‘traitor,’ a misinterpreter of the original words: traduttore traditore, as the Italian saying goes. Conversely, there is ’treachery’ even in the literal quoting of a discourse and in its most faithful interpretations: by pointing to the ‘literally true’ character of the translation, and claiming its truthfulness as inherently conforming with incontrovertible standards of correctness, one’s faithful adherence to the ‘letter’ of the text may damage the original ‘spirit’ with which the text was imbued, and effectively destroy its sacred, ‘useful’ value – witness the many ways in which various sects within the Christian tradition have marshaled the Bible to serve their own purposes, or to denigrate or even persecute those whose interpretations ­differed from their own. The religious wars of past and present times are mostly



Indirectness and co-construction 

a fall-out of this conflation of truth in discourse with what fallaciously has been called its ‘directness’ – as if there were a direct straight line from source to unadulterated secondary, tertiary, etc. wellsprings!

6.  Conclusion Indirectness in human discourse is not (as many think) an obstacle to true understanding. Pluricentricity beats egocentric attitudes any time, also in producing and receiving (especially indirect) discourse. In particular, pluricentricity is key to understanding indirectness in discourse, as it provides the proper perspective in which to consider any text. But in addition, if it is true, as pragmatics tells us, that we have to ‘contextualize’ our utterances in order to properly grasp their meaning, then we also should be aware that ‘context’ in quoting, and in general, indirectness in discourse, are double-faced, Janus-like notions: by placing a quotation in its ‘proper’ environment, or by resolving the indirection of an utterance, we at the same time remove it from our own current understanding. Every context is another context’s context: and this context-in-context is itself a sequential array of discoursal mirrors that reflect, and partially distort, reality – at least as much as did the original discourse and its (in)directness.

References Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhaĭlovich. 1994. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, ed. by Caryl Emerson, and Michael Holquist, trans. by Vern W. McGee. Austin: University of Texas Press. [1986] Cooren, François. 2015. “In Medias Res: Communication, Existence, and Materiality.” Communication Research and Practice. London: Routledge. (Accessed October 3, 2017). https://doi.org/10.1080/22041451.2015.1110075 Deyssel, Lodewijk van (ps. Karel Alberdingk Thijm). 1898. Verzamelde Opstellen (‘Collected Essays’), Vol. 3. Amsterdam: Scheltema & Holkema. Drezner, Daniel W. 2018. “The White House is Interested in Thucydides.” www.washingtonpost. com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/01/19 (Accessed January 20, 2018). Dyson, Freeman J. 2014. “The Case for Blunders.” New York Review of Books, March 6. Félix-Brasdefer, J. César. 2005. “Indirectness and Politeness in Mexican Requests.” In Selected Proceedings of the 7th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, ed. by David Eddington, 66–78, Somerville, Mass.: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. Hougaard, Anders. 2018. “The World at Our Feet.” RASK: International Journal of Language and Communication 47: 3–12. Ignatius de Loyola, St. 1541. Ep[istolae] in Monumenta Ignatiana: Epistolae et Instructiones, 12 v. (Madrid 1903–1911).

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Jørgensen, Johannes. 1916. Mit livs legende (‘The legend of my life’), Vol. 1. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Kempis, Thomas A. 1418. De imitatione Christi (‘On the Imitation of Christ’). Kiesling, Scott F., and Elka G. Johnson. 2010. “Four Forms of Interactional Indirection.” Journal of Pragmatics 42 (2): 292–306.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2009.06.004 Mey, Jacob L. 1985. Whose Language? A study in linguistic pragmatics. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Mey, Jacob L. 1993. “Edifying Archie – or: How to Fool the Reader.” In Pretending to Communicate, ed. by Herman Parret, 154–172, Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter. Mey, Jacob L. 2000. When Voices Clash: A Study in Literary Pragmatics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Mey, Jacob L. 2001. Pragmatics: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. Mey, Jacob L. 2009. “Adaptation in Human-Computer Interaction.” In Concise Encyclopedia of Pragmatics: An introduction (Second Edition), ed. by Jacob L. Mey, 7–13. Oxford: Elsevier. Mey, Jacob L. 2018. “Expanding Pragmatics: Values, Goals, and Adaptability.” In Proceedings Pragmasophia II, September 18–22, 2018. Lisbon: Faculty of Communication and Social Sciences, Universidade Nova de Lisboa. (Forthcoming) Moggach, Deborah. 2011. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. New York: Random House. Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1949. Cours de linguistique générale. Paris: Payot [1916]. Shelley, Percy Bysshe. 1817. Ozymandias. In The Complete Poems of John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley. p. 589. New York: The Modern Library, n.y. Voloshinov, Valentin N. 1973. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. New York: Seminar Press [1930].

Whose line is it anyway? Three pragmatic cues for distinguishing between the implied-author and narrative voices: The case of Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome Talli Cedar

The Hebrew University The goal of this contribution is to distinguish between the implied-author and other narrative voices in order to answer the question of how the impliedauthor conveys criticism. For this purpose, I introduce three pragmatic cues. I argue that these serve as a mechanism connecting text and context, allowing the implied-author to convey ironic/humoristic criticism. I found the combination of footing and narrative entities a useful methodology. I offer an analysis of Jerome K. Jerome’s novel Three Men in a Boat using these cues. This theoreticalmethodological combination enabled me to distinguish between the speakermeanings of the implied-author and the narrator in this novel; describe the threeway relations between the implied-author/implied-reader/narrator; and expose the implied-author’s critical stance towards its narrator. Keywords:  criticism, cues, footing, humor, implied-author, irony, narrative voices, pragmatics

1.  Introduction This contribution aims to distinguish between the implied-author and other narrative voices, based on Schiavi’s (1996) assertion that any narrator is a tool of invention and “as inventor, the implied-author is by definition distinguishable from the narrators, who are invented” (ibid: 10). The implied-author (Booth 1961) is the entity that lies between the real author and the text, and is sometimes described as an elusive ‘ghostly’ being (Chatman 1990: 74). Therefore, discerning between its “voice” and that of the narrative voices (narrator and characters) can be tricky. I will attempt to make this distinction by combining the literary participation framework (Chatman 1990) with the concept of footing (Goffman 1981), while

https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.316.05ced © 2020 John Benjamins Publishing Company

 Talli Cedar

relying on a pragmatic model for the interpretation of speaker-meaning in literary texts (Weizman & Dascal 2005). I will propose three pragmatic cues – stylistic-duet, absurd and lip-service – and argue that they can be used as a mechanism for connecting text and context in order to distinguish between the implied-author and other narrative voices. I will define these cues and illustrate their function in Jerome K. Jerome’s classic novel Three Men in a Boat, abundant in humor and irony. I will examine how these cues are used by the implied-author to convey a speaker-meaning of indirect criticism. As these cues involve criticism, like Weizman (2001, 2008) and Hirsch (2011) I see them as indicating irony when used in addition to flouting the cooperative maxims (Grice 1975) or echoic-mention (Sperber & Wilson 1981; Wilson & Sperber 1992). 2.  Theoretical background This chapter draws mainly on two conceptual paradigms. The first is a participation framework that includes the real author and the implied-author, narrator and characters, implied-reader and real reader (see 2.1). The second uses the concept of footing to discern between the three responsible aspects of the utterer: Animator; Author; Principal (see 2.2). 2.1  Participation framework in the literary text Reading is a form of interaction that creates a participation framework that differs from that of conversation. The result is that “published fictions are more complex than oral anecdotes” (Chatman 1990: 75), as the narrative agents are more difficult to identify. Despite the fact that reading a text is “ultimately an exchange between real human beings” (ibid.: 76) – namely the real author and reader – it “entails two intermediate constructs: one in the text, which invents it upon each reading (the implied author), and one outside the text, which constructs it upon each reading (the implied reader)” (ibid.). Yet the implied-author “is not the ‘voice’: that is, the immediate source of the text’s transmission. ‘Voice’ belongs uniquely to the narrator” (ibid.). Other than the narrator,1 the narrative agents that have a voice in the

.  The term “narrator” is employed in this chapter to refer to the narrative voice that recounts the events. The narrative might use a narrator that is absent from the story, or present the narrator as a character, whether the protagonist or an observer/witness. The presence of the narrator’s “person” may be explicit or implicit, and the narrative may be told in first, second or third person. For further discussion of this narrative agent q.v. Genette (1980: Chapter 5).



Whose line is it anyway? 

text are the characters. The participation framework that is created by a readingbased interaction can be roughly illustrated by Figure 1:2

Real author

Narrative voices Implied-author narrator and characters Implied-reader

Real reader

Literary text Figure 1.  Participation framework in a literary text

I will elaborate mainly on the notion of the implied-author and how it is distinguished from the narrative voices. This is relevant for the purpose of this contribution in general and specifically for the argument presented in Section 2.2. The implied-author (henceforth IA) is an entity that was proposed by Booth (1961) and is described as follows: as he writes, [the real author] creates not simply an ideal, impersonal ‘man in general’ but an implied version of ‘himself ’ that is different from the implied authors we meet in other men’s works […] Whether we call this implied author an ‘official scribe’ or […] the author’s ‘second self ’ it is clear that the picture the reader gets of this presence is one of the author's most important effects. (70–71)

The IA is an “agency within the narrative fiction,” situated between the real author and the narrator (Chatman 1990: 74). This distinction between biographical author and narrator has been widely accepted (ibid), and the IA is postulated to fill the gap between the author and the text. Keeping with this approach, the real (biographical) author “retires from the text as soon as the book is printed and sold […]. Yet the principle of inventions and intent remains in the text” (ibid.: 75). Therefore, researchers from the new-criticism discipline rely solely on the text, and do not base their research on any extra-textual knowledge about the real author (Even 1974: 141–142). The IA hovers over the text, guides the reading process, and directs it toward the global-meaning of the text. It may be assigned intentions, meaning and goals throughout the text, which generate the IA speaker’s-meaning that may agree or disagree with the speaker’s-meaning of the narrator and characters (Booth 1961; Weizman 1999; Weizman & Dascal 2005). Rhetoric intentions conveyed

.  Figure 1 is based on Chatman’s narrative-communication diagram (1978: 151) with adjustments relevant for this chapter.

 Talli Cedar

t­ hroughout the text using clues, symbols, events, language choices, etc. can also be attributed to the IA (Chatman 1990; Schiavi 1996; Hirsch 2008: 12). Upon publication, the work invested in the text becomes a textual tool. The text becomes the IA instructing the reader how to read it and how to account for the choice and order of its textual components (Chatman 1990: 81–84; Schiavi 1996: 10), thus guiding the reader towards a certain global-meaning (Weizman & Dascal 2005). The IA is an elusive entity. Identifying it in a text is not a simple undertake. Weizman and Dascal postulated “a pragmatic model of literary interpretation, whereby the assignment of meaning draws essentially on the text” (2005: 62). Their multi-layered dynamic model is applicable for texts that offer “a fairly complete possible world” (ibid.). The model consists of the following stages: (a) identifying all of the voices in the text; (b) assigning them a speaker’s meaning by “drawing on utterance meaning and co-textual cues and clues”; and (c) assigning global-meaning to the IA based on the diverse speakers’ meanings (ibid.). Hirsch (2011) used this model to demonstrate how the IA and the narrator may convey different meanings, and how the IA allows the narrator to express conceptions that it does not share or even criticizes (ibid.: 538–540). In fact, Chatman argues that the concept of IA “is particularly important for texts that state one thing and imply another,” thus delivering a dual message (1990: 75). Another way to distinguish between the voices of the IA and the narrator is the existence of the ‘unreliable narrator’: The distinction is particularly evident in the case of the “unreliable narrator” […] What makes a narrator unreliable is that his values diverge strikingly from that of the implied author’s; that is, the rest of the narrative – “the norm of the work” – conflicts with the narrator’s presentation, and we become suspicious of his sincerity or competence to tell the “true version.” The unreliable narrator is at virtual odds with the implied author; otherwise his unreliability could not emerge.  (Chatman 1978: 148–149)

Leech and Short (1981) postulate that when a certain character expresses values that overtly contradict the reader’s values, the reader will react on two different levels – as a recipient of the character’s speech, and as the implied-reader (henceforth IR) that co-judges the character along with the IA. As stated earlier, the IR is the potential addressee, i.e. the IA’s counterpart – “not the flesh-and-bones you or I […] but the audience presupposed by the narrative itself ” (Chatman 1978: 149– 150), making it another abstract entity. The IR shares the IA’s knowledge, assumptions, values, likings etc. (Booth 1961; Chatman 1978; Leech & Short 1981). When the character’s values overtly conflict with those of the reader, entailing co-judgment of the character by the IR and IA, the reader forms a “secret



Whose line is it anyway? 

c­ ommunion” (Booth 1961) with the IA that is based on shared standards and on how they were constructed throughout the text. According to Leech and Short, the secret communion is the fundamental source of irony in literature, most commonly arising when a point of view expressed throughout the text conflicts with that of the IR and IA (1981: 277–278) and creates ironic criticism. This chapter illustrates how the IA casts its criticism. In order to do so, the following section will present the various aspects of the conversational speaker as described by ­Goffman (1981) and will argue that all three aspects can be ascribed to participants in the literary text framework. 2.2  Footing In the cadre of a model for the division of interlocutors’ roles, Goffman (1981) decomposes “the primitive notions of hearer and speaker” (153) into the more differentiated parts of the communication system: participation framework and production format, respectively (144, 153). He breaks down the utterer's voice into three distinguishable notions: Animator, Author and Principal.3 The first is “the sounding box in use […] the talking machine, a body engaged in acoustic activity, or, if you will, an individual active in the role of utterance production. He is functioning as an ‘animator.’” The second is “an ‘author’ of the words that are heard […] someone who has selected the sentiments that are being expressed and the words in which they are encoded.” The third element is “a ‘principal’ (in the legalistic sense) […] someone whose position is established by the words that are spoken, someone whose beliefs have been told, someone who is committed to what the words say” (144). These three are flexible and dynamic, as individuals can rapidly change social roles. Goffman asserts that “when we shift from saying something ourselves to reporting what someone else said, we are changing our footing” (151).4 Goffman describes the dynamic roles that interlocutors assume during a conversation (1981: 131–133), however this concept does not apply only to speech. Other forms of communication (e.g. monologue, lecture, TV, or radio broadcast) might be addressed to masses, to an audience or to imagined addressees. In such cases “a participation framework specific to it will be found” (ibid.: 137–140). I see text-reading as a form of interaction that is analogous to broadcasts, where the roles are rather fixed, since unlike conversation where “the auditor can request .  These will be henceforth capitalized and written in italics to prevent confusion with terms such as biographical author. .  The term footing encompasses the general phenomenon of role and frame shifts. This contribution focuses specifically on the shifts between the three notions of the speaker.

 Talli Cedar

feedback in order to pinpoint the speech act, […] the reader cannot query the author about the fiction’s meaning” (Chatman 1990: 76). Hence, the IR plays the part of addressee and the IA plays the part of addresser who directs the IR towards grasping the text's global-meaning. Let us explore this division from the perspective of IA vs. narrator. According to Chatman, the IA is “the principle that invented the narrator, along with everything else in the narrative, that stacked the cards in this particular way, that had these things happen to these characters, in these words or images” (1978: 148). Following this approach, I argue that the IA plays the role of Author. The Animator’s role, however, belongs to the narrator and the characters, never to the IA. “Unlike the narrator, the implied-author can tell us nothing. […] it has no voice, no direct means of communicating. It instructs us silently, through the design of the whole, with all the voices, by all the means it has chosen to let us learn” (ibid.). The IA demonstrably plays the role of Author, i.e. the one responsible for unfolding the events, choosing the words, positioning the characters, conveying messages to the IR, and more. Yet the IA lacks a physical voice. The voice speaking to the IR is always that of the narrative-voices playing the part of Animators. The IA communicates silently, via the utterances that it puts in the mouths of the speakers, the experiences it puts them through, and how it edits those utterances and experiences, but never through words. “The narrator is the only […] ‘voice’ of narrative discourse. The inventor of that speech, as of the speech of the characters, is the implied-author” (Schiavi 1996: 10). Regarding the role of Principal, I argue that it could be assumed by either the IA (global-meaning) or the narrative-voices (local-meaning), depending on the beliefs and values expressed. This approach will be exemplified in more detail in Section 5.2. I previously demonstrated (Freedman-Cedar 2010) how the IA and the narrator might convey different speaker’s-meanings as Principals and how, as Author, the IA allows its narrator-Animator to voice opinions it does not share and even criticizes. In the following sections I will describe the three cues employed to distinguish between the IA-Author and the speakers-Animators (Section 3) in the novel Three Men in a Boat (Section 4), and use pragmatic analysis to illustrate their function (Section 5). 3.  Cues and the distinction between IA and narrative voices Goffman maintains that a “change in footing is very commonly language-linked” (1981: 128). Therefore “linguistics provides us with cues […] through which such footing becomes manifest, helping us to find our way to a structural basis for



Whose line is it anyway? 

a­ nalyzing them” (ibid.: 157). The cues that will be introduced in the present section are consistent with this approach. The textual analysis will be based on the Cues and Clues pragmatic model for interpretation of the indirect speaker’s-meaning (Dascal & Weizman 1987; Weizman & Dascal 1991), which was later applied to literary text interpretation (Weizman & Dascal 2005). According to this model, the reader-addressee draws on two kinds of information when interpreting the text, namely clues, “both co-textual and contextual, which will lead him towards the determination of utterance-meaning and speaker’s-meaning,” and cues, “which help him to distinguish between opacity and indirectness” (Dascal & Weizman 1987: 44). The cue for opacity is the need to fill in gaps, and the cue for indirectness is mismatch between utterance-meaning and contradicting information. The term ‘cues’ (Dascal & Weizman 1987) will be employed here in a somewhat different sense. I will use this term when arguing in favor of making a distinction between the speaker’s-meaning of the IA and that of the other narrative-voices. I maintain that it is possible to define a mechanism that connects the text and the context, which I call ‘cues.’ I refer to the three cues I identified as stylistic-duet; absurd; and lip-service (Freedman-Cedar 2010). I will examine this mechanism based on the connection that I made between footing (Goffman 1981) and the literary participation framework (Chatman 1990) (Section 2). I will present them here in brief and elaborate in Section 5. Stylistic-duet and absurd cues are based on use of linguistic forms. Stylisticduet is based on juxtaposition of high and low registers that emphasizes salient stylistic differences, while absurd is based on exaggerated or unreasonable realworld representations that are inconsistent with common-sense. The third cue, lip-service, is different as it is based mainly on content, and is used to express conflicting opinions throughout the text. As these three cues all involve criticism, like Weizman (2001, 2008) and Hirsch (2011) I see them as indicating irony when used in addition to flouting of cooperative maxims (Grice 1975) or echoic-mention (Sperber & Wilson 1981; Wilson & Sperber 1992). 4.  Methodology and text This chapter poses the question of how the IA, a voiceless entity, manages to convey criticism. In order to answer this question, I propose three cues that mark the presence and influence of the IA. I will argue that these cues serve to expose the critical nature of the IA’s speaker’s-meaning and enable the reader to discern between the different ironists/humorists and their different speaker’s-meanings.

 Talli Cedar

The three cues introduced here are based on three different aspects of the text. They will therefore be presented in Section 5 in three separate subsections while examining text excerpts that demonstrate each of the three cues. A text excerpt containing criticism may contain multiple cues or none at all, however they are each presented separately for convenience purposes. All excerpts were taken from Jerome’s novel Three Men in a Boat, published in 1889. The novel recounts the story of three Victorian gentlemen and their dog on a weeklong boating trip on the Thames. The three protagonists are the narrator, J. (presented only by nickname), and his friends Harris and George. J. is a present narrator, involved in the story as one of the three main characters. He narrates the events in the first-person, expressing his thoughts, opinions, and beliefs, and recounts the adventures of the three friends and their conversations, while sometimes deviating to past stories that are somehow related to the main plot. I chose this novel as it is abundant in humor and irony. The text offers an interesting complexity that involves the participants’ framework and is structured based on ironic and humoristic indirectness. This study analyzes 38 excerpts taken from throughout the text, using theories for the identification of the implied-author (Booth 1961) combined with the concept of footing (Goffman 1981) and the model for interpretation of speaker’smeaning. It draws on the use of the concept of cues (Dascal & Weizman 1987). The analysis distinguishes between meta-textual utterances and plot/story segments, and between the IA’s actions and those of the narrator/characters. In order to expose the editing done by the IA, I used cues as described above to distinguish between humor and irony (Weizman 2008; Hirsch 2011), as well as the three cues introduced in Section 3. These cues refer to specific editing actions performed by the IA itself, hence the argument that they can be used to identify the IA’s presence. 5.  Three proposed cues and Three Men in a Boat The following analysis of three text excerpts will demonstrate how the distinction between different speaker’s-meanings was made using known pragmatic cues in addition to the three cues introduced in this chapter. In the following examples the addresser using indirectness is the IA. In other examples, other narrative agents played this role too. Each of the following excerpts presents a manifestation of one of the three cues, yet it is important to emphasize that (1) the IA’s criticism may be apparent even if these cues are not evident in the text (in such case, other cues would be activated by the IR); and (2) more than one of these cues might appear in a single



Whose line is it anyway? 

text excerpt. The cues are isolated here for the sake of presentation. These three cues, identified based on an analysis of known pragmatic cues for the detection of humor/irony, are designed to expose the existence of the IA. In many cases the IA’s presence in the text becomes apparent to the IR when the narrator’s perspective of different elements of the story does not coincide with that of the IA. Their different and even opposing perspectives present J. as an unreliable narrator and establish the IA’s existence (Chatman 1978). The reader hears both “voices” in the novel, at times alternately and at times simultaneously. I will demonstrate how, at times, it is possible to attribute humor found in the text to the narrator and irony to the IA, and vice-versa. J. explicitly expresses certain viewpoints that he himself contradicts vigorously. By contradicting himself, J. revokes his credibility and, unbeknownst to him, exposes the presence of the IA. As previously argued (Section 2.2), following the terminology of footing (Goffman 1981) the IA plays the role of Author. Hence, the IA’s editing is responsible for incorporating those contradictions that ultimately characterize J. as unreliable. The production of irony in the text can be attributed to different ironists. In some cases, the ironist is one of the characters including the narrator, who targets another character, while in others the IA may use irony to target the narrator, for instance. In these cases, the narrator is unaware of the irony, which creates a situation in which other participants, in this case the IA and IR, are conspiring against him (Sperber & Wilson 1981). I will distinguish between the “voices” of the narrator and the IA by attributing the irony or humor found in the text to them. While analyzing the examples, I will indicate occurrences where I found that the IA’s explicit guidance was manifested, among other ways, in the meta-linguistic comments uttered by J. that relate to the very text of this novel or to different literary genres. These meta-linguistic comments expose the duplicity of the voices in the text to the reader and leave her with expectations for the continued development of the text once she is unconsciously aware of the IA’s existence. These expectations are then realized through the three cues that indicate the IA’s existence. I will expand on the nature of each cue and then demonstrate how I distinguish between two ironists-humorists, the IA and narrator, J., in the novel Three Men in a Boat. 5.1  Stylistic duet The stylistic duet is a continuous literary tool that is incorporated throughout the novel. J. tends to express his feelings in an exaggerated manner in romantic monologues and to describe reality, and particularly nature, from an idealistic, lofty perspective. The responses that he receives are dry and practical (usually from Harris),

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abruptly shattering those castles in the air that he has built at length. A linguisticrelated opposition (flowery vs. colloquial) is apparent as well in addition to the form-related (verbose vs. succinct) and the content-related (idealistic vs. realistic) oppositions. J.’s romantic descriptions are delivered appropriately, using a high register and entwined with an abundance of metaphors and similes. Harris’ responses, however, are colloquial and tend to include slang. Harris is characterized as using slang, which revolts J., despite the fact that he occasionally uses it himself. The register deviation caused by J. and Harris’ stylistic characterization is related to the participation framework, as stylistic incongruity achieved by the narrator’s exaggerated rise in register highlights the fact that he wishes to be perceived as highly educated. Thus, he himself might become the subject of the IA’s criticism. Therefore, the register gap between J. and Harris is perceived here as a cue for interpreting the IA’s global-meaning of casting social criticism. Register deviation or clash was previously described as a marker of indirectness, whether ironic (Sperber & Wilson 1981) or humoristic (Hidalgo et al. 2009). The IA’s criticism focuses on literary styles, pretensions of being educated and excessively flaunting it, and social practices that are followed in a herd-like manner without stopping to consider their value.

(1) In Example 1, the IA ironically criticizes J. for using flowery speech that is disconnected from reality. The stylistic-duet is used by the IA who plays the role of Author in order to generate irony in the dialogue with Harris. As mentioned in Section 3, the stylistic-duet serves as a cue for irony when appearing alongside echoic-mentions or flouting of the cooperative maxims. I will briefly explain these two terms, and then analyze the example. According to Sperber and Wilson, irony is perceived as a case of “echoic mention of a real or imagined utterance or opinion” (1981: 310), “used to express the speaker’s attitude to the opinion echoed” (Wilson & Sperber 1992: 59). This attitude always reflects a certain degree of disapproval, and the speaker’s intention is that the addressee will interpret her true intention and attribute ironic meaning to the utterance. According to Grice’s cooperative principle speakers tend to make their contribution to the conversation “such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange” (1989: 26). This principle is comprised of four maxims: quantity (be as informative as is required, no more); quality (do not lie or say what you do not know to be true); relation (“be relevant”); manner (“be perspicuous”) (ibid.: 26–27). Following this principle, irony is perceived as blatant flouting of one or more of these maxims in order for it to be discovered by the hearer, thus assigning ironic meaning to the utterance (Attardo 2000; Colston 2000).



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1 I agreed with George, and suggested that we should seek out some 2 retired and old-world spot, far from the madding crowd, and dream 3 away a sunny week among its drowsy lanes – some half-forgotten 4 nook, hidden away by the fairies, out of reach of the noisy world – 5 some quaint-perched eyrie on the cliffs of Time, from whence the 6 surging waves of the nineteenth century would sound far-off and 7 faint. 8 Harris said he thought it would be humpy. He said he knew the sort 9 of place I meant; where everybody went to bed at eight o’clock, and 10 you couldn’t get a Referee for love or money, and had to walk ten 11 miles to get your baccy.  (p. 8) In lines 1–7, J. uses exaggerated rhetoric that is abound with metaphors and poetry and echoes the romantic descriptions of nature that are characteristic of 19th-century writing (Shipley 1946). Critical echoing of a writing style can be interpreted as indicating parody (Genette 1997; Hirsch 2017). Furthermore, J. uses the phrase “far from the madding crowd” (line 2), which is an echoic-mention of a phrase that first appeared in Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751), and later as the title of Hardy’s novel (1874). Both works were quite popular, and the IR could be expected to identify the echoic-mention. Gray’s elegy tells of uncorrupted country folk living in harmony with nature, and their bond that remains unbroken even in death. This concept befits J.’s romantic perception of nature, which he describes throughout the novel. Hardy, as opposed to Gray and J., used the phrase as a somewhat ironic title for a novel about country folk leading troubled and tumultuous lives. Hardy’s ironic perception befits the IA’s viewpoint which presents J. and his world-view as ridiculous and farfetched. I therefore see this extra-textual echoic-mention as representing both sources simultaneously, one relating to J.’s perception and the other to that of the IA. The IA-Author uses both direct and interpretative echoic-mentions in J.’s utterance to criticize J.’s tendency towards flouting the maxims of quantity and manner. J. is the only character that expresses himself grandiloquently. The criticism of the IA and the IR (who share the former’s perspective) is constructed throughout the novel by repeated incidents in which J. speaks irrepressibly and ignores more practical matters, causing accidents or finding his flowery style contrasted by that of his friends, as in lines 8–11. Beyond the specific criticism cast on J.’s grandiloquent style, literary criticism is cast on this style in general. This is made clear by the IA playing the role of Author and choosing to put an echoic-mention in his Animator’s mouth that refers the IR to contemporary literature that inspires J.’s flowery, metaphoric style.

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The verbose rhetoric itself, however, is not the sole source of irony. It constitutes a basis for the construction of irony when combined with the second paragraph in which Harris offers his reply. Harris’s character, as opposed to J., is practical, earthly, succinct in speech and colloquial in style. The result is completely opposing styles of speech, made salient whenever they are juxtaposed. This clash is the source of the stylistic-duet that cues the existence of the IA who, by virtue of its Author role, is the one who constructs the text as it sees fit for achieving its goals. Therefore, the IA is the one who chooses to juxtapose these styles in order to emphasize their differences and generate irony. Harris’s reply enhances the irony derived from J.’s flowery speech by diverting the register downwards. His style of speech is colloquial and practical. He uses slang words (e.g. humpy, baccy), and mentions worldly pleasures like smoking, sport magazines and nightly outings. This is the epitome of the recurring J./Harris duet – one exaggerates poetically and the other replies prosaically, while shattering the previous utterance. The juxtaposition emphasizes their flouting of the quantity maxim (J. is overflowing and Harris is succinct), enabling the IA to criticize both characters. Accordingly, the continuous stylistic-duet becomes a cue for irony in this (con)text. In addition to cues for irony, I also identified incongruity which serves as a cue for humor (Hirsch 2011). In the current example, the incongruity exists on two levels: the spiritual J. vs. the mundane Harris (Bergson 1911); and the upward diversion of register (J.) vs. its downward diversion (Harris) which creates an incongruity of both content and style. It is also reminiscent of mock-heroic parody, where noble style conflicts with mundane content (Genette 1997: 10–12). This excerpt is more ironic than humoristic on account of the number of cues for each phenomenon (Hirsch 2011: 550). The ironist is the IA, who generates the stylistic-duet. I infer the irony from the stylistic-duet that appears alongside the echoic-mention and flouting of maxims, which can be attributed to the work of the IA-Author. The targets of the IA’s irony are prosaic Harris and poetic J., whose flowery style is the subject of criticism. The IA’s other target is the Victorian style that is characterized by extreme romantic floweriness echoed in J.’s style. Despite the stronger tendency towards irony, incongruity is another main characteristic of the excerpt, and therefore the humoristic aspect is strong enough for the IR to be unconsciously aware of it, to be amused, and as a result possibly be more willing to accept the social criticism in general. 5.2  Absurd Stylistic contradiction serves to emphasize J.’s absurdity by illuminating the discrepancy between J. and his surroundings. The interpretation of reality in



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many parts of the novel is so bizarre, to the extent of ad absurdum, that it may be interpreted as yet another cue for the IA’s presence. In other words, someone had to intentionally create the absurdity because the alternative is that J. is mad. Yet he is not presented in that way. He is portrayed throughout the novel as a socially-accepted individual who leads a normative life. J. patently describes unreasonable things, which is clear to the reader based on extra-linguistic and common knowledge. The IA created a character that is so exaggerated that it conceals itself by not having a reliable narrator that can represent it faithfully. Nonetheless, its presence is inferred from the way that it allows J. to freely express himself uninterrupted (e.g. without offering another character’s reasonable response). This argument is based on flouting of Grice’s quantity maxim (1989). Considering that the IR is already unconsciously aware of the existence of the IA and shares its values, the IR expects it to express an opinion in the absurd cases that call for substantial interference. The negligible interference by the IA is an insufficient contribution for the current purpose, meaning that the IA flouts the maxim of quantity. I see this type of flouting as a cue for meaning-opposition, as described by Weizman (2000: 30). According to this approach the very absence of the IA is the cue for its presence. It allows J. to dig his own grave of unreliability (Chatman 1978), thus drawing the IR to its side and distancing her from J. Presenting J. as a ridiculous individual contributes to the secret-communion between the IA and the IR (Leech & Short 1981). The meta-linguistic comments combined with the legitimacy awarded to a character that is strange to the point of absurdity, within a realistic environment, are the source of the accumulating sense of the IA’s presence. For the IR to understand what is actually happening in the text, she must intuitively understand (Weizman & Dascal 1990), that events reported by J. are actually carefully directed by the IA. As will be demonstrated, the IA chooses to eliminate itself from the text as part of the absurdity cue and to explicitly avoid expressing an opinion in order to let J. further reinforce his unreliability. However, the IA only appears to withdraw itself from the texts, while in fact moving the plot forward by not restraining J. It thus continues to play the role of Principal of the global-meaning that is manifested indirectly in this case. Meanwhile, J. becomes the Principal of a local-meaning that constitutes part of the global-meaning. Thus, the gap between J.’s absurd beliefs and the IA’s opinions is used for the purpose of casting social criticism of J.’s behavior. On these occasions J. does not violate the sincerity condition (Haverkate 1990) since he truly believes in his local-logic (special logic attributed to humor [Ziv 1984]), even if it sounds absurd and ridiculous to the IR.

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(2) In Example 1 I examined how the IA generates criticism, mostly ironic, that it directs at J. in particular and at the romantic writing style in general. Example 2 will present the way that the IA generates additional cues for humor, in this case using the second cue – absurd.



1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight. Why hadn’t I got housemaid's knee? Why this invidious reservation? After a while, however, less grasping feelings prevailed. I reflected that I had every other known malady in the pharmacology, and I grew less selfish, and determined to do without housemaid’s knee. Gout, in its most malignant stage, it would appear, had seized me without my being aware of it; and zymosis I had evidently been suffering with from boyhood. There were no more diseases after zymosis, so I concluded there was nothing else the matter with me (p. 4–5).

J. is presented in the novel as a hypochondriac. Inter-textual evidence shows that he actually believes that he is sick: he goes to see his doctor and describes how he followed the doctor’s instructions fully. Finally, he expresses his amazement and happiness over merely surviving. His hypochondria results in non-sense (Jeffers 1995), which is part of the special local-logic attributed to humor (Ziv 1984). J. feels slighted for missing a disease (line 2) instead of feeling relieved, as a sensible person would, upon discovering that he has not contracted a certain sickness. His reaction is not the normal one but is quite the typical of a hypochondriac. Evidence of the sincerity of his hurt feelings are found in the text both explicitly (“rather hurt”; “sort of slight,” lines 1–2) and implicitly (“invidious reservation”; “less grasping feeling prevailed”; “to do without,” lines 2–3, 5). Another manifestation of local-logic is his decision not to be selfish about the missing disease (line 5). According to this line of thought, it is possible to deduce that by claiming the disease J. will prevent others from contracting it. Based on the IR’s extra-linguistic conventional knowledge (Dascal & Weizman 1987) she knows that more than one person can contract a certain disease at the same time. Moreover, patients tend to spread their diseases rather than preventing others from contracting them. Another cue for humor is script-opposition (Raskin 1985; Raskin & Attardo 1994) which requires satisfaction of two conditions: that the text is compatible with two semantic scripts, and that the overlapping scripts are somehow opposing (Raskin, 1985: 99–100). The two scripts in Example 2 are (a) a normal person would be happy to discover that he is not afflicted with a disease; and (b) a hypochondriac would feel slighted by such a discovery. The last sentence (line 9) appears after J. becomes convinced that he is not suffering from any other known malady. The cues for humor in this sentence are incongruity, violation of expectations, and local-logic (Hirsch 2011), befitting J.’s hypochondriac tendencies. But above all, the sentence functions as a punch-line



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(Oring 1989). Example 2 contains humor derived from non-sense and scriptopposition and is framed with a punch-line. The cues for irony are echoing of the behavior of hypochondriacs who, despite common sense, are certain that they suffer from every possible disease and are preoccupied with their poor health even when it is in perfect condition. Therefore, the target of this criticism is hypochondriacs, who are presented here as foolish people who reach erroneous conclusions and refuse to listen to common sense. Nonetheless, I did not find any pragmatic insincerity or flouting of maxims in this example, as J. does not adhere to laws of world and reason, but rather to the laws of his own local-logic. He therefore believes his nonsensical conclusions and ultimately (later on in the story) acts in accordance with these beliefs. Furthermore, hypochondriacs do not constitute a large percentage of the population, and therefore they are not an ideal target for ridicule. Hence, this excerpt is more humoristic than ironic. According to this analysis, Example 2 can be positioned on the ironyhumor continuum (Hirsch 2011: 553). Assuming that the IA and IR do not think that one sick person protects others from a disease, the IA enables J. to convey an unreasonable real-world representation that is inconsistent with common-sense. J. presents his world-view in a natural way, including the implication that it is natural “to have a hold” on a disease. These perceptions conflict with those of the IA who represents the reasonable reader. J. is the Principal of the direct utterance meaning that is devoid of irony, whereas the IA is the Principal of the indirect utterance meaning, echoing a perception so farfetched but presented so naturally, to the point of being impossible. This is an example of the absurd cue: the IA seemingly eliminates itself from the text, allowing J. to convey a world-view that is unacceptable to the reasonable reader. The punch-line follows the same pattern: J. is completely serious about his health and does not joke about the matter. In this utterance as well, he is the Principal of the direct utterance meaning. While J.’s assertion is not wrong – supposing he knows which diseases he has, it is true that nothing else is the matter with him – his mention of many severe diseases forms a mismatch between the alleged facts and his conclusion. The IA, however, sees things from the reasonable reader’s point of view, and it is the Principal responsible for the feeling that there is indeed a mismatch, and that J. reacts and behaves foolishly. The choice of words and phrasing in this case, i.e. the work of the Author, is in fact the IA orchestrating the text in order to criticize J. The IA edited J.’s feelings and thoughts in order to present J. as the target of its indirectness. The IA is both the ironist and humorist, creating a secret communion with the IR behind J.’s back. The IA, along with its IR, is the one criticizing J.’s hypochondria and framing J.’s opinions and thoughts as a joke, thus enhancing the reader’s feeling that it is a ridiculous point of view. The IA and IR’s ridicule has an aspect of dramatic irony,

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as J. himself is unaware of the fact that his recipient is in fact ridiculing him (Kreuz & Roberts 1995; Attardo 2000). According to Leech and Short, the most common form of irony results from a contradiction between a point of view expressed or implied in the text, and that of the IA and IR (1981: 277–278). Their claim is supported here when – to use footing terms – the contradiction between the points of view often occurs when J., as Animator, expresses many absurd and nonsensical opinions that are not aligned with those of the IA-Principal or of the IR who shares its point of view. 5.3  Lip-service Another literary tool used in the text is lip-service. This is one of the patterns created by the IA in order to express its opinion of its narrator, which is why it is hereby perceived as a cue for the presence of the IA. This pattern is repeated throughout the novel. J. explains how wrong others are, only to eventually agree with them, follow their lead, or simply let his actions contradict his words. The mismatch between J.’s words and actions is created by the IA who edits the novel in its Author capacity. Lip-service presents J. as ridiculous. The ridicule is created by the IA and perceived by the IR, while J. himself is convinced that he is better than others despite the fact that he eventually acts like them. This tool can therefore be considered as a cue for dramatic irony as well – the IA and IR are aware of facts while J. remains unaware (Kreuz & Roberts 1995; Attardo 2000), serving to strengthen the secret communion (Leech & Short 1981) between them.

(3) In the following excerpt, the juxtaposition technique is used again by the IA. However, in this case it emphasizes conflicting content rather than linguistic choices. J. presents his own position as righteous and the other as undeserving. Nevertheless, the IA employs juxtaposition to criticize J.’s behavior using the third cue introduced: lip-service. In Example 3, J. leans against a churchyard fence, feeling noble and loving and willing to forgive whoever sinned against him and embark upon a life of tranquility and serenity.



1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

I was going on thinking away all these grand, tender thoughts, when my reverie was broken in upon by a shrill piping voice crying out: “All right, sur, I’m a-coming, I’m a-coming. It’s all right, sur; don’t you be in a hurry.” I looked up, and saw an old bald-headed man hobbling across the churchyard towards me, carrying a huge bunch of keys in his hand that shook and jingled at every step. I motioned him away with silent dignity, but he still advanced, screeching out the while: “I’m a-coming, sur, I’m a-coming. I’m a little lame. I ain’t as spry as





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11 I used to be. This way, sur.” 12 “Go away, you miserable old man,” I said. 13 “I’ve come as soon as I could, sur,” he replied. “My missis never see 14 you till just this minute. You follow me, sur.” 15 “Go away,” I repeated; “leave me before I get over the wall, and slay 16 you.” 17 He seemed surprised. 18 “Don’t you want to see the tombs?” he said  (pp. 66–67).

This excerpt follows a long grandiloquent speech in which J. describes his noble feelings towards the world and all its living creatures. The old man is certain that J. is standing next to the churchyard fence because he wishes to see the local tombs and he speaks to J. courteously. However, J., immersed in his noble fantasy, is unwilling to be disturbed. He describes his own behavior as noble (lines 1, 8), but after only two utterances from the old man who tries to be polite to the gentleman in his uneducated manner (lines 3–4, 10–11), J.’s pretensions of nobility change abruptly and he replies aggressively (lines 15–16). The mismatch between the way J. describes himself and his behavior and the way the IR sees him, creates a violation of expectations by means of lip-service. He describes himself as benevolent and forgiving towards mankind, yet he violates the IR’s expectation that he will behave accordingly. The incongruity is developed through script-opposition: (1) J. is a benevolent and noble gentleman; (2) J. is hottempered and uncivil. J. tries to describe the old man as revolting (lines 2, 9) and speaking poor English, to indicate his low class and lack of education (lines 4, 10). However, he ends up demonstrating a revolting personality. This generates another script opposition: (1) J.’s storyline: J is perfectly virtuous and the old man is repulsive, irritating and bothersome; (2) the IA’s storyline: the old man is, in his own way, quite polite, unlike J. who sees himself as cultivated but is in fact rude. The second script criticizes J. for his inappropriate reaction to the old man. It is not ironic criticism, as I could not find additional cues for irony. In this case, it is mild humoristic-criticism of J. on behalf of the IA, whose presence is interpreted via use of the lip-service cue. As in similar cases, I found examples (not included in this chapter), in which J. is certain that his own behavior is appropriate and the other’s is not. Through the use of the lip-service cue, the IA manifests critique towards J.’s rude behavior. The proximity of the paragraph containing J.’s description of his nobility and benevolence to the paragraph containing evidence to the contrary is the result of the IA’s editing as Author. By juxtaposing these paragraphs, the IA emphasizes J.’s rudeness and insensitivity, thus arousing criticism towards him and sharing it with its IR.

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This cue is used consistently throughout the novel. It is a pattern that allows the IA to deliver its opinion of the narrator, hence I see it as a cue for the IA’s presence. As J. is unaware that he is being presented as a target for ridicule, I also see this as a cue for dramatic irony (Kreuz & Roberts 1995; Attardo, 2000), which serves the establishment of the IA/IR secret communion (Leech & Short 1981). 6.  Findings and summary This contribution proposes three cues – stylistic-duet, absurd and lip-service – to help distinguish between the speaker’s-meanings of the IA and of the other narrative-voices. Using Jerome’s novel Three Men in a Boat, I illustrated how these cues mark the presence of the IA and serve as a mechanism for connecting text and context, while offering a possible answer to the question of how the voiceless IA conveys its criticism. The stylistic-duet and the absurd are both derived from use of linguistic forms. The stylistic-duet is based on juxtaposition and includes three types of opposition that I have identified in this text: register-related (flowery vs. colloquial); form-related (verbose vs. succinct); content-related (idealistic vs. realistic). The absurd is based on exaggerated or unreasonable real-world representations that are inconsistent with common-sense and abide by the laws of local-logic. The third cue, lip-service, is based mainly on content, i.e. expressing opinions that conflict with the actions described throughout the story. The narrator might object to the behavior of others around him, but will then follow their lead or adopt their style of speech, etc. He might, as shown in Example 3, present himself in a certain light and then behave in an opposite manner. I used these new cues alongside well-known ones (e.g. echoic-mention; cooperative maxims; incongruity; punch-line), and assigned them to the entity responsible for their production, i.e. the IA or narrator, according to their role as Animator, Author or Principal (Goffman 1981). Combining the concept of footing with the identification of cues for the purpose of interpreting speaker’s-meaning and global-meaning in the literary text was found to be a useful analysis method. As a result of this theoretical-methodological combination I was able to distinguish between the speaker’s-meaning of the different voices in the novel; expose the IA’s critical stance; and describe the three-way relationship between the IA-IRnarrator. This reading allowed me to expose a multiplicity of meanings in the text: the overt, manifested one as well as the covert, latent one. It is my hope that the cues introduced here will be found useful by other researchers.



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The limitation of this research lies in its small-scale single-text corpus. Further research based on a large-scale corpus is needed in order to endorse the validity of the method and the findings proposed.

Acknowledgments I would like to thank Prof. Elda Weizman for her highly appreciated observations, involvement and guidance. This paper is based on an MA thesis carried out under the supervision of Prof. Elda ­Weizman at Bar-Ilan University.

References Primary sources Jerome, Jerome K. 2004 (1889). Three Men in a Boat. New York: Barnes & Noble.

Secondary sources Alexander, Richard J. 1997. Aspects of Verbal Humour in English. Tubingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. Attardo, Salvatore. 2000. “Irony as Relevant Inappropriateness.” Journal of Pragmatics 32: 793– 826.  https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(99)00070-3 Bergson, Henri. 1911. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. London: ­Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1037/13772-000 Booth, Wayne. 1961. A Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Chatman, Seymour. 1978. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. IthacaLondon: Cornell University Press. Chatman, Seymour. 1990. Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca-London: Cornell University Press. Colston, Herbert L. 2000. “On Necessary Conditions for Verbal Irony Comprehension.” Pragmatics and Cognition 8 (2): 277–324.  https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.8.2.02col Dascal, Marcelo, and Elda Weizman 1987. “Contextual Exploitation of Interpretation Clues in Text Understanding: An Integrated Model.” In The Pragmatic Perspective, ed. by Jef Verschueren, and Marcella Bertuccelli-Papi, 31–46. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbcs.5.08das Even, Yosef. 1974. “sofer, mesaper u-mexaber: nisayon le-sinteza mexkarit shel txum merkazi b-siporet” [Writer, narrator and author: experiment to perform research synthesis of a central field in fiction]. Ha-Sifrut 18-19: 137–163. Freedman-Cedar, Talli. 2010. Ironya ve-humor b-sira axat [Irony and humor in a boat]. MA Research, Bar-Ilan University: Bar-Ilan. Genette, Gerard. 1980. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Oxfrod: Blackwell.

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Genette, Gerard. 1997. Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press. Goffman, Erving. 1981. Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Grice, Paul. 1989 (1975). “Logic and Conversation.” In Studies in the Way of Words, ed. by Paul Grice, 22–40. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Haverkate, Henk. 1990. “A Speech Act Analysis of Irony.” Journal of Pragmatics 14 (1): 77–109. https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(90)90065-L Hidalgo Downing, Raquel, and Silvia Iglesias Recuero. 2009. “Humor e ironia: una relación compleja” [Humor and irony: A complicated relationship]. In Dime cómo ironizas y te diré quién eres. Una aproximación pragmática a la ironía, ed. by Leonor R. Gurillo, and Xose A. Padilla Garcia, 423–455. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Hirsch, Galia. 2008. beyn ironya le-humor [Between irony and humor]. PhD dissertation, Bar Ilan University. Hirsch, Galia. 2011. “Between Irony and Humor: A Pragmatic Model.” Pragmatics and Cognition 19 (3): 530–561.  https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.19.3.07hir Hirsch, Galia. 2017. “Who is the Victim? On the Relationship between the Source of the Echoic Mention and the Target of the Irony.” Text and Talk 37 (2): 189–211. Jeffers, Jennifer. 1995. “Beyond Irony: The Unnamable’s Appropriation of its Critics in a Humorous Reading of a Text.” The Journal of Narrative Technique 25 (1): 47–66. Kreuz, Roger J., and Richard M. Roberts. 1995. “Two Cues for Verbal Irony: Hyperbole and the Ironic Tone of Voice.” Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 10 (1): 21–31. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327868ms1001_3 Leech, Geoffrey N, and Michael H. Short. 1981. Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose. London: Longman. Oring, Elliott. 1989. “Between Jokes and Tales: On the Nature of Punch Lines.” Humor 2–4: 349–364. Raskin, Victor. 1985. Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Dirdrecht: D. Reidel. Raskin, Victor, and Salvatore Attardo. 1994. “Non-Litteralness and Non-bona-fide in Language: An Approach to Formal and Computational Treatments of Humor.” Pragmatics & Cognition 2 (1): 31–69.  https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.2.1.02ras Schiavi, Giuliana. 1996. “There is Always a Teller in a Tale.” Target 8 (1): 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1075/target.8.1.02sch Shipley, Joseph T. (ed.). 1946. Encyclopedia of Literature. New-York: Philosophical library. Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 1981. “Irony and the Use-Mention Distinction.” In Radical Pragmatics, ed. by Cole, Peter, 295–318. New York: Academic Press. Weizman, Elda. 1999. “Building True Understanding via Apparent Miscommunication: A Case Study.” Journal of Pragmatics 31: 837–846.  https://doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(96)00057-4 Weizman, Elda. 2000. “al ikar v-tafel: iyun pragmati be-yaxasey xidush ve-natun be-haxay al hamet le-Aharon Meged” [A pragmatic study of the given-new discourse structure in ­Aharon Megged’s novel The Living on the Dead]. Helkat Lashon 29–32: 19–39. Weizman, Elda. 2001. “Addresser, Addressee and Target: Negotiating Roles through Ironic Criticism.” In Negotiation and Power in Dialogic Interaction, ed. by Edda Weigand, and Marcelo Dascal, 125–137. Amsterdam: Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.214.11wei Weizman, Elda. 2008. Positioning in Media Dialogue. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/ds.3



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Weizman, Elda, and Marcelo Dascal. 1990. “le-she’elat mashma’ut ha-dover ba-sifrut ha-yafa” [Speaker’s meaning in literary texts]. Hebrew Linguistics 28–30: 9–19. Weizman, Elda, and Marcelo Dascal. 1991. “On Clues and Cues: Strategies of Text Understanding.” Journal of Literary Semantic 20 (1): 18–30.  https://doi.org/10.1515/jlse.1991.20.1.18 Weizman, Elda, and Marcelo Dascal. 2005. “Interpreting Speaker’s Meaning in Literary Dialogue.” In Dialogue Analysis IX. Dialogue in Literature and the Media. Part I: Literature, ed. by Anne Betten, and Monika Dannerer, 61–72. Tübingen: Niemeyer. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110946062.61 Wilson, Deirdre, and Dan Sperber. 1992. “On Verbal Irony.” Lingua 87: 53–76. https://doi.org/10.1016/0024-3841(92)90025-E Ziv, Avner. 1984. Personality and Sense of Humor. New York: Springer.

Anne Frank’s Diary – The Graphic Adaptation as a case of “indirect translation” Integrating the principle of relevance with Bakhtinian concepts Rachel Weissbrod & Ayelet Kohn

Bar-Ilan University / David Yellin Academic College of Education The 2017 adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary into a graphic novel by Ari Folman and David Polonsky is addressed in this article as a case of indirect translation, a concept developed by Ernst-August Gutt on the basis of relevance theory. According to Gutt, indirect translation “interpretively resembles” the source text in respects that are relevant to a new target audience in a new context. Rather than applying this concept to interlingual translation, we use it to study an adaptation which involves a change of modalities – from the verbal to the multimodal. To find out how the adaptation retains the relevance of the original diary to a new generation of readers, familiar with new media and visual means of communication, we employ the Bakhtinian concepts of chronotope and polyphony. Through this case study we hope to demonstrate the usefulness of Gutt’s concept of “indirect translation” to the study of adaptations, to offer a link between the principle of relevance and Bakhtinian concepts, and to shed new light on the principle of relevance itself. Keywords:  indirect translation, relevance, chronotope, polyphony, graphic novel, Anne Frank’s diary

1.  Relevance Theory and Translation Studies Relevance theory, developed by Sperber and Wilson (Sperber & Wilson 1986; Wilson & Sperber 1988), was introduced to Translation Studies by Gutt (1990, 1992, 2000). Following Sperber and Wilson, he distinguishes between descriptive utterances, which refer to “some state of affairs” (Gutt 1990: 146), and interpretive utterances, that mediate previous utterances by virtue of their resemblance to them. In his view, translation studies can be addressed in the framework of relevance theory, because translation mediates the original to the target readers

https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.316.06wei © 2020 John Benjamins Publishing Company

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and thus it can be considered an interpretive use of language (Gutt 1990: 147). The uniqueness of translation as an interpretive use of language is that it involves a transfer from one language to another (Gutt 2000: 105–106). Gutt also categorizes translations as either direct or indirect. Both types follow the principle of relevance, he maintains, if and when they “interpretively resemble” the original without “gratuitous processing effort” (Gutt 2000: 106). However, direct translations “interpretively resemble the original completely in the context envisaged for the original” (Gutt 2000: 171); that is, there is no attempt to adjust the source to fit a new context. In indirect translations, on the other hand, the resemblance is “in respects that make it adequately relevant to the audience” (Gutt 2000: 107). This requires context modifications, which Gutt refers to as “contextual effects” (Gutt 2000: 29). In the postscript, which Gutt added to his book about a decade after the first publication of his research, he wrote: […] it seems that the lower the degree of resemblance required, the freer the translator is to adapt to the actual context of the target audience. On the other hand, the higher the degree of intended resemblance gets and the greater the claim of authenticity, the more responsibility falls on the audience to familiarize themselves with the original context. (Gutt 2000: 231)

On the face of it, Gutt’s principle of relevance approximates the classical concept of “acceptability” – adjusting the text to the target language, literary (or other) norms, and the receiving culture at large (Toury 2012). Actually, it shifts the focus to the act of communication: relevance is a feature of communication, and a condition for a successful one, whether the translation is direct or indirect. Taking as our point of departure the idea that the concept of indirect translation can also be applied to adaptations, we wish to address the graphic adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary (Frank, Folman & Polonsky 2017; English version 2018). Following Gutt’s line of thought (e.g., 2000: 106), we argue that this is a faithful adaptation, since it interpretively approximates the original in respects, which are relevant to young (and other) readers today. Put somewhat differently, it is in line with the assertion that an indirect translation “does not have to convey all the original assumptions, but those it conveys must be true to the meaning of the original” (Smith 2002: 112). Yet, in accord with its definition as an indirect rendering of the source, the adaptation is adjusted to its new context and audience (Gutt’s “contextual effects”). The adjustment affects the modalities employed, the main genre and subgenres, the dimensions of time and space, and the voices, first and foremost Anne Frank’s. In order to study Anne Frank’s Diary – The Graphic Adaptation as a case of indirect translation, we shall proceed as follows: after presenting the historical background and the transformations of the diary until the creation of the graphic adaptation (Section 2), we shall identify and characterize the audiences addressed



Anne Frank’s Diary – The Graphic Adaptation as a case of “indirect translation” 

(Section 3). Taking into consideration the specific characteristics of today’s young readers and the role of new media in their lives, we shall move on to discuss the changes made in the adaptation. To this end we shall make use of the Bakhtinian concepts of chronotope (Section 4) and polyphony (Section 5), which we find useful in analyzing the texts concerned in terms of time, space, and the voices “heard.” Section 6 will be dedicated to the detailed analysis of four pages. Our findings and theoretical insights will be summarized in the concluding part (Section 7). 2.  From ‘Version C’ to the graphic adaptation 2.1  Historical background Anne Frank wrote her diary between June 1942 and August 1944 in the Secret Annex, a hiding place in Amsterdam. It was first published in Dutch in 1947.1 This publication, referred to as version c, was a combination of the original diary (version a) and the text reconstructed by Anne herself once she decided to publish it as a novel (version b). She made this decision after hearing an appeal on Radio Oranje to keep diaries written during the occupation so they could be published after the war (Enzer & Solotaroff-Enzer 2000). Version c, which was soon translated into many languages, was censored, and not just because of the changes Anne herself had made when she turned version a into version b (such as replacing the names of some people with pseudonyms). Due to the instructions of Anne’s father, Otto Frank, the only member of her family to survive the war, her criticism of the people in the Secret Annex, particularly her mother, was toned down, as were her “bold” references to sex and the female body.2 The translators, for their part, did not stick to the Dutch source – exemplifying what is known in Translation Studies as self-censorship (Merkle 2002). In the German translation, for example, the universal aspects of the diary were given precedence over Jewish issues, and insulting references to the Germans were moderated (Lefevere 1992). An uncensored version appeared only in the 1980s, after Otto Frank’s death. Since its first publication, the diary was printed in millions of copies (Enzer & Solotaroff-Enzer 2000: 1). Its popularity can be attributed to several factors, including historical coincidence (it was found and saved by Miep Gies, one of the people .  An English version, translated by Barbara M. Mooyaart-Doubleday, was published in 1952 under the title Anne Frank – The Diary of a Young Girl (Frank 1952). .  The late discovery of two secret pages of the diary sheds more light on her curiosity, as an adolescent, about sex and sexual relations (Siegel 2018).

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who helped the Frank family); the efforts of Otto Frank to make it widely known (albeit via censored versions); and last but not least – the literary talents of the very young writer, who maneuvered skillfully between the diary, the main genre, and subgenres such as the epistolary novel, confession, meditation, novels for girls, and more (Rudin 2014). Another explanation can also be proposed – the diary is about the Holocaust, but the Holocaust is not really present (Porat 2001). Shocking as it may be for readers who know what befell Anne Frank after the breaching of the Secret Annex, the diary does not document the last months of her life. The Holocaust is referred to through the anti-Semitism the family encountered before they entered the shelter, and later – the stories told by their rescuers, the sights seen through the window, the roaring of bombers as they dropped their payloads, and the information provided by the radio and newspapers. Nevertheless, the events do not take place in a ghetto or a concentration camp, and the diary itself is full of humor and hope, which makes reading it bearable. One may even suggest that as in cases of trauma (Caruth 1996; LaCapra 2001), it revolves around the untouchable without touching it, making it easier for readers to approach the insinuated horrors. 2.2  The graphic novel comes into being Following its success, the diary was adapted many times – for the theatre, cinema and TV. Anne Frank’s biography was turned into a graphic novel for the first time in 2010 (Jacobson & Colón 2010). But it was only in 2017 that the diary itself was published in the form of a graphic novel (in Hebrew yoman graphi [graphic diary] is a pun on roman graphi [graphic novel]). It was produced by two Israeli artists, the filmmaker Ari Folman and the illustrator David Polonsky, who had already collaborated on the film and graphic novel Waltz with Bashir (Folman 2008; Folman & Polonsky 2009; see Kohn & Weissbrod 2012). Folman and Polonsky created their adaptation on the basis of the uncensored Hebrew version of the diary (Frank 2007), in response to an invitation from the Anne Frank Foundation in Basel. During a discussion with an Israeli audience,3Folman, whose parents were Holocaust survivors, told his listeners that the Holocaust was a daily presence in his life. When he undertook the project, he said, both he and Polonsky were already fathers, a fact that deeply affected their attitude toward Anne Frank and her diary. Polonsky added that as a father, he was particularly moved by her unfulfilled dreams and plans for the future. At the abovementioned event, Folman described how he “fell in love” with comics, a medium that allowed him to take a step back from the source and “go

.  The event took place in Jerusalem on 9 May 2018 as part of the International Writers Festival.



Anne Frank’s Diary – The Graphic Adaptation as a case of “indirect translation” 

wild” with its adaptation. The creative process involved several stages. To make room for the pictures, Folman condensed each 30 pages of the diary into 10 pages. Then he prepared a schematic draft of each page, or several at a time, which were translated by the illustrator and animator Yoni Goodman into a storyboard (a graphic plan of the scenes). Polonsky created the illustrations for each scene, first by hand and then with the aid of Photoshop and a team of artists. He also mentioned some of the influences on his work, such as Simplicissimus, a satirical German weekly magazine published between 1896 and 1967, and the artists Georgia O’Keeffe and Thomas Gainsborough, who inspired specific images. The graphic diary was received with enthusiasm by both readers and critics (see, for example, Einhar 2017; Rudner 2017; Shavit 2017; Saar 2018). They dismissed the concern that a comics-like diary might be regarded as blasphemy. The existence of precedents such as Maus (Spiegelman 1986), that legitimized graphic novels about the Holocaust as long as they were considered serious and artistically valuable (Weiner 2003: 35–38), probably facilitated its reception. Nevertheless, the decision to use an uncensored version also decreased the relevance of the diary for certain audiences, mainly religious and conservative institutions and educators. They complained about the inclusion of sensitive subject matter that had been omitted from previous censored versions, re-kindling past debates about the diary.4 3.  Addressees and audiences 3.1  From an imaginary addressee to real readers According to Gutt (1990, 2000), an indirect translation is adapted for a new audience in a new context. In the present case, the audiences seem to multiply rather than replace one another. The original diary (version a) is addressed to Kitty, an imaginary soul mate, the friend that Anne says she never had. According to Bell’s audience design (Bell 1984), Kitty is the main addressee, although Anne sometimes talks to real but non-present friends as well. In Bakhtinian terminology, an essential feature of language is its addressivity, i.e. the quality of being directed to a listener (Bakhtin 1986: 95). This quality is shared by all utterances, including those directed to oneself since they, too, manifest the multiplicity of perspectives and voices. A diary is no exception. In the case of Anne Frank’s diary, however, this idea is uniquely embodied in the invention of

.  Such complaints can be encountered in talkbacks (readers’ online comments) following reportage dealing with the graphic diary. For example, in a response to Shavit (2017), a reader who identifies himself as a librarian in a religious high school says that he is not sure if it is suitable for children, especially boys.

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an imaginary friend. The need to invent such a friend is understandable when we look closely at Anne’s description of herself. The person that her family, friends and suitors know is a rebellious young girl, who does not always show respect to her elders and is constantly reminded to look up to her highly valued sister, Margot. As long as the diary is secret, only Kitty knows another Anne, an independent young woman, a mature person with very deep thoughts and outstanding writing skills (see also Section 5 below on polyphony). In the diary, Anne discloses her aspiration to become a famous writer, the ambition that motivated her to create version b. The changes she introduced were meant to make the diary more “literary” and suitable for a public audience. The first translation of the diary, from version a into version b, was thus an intralingual one (Jakobson 1959; Zethsen 2009; Karas 2016). After the publication of the diary, the imaginary audience became real (“eavesdroppers” in Bell’s terminology, since obviously Anne was not aware of their existence), and undoubtedly larger than Anne could possibly have imagined. Though she was quite conscious of the fragile situation of the residents of the Secret Annex, she was full of hope and optimism, and even worried about how she would catch up with her class when she returned to school after the war. She almost certainly could not have foreseen that due to her untimely death, her private diary would become publicly known. As we have noted, its publication triggered more changes, which are apparent in the manipulated Dutch version (Het Achterhuis) and its translations, but no less in the adaptations for the theater and cinema. For example, the diary mentions Margot’s plan to be a nurse in Palestine after the war; however, Zionism was at odds with the universalism the producers wished to stress, and so it was systematically omitted from stage and screen adaptations (Whitfield 2001: 177). 3.2  Th  e graphic diary: Reinterpreting the icon and addressing today’s young audience Over the course of time, Anne Frank has become one of the most famous symbols of the Holocaust, one that is frequently encountered not only in official but also in pop culture. Her iconic pictures can be seen in comics and graffiti, on stickers and T-shirts. They are also tattooed on the bodies of Instagramers and appear on blogs whose writers sometimes adopt her name (Einhar 2017). Against this background, Folman and Polonsky created their own version, retaining the initial “audience” (Kitty) and at the same time – in accord with the idea of indirect translation – addressing a new one, mainly young people and teenagers, as the choice of the genre, and their own statements (see e.g. Saar 2018) indicate. This audience is dispersed all over the world, as can be inferred from the very fact that the graphic diary was commissioned by an international body and translated into many l­anguages.



Anne Frank’s Diary – The Graphic Adaptation as a case of “indirect translation” 

Yet, whatever their language and location, it has given readers the opportunity to take a fresh look at the long-established, perhaps even worn-out, symbol. Soon after its publication, the graphic diary became a bestseller in Israel and elsewhere (Saar 2018). Its appeal to a new generation of readers, who are thought to recoil from books, can be attributed to its two main features: it is a diary, and thus it resembles familiar contemporary formats such as blogs and Facebook’s version of a “story” (see below); and it combines the verbal with the visual, just like Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, etc. In this way it ensures successful communication “without gratuitous processing effort” (Gutt 2000: 106). “Bloggers are driven to document their lives, provide commentary and opinions, express deeply felt emotions, articulate ideas through writing, and form and maintain community forums” (Nardi et al. 2004: 41). Like other texts in the social networks, blogs are characterized by the blurred borders between the private and the public. Reflecting the changing approaches to concepts such as privacy, secrecy and voyeurism, they test and question the limits of the willingness to disclose one’s most personal experiences. Interactivity adds another factor – the renunciation of privacy is accompanied by the consent to let others comment on the content published (Cover 2006; Jenkins 2008). Despite the differences (Anne Frank did not let anyone read her diary, let alone comment on it), today’s young readers are likely to find the genre of the diary familiar and in keeping with their own production and consumption habits. Focusing on biographical writing in a generation that uses social networks for the construction of personal identities, Livingstone (2008) claims that sharing one’s life online does not destroy intimacy but widens the circle of intimate connections: “[…] they [teenagers] are seeking to share their private experiences, to create spaces of intimacy, to be themselves in and through their connection with their friends” (Livingstone 2008: 11). This observation can also be applied to Anne Frank, whose main motivation in writing the diary was the need to create for herself “spaces of intimacy” that could nevertheless be shared with someone else (Frank, Folman & Polonsky 2017: 6–7). Like today’s youth, she reflected on the very act of writing, the creation of “self ” through the process, and the possibility of writing for an audience. The transformation of version a into version b resembles the process of selecting the materials to be published online and determining the desirable level of self-exposure: […] although to exist online, one must write oneself, and one’s friendships and community, into being […] this does not mean one must thereby include every aspect of oneself. Deciding what not to say about oneself online is for many teenagers, an agentic act to protect their identity and their spaces of intimacy.  (Livingstone 2008: 13)

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This twofold phenomenon – sharing private experiences while protecting them from a world that can be hostile – is described by Livingstone as follows: Elaborating the presentation of self at the node supports the biographisation of the self by prioritising a managed and stylised display of identity as lifestyle. But it risks invasions of privacy, since the backstage self is on view […], potentially occasioning critical or abusive responses from others. (Livingstone 2008: 11)

As can be inferred from the diary itself, as well as historical evidence, Anne was concerned with similar problems – a similarity which is possibly due to the very act of writing (e.g., the need to select), but may also be explained by the common experiences of youngsters, any time. The choices made by Folman and Polonsky suggest that, in line with Gutt’s assumptions, they recognized the interface between Anne and contemporary youngsters and used this as their starting point. Their responsibility toward the original (Saar 2018), and their respect for the choices made by Anne (rather than others) are manifest in their decision to retain topics that were censored in the past, such as her tense relations with her mother, or her curiosity about her own body. This attitude, which is in accord with Gutt’s idea of “faithfulness” (Gutt 2000: 106), is also apparent in the fact that they left entire pages from the original intact, thus preserving its “aura” (Benjamin 2008). The insertion of dense blocks of text is an invitation for the young readers to renew their acquaintance with an “old” medium and experience “old-fashioned” reading. At the same time, as one can expect from an indirect translation, Folman and Polonsky took the liberty of adapting the diary for their intended readership and ensuring its relevance for them. As Polonsky stated: This is homage […] not a substitute for the diary: The diary is there and it will remain. We try to emphasize elements in the text to attract the attention of new audiences and [so that] the diary does not remain only a symbol.  (Polonsky in Saar 2018; our translation)

To adjust the diary to its new readers, they have turned large segments of the written text into dialogue and presented it in speech bubbles – a format that is familiar to an audience acquainted with comics and graphic novels. Yet, the main means of ensuring relevance are the combination of words and images, and their equal treatment, which is self-explanatory for contemporary readers. Young people used to emoticons (visual symbols of emotion) will not be surprised by the employment of images to express feelings. Nevertheless, there are significant differences between the diary, even in its graphic form, and production and consumption habits of today. This can be illustrated by comparing it with the “story” feature, which enables users of new media such as Facebook to share sequences of photos and short videos in a story format that is removed after 24 hours. This format sanctifies the temporary, in contrast to traditional diaries, which were created gradually, day



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by day, and were not meant to disappear after a short while. Indeed, Anne Frank’s diary, in particular, has become part of history, the very opposite of temporariness (see Section 4 below for an expanded discussion of Bakhtin’s chronotope). The challenge undertaken by Folman and Polonsky, and not without risks, was how to deliver the original contents of the diary, while retaining Anne’s unique style, humor and critical look at the surrounding world, by means of the visual/ verbal language familiar to their intended audience. To achieve this end, their adaptation approximates new media in some respects, but not in others, offering a different look at a story comprising words and pictures. The physical appearance of contemporary texts on the screens of netbooks, smartphones, etc., and their consumption in a world in which the consumers are also the producers (sometimes referred to as prosumers; see Weber & Mitchell 2008) is another point to be considered. The creation of content on the limited space of the screen in new media demands selection and focus. The decoding – whether the reader surfs the Internet, checks posts on websites or browses messages – is dynamic and interactive. It requires scrolling screens, clicking on links and responding simultaneously to verbal and visual elements in motion. The experience of reading the graphic diary is somewhat similar. The linearity of the written book is partly retained (it is a book, with numbered pages). But on each page, or page spread, verbal and visual elements appear simultaneously; the eye moves in all directions, skipping from chunks of text to pictures and speech balloons, or vice versa (following nonlinear “reading paths” in the terminology of Kress & Van Leeuwen 1996, 1998). The result is a hybrid, intermediary form integrating and mixing the features of nondigital and digital texts. The similarity to the latter is likely to appeal to today’s young readers, the intended audience of this indirect translation. 4.  Chronotopes In literary studies, the term chronotope, borrowed from biology (Dentith 1995: 52), is identified with Bakhtin (1981). The term, which literally means time-space, refers to a unit of time and space conceived and interpreted together (Dentith 1995: 52). Different literary genres have their characteristic chronotopes (Morson & Emerson 1990: 374); however, it is quite possible to have various chronotopes intersect each other in one and the same work (Morson & Emerson 1990: 426). This applies to the present case as well. In the diary, time and space as experienced by Anne and the residents of the Secret Annex differ greatly from the chronotope of the events taking place outside, though they are linked to each other. In the chronotope of the Secret Annex, daily routine, interrupted by “news” such as the information that Peter washed his hair (Frank 2007: 39) takes place in a narrow place, where even looking out of the window to see the outside world is dangerous.

 Rachel Weissbrod & Ayelet Kohn

This chronotope intersects with another, which encompasses the progress of the war in Holland and throughout Europe. These two chronotopes are linked with another one – the time and space of the imagination, revealed for example when Anne dreams of a boy she loved, talks to a friend who has been taken to the camps, or imagines a patch of blue sky surrounded by black clouds that come closer and closer – a metaphoric description of her situation (Frank 2007: 141). There are two more chronotopes, which transcend the diary itself but exist in the mind of the reader who knows what happens afterwards. One encompasses the last seven months of Anne’s life, from the breaching of the Secret Annex to her death in Bergen-Belsen in 1945 (Enzer & Solotaroff-Enzer 2000). The other comprises the time that passed from the first publication of the diary to the present plus the space that includes every country in which the diary is read. There is an amazing gap between the situation of the real Anne in 1944–1945 – first in Auschwitz and then in Bergen-Belsen, a lonely, frightened, starved girl, who first becomes an orphan and then dies – and the contemporary status of “Anne Frank” as one of the main icons of the Holocaust. In accord with Gutt’s idea that the resemblance of the translation to its source is interpretive (that is – the kind of resemblance expected from an interpretive utterance), the intersection between all these chronotopes is maintained in the graphic novel (see Section 6 below for concrete examples), but it is realized visually. In addition, new chronotopes are created on the space of the page, in which various times and places, both real and imaginary, are juxtaposed. The multiplication of chronotopes is also the result of the new intertextual links created by Polonsky. They include, for example, the identification of the Jews in the camps with the Biblical Hebrew slaves in Egypt (Frank, Folman & Polonsky 2017: 12), and the use of ancient Greek busts as a visual metaphor for M ­ argot’s perfection (Frank, Folman & Polonsky 2017: 86). The allusions to famous works of art such as Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” (Frank, Folman & Polonsky 2017: 56) and Gustav Klimt’s “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I,” also known as “Woman in Gold” (Frank, Folman & Polonsky 2017: 57) evoke even more times and places, emphasizing the universal as well as the history-conscious aspects of the diary. Interestingly, the latter is itself a Holocaust icon (especially since Curtis’ 2015 film came out, based on Anne-Marry O’Connor’s 2015 book The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt Masterpiece Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer). The rich intertextuality and the chronotopes that it establishes suggest that “relevance” is not necessarily the same for different audiences. Some audiences will probably grasp the visual allusions, if only in part, thus enriching their reading experience at the expense of the increased processing effort, while for other audiences, some or all of the allusions may be lost.



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5.  Polyphony Bakhtin borrowed the term “polyphony” from music and applied it to literary theory. In his analysis of Dostoevsky’s novels, he describes polyphony as the “plurality of independent and unmerged voices and consciousnesses” (Bakhtin 1984: 6). In a polyphonic text, different voices and points of view play against each other. As Park-Fuller (1986) explains – Polyphony refers not literally to a number of voices, but to the collective quality of an individual utterance; that is, the capacity of my utterance to embody someone else’s utterance even while it is mine, which thereby creates a dialogic relationship between two voices.

In Anne Frank’s diary, we listen “through” her to the voices of other people, but the dominant voice is hers. Fluctuating between hope and despair, humor and seriousness, it is always subversive. Though she is required to be respectful and obedient, she refuses to regard grown-up people as wise simply because they are older. Nourishing a feminist sensitivity, she is conscious of the inferior status of women in society and in her mind, she rebels against it. Ironically, her unique voice, which was silenced by the Nazis, was partially silenced once more due to censorship. In adapting the diary into a graphic novel, Folman and Polonsky asked themselves “how can two adult men talk in the voice of a girl in a hiding place in Amsterdam” (Polonsky in Saar 2018; our translation). Their choices show that they interpretively retained her voice with all its subversive aspects. Rather than replacing hers, they have added their own voices, as editor and illustrator. This is particularly apparent in the visual interpretation of the diary. For example, in a picture showing the residents of the Secret Annex at dinner (Frank, Folman & Polonsky 2017: 76–77), Polonsky draws them as animals, based on the features which Anne ascribes to them (e.g. gluttony), thus offering his own interpretation to Anne’s characterization. Otto Frank is drawn as a bird, realizing the idiom “eats like a bird”; Herman Van Dan, represented as a bear, devours his food; Albert Dussel is shown as a wolf, which fits the information we get that he does not share the food packages sent to him by his non-Jewish spouse with the others; and so on. The graphic novel also contains other new voices, such as that of a German actress on a poster, who says (in a speech balloon) that she refuses to perform for “Jewish pigs” (Frank, Folman & Polonsky 2017: 15). This example is an indication of Folman and Polonsky’s willingness to include topics, which had been censored or toned down in the early versions of the diary. The concept of polyphony does not apply to human voices alone. It also encompasses languages, genres, points of view, ideologies and modalities that

 Rachel Weissbrod & Ayelet Kohn

interact, dialogue and clash with one another (for a detailed example, see Kohn 2016). Bakhtin describes these relations as “dynamic, vibrantly intense bonds between utterances, between independent and autonomous speech and semantic centers, not subordinated to the verbal and semantic dictatorship of a monologic, unified style and a unified tone” (Bakhtin 1984: 204). With respect to Anne Frank’s diary, we can also add silent voices (such as Kitty’s), silenced voices (those of individual friends as well as all of European Jewry) and the metaphoric “voice of history,” which guides us in reading the diary today. In the adaptation, this polyphonic system has been transformed into a multimodal one. Written text taken from the diary “as is,” speech bubbles, illustrations with their varied components (color, size, composition, etc.), are all part of the new polyphonic whole. In the following section, we shall look at four individual pages. Each of them illustrates some of the topics referred to so far and exemplifies, in its own way, the contribution of the visual interpretation to the original diary. 6.  The visual contribution: The page-space, words and images 6.1  The house behind The illustration of the Secret Annex on page 25 takes up the entire page (Illustration 1). The reader’s eye moves along “reading paths,” which according to Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996, 1998), are relatively free compared to the linear reading of a book. By removing the external wall, Polonsky creates a kind of orientation map, which does not exist in the written diary and helps readers figure out the location of each room, passage and staircase in relation to the others. The life and activities of the Secret Annex’s residents become tangible, while in the written diary they could only be imagined. In this respect, Polonsky’s illustration bridges between Anne’s diary and the real house, which has been turned into a museum.5 Remarkably, the identifying labels (Anne’s room, the kitchen, the bathroom, etc.) are presented in speech bubbles, which are linked to the rooms themselves and not to specific people. Their absence from this picture may make readers feel that they are listening to the unseen ghosts of the people who used to live there: they speak but have no bodies, their existence has become aerial. At the same time, the labels may create the impression that we are listening to a guide accompanying tourists on their visit to a place once occupied by real people – people who suffered there but were also full of hopes, who planned to go on with their lives after the war. This

.  On museums as actual sites of memory, see Katriel 1997.



Anne Frank’s Diary – The Graphic Adaptation as a case of “indirect translation” 

picture, which creates its own polyphony and chronotopes, adds more meanings to the work as a whole.

Illustration 1. 

 Rachel Weissbrod & Ayelet Kohn

On the upper part of the page, above the house, there is a title, “Ha-bayit haakhori” (the house behind; Hebrew for the Dutch Het Achterhuis), which creates another link between voices, time and space. Het Achterhuis was the name of the book Anne planned to publish after the war. It was supposed to “translate” the diary into a more literary work about life in the hiding place (Enzer & SolotaroffEnzer 2000: 81). This title makes Anne’s voice present in the adaptation. However, it also calls attention to the limited knowledge possessed by Anne, supposedly the omniscient narrator of her life story, in contrast to the historical information available to Folman, Polonsky and their readers, who know how Anne’s plans and aspirations ended. The position of these words at the top of the page and their function as a title invest them with meaning – they represent the metaphoric voice of history, which is indirectly present throughout the graphic diary, triggering the audience to read it in light of subsequent events. 6.2  Life in the secret annex Page 62 is divided into two pictures (Illustration 2). Each of them is further divided into several interrelated visual elements. The upper picture shows the residents of the Secret Annex falling asleep by the table, probably after a sleepless night. In the background, we see the city of Amsterdam in flames – a sight which the people in the Secret Annex could mainly imagine on the basis of radio broadcasts and the reports of their rescuers. Here again, the readers’ perspective is wider, and their historical knowledge places the chronotope of the Secret Annex within a larger one. The various genres used – a diary, an epistolary novel (the text at the top of the page addresses “Dear Kitty”) and historical evidence – give a visual interpretation to the original ones. Polonsky seems to be walking in the footsteps of Anne Frank in the sense that he, too, uses the diary as an artist’s laboratory, experimenting with different modes of expression. This impression also results from the change of style on the same page. On the lower part of the page, six different people refer to food, each expressing his or her disgust in a characteristic way (e.g., Mr. Van Dan: “I prefer to eat my tobacco and die of indigestion”; Mrs. Van Daan: “I prefer to eat my liver and die immediately”; our translation). The format of the illustrations (same size, no borders, each referring to an item of food and accompanied by an explanation) can be understood as a parodical imitation of a botanical encyclopedia or a reference book. On the face of it, there are six speakers, but actually, the speech bubbles only contain the voice of Anne, who functions here not just as an animator, who delivers the words of others, but also as a principal, who is responsible for the views uttered (in the



Illustration 2. 

Anne Frank’s Diary – The Graphic Adaptation as a case of “indirect translation” 

 Rachel Weissbrod & Ayelet Kohn

terminology of Goffman 1981): The text reveals her sharp insights into human nature, her sense of humor and capacity to find absurd and comic aspects in the most distressing situations. Polonsky increases the humor by employing pseudoscience (Margot wonders if they taught her about animal-like vegetables in biology class), inserting the icon for poison and using perspective to make us share the diners’ disgust. Here the use of speech bubbles, which evokes comics, reclaims an original feature of this genre – to be comic. At the same time, it links the graphic adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary with traditional comics such as Batman and modern works such as Maus (Spiegelman 1986) that employ comics as a means to express distress and trauma from a safe distance (Kohn & Weissbrod 2012). 6.3  Anne’s feminism It has been suggested that Anne not only died too early, but was also born too early (Shavit 2017). One of the characteristics that triggered this observation was her feminist awareness. The verbal text on page 139 (Illustration 3) testifies to her approval of women’s struggle for equality and her criticism of their perception as inferior beings. Folman and Polonsky highlight this feature by the text they selected for inclusion in the graphic diary and the pictures accompanying it. In this way they maintain the relevance of the diary for contemporary readers. In the illustrations on this page, Anne’s views about women – which are progressive considering her age, education and the period in question – merge with those of Folman and Polonsky. The picture in the middle of the page, which goes along with Anne’s assertion that women are the real heroes of the world, is a critique against the view of women as the mothers of would-be soldiers, a Spartan idea that was embraced by national socialism (McCormick 2002: 159). Visual means are employed to protest against a militarist male society and the education that leads men to cherish power and obedience. The emphasis is on uniformity (all the people portrayed wear the same clothes and move in the same direction) as a symbol of totalitarianism and fascism. Stress is also placed on the deterministic process of evolution: women are destined to give birth to babies who are destined to become soldiers. The two rows of boys and young men represent two youth organizations, the Hitlerjugend and the Young Pioneers, which emerged under two different totalitarian regimes. The contrast between the ideologies they stand for, national socialism and communism, is neutralized by the shared destination – all boys will eventually be sent to the battle fields. Folman and Polonsky seem to continue Anne’s line of thought, presented in the written text, rather than interfering with her ideas.



Illustration 3. 

Anne Frank’s Diary – The Graphic Adaptation as a case of “indirect translation” 

 Rachel Weissbrod & Ayelet Kohn

6.4  The many faces of Anne “It remains open to young people to select a more or less complex representation of themselves linked to a more or less wide network of others” (Livingstone 2008: 9). Though this observation has been made in regard to contemporary teenagers, it fits the complexity of “self,” and the different “selves” revealed to others in Anne Frank’s diary. This complexity is concretized in the final illustration of the graphic diary (Illustration 4). It follows the last page of the written diary, quoted “as is” (from the Hebrew translation), as if giving Anne an opportunity to say her last words to us. The illustration translates her many voices into an entanglement of faces reflecting her multifaceted personality and changing moods – desperate, lost in thought, angry, relaxed. The face in the middle – which is larger than the others – evokes some of her famous portraits, in which she is easily identified by her dark hair, large dark eyes and half smile. These portraits, which not only symbolize the suffering of Jews in general, and Jewish children in particular, but also stand for a free and undefeated spirit, have become public domain and are employed for different purposes, including political ones. One example is the graffiti on a Tel Aviv wall, in which Anne’s picture is accompanied by the question: “ve-khan hi hayta soredet?” [Could she have survived here?] (Marom 2011).6 Folman and Polonsky do not try to counteract her status as an icon, something they probably could not do in any event; but, as they stated (e.g. in Saar 2018), they do attempt to call attention to the living person behind the symbol. This illustration, which concludes the graphic diary and the work as a whole, serves this end. 7.  Conclusion Reading Anne Frank’s Diary – The Graphic Adaptation through the multifaceted prism of voice, time and place (Bakhtin’s polyphony and chronotopes) calls for a dynamic interpretation of historical events, the modalities employed to portray them, and their relevance for today’s young audiences. The mediation of an extremely harsh reality through the autonomous, fantastic world of comics enables present-day readers, who know their way very well in the spheres of video and computer games, to decode the genre’s style yet realize that in Anne Frank’s world there was no room for an alternative happy ending, a miraculous resurrection, or .  Another example of the various and sometimes weird uses of the icon is the following: In 2017, the rapper Xan Frank tattooed Anne Frank’s picture on his face, declaring that it represents his “dying” for his music (Harrison 2017).



Illustration 4. 

Anne Frank’s Diary – The Graphic Adaptation as a case of “indirect translation” 

 Rachel Weissbrod & Ayelet Kohn

a just punishment for crimes. At the same time, these readers can easily identify with a young girl whose feelings and thoughts resemble their own. They may find that her words voice their thoughts about their place in the world, the way other people see them, and the passion and frustration of a young person attempting to find a way to express emotions. “Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me,” writes Anne Frank in the beginning of her diary.7 And she continues: Not only because I’ve never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl. Oh well, it doesn’t matter. I feel like writing, and I have an even greater need to get all kinds of things off my chest.

These words can be smoothly transferred from their original context to other times and places and still maintain their relevance. The same applies to Anne’s reflections about the meaning of having a friend and the need to tell her story to someone who listens or at least, in the case of a diary, passively absorbs: To enhance the image of this long-awaited friend in my imagination, I don’t want to jot down the facts in this diary the way most people would do, but I want the diary to be my friend, and I’m going to call this friend Kitty.

The feelings expressed here are probably very familiar to contemporary young bloggers, Facebook storytellers and Instagrammers. Following Gutt (2000), who elaborates the ideas of Wilson and Sperber,8 we suggest that, given its enthusiastic reception, the diary in its graphic form offers ostensive stimuli that capture the interest of its audience. While manifesting responsibility and commitment toward Anne Frank’s original voice, and exemplifying Gutt's idea of the kind of faithfulness to be expected from an indirect translation, the diary in its current multimodal version is compatible with young readers’ experiences and preferences. It is “optimally relevant” (Gutt 2000: 106) in the sense that it is worth the processing effort that such a sophisticated text requires. Though our focus in this article is on Anne Frank’s Diary – The Graphic Adaptation, we hope to have offered a multifold contribution to more than one discipline. First, we have manifested the usefulness of Gutt’s concept of “indirect translation” to the study of adaptations which involve a change of modalities (from the verbal to the multimodal). Second, we have offered a link between the principle of relevance and the Bakhtinian concepts of chronotope and polyphony, which help to find out

.  The excerpts from the diary are available at: https://genius.com/Anne-frank-the-diary-ofanne-frank-excerpts-6-20-1942-7-5-1942-annotated .  Gutt refers to works from the 1980s, but see also Wilson and Sperber 2004.



Anne Frank’s Diary – The Graphic Adaptation as a case of “indirect translation” 

how the adaptation adjusts itself to a new context. Meanwhile, we have illuminated the links between the graphic novel as a hybrid form which partly represents the era of printed books, and new media as one of the major emblems of today’s world.

Acknowledgement We are grateful to Anne Frank Fonds for the permission to include illustrations from the graphic diary in this article.

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Frank, Anne. 2018. Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation, ed. by Ari Folman, illus. by David Polonsky. New York: Pantheon Graphic novels. Goffman, Erving. 1981. “Footing.” In Forms of Talk, 124–159. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Graver, Lawrence. 1995. An Obsession with Anne Frank: Meyer Levin and the Diary. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gutt, Ernst-August. 1990. “A Theoretical Account of Translation - Without a Translation Theory.” Target 2 (2): 135–164.  https://doi.org/10.1075/target.2.2.02gut Gutt, Ernst-August. 1992. Relevance Theory: A Guide to Successful Communication in Translation. Dallas and New York: Summer Institute of Linguistics and United Bible Societies. Gutt, Ernst-August. 2000. Translation and Relevance: Cognition and Context. Manchester: St. Jerome. Harrison, George. 2017. “Have a Reth-ink: Rapper Gets a Tattoo of Anne Frank on his Face… because He’s ‘Dying’ for His Music.” The Sun (10 October). Online at: https://www.thesun. co.uk/news/4650778/anne-frank-tattoo/ (accessed 15 April 2020). Jacobson, Sid, and Ernie Colón. 2010. Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic Biography. New York: Hill & Wang. Jakobson, Roman. 1959. “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation.” In On Translation, ed. by ­Reuben A. Brower, 232–239. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674731615.c18 Jenkins, Henry. 2008. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York and London: New York University Press. Karas, Hilla. 2016. “Intralingual Intertemporal Translation as a Relevant Category in Translation Studies.” Target 28 (3): 445–466.  https://doi.org/10.1075/target.28.3.05kar Katriel, Tamar. 1997. Performing the Past: A Study of Israeli Settlement Museums. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Kohn, Ayelet. 2016. “The Polyphonic Framing of Ehud Olmert.” Iyunim be-Safa ve-Khevra 9 (1–2): 116–141. [In Hebrew.] Kohn, Ayelet, and Rachel Weissbrod. 2012. “Waltz with Bashir as a Case of Multidimensional Translation.” In Translation, Adaptation and Transformation, ed. by Laurence Raw, 123–144. London and New York: Continuum. Kress, Gunther, and Theo Van Leeuwen. 1996. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London and New York: Routledge. Kress, Gunther, and Theo Van Leeuwen. 1998. “Front Pages: (The Critical) Analysis of Newspaper Layout.” In Approaches to Media Discourse, ed. by Allan Bell, and Peter Garrett, 186–220. London: Blackwell. LaCapra, Dominick. 2001. Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Lefevere, André. 2017 (1992). “Translation: Ideology – On the Construction of Different Anne Franks.” In Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame, 45–54. London and New York: Routledge. Livingstone, Sonia. 2008. “Taking Risky Opportunities in Youthful Content Creation: Teenagers’ Use of Social Networking Sites for Intimacy, Privacy and Self-Expression.” New Media and Society 10 (3): 393–411.  https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444808089415 Marom, Hagai. 2011. Makhteret ha-graffiti shel Tel-Aviv [The Tel-Avivian graffiti underground]. Tel Aviv: Halfi Art Publishing. [In Hebrew.] McCormick, Richard W. 2002. Gender and Sexuality in Weimar Modernity: Film, Literature, and “New Objectivity.” New York: Palgrave Macmillan.



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Merkle, Denise. 2002. “Presentation.” TTR 15 (2): 9–18.  https://doi.org/10.7202/007476ar Morson, Gary Saul, and Caryl Emerson. 1990. Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Nardi, Bonnie A., Diane J. Schiano, Michelle Gumbrecht, and Luke Swartz. 2004. “Why We Blog.” Communications of the ACM 47 (12): 41–46.  https://doi.org/10.1145/1035134.1035163 O’Connor, Anne-Marry. 2015. The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt Masterpiece Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. New York: Vintage Books. Park-Fuller, Linda M. 1986. “Voices: Bakhtin’s Heteroglossia and Polyphony, and the Performance of Narrative Literature.” Literature in Performance 7 (1): 1–12. Online at: www.csun. edu/~vcspc00g/604/voices-lpf.html (accessed 15 April 2020) https://doi.org/10.1080/10462938609391621 Porat, Dina. 2001. “A Forty Years Struggle, Anne Frank’s Diary and Holocaust Deniers, 1958– 1998.” In The Holocaust: The Unique and the Universal – Essays Presented in Honor of Yehuda Bauer, ed. by Shmuel Almog, David Bankier, Daniel Blatman, and Dalia Ofer, 160–183. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem. [In Hebrew.] Rudin, Shay. 2014. “‘Pka’at shel nigudim’: ha-shizur ha-poeti be-yomana shel Anne Frank” [‘A bundle of contradictions’: The poetic interweaving in Anne Frank’s diary]. Iyunim be-sifrut yeladim 23: 41–83. [In Hebrew.] Rudner, Ofra. 2017. “Anne Frank – Ha-yoman ha-graphi: yaldat ha-shoah ke-gibora exzistentsialistit merateket” [Anne Frank – the graphic diary: the holocaust girl as a fascinating existentialist hero]. Haaretz (14 November). [In Hebrew.] Online at: https://www.haaretz.co.il/ literature/youngsters/.premium-REVIEW-1.4592406 (accessed 15 April 2020). Saar, Yuval. 2018. “Anne Frank – ha-yoman ha-graphi: lishmor al ha-khayut shel ha-mutag” [Anne Frank – the graphic diary – to retain the vividness of the brand name.] Portfolio (27 February). [In Hebrew.] Online at: https://www.prtfl.co.il/archives/100967 (accessed 15 April 2020) Shavit, Avner. 2017. “Ani Anne F.: Ha-roman ha-graphi al-pi yomana shel Anne Frank hu ibud mofti” [I, Anne F.: The graphic diary based on Anne Frank’s diary is an exemplary adaptation]. Walla (13 November). [In Hebrew.] Online at: https://e.walla.co.il/item/3110880 (accessed 15 April 2020). Siegl, Nina. 2018. “Researchers Uncover Two Hidden Pages in Anne Frank’s Diary.” The New York Times (15 May). Online at: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/books/anne-frankdiary-new-pages.html (accessed 15 April 2020) Smith, Kevin. 2002. “Translation as Secondary Communication: The Relevance Theory Perspective of Ernst-August Gutt.” Acta Theologica 22 (1): 107–117. Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 1986. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell. Spiegelman, Art. 1986. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale. New York: Pantheon Books. Toury, Gideon. 2012. Descriptive Translation Studies and beyond (revised edition). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.100 Weber, Sandra, and Claudia Mitchell. 2008. “Imagining, Keyboarding, and Posting Identities: Young People and New Media Technologies.” In Youth, Identity, and Digital Media (The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning), ed. by David Buckingham, 25–48. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Weiner, Stephen. 2003. Faster than a Speeding Bullet: The Rise of the Graphic Novel. New York: NBM. Whitfield, Stephen J. 2001. In Search of American Jewish Culture. Hanover and London: Brandeis University Press.

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Wilson, Deirdre, and Dan Sperber. 1988. “Representation and Relevance.” In Mental Representations: The Interface between Language and Reality, ed. by Ruth M. Kempson, 133–153. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wilson, Deirdre, and Dan Sperber. 2004. “Relevance Theory.” In The Handbook of Pragmatics, ed. by Laurence R. Horn, and Gregory Ward, 607–632. Oxford: Blackwell. Zethsen, Karen Korning. 2009. “Intralingual Translation: An Attempt at Description.” Meta 54 (4): 795–812.  https://doi.org/10.7202/038904ar

part iii

(In)directness as an effective choice The functional view

Indirectness and effectiveness of requests in professional emails A case study Hassan Atifi & Michel Marcoccia

Tech-CICO (Université de Technologie de Troyes), France This chapter deals with the question: which strategies are used when formulating a request in a particular context – workplace – and with a specific means of communication (electronic mails). This research is based on a case study: the analysis of 60 emails sent over two days by three employees of a large French professional training company. Our research questions are: how are requests formulated in organizational context? What relationship can we observe between indirectness and effectiveness of email requests. Keywords:  request, electronic mail, workplace, discourse effectiveness, politeness

1.  Introduction The objective of this chapter is to analyze the strategies used when formulating a request in a particular context – an organizational context – and with a specific means of communication (electronic mails). This research is based on a case study: the analysis of sixty emails sent over two days by three employees of a large French professional training company. Our research question is: how are requests formulated in organizational context? On the one hand, emails pose a risk of misconstruing messages, which might encourage those who care about the effectiveness of their messages to be fairly explicit and direct. On the other hand, it is generally preferred to formulate a request indirectly to maintain a cordial and polite relationship with its recipient (Blum-Kulka et  al. 1989). What strategies will be adopted to deal with this dilemma in an organizational context? This chapter is at the intersection of three areas of research: organizational discourse analysis, computer-mediated discourse analysis (CMDA) and pragmatics.

https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.316.07ati © 2020 John Benjamins Publishing Company

 Hassan Atifi & Michel Marcoccia

Organizational discourse analysis seeks to outline the patterns and the constraints that determine discourses in organizational contexts (Iedema 2003). From a socio-constructionist perspective, not only are discourses determined by their organizational context, but they also contribute to its definition: organizations are shaped and influenced by discursive practices (Mumby & Clair 1997). Computer-mediated discourse analysis (CMDA) is part of the interdisciplinary field of computer-mediated communication (CMC), distinguished by its focus on language and language use in digital environments, and by the use of methods of discourse analysis (Herring 2001). Our study will focus on analyzing the strategies implemented to form a request by email, by observing the way this technological tool creates communicative rules that affect the form of the messages and interactions. In the field of pragmatics, indirectness is a phenomenon that concerns all who work on speech acts, their theory and their functioning. For example, research on requests has revealed that for this particular speech act indirect formulation is generally preferred to the direct one (Blum-Kulka et al. 1989). In addition, indirectness is associated with many communicative strategies taking into consideration issues of politeness (Brown & Levinson 1987) or power (Weizman 2008; Livnat & Dori Hacohen 2013). A request is also a good example of a speech act that puts the person who makes it in a dilemma between the effectiveness of the message and the threat to face it might pose (Goffman 1959) or, putting it differently, between the content and relationship aspects of communication highlighted by the Palo Alto Group (Watzlawick, Bavelas & Jackson 1967). As Lakoff (2009) notes, the most efficient communication is, in theory, the one that expresses its speaker’s intention in the fewest and clearest words; however, as the ultimate aim is to influence the recipient’s future actions, clarity and directness may not always be the best strategies. Specifically, if a directive is expressed so boldly as to offend the addressee, its effect might be nullified. From a contrastive perspective, such as the CCSARP (CrossCultural Speech Acts Research Project, see Blum-Kulka, S., House, Kasper, eds. 1989), conventional indirect formulations are the generally preferred formulations for making a request, and such formulations thus solve the above-mentioned dilemma. This work is based on a natural corpus of 61 messages and has an essentially empirical focus: how are email requests formulated in an organizational context (here, a large French training company)? Is there a preference for conventional indirect requests? What factors can explain the formulations chosen by professionals? What effect has the position of the messages’ authors, when that position is considered from both an organizational (what do they do in the company) and a hierarchical perspective (what are their hierarchical positions).



Indirectness and effectiveness of requests in professional emails 

2.  Making a request by electronic mail 2.1  The act of request The act of request is probably the most studied speech act, in all likelihood because two central phenomena in the field of pragmatics and linguistics are at play: that of indirect formulations and that of politeness. The act of request has been extensively studied in the fields of theoretical linguistics (Searle 1969) and intercultural pragmatics (Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper, eds. 1989). From a pragmatic point of view, a request is a directive speech act whose purpose is to get the addressee do something in circumstances in which it is not obvious that he/she will perform the action in the normal course of events (Searle 1969). When introducing a request, the speaker believes the addressee is able to perform an action. Depending on the nature of the subject of the address, two types of requests can be distinguished: a request for information (the act of request is thus identified with the act of formulating a question) and a request for goods and services (where a speaker asks a recipient to do something). In a French-speaking context, Kerbrat-Orecchioni (2001) proposes distinguishing between two types of “demande”: the “question” (request for information) and the “requête” (request for a service). Request strategies are divided into two types according to the level of interpretation (of the message recipient) needed to understand the utterance as a request. The two types of requests include direct requests and indirect requests (Searle 1975). A request can be emphasized by projecting toward either the speaker (Can I do X?) or the listener (Can you do X?). A direct request may use an imperative, a performative, obligations and want or need statements. An indirect request may use queries about the ability, willingness, capacity, etc. of the listener to perform the action or may use statements about the willingness (desire) of the speaker to see the listener doing X. An indirect request can be conventional (referring to contextual preconditions necessary for its performance as conventionalized in the language) or non-conventional (referring to contextual clues, often allusive) (Blum-Kulka & Olsthain 1984). Requests are a speech act that has an important place in linguistic work on politeness. Indeed, requests are by definition face-threatening acts (Brown & Levinson 1978), since by making a request, the speaker impinges on the listener’;s claim to freedom of action and freedom from imposition. The listener, called on for help, seems to be forced to accept performing this act. Any directive action is potentially threatening and dangerous for the speaker’s or recipient’s faces and, in the case of a request, the threat concerns particularly the negative face of the recipient because one expects an effort from him/her.

 Hassan Atifi & Michel Marcoccia

Thus, according to Leech (1983), the preference for indirect forms of request may correspond to a strategy for increasing the optionality and therefore the politeness of the speech act. Blum-Kulka (1987) modifies this position by showing that only conventional indirect requests can correspond to politeness strategies, but this criterion is much less clear when applied to unconventional indirect requests. Moreover, mitigating the face-threatening nature of requests can also be achieved by the use of downgraders, whose functions is to soften requests (as interrogative forms, for example). On the other hand, the speaker may wish to increase the compelling force of a request. This function of enhancing a request can be achieved through upgraders (as time intensifiers, for example, see BlumKulka & Olshtain 1984). 2.2  A request by email Electronic mail is one of the oldest forms of Internet technology used for interpersonal communication. Some studies have focused on the linguistic and pragmatic aspects of emails. For example, Cho (2010) analyzed the linguistic features of emails in an academic workplace, and showed they are based on a principle of linguistic economy, but this principle is tempered by the need to maintain social contact between users. Many studies show that email style tends to be less formal than other varieties of written workplace communication, and that emails contain features traditionally considered oral (Panckhurst 1999; Dürscheid & Frehner 2013). Crystal (2001) also found mixed results when applying written language criteria to email. He concludes that emails in particular, and CMC in general, are “identical to neither speech nor writing, but selectively and adaptively display properties of both” (2001: 51). Moreover, a concise style of communication is often preferred online (Newlands, Anderson & Mullin 2003), and according to guides, brevity is one of the rules of good digital writing (for example, for business email, Smith 2002). According to many researchers in CMC Studies, some features of ComputerMediated Communication (mainly text-based communication) cause problems for mutual understanding. For example, in an earlier but seminal work, Sproull and Kiesler (1986) argue that emails are characterized by the absence of social context cues. It is difficult to interpret participants’ messages without having access to their facial expressions, gestures, intonations, general appearance, or physical adornments. For example, the emotional or ironic dimension of a computer-mediated discourse is rather difficult to identify, but paradoxically there is more frequent and explicit emotional communication in Computer-Mediated Communication than in face-to-face communication (Derks, Fischer & Bos 2008). Thus, CMC in



Indirectness and effectiveness of requests in professional emails 

general, and emails in particular, can pose many problems for the effectiveness and the intelligibility of messages, both from the point of view of production and interpretation (Kruger et al. 2005; Atifi, Mandelcwajg & Marcoccia 2011). From a communicational and pragmatic perspective, Atifi, Gauducheau and Marcoccia (2012) show that an email can also pose problems of information overload. Computer-Mediated Communication devices (such as email) improve communication within organizations but also have the effect of creating situations of information overload (too many emails received) and strain (for example, the emails disrupt ongoing activities). The main problem is the sheer number of messages in the inbox. The quantity of received messages exceeds human information processing capacities and results in informational and communicational overload. These two phenomena can obviously be problematic when a professional write a request message by email: will his/her message be processed correctly? Will his/her request be understood? Will it be followed by the desired perlocutionary effect? Several studies are devoted to requests by email and can provide answers to these questions. Some deal specifically with requests by email in organizational context. Gains (1999) points that commercial emails contain a high proportion of requests. This seems to indicate that this is a popular way for asking people to do something without necessarily observing social and status rituals that a face-toface interaction or a telephone call demand. Some studies deal with requests by email by looking at issues of interpersonal relationship and politeness. For example, Ho (2011) compares the way the members of three communities of practice maintained a harmonious relationship with one another, while threatening other members’ face in making requests through emails. Duthler (2006) analyzes properties of politeness in requests made via email and voicemail. The study claims that voicemail users must manage more non-verbal cues than email users. Thus, speakers have less control over planning, composing, editing, and executing messages. The results indicate that email enabled the creation of more polite message content compared to messages created through voicemail. Indeed, text-based, asynchronous communication and increased functionality, eliminate the necessity to focus on performance cues and add the possibility to plan, compose, and edit a communication with more carefully considered messages. From an inter-cultural perspective, Biesenbach-Lucas (2006) examines email requests sent by native and non-native English-speaking graduate students to faculty members at a major American university. She shows native speakers demonstrate greater resources in creating polite messages to their professors compared to nonnative speakers. She adds that far more email requests of non-native speakers are using direct strategies as well as hints than conventionally indirect strategies typically found in comparative speech act studies. Chen (2015) observed that a student’s

 Hassan Atifi & Michel Marcoccia

ability to address her professor’s requests via email improved over time: the student’s requests evolved from primarily want statements to query preparatory strategies, and showed evidence of greater politeness through lexico-syntactic modification. Chen’s study (2015) provides insight into a non-native speaker’s motivation for selecting direct over indirect forms: the student felt that in order to have the professor attend to her email requests, he/she needed to make them sound important and urgent. Other studies have research objectives related to the development of automatic email processing methods and techniques. For example, Carvalho and Cohen (2005) and Lampert et al. (2010) try to create tools that assist email users in identifying, classifying, and managing requests contained in incoming emails. These works generally propose typologies of the forms of requests observed in a broad corpus of organizational emails. These typologies are bottom-up (they emanate from the observation of the corpus) and can be very precise (as seen in the classification proposed by Leopold 2015). However, they are sometimes too schematic and not always consistent with standard classifications in speech act theory (for example, the speech act classification proposed by De Felice et al. 2013). Leopold (2015) examines request strategies in emails written by native English-speaking professionals from a variety of industries in the United States. She shows that the rate of direct requests was approximately two times the rate of indirect requests. She explains that there was some variation in the request strategy influenced by gender, status, and social distance. She also notes that the imperative was used most frequently across all groups. As will be subsequently shown, our analysis, which is based on a smaller corpus, does not confirm these results. Leopold (2015) is also interested in the nature of requests: what are they about? what do those who produce these requests ask? Her study observes a great variety of queries, but nevertheless its main result is that most often, requests are for information or action (and more rarely permission or feedback, for example). Hassel and Christensen (1996) propose a contrastive study (with a comparison of face-to-face, email, and phone communication), and show that there are more direct requests by email (39%) than face-to-face (27%) or phone (34%). These interesting results should be approached with caution as they may reflect an earlier use of email. It would be useful to carry out the same type of analysis with a more recent corpus. 3.  Data and methods 3.1  Theoretical and methodological frames This research lies within the scope of computer-mediated discourse analysis (CMDA) (Herring 2004) and more precisely the pragmatics of computer-­mediated



Indirectness and effectiveness of requests in professional emails 

communication (or “cyber-pragmatics,” see Marcoccia 2016). This approach consists of focusing on topics that traditionally belong in the domain of pragmatics and studying them in the context of digital communication. The study thus focuses essentially on the principles of cooperation and relevance, the performativity of the digital discourse, and the norms of politeness. The performativity of digital discourses – that is, their capacity to perform speech acts – is a central object of study for the pragmatic analysis of digital discourses. Thus, quite a few works deal with particular speech acts and how they are carried out in specific digital communication situations: for example, requests for mutual support in discussion forums (Gauducheau & Marcoccia 2011) or apologies by email (Harrison & Allton 2013). We can also mention Yus’s work on cyber-pragmatics (2011), which represents an approach that can be described as cognitive-pragmatic. This type of analysis favors the question of interpreting messages in the context of digital communication within the framework of Sperber and Wilson’s theory of relevance (1986). According to this theory, a speaker will provide to his interlocutor a certain number of indices which, linked to the context, will allow inference of the communication intention by respecting the principle of economy. In this context, the cognitive pragmatic analysis of digital communication questions how the digital environment will modify the principles of message production and interpretation. In this chapter, the analysis consists of a classification of the requests sent via emails in order to address the following issues: how are email requests formulated in an organizational context? Is there a preference for conventional indirect requests? What factors can explain the formulations chosen by professionals? What is the effect of the position of the messages’ authors, that position being considered from both an organizational (what they do in the company) and a hierarchical perspective? 3.2.  Corpus Our analysis is based on 61 professional emails sent over two days between March and April 2009 by three professionals: an executive assistant (32 messages), a consultant-trainer (11 messages) and a manager (18 messages). These messages were collected in the field during explanatory interviews conducted by our colleague Gauducheau as part of a study on email overload (Gauducheau 2012; Atifi, Gauducheau & Marcoccia 2012, 2017). The corpus was collected in 2009 in a large professional training company (e-learning, seminars, consulting training and so forth), which has about 1200 employees. The courses are varied: office, marketing, management, human resources, etc. Their main activity is to design, produce, and sell training courses to companies; and their customers are mostly large industrial groups. E-mail was

 Hassan Atifi & Michel Marcoccia

installed in this company about fifteen years ago, first for the managers, then for the rest of the staff. The email client used is Microsoft Office Outlook. Employees are office workers, sometimes “nomadic” (they are not always at the office because they often meet with clients or telecommute), in a context where ICTs are ubiquitous. Their activity is relatively varied. They work in a context where communication and information are central and where coordination (with colleagues and clients) is needed to carry out the work. Three people were asked to send their email content over a two-day period. We collected all the messages received, deleted, and sent during this period (in total, 150 messages), but kept only the sent messages (61 emails). The three selected people occupy different position levels in the company’s hierarchy and are related to the “operational” activities: executive assistant, consultant-trainer and manager. The executive assistant is a woman who works with three managers and a team of 18 people. Her tasks are making internal or external appointments, updating the directory and the intranet, controlling time, managing leave, preparing and monitoring contracts, etc. The consultant-trainer is a man who is in charge of building, facilitating and selling training or consulting services (his area of ​​expertise is HR – Human Resources). The manager is a woman who has two main missions: the updating of the trainings on the catalog (creation, deletion, update) and the follow-up of the trainings carried out. She also ensures the commercial relation with the customers and the training of the new consultants-trainers. Schematically, we can consider that the assistant helps the consultant, whose activity, in turn, is supervised by the manager.

4.  Results 4.1  Request / Non request In order to identify and count the speech acts in our corpus, we took into account only the macro-acts, which can be composed of several subordinate speech acts. There is a possibility that the same message will contain several macro-acts, even if it does not happen often. In other words, sometimes a single message allows its author to perform several macro-acts but, most often, professionals adhere to the following rule: an email corresponds to an action. This rule is consistent with what is found in the prescriptive texts on the use of mail (studied by Atifi et al. 2012): “One topic for each email.”



Indirectness and effectiveness of requests in professional emails 

The following tables summarize the results of our analysis: what is the nature of the speech acts identified in the messages? When the speech act is a request, how is it formulated? These tables make it possible to understand the type of speech acts performed in the messages present in our corpus, according to their author (the assistant, the consultant and the manager: three columns in our table). Four types of messages are distinguished: messages whose main value is not a request, and three types of request: conventional direct, indirect, and non-conventional indirect. In short, these tables allow the reader to see how many messages of a specific type a particular employee has sent. Table 1.  Requests / Non-requests Executive assistant (32 emails)

Consultant (11 emails)

Manager (18 emails)

Non-requests

22

2

12

Requests

10

12

6

Table 1 shows that requests constitute a little less than half of the messages analyzed. Messages that do not contain requests are varied in their purpose. We mainly found messages providing information that allows the company’s activities to be carried out; this was the case for almost a third of the non-requestive messages: (1) Laurent m’a renvoyé aujourd’hui les entretiens ‘Laurent sent me back today the documents’ (2) La réunion se déroulera dans la salle … ‘The meeting will take place in room…’

Some reply messages contained thanks giving (3) or are related to some features of the email software (send an attachment (4) or notify of a calendar change). (3) merci à vous ‘thank you’ (4) Voici ta fiche ‘Here is your document’

4.2  Direct or indirect request? In Table 2, the data concerning the distribution of types or request in the corpus is presented.

 Hassan Atifi & Michel Marcoccia

Table 2.  Direct/Indirect requests Executive assistant (10 emails)

Consultant (12 emails)

Manager (6 emails)

Direct Request

2 messages

6 messages

1 message

Question

2 messages

3 messages

1 message

Infinitive/imperative

1 message

Imperative

2 messages

Conventional Indirect Request

7 messages

4 messages

5 messages

Question about a condition of felicity

2 messages

4 messages

2 messages

Thanks in advance

3 messages

Assertive – constative (whose formulation favors, in French, a conventional derivational mechanism(

1 message

Affirmation of an obligation

1 message

Non-conventional Indirect Request

1 message

2 messages

1 message

1 message

3 messages

0 message

Indirect Request Reiterating a request Assertion

1 message

Requests can be formulated in various ways. A request can be expressed directly. This is the case of a third of the requests in our corpus. When it comes to a question (a request for information), the illocutionary value can be manifested by the use of an interrogative structure with certain specific markers: morpho-syntactic, with the use of interrogative morphemes (5), or syntactic, such as subject matter inversion (6). (5) Combien de RTT? ‘How much work time reduction?’ (6) Seras-tu au bureau? ‘Will you be at the office?’1

When it comes to a request (a request for action), the clearest strategies are the use of the imperative mode (7), or an infinitive with a value of imperative (8).

.  According to the context, (6) is a genuine question about the presence of the recipient and not an indirect request.



Indirectness and effectiveness of requests in professional emails 

(7) Recontacte Michel ‘Recontact Michel’ (8) Adresse à garder ‘Address to be kept’

Requests may be expressed in a conventional indirect form. This is the case for more than half of the requests in our corpus, which use various writing strategies. In order to describe them, we will use a synthetic classification similar to that presented by Kerbrat-Orecchioni (2001), which is simpler than the typologies proposed by Clark and Schunk (1981) or Blum-Kulka (1987) for conventional indirect requests in general. However it is more consistent with the theory of speech acts than those proposed for specifically analyzing e-mail requests (for example De Felice et al. 2013; Leopold 2015). In French, some forms are used in a standard way for conventional indirect requests, such as interrogative structures in the second person with the modal verbs “want” or “can” in indicative or conditional (9), or assertions about the speaker's desire, will, or needs (10). (9) Peux-tu nous indiquer… ‘Can you tell us…’ (10) Il me faut un vidéo ‘I need a video’

In our corpus, conventional indirect requests are made by the formulation of another speech act, such as an assertion, about the speaker’s situation. It can be an assertion of an obligation (10), a constative about a state of affairs, realized or not, whose formulation favors, in French, a derivational mechanism (KerbratOrecchioni 2001: 99) (11), a question about a condition of felicity regarding the recipient (12), or an expression of gratitude (with the ritual formula “Merci de + verb”) which, in French, corresponds to a conventional indirect request (KerbratOrecchioni 1997: 133; Manno 1999: 205). (11) Il s’agit pour Laurent et moi de récupérer le document ‘Laurent and I do have to retrieve the document’ (12) Pouvez-vous pour demain matin me concocter un titre ‘Can you provide me with a title for tomorrow’ (13) Merci de remplir le document ‘Thank you for completing the document’

Finally, and more rarely, a request may be formulated in an unconventional indirect way. Unconventional indirect requests include strategies such as (14) to reiterate a request or (15) to make an additional request.

 Hassan Atifi & Michel Marcoccia

(14) Je crois que tu m’as oubliée ‘I think you forgot me’ (15)  Quelques minutes au téléphone seront peut-être nécessaires pour clarifier le déroulé ‘A few minutes on the phone may be necessary to clarify the process’

4.3  Polite or brutal request? Managing the illocutionary force of a request Whether the formulation of a request is direct or indirect, it can also be either more intrusive or less intrusive. Its directive and threatening nature can indeed be reinforced by the use of accentuating processes or be softened by downtoners. The analysis allows us to identify the various communicative and discursive strategies developed by e-mail users to reinforce the directive nature of the messages to make these messages efficient. In Atifi et al. (2012), we have distinguished two levels of email effectiveness. First, an email message can be effective when it appears in the recipient’s inbox: it is presented in a way that is intended to attract his attention and persuade him to open and read it. Second, an email message is effective when it incites the recipient to react in accordance with the sender’s intentions (producing the expected message or action). A number of strategies concern the first level of effectiveness, some of these devices consisting of exploiting a number of the email software’s functionalities (Microsoft Office Outlook in this particular case). The messaging software gives users functions that can be used with particular pragmatic aims. In general, an email user has several possibilities to modulate the directive and soliciting dimension of his/her message, outside the text of the subject and the content of the message himself. The direct and obvious way is the use of the priority indicator (three levels in Microsoft Office Outlook © (low, normal or high), five in Thunderbird ©) whose use does not seem neither widely distributed nor controlled (Lewkowicz & Laflaquière 2017: 158). Another strategy is worth mentioning: when the expected reaction is not obtained, the sender can resend his/her message by forwarding it to the same recipient. Some devices consist of the strategic use of the email subject line. In all the analyzed messages, senders used the subject line to explicitly indicate the project or the context concerned by the message (16). Occasionally, the subject line provides a summary of the message content (17). The sender may also give time-related information (deadlines, dates of meetings, etc.), possibly as ways of upgrading the illocutionary force of a request (18). (16) Formation Base Clarify ‘Base Clarify Training’



Indirectness and effectiveness of requests in professional emails 

(17) SOW#5_validé ‘SOW#5 validated’ (18) RV GDF-SUEZ du 8 avril ‘GDF-Suez meeting on April 8’

Several discursive devices might be used as upgraders in the body of the message. First, in his/her message, a professional can show that the felicity conditions of his/ her speech act are met, especially those conditions concerning the speaker. For example, the sender of an email of request can explain that he/she cannot find the information himself (19) and that the information he/she needs will be useful to him/her (20), for it is related to the preparatory condition. (19) J’ai besoin de ton aide pour le calcul des RTT ‘I need your help to calculate the days of work time reduction for the staff ’ (20)  Cela me permettra, comme chaque année, de préparer le planning des permanences ‘As in previous years, this will allow me to schedule standby duties.’

An email message may also indicate that the person responsible for a request has the necessary authority, for example, when a request comes from a superior (21). (21) Claudia recontacte cette personne de la part du [manager] ‘Claudia, could you let this person know that [the manager] wants to speak with him’

Second, to be strongly directive, professional emails must generally contain clear, concise and explicit expressions of their illocutionary force. Our data provide several illocutionary force-indicating devices. The way the question is expressed might be very direct, using yes-no questions (22). (22) Laurent a-t-il répondu à ta demande de RV ? ‘Has Laurent been in touch concerning your meeting with him?’

The sender often precisely describes what he/she expects from his/her recipient and the way this task is to be achieved (23). (23)  Peux-tu te mettre en relation pour lui demander les coordonnées de Martine Durand. Ainsi, tu lui diras que c’;est toi qui anime le plan de com’; interne, et que tu qualifieras sa demande pour rédiger la proposition ‘Ask for Martine Durand’s contact details. That way, you can inform her that you will be running the in-house communications program and that you will back her request for drafting the proposal. Could you get in touch with him?’

Professionals often go further than writing email messages that clearly express their intentions: they attempt to upgrade the illocutionary force of their email

 Hassan Atifi & Michel Marcoccia

­ essages to increase the degree of strength of the illocutionary act. Several devices m fall into this category, making use of the structure or content of the email message: the “high importance” icon (as mentioned) which can be used to highlight the illocutionary force of the message, the use of the imperative form, the use of injunctive forms (24), the use of typographic devices as capital letters (25), expressive punctuation (26) or visual enrichment (for example, writing a sentence in orange) to highlight elements within the email message. (24) J’ai besoin… / Tu dois… ‘I need… / You have to…’ (25) CONFIDENTIEL ‘CONFIDENTIAL’ (26) Adresse à garder !!!! ‘Address to be kept!!!!’

Indicating that a request comes from a superior (as mentioned) can also be seen as an upgrader of a request. Finally, an indication that the email message has a high degree of urgency, whether or not specifically defined (27) is also a way to make a request strongly directive. (27) C’est super urgent, pour une session le 22 juin soit lundi prochain ‘It’s really urgent, it’s for a session on June 22, and that means next Monday’

By contrast, a request can be downgraded to mitigate its threatening nature by the use of various methods. When the email message is a request, it can be more effective if its directivity is reduced or compensated by politeness devices or proximity markers. In other words, the effectiveness of an email of request depends on the way its sender mitigates the face threats inherent in the illocutionary act (Brown & Levinson 1987). In our corpus, two main types of devices were used to mitigate or soften the illocutionary force of a request. The sender of an email could use proximity markers to build a satisfactory relationship with its recipient. These proximity markers are essentially the use of the recipient’s first name, the familiar “tu” form and rituals of greeting. The sender of an email message could also use several politeness devices, such as politeness expressions in a sentence (expression of thanks in particular), conventional indirect questions (28), optional requests (Manno 2002) (29), and apologies (30). Here, we have a mix of positive and negative politeness in the sense that the author of the message combines strategies to satisfy the positive face of the recipient (such as thanking) with strategies of minimization of the imposition (with indirect questions, for example).



Indirectness and effectiveness of requests in professional emails 

(28) Merci de remplir le document ‘Thank you for completing the document’ (29) Essaie de voir ça ce matin ‘Try to get that done this morning’ (30) Désolé Claudia, recontacte Michel avant d’appeler son client ‘Sorry, Claudia, contact Michel again before calling his client’

4.4  How to be effective and polite? There are many messages in our corpus that surprisingly combine these two opposing strategies: “be as directive as possible” and “be polite.” There are many messages in which authors formulate a direct request with downgraders, or, by contrast, an indirect request with upgraders. The message (31) combines a very indirect request (“je n’ai pas eu de retour de ta part” which means “answer me” and two mitigators: a pre-request that serves as a justification and a formula of insistence (“it’s pretty urgent now”) that reinforces the illocutionary force of the request and an expression of gratitude which complies with the request and has a positive value for the face of the addressee. (31)  Je n’ai pas eu de retour de ta part. C’est assez urgent maintenant. Merci de ton aide ‘I did not receive a reply from you. It’;s pretty urgent now. Thanks for your help’

Similarly, the message (32) presents a request as both optional and very urgent. (32)  Si oui (et j’espère), peux-tu m’envoyer les documents relatifs à ce stage (…) Inutile de dire que c’est super urgent ‘If the answer is yes (and I hope so), can you send me the documents related to this internship (…) Needless to say, it’;s extremely urgent’

In the opposite direction, there are some direct but attenuated requests, such as (33). Here, this request is very direct but is mitigated by various means: a justification of the request, an enhancement of the help that the addressee can bring, and an expression of gratitude. (33)  j’ai besoin de ton aide pour le calcul des RTT concernant 2 personnes (…). Combien de RTT, combien de CT ? Voulant être sûre de ne pas faire d’erreurs, je préfère te demander? Merci pour ta compréhension ‘I need your help to calculate the working time reduction (RTT) for 2 people (…). How much RTT, how much CT? Want to be sure not to make mistakes, so I prefer to ask you? Thank you for your understanding’

Thus, these examples show that the professionals in our corpus try above all to reconcile effectiveness and politeness and implement various strategies of writing

 Hassan Atifi & Michel Marcoccia

to solve this communication problem. It also shows that the opposition between direct and indirect requests is not sufficient to capture the way in which speakers choose to address a request to a recipient since, in many cases, professionals combine direct and indirect formulations, methods of downgrading and upgrading the request in the same message. 4.5  Request, activity and hierarchical position The way in which professionals formulate their requests by email seems to be partly determined by constraints related to the context and, in particular, to the channel used (the email). However, other important factors must be taken into account, such as the hierarchical or organizational position occupied by the authors of the messages. Requests in any language involve a number of social and situational factors. For example, Blum-Kulka et  al. (1989) show that the success of a request may depend on the dominance of the requester in relation to the addressee, on the speaker’s right to issue a request, and on the addressee’s degree of obligation to carry out this request. According to Searle (1979), the difference in status or position between the speaker and the recipient is even one of the preparatory conditions for a request. In our case, the hierarchical structure is quite clear. In the company, the assistant is supposed to be at the service of her colleagues. The consultant is under the responsibility of the manager. From the activity point of view, the consultant performs the activity – strictly speaking (building training programs) – that the manager is in charge of supervising. This seems to have several consequences for the types of messages sent by these professionals. First, we can see that the consultant is the one who posts the most requests (in proportion to the number of messages he has sent), probably because it is he who must solve the problems of organizing the activity being discussed. The manager and the assistant provide more answers than they post requests. Second, the formulation of requests is interesting to observe. The assistant posts almost no direct requests and seems to favor politeness over clarity in his messages, sometimes posting requests at once allusive and attenuated as (34). (34) Je pense que tu m’as oubliée mais je ne t’en veux pas ‘I think you have forgotten me but I do not blame you’

These findings can be easily explained by the CCSARP Model (Blum-Kulka & Olshtain 1984): speakers who do not have a high status preferentially use indirect and mitigated requests. On the other hand, the consultant in our corpus posted as many direct as indirect queries, and sometimes even combined a direct request with an upgrader (35).



Indirectness and effectiveness of requests in professional emails 

(35) Recontacte Michel (…) Le plus tôt étant le mieux ‘Contact Michel again (…) The sooner the better’

Thus, there is a strong correlation between the position and the activity of the email author in the organization and the way in which he/she will formulate his/ her request. This configuration is more complex than a simple reflection of hierarchical positions. Indeed, the consultant in our study was found more directive than the assistant, but no less so than the manager, who may have less need to manifest his/her authority in messages. This difference in the way of formulating a request in workplace may also be linked to gender issues (Saito & Cook 2017: 206). Thus, the messages of the consultant (who is a male individual) and the messages of the assistant and the manager (who are female individuals) correspond to a certain extent to normative gendered interactional styles. Masculine ways of issuing directives are direct, assertive and authoritative, whereas feminine ways are polite, indirect and mitigated (Holmes 2006; Mullany 2007). 5.  Conclusion In short, this study shows that the use of a distinctive communication device (e-mail) in a particular context (a particular organization) by some specific users (an assistant, a consultant, and a manager) can change to some extent the formulation of speech acts. The conventional indirect forms of a request are certainly preferred, but many direct requests are still present in the corpus and, above all, many configurations are used to reconcile the effectiveness of a request and the rules of politeness: professionals often combine indirect requests and upgraders or, conversely, direct requests and downgraders. The corpus is not large enough to draw general conclusions from this research. Nevertheless, this case study highlights the importance of the organizational or hierarchical position of the messages authors when trying to understand their formulation strategies. There is, however, no automatic relationship between the hierarchical position and the degree of the directness of a request: as expected, the assistant uses almost exclusively indirect and attenuated forms of request, but the manager does not manifest his/her authority in his requests. Nonetheless, the consultant is the one who emphasizes his requests. The formulation of a request may be more a means of manifesting than of reflecting the authority of a speaker. In addition, in this corpus there is a clear relation between directive discourse, politeness and gender. This aspect should be developed by observing a larger corpus. Finally, this study shows the need to take into account the material aspect of technical devices and analyze the communicative affordances of the ­technological

 Hassan Atifi & Michel Marcoccia

artefacts (Hutchby 2001). In our corpus, the users exploit three technological resources: the structural organization of the email (the use of the subject area to clearly formulate a speech act that will be presented in a more nuanced way in the body of the message), the features of the Microsoft Office Outlook messaging (by using the “important” icon) and the methods of formatting the text (with the use of capital letters, bold letters and colors). These observations are based on a case study and constitute a contribution to the pragmatic analysis of computer-mediated exchanges. They could be enhanced by further developing this type of research, for example by expanding our analysis to a much larger body of work.

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Newlands, Alison, Anne H. Anderson, and Jim Mullin. 2003. “Adapting Communicative Strategies to Computer Mediated Communication: An Analysis of Task Performance and Dialogue Structure.” Applied Cognitive Psychology 17 (3): 325–348. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.868 Panckhurst, Rachel. 1999. “Analyse linguistique assistée par ordinateur du courriel.” In Internet, communication et langue française, ed. by Jacques Anis, 55–70. Paris: Hermès Science. Saito, Junko, and Haruko Minegishi Cook. (2017). “Directives in Workplace Discourse.” In The Routledge Handbook of Language in the Workplace, ed. by Bernadette Vine, 203–215. New York: Routledge.  https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315690001-18 Searle, John. 1969. Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.  https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139173438 Searle, John. 1975. “Indirect Speech Acts.” In Syntax and Semantics Vol. 3: Speech Acts, ed. by Peter Cole, and Jerry L. Morgan, 59–82. New York: Academic Press. Searle, John. 1979. Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511609213 Smith, Lisa A. 2002. Business E-Mail: How to Make it Professional and Effective. San Anselmo, CA: Writing & Editing at Work. Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 1986. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Sproull, Lee, and Sara Kiesler, S. 1986. “Reducing Social Context Cues: Electronic Mail in Organizational Communication.” Management Science 32 (11): 1492–1512. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.32.11.1492 Watzlawick, P., Janet B. Bavelas, and Don D. Jackson. 1967. Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies, and Paradoxes. New York: Norton. Weizman, Elda. 2008. Positioning in Media Dialogue. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/ds.3 Yus, Francesco. 2011. Cyberpragmatics: Internet-Mediated Communication in Context. Amsterdam /Philadelphia: John Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.213

Directness and indirectness in a presidential debate Luisa Granato

Universidad Nacional de La Plata This contribution examines the use of directness and indirectness as utilized by the two candidates to the presidency of Argentina, in a debate broadcast on television before the 2015 elections. Adopting a socio-pragmatic perspective, this study makes a qualitative and quantitive analysis of addressivity at the micro and meso levels of the interaction. An exploration of the form and function of the interactants’ contributions demonstrated that directness is the preferred choice when presentations and closing fragments are produced, while the questions and answers addressed by the candidates to each other reveal differences in the use of in/directness. These disparate strategies have a bearing on the interpersonal discourse relationship between the two politicians and the audience. Keywords:  addressivity, political debate, directness, indirectness, micro level, meso level

1.  Introduction Before election days, people may draw information about politicians’ governance plans in different ways like reading books, essays, newspapers or specialized publications, attending public addresses performed live, or listening to broadcast speeches, interviews or debates in which candidates participate. Among these, media discourses shown on television seem to be the source which attracts attention of most future voters. As institutional discourses, they are subject to the limitations of the medium and the programme in which they may be embedded, and to the presence of a mass audience in absentia who, as a ratified participant receives the discourse but cannot participate in the negotiation of the meanings expressed. Thus, the construction of meaning is in the hands of the first-frame participants who address their discourses to the ‘second-frame participant’ – the audience (Lauerbach & Fetzer 2007: 14). Simon-Vandenbergen et al.(2007: 31–32) divide media political language into three groups of studies. “In one type of studies the focus is on ways in which language reflects explicit or implicit ideologies,”

https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.316.08gra © 2020 John Benjamins Publishing Company

 Luisa Granato

which looks at the way political opinions are projected in relation to social issues and are included in the area of critical discourse analysis, area that concentrates on language as power. The second group of studies looks at the “mechanisms of interaction and the ways in which participants engage in talk” in media spoken genres and works from conversation analysis frameworks. The third group centres on “the linguistic means – lexical and grammatical – of persuasion,” as the rhetorical structures used by the participants to fulfil their aims constitute their object of research and analysis. This study shares the interests of the third group, for it examines the use of direct and indirect utterances as a strategy used in the televised debate between the two candidates to compete in the second round of the presidential election of Argentina in 2015, namely Mauricio Macri and Daniel Scioli. This debate was the first in its class to be broadcast in the country and aroused great interest in all walks of life and among people ranging from ordinary citizens to specialists in different areas, who not only commented on the contents of the interaction in private and public spaces, but also evaluated aspects of the speech used by the two politicians. The specific aims of this work are to look at the use of in/directness at the micro and meso levels of the interaction, to identify the linguistic and discoursal resources used in the production of utterances, and to discuss the consequences of the speakers’ choices vis à vis the other participants. The text was basically approached from a socio-pragmatic perspective and although the data was qualitatively analysed, some quantitative techniques were used. 2.  Directness and indirectness In/directness in language has been a popular topic in language and discourseoriented research over the last decades and is viewed as a central resource in communication by linguists and non-linguists. Lempert (2012) holds that: Indirectness borders on and bleeds into many topics, including euphemism, circumlocution, metaphor, irony, repression, parapraxis. What is more, the topic (really topics, since “indirectness” does not name a single problematic) has received attention in diverse fields, from linguistics to anthropology to rhetoric to communication studies. No attempt is made to consolidate this research with the hope, naïve if not Icarian, of finding some high ground from which to synthesize this diversity or adjudicate among alternatives. (Lempert 2012: 181)

The author argues that indirectness is not a stable phenomenon that can be studied from different theoretical frameworks, unless the differences between those frameworks are seriously taken into account.



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Approached from different analytical perspectives, there seems to be no ­possibility of giving a unified definition of indirectness. This owes to the diverse phenomena that the concept encompasses. Grainger and Mills (2016: 34) refer to this difficulty when they claim, “the definitions (of what an indirect sentence or utterance is) can vary considerably and are sometimes inconsistent and contradictory.” The authors hold that “when examined in detail […] it turns out that the concept of indirectness can be very ‘slippery’ and ambiguous.” They carry out a close analysis of the topic, describe the theoretical and methodological perspectives from which indirectness has been studied, and point to the eight themes, notions or relations found in the literature: (i)the idea that indirectness is the difference between literal meaning and speaker’s intended meaning, (ii) the idea that indirectness is about the amount of interpretive work carried out by the hearer, (iii) the treatment of indirectness as conventional politeness, (iv) the notion of indirectness as an off record speech act, (v) the idea that there are degrees of indirectness, (vi) the notion that there is a close relationship between indirectness and politeness, (vii) indirectness as an interactional achievement and (viii) indirectness as identity work.  (Grainger & Mills 2016: 34)

As the term has been generally understood in Grammar, it concerns utterances used to perform functions not recognized as basic to the syntactic organization of a sentence, as for example, a statement used to express a command. When addressing the role of indirectness in discourse, Sifianou (1993: 217) describes indirectness as a “multifunctional linguistic phenomenon” which may be used in the performance of diverse functions. Directness, on the other hand, has received less attention than indirectness, on the assumption that it is a kind of unmarked form. Theorists consider that directness “is the base form of an utterance where there is no inferencing required from the hearer to understand the utterance” (Grainger & Mills 2011: 51). The authors believe that this view presents analytical problems. These can derive from the different evaluations of what is in/directness across cultures and languages. More specifically, these analytical problems reflect the ideologies associated with different linguistic styles and social groupings, within which directness and indirectness are evaluated differently according to the social values each group possesses. In their view, directness is not a clear indication of a person’s personality or typical behaviour or style, since it is possible to make different associations “between directness and styles, and social positions” (op. cit.: 58). From a perspective at once sociocultural and discursive, these authors conclude that the role of directness in interaction can inform the participants’ belonging to a social group and it can reflect their connections with a certain social class as well. Scholars seem to agree that directness and indirectness are not fixed standards. Instead, they are the two extremes of a cline, between which intermediate

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points can indicate other levels approximating one or the other end of the continuum or being equidistant from both. Among the authors trying to design taxonomies of indirectness are Kiesling and Ghosh-Johnson (2010: 296). They make an interesting distinction between four types of interactional indirectness, in their belief that directness in language is understood as involving no intervening steps required for arriving at a meaning, in contrast to indirectness, which does require one “to go through some extra steps and take a circuitous route.” In this view, directness and indirectness are equated with the conventional and unconventional meaning of utterances. These authors differentiate between ‘stance indirection,’ ‘topic indirection,’ ‘participation indirection’ and ‘production indirection.’ Stance indirection refers to the use of linguistic forms which do not match the type of relationship in the event, thus creating a different one. Topic indirection occurs when the topic of the conversation is not the one really discussed, but simply leads interactants to it. Participation indirection is observed when a speaker does not address the intended addressee but reaches him through a third participant. Finally, production indirection is produced when speakers change their identity for some time, hiding their real persona. Kiesling and Ghosh-Johnson’s (2010: 296) definition of participation indirection proved very useful in our analysis, given the frequent use of this resource in the debate. The topic has also interested scholars who consider how addressees of utterances make meaning of in/directness on the bases of contextual information. Relevance Theory attributes a key role to context in the interpretation of utterances in conversation. Sperber and Wilson (1996), Wilson and Sperber (2006) and Yus (2017a, 2017b) hold that communication is attained when the interlocutor makes meaning of utterances pronounced by the speaker. “The central claim of the theory is that the expectations of relevance raised by an utterance are precise and predictable enough to guide the hearer toward the speaker’s meaning” (Wilson & Sperber 2006: 607). Dascal (2003), Weisman and Dascal (1991), Dascal and Weizman (1987) distinguish two types of contextual information that contribute to text interpretation – ‘metalinguistic’ and ‘extralinguistic.’ The interpretation is possible through recourse to ‘cues’ (used to notice interpretation problems) and ‘clues’ (used to arrive at utterance or speaker’s meaning). Both of these involve the recipient’s knowledge of the language and of the situation in which utterances occur (Dascal 2003: 170). Not only there may be cultural differences in the use of in/directness in discourse, but there are also differences regarding the type of interaction in which speakers engage preferences for one form or the other. This may be the case of an individual who may decide how to express himself according to which form he



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considers more useful for the goals to be achieved in each step of an interactive situation. In this chapter, the terms direct and directness will be applied to utterances or fragments in an interaction that: (a) are expressed in plain, clear, straightforward language and through the use of structures whose functional grammatical meanings (at the levels of semantics, morphology and syntax) directly express the pragmatic meanings in the text; (b) do not alter the rigid structural organization of the debate, as giving answers to the interlocutor after he poses a question, thus adopting the respondent position, and assuming the questioner position in the stages in which they are supposed to do so; (c) help develop the established topic and (d) orient to the indicated addressee. On the other hand, the terms indirect and indirectness will be utilized in relation to those utterances which do not exhibit these characteristics. 3.  Context of the interaction and source of the data Political discourse in the media, especially when produced in the form of televised interviews and discussions, is an important information source that may often be the only source to which citizens refer at election times. Politicians, well aware of the effect of their words on public occasions, use linguistic and extra linguistic strategies and resources which they and their assessors believe best contribute to gain support from the voters. This participation in the media starts early for candidates in Argentina who begin their presidential campaigns far in advance of the election days. Argentina has a two-round system for direct presidential elections which is used if no candidate obtains an overall majority in the first round. Such was the case on the occasion of the presidential elections in Argentina in 2015, when Mauricio Macri and Daniel Scioli emerged as the final candidates to compete in the second round. Some explanations about the political scenario are in order here. Mauricio Macri and Daniel Scioli represented two different political spaces: Cambiemos (‘Let’s change’) and Frente para la Victoria (‘Front for victory’). Both had been members of parliament and had occupied senior posts in government: Scioli was vice president of Argentina between 2003–2007, and then governor of the province of Buenos Aires – the largest and most populated in the country – between 2007–2015. Macri was the Mayor of Buenos Aires, the autonomous capital city, also between 2007–2015. The data analysed come from a debate, which constitutes a genre with the general function of simultaneously giving the candidates an opportunity to discuss

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their views with their adversary while allowing the audience to hear the candidates’ governance plans as presented and argued in a live, face-to-face interaction. Held at the National University of Buenos Aires shortly before the second round of the presidential election, the debate was broadcast during prime time on national and provincial radios and on TV channels throughout the country. Figure 1 shows how the interaction developed. Candidate 1

Candidate 2

Journalists

Audience Figure 1.  Interactions in the debate

As indicated in the figure, the two candidates, the three journalists and the audience interacted. Given that the audience could only listen to the other participants but was not allowed to speak, two types of participation were produced: reciprocal interaction established between the two candidates, and between the candidates and the journalists, and non-reciprocal interactions occurring between the candidates and the audience and the journalists and the audience. These unidirectional and bidirectional addresses are shown in the diagram by one and two-headed arrows respectively. The debate was a highly structured interaction: three very experienced journalists acted as moderators who shared the task of presenting the event. They welcomed the candidates, announced the rules of conduct to be observed during the debate, presented the subjects for discussion and told the speakers when they could start and should finish a contribution to the interaction. They were to be responsible at all times for controlling the activity so that its development would be governed by the code of behaviour to which the organizers and the candidates’ political parties had agreed. After the order of the candidates’ participation was



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decided by drawing lots, four topics were discussed: Economic and human development; Education and childhood, Security and human rights, and Reinforcement of democracy. The presentations of these topics were followed by a segment of questions and answers produced by the candidates. Wrapping up the debate were summary statements from each candidate. Table 1 indicates the time span allocated to each of these steps for the speakers who were involved. Table 1.  Structure of the debate Participant

Activity

Time allowed

Journalists

Present the debate

2 minutes

1 Journalist

Presents the topic

1 minute

Procedure with first topic Candidate 1

Exppresses ideas about topic

2 minutes

Candidate 2

Asks a question

1 minute

Candidate 1

Answers question

1 minute

Candidate 2

Asks second question

1 minute

Candidate 1

Answers second question

1 minute

Candidate 2

Expresses ideas about topic

2 minutes

Candidate 1

Asks a question

1 minute

Candidate 2

Answers question

1 minute

Candidate 1

Asks second question

1 minute

Candidate 2

Answers second question

1 minute

Procedure repeated with the remaining topics Candidate 1

Produces final message

2 minutes

Candidate 2

Produces final message

2 minutes

Journalists

Close debate

1 minutes

As can be seen in Table 1, the debate consists of four types of contributions at the meso level: the presentation of ideas about a given topic (2 min. each), the formulation of questions (1 min. each), their corresponding answers (1 min. each) and the final messages (2 min. each). In the discourse situation analysed, the parties have to be well aware of the demands of a complex participation system, which consists of the co-presence of the journalists and the two candidates, as well as the public present in the room, and the remote spectators, namely the live TV audience. As said above, the analysis of in/direction in the above-mentioned fragments was done basically through the observation of the characteristics of the speech produced at the micro and the meso levels. At the micro level of the interaction, the unit analysed was the discourse act. At the meso level, the units under

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c­onsideration were the different fragments contributed by the participants – presentations and final messages, questions and answers – each considered as a whole. 4.  In/directness at the micro level of the discourse Bearing in mind the complexity of the topics of directness and indirectness in ­discourse, we borrowed Terkourafi’s (2011: 2861) question when facing the “­puzzle of indirect speech”: “[…] why should anyone want to communicate the same message in a more convoluted way that typically requires additional effort on the part of the speaker to produce and on the part of the listener to comprehend?” The motivations for the choice of in/directness by the participants seem to be diverse, as well as the linguistic resources they use to express themselves with different degrees of in/directness in a cline between the two opposed notions. The focus on the micro level of the discourse allowed us to look at the use of in/directness in the discourse acts produced step by step by the participants. To detect in/directness, attention was paid to the pragmatic meanings conveyed and to the grammatical and lexical choices made by the speakers. Considering the clause as an exchange in verbal interactions, Halliday and Matthiessen (2004: 107) recognize two basic types of speech roles: (i) giving and (ii) demanding, and according to the commodity being exchanged, they distinguish between (a) goods and services and (b) information. They hold that these distinctions define the primary speech functions of offer, command, statement and question, but that behind these, there are more specific types. These concepts proved useful to discriminate between direct and indirect utterances. The discourse acts performed in the debate occur basically within six broad dimensions distinguished according to the most representative general discourse acts identified in the debate: a. Reference to present action (discourse acts of expressing feelings, stating, inviting, summoning, promising, etc.) b. Reference to future action (discourse acts of promising, proposing, announcing, communicating, stating, etc.) c. Reference to past action (discourse acts of informing, supporting, clarifying, etc.) d. Presentation of self (discourse acts of self-praising, claiming capacity, giving evidences, contrasting, self-assurance etc.) e. Presentation of other (discourse acts of accusing, reproaching, sanctioning, criticising, requesting, contradicting, challenging, eliciting information, ­eliciting explanations, refusing, commenting, acknowledging, etc.)



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The acts included in each of the areas above were selected according to the highest frequency of occurrence, but they can be produced in other dimensions as well. On the other hand, acts like addressivity, summoning, stating, contrasting, are used by the interactants in the five dimensions described above. Directness and indirectness do not occur consistently in association within any of the above-mentioned dimensions in particular. It has been observed that direct forms seem to be the main speakers’ option. This may originate in the politicians’ need to make use of clear, straightforward language when they make their ideas, actions or plans known to the interlocutor and the audience, or to project a selfimage of a competent and efficient future governor, and an image of an incompetent, unqualified adversary. The participants use different resources to produce in/direct utterances and we will refer to those which are more often heard in the debate. The reiterated occurrence of these resources to produce direct utterances is made evident in the following excerpts which are representative of what was found in the corpus and are grouped according to the speech action within which they occur. 4.1  Directness Directness is used in most utterances in which the candidates express actions related to the present, past and future actions. Linguistically, this is achieved by means of canonical structures of statements, structures whose grammatical meaning coincides with the pragmatic meaning of the utterance and by the use of straightforward, clear vocabulary which is accessible to all listeners. This is a feature observed throughout the debate. Excerpt (1) exhibits these characteristics in a contribution in which the candidate manifests his belief and knowledge, by producing a statement expressed through an indicative mood declarative clause in the present tense, structured in the typical pattern S V Adverbial Adjunct of Manner. (1)  Macri: La Argentina tiene que crecer en base a un gobierno que diga la verdad, un gobierno que fije reglas de juego claras, que defienda el valor de nuestra moneda. Macri: Argentina has to grow on the basis of an administration that tells the truth, an administration that establishes clear rules, that defends the value of our currency.

In Excerpt (2), Scioli commits himself to follow a course of action in the future (defeating poverty) also using the structure S V Complement Adverbial Adjunct, which is natural of utterances with proposal or commitment functions. (2)  Scioli: […] Yo me comprometo a derrotar definitivamente la pobreza, trayendo inversiones productivas … Scioli: I commit myself to completely defeating poverty, attracting productive investments […] (Commitment)

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Directness, in Excerpt (3), is used by candidate Scioli to mention his successful past actions as governor of the Province of Buenos Aires, which he communicates using the canonical structural organization for an information giving utterance, namely S V (Past tense) Direct Object Adverbial Adjunct. (3)  Scioli: […] Yo ya inauguré más de cien comisarías de la mujer en la Provincia de Buenos Aires. Scioli: […] I have already opened more than a hundred Police Offices for women in the Province of Buenos Aires.

Among the various resources in the presentation of self, the candidates often directly highlight the qualities and capacities that position them as the right choice to govern the country, as can be seen in Excerpt (4). (4)  Scioli: […] Estoy convencido de hacerlo bien, porque yo interpreto muy bien a las familias argentinas, sus preocupaciones, sus demandas. Sé escuchar. Sé interpretar. Scioli: […] I am certain I can do it well (govern the country), because I can interpret Argentinian families very well, their worries, their demands. I can listen. I can interpret them.

In this example, Scioli expresses self-confidence and emphasises his assertion ­giving reasons for what he states, through a typical structure of self-presentation: S V Direct Object Adverbial Adjunct. Often the presentation of other is manifested through direct speech acts of sanction or criticism, which are sometimes quite aggressive as can be seen in (5). (5)  Macri: […] La verdad es que tu planteo es […] autoritario, conservador, cínico. Macri: […] The truth is that your proposition is […] authoritarian, conservative, cynical.

The speaker starts his contribution with la verdad es que… (‘The truth is that…’) that qualifies the following segment as true (Piatti 2019). The author argues that this equational structure has de effect of highlighting what follows and may perform different functional meanings according to the context in which it occurs. In this case, the speaker seems to focus attention on the truth of the following negative evaluation of his opponent, the implicit meaning being that he contradicts the identity his opponent is projecting- that of an ideal candidate to the presidency. At the same time, this structure seems to emphasize the devastating evaluation made in rheme position, projected through the use of three negative qualifiersauthoritarian, conservative, cynical- which contribute to shape a direct a­ ccusation, ­structurally organized as S V Subjective Complement.



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4.2  Indirectness Indirection, on the other hand, is also utilized by the candidates to express the same discourse actions, for which they make use of various verbal resources. In their reference to past, present and future actions, the utilization of interrogative structures to perform functions other than eliciting information is quite frequent. In Excerpt (6), by means of an interrogative structure, Scioli presents a fact. (6) Scioli: Macri administra el distrito de ingreso per cápita más grande del país. ¿Cómo justifica que haya crecido la mortalidad infantil? Scioli: Macri is the head of the district with the largest per capita income of the whole country. How does he justify the growth of infant mortality rate?

It is well known that infant mortality increased during Macri’s 8-year administration of the city of Buenos Aires, due to the assignment of very tight budgets to health care. Given that Buenos Aires is one of the richest districts in the country, Macri should explain the ongoing state of affairs offering a reasonable justification, which, in the speaker’s opinion, he won’t be able to do. The speaker uses the interrogative structure in a rhetorical question (underlined in the example) to state the belief that his opponent cannot possibly offer this justification of the present mortality rate, because he had the means to avoid it, being the head of ‘the largest per capita income district in the country.’ In (7), the candidate shows awareness of the kind of president the country needs for the future. (7) Macri: Yo sé que se necesita un presidente que hable menos y escuche más, que haga conferencias de prensa y no cadenas nacionales, que entienda que el valor es el equipo y no el personalismo. Macri: I know that what is necessary is a president who speaks less and listens more; who gives press conferences and does not talk over national radio and TV networks, who understands that the value lies in the team and not in personalism.  (Promising, Committing)

He indirectly means that he will act in agreement with these needs if he is the future president of the country, through an assertive utterance expressed in a S V Direct object. At the same time, by alluding to the well-known characteristics of the president in office so far – who belongs to the adversary’s political party – he expresses indirect disapproval of what she has been doing to date, that is speaking a lot, talking over national radio and TV networks, and governing in a personalist, self-oriented style.

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In Excerpt (8), one can hear candidate Scioli expressing the desire to ask his opponent to justify his past behaviour – por qué votó en contra de […] (‘why did he vote against’ […]) (8) Scioli: Yo quiero preguntarle al ingeniero Macri por qué votó en contra de la recuperación de YPF, de Aerolíneas, de la creación de una empresa que ha dado agua potable y cloacas. Scioli: I want to ask engineer Macri why he voted against the re-nationalization of YPF, of Aerolíneas of the opening of a company which has given drinking water and sewage systems, …  (Informing about wrong past actions)

He produces an utterance by means of which he expresses his desire to ask his opponent a question, when he is not really eliciting an answer from him. In the context, the utterance clearly constitutes an indirect way of directly informing the audience that, in the past, his adversary had voted against the interests of the country and against progress and welfare services. This reference to a past action also has the ultimate goal of persuading the audience not to vote for a candidate with these records in his political career. Very few indirect utterances are produced in the self and other presentations in the debate. In Excerpt (9), after severely criticising the previous administration, candidate Macri expresses his ideas about what has to be done to make the country grow. (9) Macri: La Argentina tiene que crecer en base a un gobierno que diga la verdad, un gobierno que fije reglas de juego claras, que defienda el valor de nuestra moneda. Macri: Argentina has to grow on the basis of an administration that tells the truth, an administration that lays down clear rules of the game, that defends the value of our currency.

Using a non-personal actor as subject – Argentina – the speaker directly expresses his own views about the moral and ethical values and principles of the administration the country needs. In other words, he means that if he is elected president, he will govern telling the truth, establishing clear rules of the game, and defending the value of the national currency, this being the opposite to what the adversary’s political party in office has been doing. This can also be interpreted as an indirect criticism to the past administration. By means of a reference to what the citizens of the country feel, a veiled criticism is made of the adversary in (10). (10) Macri: Te escucho hace varios días insistir que los argentinos tienen miedo. Yo no creo, yo creo que- los veo muy contentos. Sienten la esperanza de que se puede, de que vamos a crecer, que va a haber trabajo, que vamos a desarrollar las economías regionales.



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Macri: For several days I’ve heard you insisting that Argentinians fear what might happen. I do not believe it, I believe… I see that they are quite happy. They are hopeful that it is possible, that we are going to grow, that there will be job opportunities, that we will develop regional economies.

Macri’s words can be interpreted as referring to the hope that people had lost during the twelve-year administration of the political party Scioli represented. As such, this segment constitutes a roundabout way of signalling what the adversary’s political party were incapable of achieving while they were in office. This fragment opens with a clear reference to the citizens’ expectations of obtaining what could not be obtained during the past government term of office, for he says that ‘it is possible,’ which can be interpreted as ‘it was not possible before.’ Excerpt (11) shows an even more circuitous way to voice a negative evaluation of the adversary. (11) Macri: Hace unas semanas aquí tuvimos un debate y yo sentí que aprendí del intercambio de propuestas de Sergio, de Margarita, de Nicolás, de Adolfo. Y espero que hoy también, más allá de las diferencias y de que uno solo va a ser presidente, espero que sea un intercambio constructivo. Y como yo tengo un compromiso con la democracia, estoy acá, más allá de que vos no viniste al debate pasado, porque creo que tenemos todos que colaborar en que se consolide nuestra democracia. Macri: Some weeks ago, we participated in a debate and I felt that I had learned a lot in the exchange of proposals by Sergio, Margarita, Nicolás and Adolfo. And I also hope that today, beyond the differences (between us) and that only one of us will be president, I hope this will be a useful exchange of views as well. And since I have a strong commitment to democracy, I am here, even if you did not come to the past debate, because I believe that we all have to collaborate to consolidate our democracy.

By means of expressing what might sound as a sincere wish to hold a constructive exchange of ideas, Macri makes a stinging remark about his interlocutor ­having missed the previous debate in which the other candidates to the presidency of Argentina participated, a behaviour which makes his lack of interest in learning evident, as opposed to what the speaker did. Then, through referring to his own motivation to be present at the debate – a reasonable and expected behaviour – and contrasting it with that of his interlocutor’s – he produces again a rather i­ndirect accusation towards his opponent’s having refused to do something that would have helped consolidate democracy in Argentina. Following Kiesling and Ghosh ­Johnson (2010), this might be considered a kind of ‘topic indirection’ whose understanding depends on an inferencing process, as it needs the recipient to realize the real topic he wishes to address. It also shows features of production indirectness occurring when participants change their identities briefly in the course of

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an interaction. The speaker in this case stops functioning as an adversary with an identical status as his opponent’s in the debate, to take on the stance of someone with the prerogative of exercising power over his interlocutor by means of pointing out mistakes in his behaviour. To capture the meaning of this segment, it will be necessary to resort to knowledge of the genre under development and to identify the positions taken by the participants, that is, to use this ‘extra-linguistic shallow information” (Weizman & Dascal, 1991: 19) or “extralinguistic shallow context” (Dascal 2003: 175) to make an adequate interpretation of what is heard. 4.3  Addressivity strategies occurring in all dimensions Although several utterances at the micro level were said to be frequent within the different discourse actions identified in the debate, some of them occur in all of these dimensions as is the case of interrogative structures which, far from seeking information, are produced to put the adversary in a difficult situation. This is done by posing a question for which the speaker expects no answer, given that he believes his interlocutor cannot justify their inaction, as in (12), by pressing the interlocutor to commit himself through his reply, but at the same time presupposing that the addressee will not do this, as shown in (13), by projecting the idea that his adversary will not answer the question because, due to his ideology, his decision will damage lower classes in particular, as exemplified in (14). (12) Macri: […] Daniel, te preguntaría, todas esas cosas que decís ¿por qué no las hicieron en estos más de diez años que están gobernando? Macri: […] Daniel, I would ask you, all of these actions that you are talking about, why didn’t you do them during these more than ten years that you (the interlocutor’s party) have been governing? (13) Macri: […] quiero saber si vos te comprometés a lo mismo. Macri: […] I want to know if you commit yourself to the same thing. (14) Scioli: […] por ejemplo […] en el caso de los subsidios ¿qué pensás hacer? Scioli: […] for example […] as far as state grants are concerned, what do you think you’ll do?

In all cases, the pragmatic function of the questions in (12), (13) and (14) is to make a point of his opponent’s weaknesses. Addressivity is another discourse function which deserves attention. In this kind of debate, produced with the aim of reaching the audience, the prescribed addressivity structure comes from the characteristics of the event clearly organized into the three well differentiated phases described in Section 3 above. The candidates are expected to take the audience as the natural addressee in both the topic presentation and the closing fragments, and the adversary in the question



Directness and indirectness in a presidential debate 

and answer fragments. The analysis showed that the speakers not always orient their contributions to the interaction in this way. Different contextual, discoursal and grammatical resources signal these occurrences, and when this is not the case, the addressee is said to be ‘non-specified,’ as can be seen in several statements made by the candidates about their beliefs, plans or ideas. This is made evident in (15), which shows the beginning of a contribution. (15) Scioli: La seguridad ciudadana hay que abordarla desde la prevención. Prevención significa más recursos humanos, más logística, […] Scioli:Citizens’ security has to be approached from a prevention side. Prevention means more human resources, more logistics, […]

It might perhaps be reasonable to think that this utterance is directed towards the audience, but it might also be possible to interpret it as addressed to the interlocutor, with the aim of contrasting views. Excerpts (12), (13) and (14) above can also help discuss addressivity in the debate, as they are instances of direct address to the expected addressee, as stated in the regulations of the debate: in (12), through the term of address “Daniel,” the second person pronoun te (‘you’) as indirect object; the second person elided as subject but present in the verb ending decís (‘you are talking/saying’); the second person plural personal pronoun, present in the verb endings in hicieron (‘you did’) and están gobernando (‘you have been governing’); in (13), through the second person pronoun vos (‘you’) and the verb ending indicating second person singular as subject in pensás (‘you think’) and in (14), through the second person personal pronoun, elided but present in the verb ending pensás (‘you think’). Cases of indirect addressing are also found in the text analysed as shown in (16) and (17). (16) Scioli: ¿Por qué votó (Macri) en contra de recuperar los fondos de la ANSES? Scioli: Why did he (Macri) vote against recovering the ANSES’s funds? (17) Scioli: Yo quiero preguntarle a Mauricio qué les dice a los miles de estudiantes de esas universidades […] que él ha cuestionado. Scioli: I want to ask Mauricio: what he tells the thousands of students of those universities […] that he has questioned.

In (16) the third person reference shown through the verb ending votó (‘did he vote’) is addressed to the audience but meant to reach the adversary as a challenge, rather than as an elicitation. The same happens in (17), but this time the indirect address is made manifest by the metapragmatic segment with which the utterance starts (underlined in the example). Whether making use of directness or indirectness, criticism sounds severe and often fierce in the participants speech in the debate. Making negative e­ valuations

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of the adversary or his policy statements constitutes a frequent resource in search of beneficial outcomes for the speakers, who are often aggressive, impolite, and who may project lack of respect for the interactant. The analysis at the micro level of the discourse showed that direct utterances outnumber indirect ones in general, and that the two forms occur in any of the main discourse actions produced in the debate. It was possible to identify diverse types of indirection as well as different discoursal and linguistic resources to express them. In the next step of our study, attention is turned to the meso level of the interaction. 5.  In/directness at the meso level of the interaction Given the strict organization of turn taking in the debate and the prearranged length of each section, the resulting fragments are considered to constitute the meso level of the interaction. For the identification of in/directness grammatical and discourse resources are taken into account. These contributions contain an average of 153 and 82 words uttered in two and one-minute turns respectively. 5.1  Presentation of topics and final messages Grouping presentation of topics and final messages together stems from identifying similarities between them with regard to the type of information they contain, and from identifying who the speakers considered to be the most suitable addressee. Evidence was gathered through careful scrutiny of the context along with the candidates’ conspicuous interest in participating in this event, so that they might make their views known to prospective voters in the upcoming presidential elections. The analysis starts with the first candidate to speak. Excerpts (18) and (19) show segments of Macri’s topic presentations. (18) Macri: Buenas noches. Quiero empezar hablándote a vos, que estás en tu casa, terminando el fin de semana en familia, preparándote para ir a trabajar mañana. Nuestro único objetivo es trabajar todos los días para que vos vivas un poco mejor y para que te sientas más seguro. Sé que tal vez te está costando llegar a fin de mes o que te preocupa la salud de tus padres o la educación pública que reciben tus hijos […] También quiero trabajar para que accedas a tu primera vivienda: un millón de créditos a treinta años […] Macri: Good evening. I’d like to start talking to you, who are in your homes, finishing the weekend with your families, getting ready to go to work tomorrow. Our only aim is to work every day so that you might live a bit



Directness and indirectness in a presidential debate 

better and feel more secure. I know it might be difficult for you to reach the end of the month, or that the health of your parents or your children’s public education might be worrying you […] I also want to work so that you can have your first house: a million in credits to be paid in 30 years […]

Several linguistic expressions (underlined in the text) indicate that Macri addresses the audience: second person pronoun as indirect object vos (you), second person possessive pronoun tu (‘your’); second person reflexive pronoun, affixed to the verb te (‘you’) in ‘preparándote;’ personal pronoun, second person singular vos (‘you’), indirect object te (‘you’), possessive adjective, second person plural tus (‘your); second person personal pronoun present in the verb ending accedas (‘acceed’); possessive adjective, second person singular tu (‘your’). (19) Macri: Como te dije, te queremos cuidar, queremos que exista un estado que […] te ayude a […] resolver todos tus problemas […] Macri: As I told you, we want to take care of you. We want a state that […] helps you to […] solve all your problems…

In (19), three uses of the second person as indirect object te (‘you’), and the second person possessive adjective tu (‘your’) are the grammatical resources that indicate direct addressivity to the audience. In the final message, the candidate displays his willingness and resolution to help the citizens of the country. (20) Macri: Hace un tiempo decidí dedicarme a soñar y a mi pasión por el hacer: me refiero a Boca y a la Ciudad. Hacer posible lo imposible, y con Boca llegamos a ser el primer equipo del mundo durante varios años y fueron muchas alegrías. Después, trabajando mucho, logramos que la gente viva mejor en esta ciudad y que se la reconozca entre las grandes ciudades del mundo. Y hoy es cuando quiero convocarlos a todos, porque ya probamos demasiados años enfrentados. Llegó la hora de hacerlo juntos […] siento en el corazón que es ahora, que es el momento de poder decirles el día de mañana a nuestros hijos que no nos resignamos y que nos animamos a ir por ese lugar que le corresponde a nuestro país, que nos corresponde a todos nosotros, que es crecer, progresar, vivir mejor. Pero eso se hace con humildad y trabajo. Y por eso les pido que nos acompañen el 22 de noviembre a este desafío. Este desafío lo tenemos que hacer juntos […] Macri: Some time ago, I dedicated myself to dreaming and to my passion for doing: I refer to Boca (a football club of which he had been the president) and the city (of Buenos Aires, of which he is the Mayor). To make the impossible possible, and with Boca, we managed to be the first team in the world during many years and we got many joys. Later on, and working very hard, we succeeded in getting people to live better in this city, and in making this city to be regarded as one of the great sites of the world. And today is the day when I want to invite all of you to join in, because we have already been separated for many years. It’s time to do it together […] I feel

 Luisa Granato

in my heart that now is the time, the moment that’s on us, to be able to tell our children in the future that we did not surrender and that we had the guts to follow the path to the place that our country deserves, that we all deserve, which is to grow, to progress, to live better. But this is done with humility and work. That’s why I ask you to join us in this challenge on the 22nd of November. We must face this challenge together […]

Starting with a segment of six line of self-praise in which he points to his governmental achievements as the Mayor of the City of Buenos Aires, the candidate makes a call to all citizens to join in and work together in the construction of a different country. The linguistic manifestations that indicate addressing the audience are the use of the lexical item juntos (‘together’) with an adverbial function, and todos nosotros (‘all of us’); the second person plural los (‘you’) as direct object affixed to the verb, the second person plural les (‘you’) as indirect object. It is this call to the audience – quite clearly expressed at the end of his closing fragment – that signals his direct orientation to the audience. Tables 2 and 3 show the total number of words in the topic presentation and the final message fragments, along with the number of words and the distribution of these figures, according to whether the addressee is the audience, the other candidate, or is not specified. Table 2.  Number of words and percentages in Macri’s fragments of topic presentations Topic presentations Macri

Total number of words

No. of words and percentage addressing audience

No. of words and percentages addressing adversary

No. of words and percentages addressing nonspecified addressee

Topic 1

 370

  278 (75,13%)

  92 (24,86 %)

–

Topic 2

 345

  323 (93, 62 %)

  22 (6,37%)

–

Topic 3

 331

  331 (100 %)

–

–

Topic 4

 342

  342 (100%)

–

–

Total No. of words

1388

1274

114

Percentages:

100%

91,78 %

8,21%

Table 3.  Number of words and percentages in Macri’s final message

Final closing Macri

Total number of words

No. of words and percentages addressing audience

No. of words and percentages addressing adversary

No. of words and percentages addressing nonspecified addressee

Total No. of words

 329

 329

–

–

Percentage

100%

100%



Directness and indirectness in a presidential debate 

Candidate Macri addresses the audience in almost the whole presentation of two topics and in the final message. Only in the presentation of two topics does he direct small portions of his contributions towards his interlocutor, which are manifested through the use of the interlocutor’s first name – Daniel – or the second person personal pronoun vos (‘you’), and the rhetorical resource widely used in the debate of the ‘I’ vs. ‘you’ contrast. See Excerpt (21). (21) Macri: Daniel, hace algunas semanas acá tuvimos un debate y yo sentí que aprendí del intercambio de propuestas de (nombres de otros candidatos) espero que hoy también, más allá de nuestras diferencias y que uno solo va a ser el presidente, espero que sea un intercambio constructivo. Y como yo tengo un compromiso con la democracia, estoy acá más allá de que vos no viniste al debate pasado, porque creo que tenemos todos que colaborar en que se consolide nuestra democracia […] Macri: Daniel, some weeks ago, we had a debate here and I felt that I had learned from the exchange of proposals with… (other candidates before the ballot). And I hope that today too, beyond our differences and that only one of us will become president, I hope that this will be a constructive exchange. And because I am committed to democracy, I am here, even though you did not attend the past debate, because I believe that we all must cooperate to consolidate our democracy […]

In fact, as shown in Table 4, the percentage of words used by the speaker to address the audience in the five fragments under analysis is 93,36%, while only 6,63 % is employed to address the other candidate directly. There are no fragments with unidentified recipients in this speaker’s discourse. Table 4.  Number of words and percentages in Macri’s fragments of topic presentations and final message Macri’s number of words and percentages. Total number of words: 1717 Addressed to

Number of words

Percentages

Audience

1603

93,36

Adversary

 114

 6,63

Non-identified addressee

–

–

We will now look at the same fragments produced by the other candidate, Scioli. Here is the presentation of the topic Education and childhood, which starts with an address without identifying whether he is directing his words to the audience, to his interlocutor or to both of them, and then continues with a clear direction of his speech to the audience. (See Excerpt 22).

 Luisa Granato

(22) Scioli: Como egresado de la escuela pública (name of school) soy un defensor acérrimo de la educación pública, convencido que de la mano de la educación vienen las soluciones de fondo a los temas que enfrentamos. A lo largo de estos años hemos generado avances a destacar. Yo lamento que Mauricio no haya estado en ninguno de los debates que se dio sobre la Ley Nacional de Educación, sobre la recuperación de las escuelas técnicas, sobre la recuperación de las escuelas agrarias. Y haya cuestionado tan duramente la creación de diez y siete nuevas universidades. Como también ha hecho referencia a qué sentido tenía invertir en ciencia y tecnología […] Scioli: As a state school graduate (name of school), I am a staunch supporter of public education; I am convinced that the real, in-depth solutions to the problems that we face come from education. In these past years we have made important improvements. I regret that Mauricio did not attend any of the debates about the National Education Law, about helping technical and agricultural schools recover and that he severely questioned the founding of seventeen new universities. Just as he has referred to “what’s the point of investing in science and technology […]

Scioli claims to be a defender of public education, and airs his ideas about advances in that area during his administration, making these the basis for the improvements that he promises to implement if he is elected to the presidency. He speaks about ‘Mauricio’ and his ideas about the area, which are, in his view, non-acceptable, and which constitute a clear mark of addressing the audience. Another resource used by Scioli to talk to his adversary indirectly through addresses to the audience is the use of metalinguistic expressions like Quiero decirle al candidato Macri […] (I want to tell candidate Macri […]), Yo quiero preguntarle al Ingeniero Macri […] (I want to ask engineer Macri […]), Quiero decirle a Macri […] (I want to tell Macri […]), etc., found in several excerps included in this article (8, 17, 29, 30, 32, 38). Scioli’s final message exhibits similar characteristics. In Excerpt (23) he starts with a description of his own virtues suitable for governing the country and describes the two options that citizens have in the next step of the presidential elections; no identification of addressee is marked by linguistic or discourse choices. He then turns clearly towards the audience as can be seen in the underlined segments in Excerpt (23): (23) Scioli: […] Y yo te tengo que defender, compañero trabajador, yo tengo que defender, tengo esta responsabilidad moral e institucional de cara a la juventud. Ustedes saben muy bien la situación que venimos remontando, y la opción está clara: […] O les sacamos los subsidios y que aumenten las tarifas […] y retrocedemos, como quiere Macri, o yo les garantizo los subsidios. […] Por eso, los convoco a votar en favor del país, a que vayan por su propia victoria y que gane la Argentina […]



Directness and indirectness in a presidential debate 

Scioli: […] And I must defend you, fellow worker, I must defend you. I have this moral and institutional responsibility for the young. You know very well the situation that we are facing, and the choice is clear: […] either we remove grants and let tariffs rise […] and we fall behind, as Macri wants, or I guarantee grants for you. […] That is why I invite you to vote in favour of the country, moving towards its own victory and may Argentina win.

The candidate here uses linguistic expressions to make evident the fact that he is addressing the audience or a segment of it through the use of the second person pronoun as direct object, and a term of address, as well as the plural second personal pronoun, by talking about his opponent in the third person. No direct orientation to his adversary is detected in this presentation fragment. Tables 5 and 6 display the figures about Scioli’s production of the five fragments, namely the topic presentations and the final message in terms of number of words and percentages. Table 5.  Number of words and percentages in Scioli’s fragments of topic presentations Topic presentations Scioli

Total number of words

No. of words and percentages addressing audience

No. of words and percentages addressing adversary

No. of words and percentages addressing nonspecified addressee

Topic 1

 334

334 (100%)

–

–

Topic 2

 304

116 (38,48%)

–

187 (61,51)

Topic 3

 272

  22 (8,05%)

–

251 (91.94%)

Topic 4

 329

329 (100%)

–

–

Total No. of words

1239

801

438

Percentages:

100%

64,64%

35,35%

Table 6.  Number of words and percentages in Scioli’s final message

Final closing Scioli

Total number of words

No. of words and percentages addressing audience

No. of words and percentages addressing adversary

No. of words and percentages addressing nonspecified addressee

Total No. of words

 285

 285

–

–

Percentages:

100%

100%

–

–

The presentation of the first and last topics and of the final message are clearly addressed to the audience, while the speech in the presentation of topics two and three exhibit a percentage of segments addressing the audience (38,48 and 8,05 in each case) and other segments in which no addressee is identified (61,51% and 91,94% respectively).

 Luisa Granato

In Table 7, which considers the five fragments by candidate Scioli, we can see the number of words and the corresponding percentages used to address the audience, the adversary and a non-specified addressee, respectively. Table 7.  Number of words and final percentages in Scioli’s topic presentations and final message Scioli’s number of words and percentages. Total number of words: 1525 Addressed to

Number of words

Percentages

Audience

1086

71,21

Adversary

–

–

Non-specified

 439

28,78

As can be observed, the percentage of words used by the speaker to address the audience in the five fragments is 71,21 %, while in the 28,78 %, identifying the recipient is not possible, although one might interpret that the whole of his speech is directed toward the audience. No addresses to the adversary are produced. A characteristic of Scioli’s style that may lead to the production of fragments with non- specified addressee is that he frequently voices his ideas about how to govern the country through enumerations or descriptions of an issue in the form of statements, as is evident in Excerpts (24) and (25). (24) Scioli: La lucha contra la inseguridad tiene ejes centrales: tolerancia cero al narcotráfico, blindaje total a las fronteras. Scioli:The fight against insecurity has cardinal features: zero tolerance for drug-trafficking, completely securing the borders. (25) Scioli: La seguridad ciudadana hay que abordarla desde la prevención. Prevención es más recursos humanos, más logística, incluir tecnología, y fundamentalmente, políticas de inclusión. Scioli:Citizens’ security must be approached from a prevention side. Prevention means more human resources, more logistics, including technology and basically, policies for inclusion.

Another frequent feature of his discourse is the use of cognitive, mental clauses that include verbs like ‘believe,’ ‘think,’ ‘know,’ ‘consider’ to indicate his positioning. This is manifested in Excerpt (26): (26) Scioli: Vamos al tema. Fortalecimiento democrático. Insisto. Yo creo que el rol del estado […] Scioli: Let’s get to the point. Democratic strengthening. I insist. I believe that the role of the State […]



Directness and indirectness in a presidential debate 

None of these segments of discourse offer grammatical hints for addressee identification. However, the fragments in which they appear and the meanings produced help us realize that the intended addressee may be the audience. These utterances, together with those clearly addressed to the audience, represent 100% of the words uttered by the speaker; no address to the other candidate is registered. Table 8 displays the differences between the two participants in this respect: Table 8.  Percentages of words used in addressivity in the two candidates’ presentations and final messages

Presentations and final messages

Percentages of words addressing the audience

Percentages of words addressing the adversary

Percentages of words addressing non-specified addressee

Macri

93,36%

6,63

–

Scioli

71,21%

–

28,78

Macri speaks to the audience, except for the last segment of his first presentation in which he talks directly to his opponent, to make a sarcastic remark about his having missed a previous debate: Y como yo tengo un compromiso con la democracia, estoy acá más allá de que vos no viniste al debate pasado (‘And because I am committed to democracy, I am here, even though you did not attend the past debate’), extracted from Excerpt (12). Scioli, on the other hand, does not directly address Macri. He addresses the audience throughout two thirds of his allotted time, while his remaining discourse is directed towards non-specified addressee. We hypothesize that these segments are also primarily produced with the audience in mind, because this is what the speaker does throughout almost all his participation in the debate. We think that these results may partly derive from how the journalists who acted as moderators to frame the body of the debate expressed themselves when they invited the candidates ‘to set out their opinions, plans, ideas, etc.’ and ‘to give a final concluding message,’ corresponding to the organization and stipulations of the debate’s ‘style manual.’ It seems clear that these two occasions constitute a good opportunity for the candidates to choose the audience as their main interlocutor, as opposed to the question and answer periods during which they are expected to engage in a reciprocal interaction between candidates. Excerpt (27) is a fragment of a journalist’s description of how the debate is organized. (27) … y se ha pensado, en el orden temático, en cuatro bloques en los que los candidatos expondrán, de acuerdo a su parecer, las preguntas que cada uno tendrá.

 Luisa Granato

[…] También va a haber un quinto bloque en el debate que va a ser la parte final, en la cual los candidatos van a dar un mensaje final de conclusión del debate … concerning topics, it has been thought of four sets of topics in which the candidates will make a presentation according to their own ideas and questions they will be asked […] […] there will also be a fifth set in the debate, to be produced at the end, in which the candidates will each have two minutes to give their final words, a conclusion of the debate.

After listing the issues that could be included in the first topic set, the journalist in charge continues in (28): (28) Estos son los temas que interesan mucho a la gente, tienen que ver con el bolsillo de cada uno de los argentinos […] These are the topics that interest people very much, that have to do with the pocket of every Argentinian […]

This preamble can be an invitation to the two parties to talk to the audience rather than to the other candidate. No occurrences of indirectness have been found in the fragments analysed so far. The only address of a candidate to his opponent in the ‘presentation and closing segments’ is made by Macri to make a criticism and/or sardonic remark to his interlocutor, as seen in Excerpt (4) above. 5.2  Question and answer fragments It is often the case that questions are followed by answers in interactive encounters. This sequentiality principle is disregarded in the production of diverse types of interactions, especially in those which are not regulated by fixed norms, as is the case of casual conversation. More formal institutional encounters, like political debates of the kind analysed here, not only restrict the freedom of the participants in various normative ways, but also raise the expectation on the audience that part of the debate will offer the possibility of watching the candidates engaged in the activity of asking questions and giving answers to each other during the corresponding stages of the event. However, participants frequently ignore this norm to contribute to the discourse with what they evaluate as more important in their efforts to gain support to their respective candidacies. In connection with this, Kiesling and Ghosh Johnson argue that Answers conventionally follow questions, so that speakers (especially those speakers seeking political office) may fashion an utterance following a question to look like an answer, and it is in one sense an answer because its sequential



Directness and indirectness in a presidential debate 

location following a question conventionally assigns it that identity, but it can be almost anything else as well: a vague statement, an accusation, etc.  (Kiesling & Ghosh Johnson 2010: 296)

Despite the agreement reached between the organizers of the debate and the participants’ political parties about the inclusion of question and answer periods, the two candidates often use these stages to produce other discourse acts. Instead of elicitations or responses, the candidates produce acts of challenging, accusation and evaluation with high frequency. The decision about what is a direct or an indirect address in these parts of the debate are made according to the structure of the debate and the functional and grammatical choices made by the interactants. The regulations of the debate incorporate fragments in which the two candidates should ask and answer questions to each other, that is, produce elicitation and answering acts, as well as direct their discourse to the opponent. If this is altered, we consider that they use addressivity indirection, without ignoring that the whole event is specifically taking place for the sake of the audience. Excerpt (29) shows how, after having expressed his position in favour of defending human rights and the rights of the citizens at present, among other issues, candidate Macri poses a question to his adversary. (29) Macri: Yo quiero preguntarte, ¿nos vas a acompañar con una reforma electoral como la que he propuesto, que realmente le dé transparencia e independencia al organismo que organiza el acto electoral? Macri:I want to ask you something: Are you going to join us in the electoral reform like the one that I have proposed, that will really provide transparency and independence to the organizational entity that organizes elections? (Part of a much longer contribution) Scioli: Tanto que le preocupa el agua potable y las cloacas ahora, pero los vecinos lo tienen que saber: miles y miles de familias no hubieran tenido el acceso al agua potable y cloacas si hubiese sido por la posición que tuvo él, que siempre es la misma […] Scioli: He is now so worried about drinking water and sewage systems, but citizens must know this: thousands and thousands of families wouldn’t have had access to drinking water and sewage systems if his position had succeeded, which is always the same […] (followed by a reference to what he considers his adversary’s economic plan).

The first speaker uses direct addressivity through addressing the elicitation to his adversary, since his role is described in the ‘code of behaviour’ agreed upon by organizers and candidates. Macri starts his contribution with a metapragmatic segment – ‘I want to ask you’ and uses the second person pronoun ‘te’ affixed to the verb as indirect object. These two characteristics are clear indications that he is

 Luisa Granato

using directness in his address. Scioli ignores the question and produces an accusation act when referring to Macri’s position as regards ‘improving new drinking water and sewage systems,’ and of having implemented a ‘devastating economic plan.’ It is the utterance ‘the citizens have to know about this,’ which supports the interpretation as an accusation. His contribution can be interpreted as an evaluative act which leads to a strong accusation against his opponent. The slots for asking questions are also often used to other ends, such as accusing his interlocutor of improper behaviour. This is made evident in Excerpt (30) uttered after the candidate marks the difference between his interlocutor’s government agenda and his own, and subsequently accuses him and his political entourage of telling lies. (30) Macri: Te quiero preguntar, vos que hablás de que vas a poder generar confianza, porque la confianza se basa en la verdad, ¿no? Yo te pregunto: cuando la presidenta de la República dice que en la República Argentina hay 5% de pobres, 5% de personas en la pobreza, ¿miente o dice la verdad? Cuando Aníbal Fernández dice que en Alemania hay más pobres que en Argentina, Daniel ¿miente o dice la verdad? Macri: I want to ask you, you are saying that you are going to build trust, because trust is based on truth, isn’t it? I ask you: when the president of the Republic says that 5% of the people in Argentina are poor, 5% of people live in poverty, is he lying or is he telling the truth? When Anibal Fernández says that there are more poor people in Germany than in Argentina, Daniel, does he lie or does he tell the truth?

The utterances in the interrogative structure here – ‘Does s/he lie or tell the truth?’ – do not fulfil an eliciting function as they might be expected to do in the circumstances. Rather, they are employed as a strategy that allows the speaker to accuse the opponent and other members of his party of having acted immorally when lying about different issues- ‘only 5% of the people in Argentina are poor,’ ‘…that there are more poor people in Germany than in Argentina.’ The speaker resorts to indirectness to present what are undeniable truths through the use of what he himself presents as a question – ‘I want to ask you’– when in the context, the illocutionary force of the utterance is that of a challenging act. Later in the debate, Macri asks Scioli about his position towards the situation in Venezuela. See Excerpt (31). (31) Macri: Yo quiero saber, […] porque yo estoy comprometido (con la democracia) […] y en caso de ser electo presidente el 11 de diciembre, voy a pedir, dado los abusos que ha habido en Venezuela, los presos políticos que hay y la participación de los militares en el gobierno, que se ejerza la cláusula democrática suspendiendo a Venezuela. Quiero saber si vos te comprometés a lo mismo.



Directness and indirectness in a presidential debate 

Macri: I want to know, […] because I am committed (to democracy), and in case of being elected president on December 11th, I am going to request that on account of the abuses that have taken place in Venezuela, with the political prisoners, and the military’s participation in the government, I will request the suspension of Venezuela in compliance with democratic regulations. […] I want to know if you are likewise committed to this decision.

Scioli uses his turn in which he is supposed to respond to his adversary’ question to pose himself a question and conspicuously avoiding an answer. (32) Scioli: En primer lugar, como se trata también de una posibilidad de no solamente responder sino de dejar planteada una pregunta, quiero decirle a Macri si sostiene que la política de derechos humanos es una etapa de la Argentina o tiene un compromiso con la memoria […] Scioli: In the first place, as this also deals with the possibility not only of answering, but of posing a question, I want to tell Macri if he thinks the human rights policy was a stage in Argentina or if he is committed to remembering […]

Excerpt (32) exemplifies the use of an elicitation to indirectly make a statement about human rights, another decision that represents a strategic choice. Table 9 exhibits Macri’s choices in this respect. Table 9.  Number of words and percentages in Macri’s question and answer fragments Questions and answers Macri

Total number of words

No. of words addressing audience

No. of words addressing adversary

Percentages of words addressing non-specified addressee

Topic 1

 804

–

 804

–

Topic 2

 806

 60

 746

–

Topic 3

 639

–

 639

–

Topic 4

 735

163

 572

–

Total No. of words

2984

223

2761

–

Percentages

100%

7,47%

92,52

–

Macri addresses practically all of his questions and answers towards his interlocutor, which shows directness, as these fragments are meant to be part of a dialogue between the two candidates. This can be seen in Examples (33 and 34). After acknowledging a good action by Scioli’s previous administration and criticising the state of the hospitals in the province that he governs, Macri asks his interlocutor a direct question.

 Luisa Granato

(33) Macri: entonces la niñez, ¿cómo entra en tu programa ante tal falencia en pediatría? Macri: Then childhood; how does your program involve children in view of such deficiencies in paediatrics?

Directness here is marked by the use of the second person possessive adjective tu (‘your’). The two candidates discuss oral reports from a government official in Scioli’s party who has stated that Argentina is a country only used for the traffic of drugs to Europe (not to produce drugs). This is again done in a direct address to the opponent, signalled by the second person singular pronoun vos (‘you’) as seen in (34). (34) Macri: ¿Vos de verdad pensás que en el gran Buenos Aires el narcotráfico no ha avanzado? Macri: Do you really think that drug trafficking has not grown in greater Buenos Aires?

The very few utterances directed to the audience in these question and answer fragments consist of asides that usually include critical or reproachful remarks, or complaints about the answers given – or not given! – by the opponent, as shown in (35) and (36). (35) Macri: (El /Scioli) Insiste en seguir siendo mi vocero de cosas que no voy a hacer. Macri: He (Scioli) insists on continuing to be my spokesman regarding things I won’t do. (36) Macri: Ahora entiendo a los periodistas. Es frustrante: no hay ninguna chance que (él, Scioli) encare la pregunta que uno le hace. Macri: Now I understand the journalists. It is frustrating: there are no hopes of his (Scioli’s) facing the question that one asks him.

The use of the third person personal pronoun él (he) present in the endings of the verbs insiste (‘insists’) and encare (‘faces’) is an evidence that the candidate is talking to the audience about his adversary. Scioli, on the other hand, directs only a few elicitations towards his adversary. Rather, he devotes most of the available time within the questioning activity to presenting his governmental plans as a possible future president, to his prior actions and political positions that he occupied in the past and to criticizing his opponent’s political action, plans and ideas. With only a few exceptions, his questions and answers meant to reach his adversary are directed to the audience, as Excerpts (37), (38) and (39) show. (37) Scioli: ¿Cómo justifica el aumento de mortalidad infantil? Scioli: How does he explain the rise in child mortality?



Directness and indirectness in a presidential debate 

(38) Scioli: Yo quiero preguntarle al Ingeniero Macri por qué votó en contra de la recuperación de YPF, de Aerolíneas, de la creación de una empresa que ha dado agua potable y cloacas. Scioli: I want to ask engineer Macri why he voted against the recovery of YPF and of Aerolíneas, against the creation of a company that has provided citizens with drinking water and sewage systems. (39) Scioli: ¿Cómo podemos creer en lo que él propone cuando habla de los maestros? Scioli:How can we believe in what he proposes when he speaks about teachers?

In these segments again the mark of indirectness is the use of the third person personal pronoun él (he) to refer to the opponent, and the term of address Ingeniero Macri (‘engineer Macri’) Table 10 shows the number of words and the corresponding percentages in Scioli’s questions and answers. Table 10.  Number of words and percentages in Scioli’s question and answer fragments. No. of words addressing adversary

Percentages of words addressing non-specified addressee

662

76

–

619

–

–

486

107

–

Questions and answers Scioli

Total number of words

No. of words addressing audience

Topic 1

738

Topic 2

619

Topic 3

593

Topic 4

651

607

44

–

Total number of words

2601

2374

227

–

Percentages

100 %

91,27 %

8,72 %

–

These results show a preference for indirect address in Scioli’s discourse. Table (11) displays the percentages of words that the two candidates address to the audience and to the adversary as the direct interlocutor in this part of the debate. Table 11.  Percentages of words used in addressivity in the two candidates’ question and answer fragments Percentages of words addressing audience

Percentages of words addressing adversary

Macri

7,47

92,52

Scioli

91,23

8,72%

Questions and answers

 Luisa Granato

A sharp contrast is observed in these results. The percentage of discourse used by Macri to speak to his opponent is very similar to the percentage used by Scioli to address the audience; and the percentage of Macri’s discourse to address the audience is very near Scioli’s addressing his interlocutor. Linell (1998: 105) has argued that “… the mutual nature of the face to face interaction tends to marginalize other recipients, though ratified third persons.” He refers to this phenomenon as a ‘dyadizing’ tendency. In this respect, the interactional behaviour of the two candidates in these fragments shows “dyadizing” processes of a different type. Macri mostly talks to his interlocutor, which. in this case, would be Scioli. Scioli, on the other hand, talks to the audience, which results in a marginalization of his adversary. The antipodal attitudes towards the addressing systems adopted by the two candidates have a bearing on the discoursal relationships between the participants to the debate. When a candidate directs himself to one of the two participants mentioned above – the audience or the other candidate – he positions himself near the chosen addressee and distant from the third one. This situation is graphically represented in Figure 2 in which a line stands for a continuum with ‘close’ and ‘distant’ at the ends, signalling minor or major discourse distances between those involved in the interaction. Speakers

Macri

Addressees

Scioli

Close Scioli

Audience

Distant Audience

Macri

Figure 2.  Distance between participants

Candidate Macri’s choices position him in an interactional proximity with ­candidate Scioli and at an interactional distance from the audience. Candidate Scioli creates relational connectedness with the audience and separateness with his partner in the dialogue. But the effect of this is not necessarily to enhance rapport or increase personal distance. These resources used rather systematically by the two speakers seem to be managed to affect the interaction in specific ways that they evaluate as useful to further their specific aims. Addressing his interlocutor, Macri may believe that he will have more control of the dialogue so as to exert



Directness and indirectness in a presidential debate 

more p ­ ressure on Scioli to give relevant information, justifications, and explanations. On the other hand, Scioli may well consider that the likely consequence of addressing the audience when asking and answering questions to his opponent can have the effect of reducing his importance as a consequence of ignoring him, not even talking to him directly and, at the same time, of ensuring that the audience knows that these questions greatly concern him. These are only possible interpretations, since the different choices referred to may depend on the intentions of the participants, which cannot be easily inferred from the discourse produced. As has been demonstrated, the two candidates adopt different interactional behaviours with scant exceptions in the question and answer fragments of the debate. Macri uses a direct form of communication given that he normally addresses the natural recipient in a dialogue – his adversary – although he occasionally changes the direction of his talk towards the audience. These very few departures from a direct address are either complaints about his interlocutor’s sayings or his violation of the rules of conduct of the debate, as in (35), or about his reluctance to answer questions, as in (36) above. Contrary to what Macri does, Scioli reaches his opponent through the audience, thus producing what Keisling and Ghosh Johnson (2010) call ‘participation indirectness.’ The very high percentage of indirect addresses in candidate Scioli’s speech extends over whole fragments and is made evident through the use of the third person in his references to his opponent or when detailing his governmental actions in the questions and answers that he produces in the corresponding fragments.

6.  Interpreting indirectness As it was revealed by the analysis at both the micro and the meso levels of the debate, few uses of indirectness are registered in the candidates’ contributions. That is, considering directness and indirectness as the two ends of a cline, most indirect utterances produced in the debate would be distant from the extreme of indirectness, nearer the mid position, as shown by the right side of the wide area in Figure 3. Mid position Directness

Figure 3.  Directness-indirectness cline

Indirectness

 Luisa Granato

Discussing indirectness from the point of view of the recipient on the special occasion of the debate requires careful consideration of the possible differences among these addresses. The whole event is a deliberative genre whose main function is to exhort or dissuade (Reisigl 2008) a heterogeneous audience who, as such, may make different senses of the input they receive. Depending upon various factors, a group may take the propositional meaning of an utterance as a direct evidence of what a politician means in his speech. So, when in Excerpt (10) candidate Macri says ‘I see they (Argentinians) are quite happy,’ ‘They are hopeful that it is possible, that we are going to grow, that there will be job opportunities […]’ through which we exemplified an indirect criticism to the previous administration, a segment of the audience may interpret this as only a statement of facts unrelated to any intention of blaming the opposition for the present state of affairs. Based on the strategies of text-understanding as described by Dascal and Weizman (1987), Weizman and Dascal (1991) and Dascal (2003),1 we refer to the possible processes through which another part of the audience may arrive at interpreting that the speaker’s intention is to present the situation of the country as the outcome of the opposition implementation of inadequate policies, thus making an indirect criticism. We borrow some elements from Weizman and Dascal’s (1991: 18–19) description of contextual information and observe that the recipient can detect that a speaker’s meaning is not completely expressed by ‘what is said,’ though not necessarily associated with words actually produced in the text. In our example, extra-linguistic information related especially to the “shallow knowledge” about the structure of the event; “specific and shallow meta-linguistic knowledge”; “knowledge of habits” of people in the text and of “habitual discourse conventions” are all contextual clues that listeners may rely on to arrive at other meanings different form the most conspicuous meanings expressed. In the excerpt analysed, to project the identity of an eligible candidate in election times, Macri, as well as most politicians do, highlights the weaknesses and faults of the adversary, which is known by the audience as it comes from the meta-linguistic knowledge of the specific habits of the speakers in the debate discourse situations. They also know that this contrast can be easily introduced in the question and answer activity in interviews and debates, an extralinguistic knowledge obtained through the familiarity that the audience

.  Dascal (2003), Weizman and Dascal (1991), Dascal and Weizman (1987) distinguish two types of contextual information that contribute to text interpretation: metalinguistic and ­extralinguistic. The interpretation is possible through recourse to cues (used to notice ­interpretation problems) and clues (used to arrive at utterance or speaker’s meaning) which involve the recipient’s knowledge about the language and of the situation in which utterances are produced (Dascal 2003: 170). These two types of contextual information are subdivided into three levels: specific, shallow and general. (See Weizman & Dascal 1991).



Directness and indirectness in a presidential debate 

has with the unfolding of these texts in the media. So, referring to people ‘being hopeful, that they will grow, have new job opportunities,’ etc., projects the indirect meaning that the administration of the opposite political party has not offered the same possibilities. As far as indirect addressivity is concerned, there may also be two interpretations from the recipient. When a candidate addresses his interlocutor through the audience, mostly in the question and answer fragments of the interaction, as when candidate Scioli says ‘I want to ask Macri […],’ the utterance may be taken as a real manifestation of the speaker’s desire to elicit information from his interlocutor. On the other hand, both the interlocutor and the audience may use the metalinguistic knowledge of the speaker’s habit of never addressing his adversary even though his intention is to get an answer from him. In this case, it is possible to interpret that the question is meant to reach the interlocutor, and that the interlocutor will provide the expected response. Moreover, having the extralinguistic knowledge of how the debate is structured may contribute to the understanding that no matter who the direct recipient is, a request for information produced in the question and answer fragments of a debate is meant to be answered by the opponent. 7.  Concluding remarks This study examined the use of in/directness by two candidates in a presidential debate shown on television, and was analysed from a socio-pragmatic perspective. Our attention was centred on the micro and the meso levels of the interaction, with the aim of identifying the use of these strategies in relation to the discourse actions performed by the participants and to the steps in which the interaction is structured. The micro level was approached taking into consideration the five main discourse actions developed by the participants and the discourse acts produced within them. A random alternation in the use of directness and indirectness was observed, with a clear predominance of directness, which was interpreted as the need of the candidates to use canonical structures and straightforward lexis which might guarantee easy access to their speech by all kinds of audiences. An exception to this predominance of directness is the use of indirect addressivity by one of the participants. This was made evident in the study of the meso level of the debate, based on the phases that constitute the whole interaction. The study revealed similarities and differences in the use of in/directness in addressivity strategies by the two participating candidates: directness is used by both candidates mostly in the topic presentation and in the final message stages of the debate, while the question and answer fragments show opposed preferences. The recurrent choices at this level have a cumulative effect which extends over whole fragments. It is argued

 Luisa Granato

that these divergencies in the ways in which the two candidates direct their speech towards the adversary or towards the audience have an effect on the discoursal relationships constructed in the unfolding of the text, as they favour discoursal proximity or distance through the use of directness and indirectness respectively.

References Dascal, Marcelo. 2003. Interpretation and Understanding. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John ­Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/z.120 Dascal, Marcelo, and Elda Weizman. 1987. “Contextual Exploitation of Interpretation Clues in Text Understanding: An Integrated Model.” In The Pragmatic Perspective, ed. by ­Verschueren, Jef, and Marcela Bertuccelli-Papi, 37–46. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/pbcs.5.08das Grainger, Karen, and Sara Mills. 2016. Directness and Indirectness across Cultures. Hampshire United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan.  https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137340399 Halliday Michael A. K., and Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen. 2004. An Introduction to Functional Grammar . Third edition. London: Hodder Education. Kiesling, Scott F., and Elka Ghosh Johnson. 2010. “Four Forms of Interactional Indirection.” Journal of Pragmatics 42: 292–306.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2009.06.004 Lauerbach, Guerda, and Anita Fetzer. 2007. “Political Discourse in the Media: Cross-Cultural Perspectives.” In Political Discourse in the MediaPolitical Discourse in the Media, ed. by Anita Fetzer, and Guerda Lauerbach, 3–28. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.160.03lau Lempert, Michael. 2012. “Indirectness.” In The Handbook of Intercultural Discourse and ­Communication, ed. by Christina Bratt Paulston, Scott F. Kiesling, and Elizabeth S. Rangel, 180–204. Chichester, West Sussex: Blackwell.  https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118247273.ch10 Linell, Per. 1998. Approaching Dialogue. Talk, Interaction and Contexts in Dialogical Perspectives. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.3 Piatti, Guillermina. 2019. “En torno a la verdad: algunos usos de marcadores discursivos en la conversación coloquial y en el debate politico.” Presented in the III Congreso de la delegación argentina de la ALFAL y IX Jornadas internacionales de investigación en Filología hispánica. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Argentina. 24–26 abril de 2019. Reisigl, Martin. 2008. “Political Speeches and the Public Sphere.” In Handbook of Communication in the Public Sphere, ed. by Ruth Wodak, and Veronica Koller, 243–69. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.  https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110198980 Sifianou, Maria. 1993. “Off-record Indirectness and the Notion of Imposition.” Multilingua 12 (1): 69–79. https://doi.org/10.1515/mult.1993.12.1.69 Simon-Vandenbergen, Anne-Marie, Peter White, and Karen Aijmer. 2007. “Presuppositions and ‘Taking for Granted’ in Mass Communicated Political Argument.” In Political Discourse in the Media, ed. by Anita Fetzer, and Guerda Lauerbach, 31–68. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.160.05sim Sperber, Dan, and Dierdre Wilson. 1996. Relevance. Communication and Cognition, 2nd E ­ dition. Oxford: Blackwell.



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Terkourafi, Marina. 2011. “The Puzzle of Indirect Speech.” Journal of Pragmatics 43: 2861–2865. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2011.05.003 Weizman, Elda, and Marcelo Dascal. 1991. “On Clues and Cues: Strategies of Text-Understanding. Journal of Literary Semantics 20 (1): 18–30.  https://doi.org/10.1515/jlse.1991.20.1.18 Wilson, Dierdre, and Dan Sperber. 2006. “Relevance Theory.” In The Handbook of Pragmatics, ed. by Laurence R. Horn, and Gregory Ward, 607–632. Oxford UK: Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470756959.ch27 Yus, Francisco. 2017a. “Incongruity-Resolution Cases in Jokes.” Lingua 197: 103–122. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2017.02.002 Yus, Francisco. 2017b. “Relevance-Theoretic Treatments of Humor.” In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humor, ed. by Salvatore Attardo, 189–203. New York and London: ­Routledge.  https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315731162-14

“The hon. Gentleman says this is rubbish; it is absolutely true” The strategic use of references to truth in Prime Minister’s Questions Anita Fetzer

University of Augsburg This chapter reports on an analysis of references to truth and compares their discursive value with references to fact and to reality as argumentative and rhetorical resources in the context of Prime Minister’s Questions. Truth is assigned a dual status in the analysis: it is a fundamental premise and can thus be assigned the status of a presupposition to which participants are committed. The research is based on 240 question-response sequences between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. The analysis shows that references to truth are utilised by both participants with the Prime Minister referring more frequently to truth and fact, and the leader of the opposition referring more frequently to reality. References to truth insinuate its gradient conceptualisation with higher and lower degrees of truthfulness. The conversational implicature allows the speaker to act at face level in accordance with the rules of conduct of the speech event. Keywords:  truth, implicature, interactional achievement, challenge, maxim of quality, Prime Minister’s Questions

1.  Introduction Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) is the central British parliamentary institution and its highest profile parliamentary event. Every week in the House of Commons, Members of Parliament (MPs) have the opportunity for half an hour to pose questions to the Prime Minister (PM) on any topic of their choice. MPs must orient to the expectation that the dialogue should follow a question-response pattern, displaying a clear-cut division of labour with MPs asking questions and the government providing answers. The interactional organisation of the communicative event of a political interview also displays this clear-cut division of labour

https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.316.09fet © 2020 John Benjamins Publishing Company

 Anita Fetzer

with the interviewer asking questions and the interviewee providing answers (cf.  e.g., Blum-Kulka 1983; Fetzer 2000). Conversation-analytic approaches to news interviews suggest that the clear-cut division of labour contributes to the interactional organisation of neutralism (cf. Greatbatch 1988; Clayman 1992), as would be required from the interviewer as a representative of public media. While the provision of non-biased information is an institutional constraint for publicly funded media in the majority of European and Anglo-American contexts, the question-and-response sequence in PMQs does not need to be in accordance with that constraint. In PMQs MPs can be as partisan as they like and challenge their communication partners’ political programmes in a straightforward manner. They may, however, not attack their political opponents in person, as regulated by the code of conduct in PMQs; the Speaker presides over the House’s debates and is responsible for maintaining order during debate. S/he may also punish members who break the rules of the House. One important rule is that MPs are expected to observe certain traditions and conventions regarding what is termed “unparliamentary language”: they should thus not be abusive or insulting, call another member a liar, suggest another MP has false motives, or misrepresent another MP – in other words their conversational contributions should be sincere, truthful and represent the context of the contributions in a comprehensive manner. These conventions are enforced by the Speaker of the House, who may ask a Member to withdraw an objectionable contribution. The confrontational nature of PMQs discourse is not only reflected in the MPs’ verbal interactions, but also in the situational context of the House of Commons, in particular the seating arrangements in the Chamber with the Government sitting together on one side and the Opposition on the other. It may be further intensified by the mediated status of the speech event, making the verbal exchange between two opposing camps a verbal exchange in the mediated public arena. There is another difference between the two speech events: in political interviews the interviewer may follow-up on the information requested and challenge the appropriateness of the interviewee’s response for as long as they consider it to be appropriate. This is not the case in PMQs, where only the leader of the opposition (LO) has the right to ask up to 5 follow-up questions; other MPs may ask one question only. Against this background, the question-answer sequence with the LO asking questions and the PM providing responses can be seen as contributing to the interactional organisation of accountability of political action with the LO requesting the government to account for political actions and their underlying political decision-making processes not only to MPs, but also to the media audience and thus to the electorate. PMQs always begin with the same tabled question to the PM, asking if s/he will list his/her official engagements for the day. At this point, the called ­Member



“The hon. Gentleman says this is rubbish; it is absolutely true” 

can put as a supplementary question (termed a “supplementary”) almost any ­question that relates to the PM’s general responsibilities or to some aspect of government policy. The MP is limited to this one supplementary and cannot follow up the PM’s response with any further comment or question (Harris 2001). However, this is permissible for the LO, who is allowed up to six questions. These questions may be posed all in one bloc, or in more than one bloc. Only the initial question regarding the PM’s engagements is tabled. In the context of these question-andanswer sequences, references to truth may imply that some previous contribution of a MP may not have been fully true and that the MP may not have been sincere (cf. Fetzer (2007) for the strategic use of references to reasonableness, and Fetzer (2002b) for the interactional organisation of sincerity and credibility), while references to fact may imply that the MP may not have represented the content of their contribution as truthfully as would have been possible, and references to reality may imply that the MP may not have represented the context of their contributions as comprehensively as would have been possible. This chapter reports on an analysis of references to truth as an argumentative and rhetorical resource in PMQs discourse, as is reflected in the predications ‘be true’ or ‘be the truth’ and the propositions ‘the truth be X’ or ‘X be the truth,’ and compares them with references to fact and reality. It shows that references to truth and truths, fact and facts, and reality are used strategically to achieve the following goals: (1) intensify the force of the challenge, and (2) deconstruct credibility, trustworthiness and policies of Other while at the same time constructing credibility, trustworthiness and policies of Self by, for example, pointing at incongruencies in the political agenda of Other and commenting on them in an explicit manner. The research is based on 20 PMQ sessions (2012–2013) featuring David Cameron, the former PM (2010–2016, Conservative Party) and the former LO, Edward Miliband (2010–2015, Labour Party), and 20 PMQ sessions (2015–2016) featuring the former PM David Cameron and the former LO, Jeremy Corbyn (2015–2020, Labour Party), comprising an overall of 240 question-response sequences. References to truth, fact and reality occur in the context of the communicative act of challenge (Fetzer 2009/2011; Weizman 2008), which expresses the speaker’s intention not to comply with a proposition, force or presupposition communicated in and through some prior conversational contribution. This may be a directly adjacent contribution, some less directly adjacent contribution, or a conversational contribution uttered in some prior discourse. As for their sequential status, challenges – and embedded references to truth, fact and reality – are responsive acts, and they carry a high face-threatening potential. This is evident in the LO’s reference to truth in his concluding statement about a government plan “and and the truth is that they are the last people left who think their plan is working” (Edward Miliband 27 February 2013; my emphasis). Not only does the LO refer to truth in

 Anita Fetzer

order to intensify the force of his challenge and thus the argumentative value of his contribution, but he also challenges the PM and his government by implicating that nobody but them believes in their policies. The research framework subscribes to methodological compositionality. It accommodates the fundamental premises of pragmatics, in particular rationality, intentionality of communicative action, cooperation, and participants’ face wants / needs and information wants / needs (Brown & Levinson 1987; Grice 1975; Searle 1969, 1995). These pragmatic premises – and the participants’ commitment to act in accordance with them – are supplemented with the interactional-sociolinguistic premises of indexicality of communicative action, conversational inference, language as socially situated form, and linguistic variation, i.e. variations and alterations are not random or arbitrary, but communicatively functional and meaningful (Gumperz 1992). The main bridging point between pragmatics and interactional sociolinguistics lies in the explicit accommodation of context as a complex and dynamic whole. For the discourse domain of political discourse, both the dynamics of context and the complexity of participation are of key importance. Conceiving of participants as rational agents who direct their conversational contributions intentionally towards a ratified set of addressees further refines the analytic framework by providing a set of methodological tools, which allow for the analysis of meaning production and meaning interpretation in context. The chapter is organised as follows: The following section analyses and ­discusses the status of truth and truths, fact and facts, and reality in pragmatics and discourse pragmatics in order to operationalise them so that their discursive values can be analysed as interactional achievements. Section 3, methodology, presents method of analysis, procedure and data. Section 4, challenges, provides a definition of the communicative act of challenge and adapts it to the contextual constraints and requirements of the speech event of PMQs, paying particular attention to the discursive value of references to truth and truths, fact and facts, and reality. ­Section 5 concludes. 2.  Truth, reality and fact, and truths, realities and facts The concept of truth has not only been an object of investigation in the field of philosophy in general and in the philosophy of language in particular, but also in theories of semantics and pragmatics, where it is assigned the status of a fundamental premise which needs to obtain for propositions to be meaningful and for speech acts to be felicitous. Truth is a pillar of logic and reasoning, and thus is indispensable to a conceptualisation of rationality and intentionality. Truth is the defining condition of speech act theory’s propositional act, and rationality is the



“The hon. Gentleman says this is rubbish; it is absolutely true” 

defining condition of speaker and addressee in speech act theory (Searle 1969, 2010) and in sociopragmatics (Brown & Levinson 1987; Fetzer 2013, 2015; Mey 2001; Sarangi & Slembrouck 1996). In pragmatics-based theories of communicative action, participants are rational agents, who perform communicative actions in an intentional manner; this holds both for the production and interpretation of speech acts. The premise of rational agent also holds for ethnomethodology (Garfinkel 1994) and its principle of accountability of social action, according to which participants not only perform social actions but are also able to account for their actions as they know, at some level, what they say and what they mean by their actions. The premise of accountability of social action and of one of its subsets, communicative action, is also implicit in Recanati’s availability principle, which is based “on a specific cognitive hypothesis, according to which what is said is consciously accessible” (Recanati 1989: 328). While truth is generally attributed to propositions and propositional content, which are evaluated as true or false, it is participants and their illocutionary acts which are evaluated as sincere or not sincere. Sincerity is a fundamental premise in speech theory and manifests itself in condition 6 of the structure of illocutionary acts, the sincerity condition: “6. S intends to do A.” (Searle 1969: 60), which is further refined in “6a. S intends that the utterance of T will make him responsible for intending to do A.” (Searle 1969: 62). Sincerity is thus anchored in participants, and truth in propositions. Truth is also a fundamental premise in Gricean pragmatics, but is supplemented with beliefs, as is reflected in the Gricean logic and conversation and one of the four maxims, the maxim of quality: “Under the category of Quality falls a supermaxim – “Try to make your contribution one that is true” – and two more specific maxims: 1. Do not say what you believe to be false. 2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.” (Grice 1975: 46). Quality is anchored to the overarching cooperative principle: “Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged” (Grice 1975: 45). Truth and sincerity are also fundamental premises in the dialogue act of plus/ minus-validity claim1 which is defined within a tripartite system of objective, social and subjective worlds (Fetzer 2002a/b): the objective world is determined by the dichotomy of true/false; references to the objective world can only be realised explicitly, such as food is the essential issue. The subjective world is determined by the premise of sincerity, that is speaker’s communicative intention meant as uttered and interpreted as meant; references to the subjective world can be realised

.  The definition of plus/minus-validity claim (Fetzer 2000) is informed by Habermas’s (1987)theory of communicative action.

 Anita Fetzer

both explicitly with metacomments or implicitly. The social world is determined by the paradigm of appropriateness; references to the social world can be realised explicitly and implicitly, such as I’m not asking you whether that leak did come from the treasury or this sounds quite plausible. In communication participants postulate, ratify and negotiate the communicative status of validity claims in context by accepting them and assigning them the status of a plus-validity claim, and by rejecting them and assigning them the status of a minus-validity claim. Communication is thus conceived of in a (minimally) three-move sequence, namely (1) a speaker postulates a validity claim in context, (2) the hearer ratifies the postulated claim (3) through an acceptance or a rejection. In case of acceptance, s/he assigns the validity claim the status of a plus-validity claim and attributes it to the participants’ discourse common ground (Fetzer 2002a). In case of rejection, the validity claim is assigned the status of a minus-validity claim. Unlike the clear-cut three-move sequence of postulation, ratification and acceptance, a rejection initiates a negotiation-of-validity sequence, in which the non-accepted claims and non-accepted presuppositions are spelt out to be negotiated. Only after the status quo has been re-established, that is after an agreement about what claim or presupposition is accepted and what claim or presupposition is not accepted has been reached, felicitous communication is ­possible. But what relevance does the validity-claim framework have for the interactional organisation of truth and the negotiation of its validity in context? In pragmatics and discourse pragmatics, truth counts as a fundamental premise and thus can be assigned a presuppositional status. Adapting Sbisà’s claim that the satisfaction of felicity conditions is assumed by default (Sbisà 2002) to discourse pragmatics, truth and sincerity are assumed by default and that is why these premises to which participants are committed in interaction2 are generally not made explicit when entering a conversation by saying for instance what I am ­saying now is meant sincerely and its content is true, and of course I am accountable for my words and actions. While the sincerity of speakers and their communicative acts is generally calculated with respect to verbal and non-verbal aspects of communication as well as with respect to coherence, that is the coherence of the ongoing discourse and its coherence with other discourses, the evaluation of a communicative act as true or not true is based on its proposition as being true or not true. Truth and sincerity are theoretical constructs. Their discursive value, h ­ owever, is different. References to truth do not only make manifest that the proposition of a contribution may not be true – or may in fact be true, but they also make

.  I am deeply grateful to one of my reviewers for this very insightful comment.



“The hon. Gentleman says this is rubbish; it is absolutely true” 

­ anifest that the speaker may not have been fully sincere – or may in fact have m been sincere. As for the discursive value of references to fact, they may make manifest that a contribution may not have been fully truthful – or that it may in fact have been fully truthful. The discursive value of references to reality may make manifest that representation of the contribution’s embedding context may not have been fully comprehensive – or that in fact may have been fully comprehensive. Consequently, facts may count as evidence in the evaluation of a contribution as true, while reality, that is socially constructed reality (Searle 1995), may count as evidence in the evaluation of a contribution as not representing its embedding context as comprehensively as would have been possible. In natural-language discourse, felicity conditions and other discourse-­ pragmatic premises obtain by default and – unless indicated differently – are part of the participants’ discourse common ground, which is related in a dialectic ­manner with “Background presuppositions, on practices, and on modes of ­sensibility” (Searle 2010: 168). For this reason, they are generally not made explicit in discourse. An explicit reference to the premise of truth signifies that the fundamental premise and the participants’ commitment to it is no longer assumed to obtain by default and that it needs to be negotiated for this reason. References to truth can be realised differently in different contexts. However, the different linguistic realisations are not arbitrary, but communicatively meaningful, as put forward in interactional sociolinguistics. Against this background, this chapter examines the discursive value of references to truth which may be realised with (1) the lexeme ‘truth’ and related predications making manifest that the speaker may not have been sincere, or – has in fact been sincere; (2) the lexeme ‘fact’ and related predications making manifest that a contribution may not have been fully truthful – or has in fact been fully truthful, and (3) the lexeme ‘reality’ and related predications making manifest that the contribution’s embedding context may not have been represented as comprehensively as would have been possible – or has in fact been represented as comprehensively as was possible. The paper claims that references to truth realised with the lexeme ‘truth’ and related predications have a stronger discursive force in the context of PMQs than the ones realised with the lexemes ‘fact’3 and related predications, and the ones realised with ‘reality’ and related predications. .  The discourse-pragmatic analysis of reference to truth is different to a Post-Truth analysis, which is “first and foremost, an emotional phenomenon. It concerns our attitude to truth, rather than truth itself ” (D’Ancona 2017: 126). This has consequences on the construction of social reality as well as on (discourse) common ground: “The epistemology of Post-Truth urges us to accept that there are ‘incommensurable realities’ and that prudent conduct consists in choosing sides rather than evaluating evidence” (D’Ancona 2017: 98).

 Anita Fetzer

In the following, the participants and procedure as well as method and data are introduced, followed by the results obtained. 3.  Methodology and data 3.1  Participants and procedure The participants in this study were David Cameron (former Conservative PM (11 May 2010 – 13 July 2016)), Edward Miliband (former leader of the Labour Opposition (25 September 2010 – 8 May 2015)) and Jeremy Corbyn (former Leader of the Labour Opposition (12 September 2015 – 03 April 2020)). T ­ ranscripts of 20 sessions of PMQs from 2012 to 2013, and of 20 sessions of PMQs from 2015 to 2016 were downloaded from Hansard, the electronic record of parliamentary debates in the House of Commons (http://www.parliament.uk/business/­publications/hansard/, checked against delivery by the author and three research ­assistants4 and modified accordingly. 3.2  Data and method The total number of words counted for the interchanges between the PM and LO for each of the 6 question-response exchanges of the 40 sessions of PMQs was 60,563 words (cf. Tables 4 and 5 in the appendix). The focus of analysis of all 40 PMQs sessions was on question-answer sequences between the PM and the LO. In the data the six questions from the LO were posed in one continuous bloc; thus, 240 question-answer pairs and their sequential organisation were analysed in total. The sequential organisation of the question-answer sequences was accounted for in the analysis of the excerpts below and the questions and answers are numbered accordingly, coding their sequential status. The sequential status of a question / answer containing references to truth, fact and reality is relevant to the analysis of their discursive values because they are interdependent on the stages at which the questions / answers occur, and whether they are initiating moves, follow-ups or follow-ups on follow-ups. The analysis of the two data sets was corpus-based and utilised key word search. References to the lexeme ‘truth’ and its root ‘true,’ the lexeme ‘false,’ and the roots ‘fact’ and ‘real’ were identified, and the occurrences of the lexemes ‘truth,’ ‘true,’ ‘untrue,’ ‘false,’ ‘fact,’ ‘factual,’ ‘real,’ and ‘reality’ were hand-coded and hand-counted accordingly.

.  Anna Katharina Feige, MA; Daria Pominova, MA; and Verena Weber, MA (all University of Augsburg, Germany).



“The hon. Gentleman says this is rubbish; it is absolutely true” 

3.3  Results In the corpus search for the keywords ‘truth,’ ‘fact’ and ‘reality’ and their l­ inguistic realisations as ‘truth,’ ‘true’ and ‘untrue,’ ‘false;’ ‘fact’ and ‘factual;’ and ‘real’ and ‘reality’ 131 (or: 0.21 %) references to truth, fact and reality were identified, hand-counted and hand-coded considering distribution and production-format. Because of the low frequency of tokens, the analysis is based on raw frequencies only, as is systematized in Table 1: Table 1.  Quantitative analysis of references to truth, fact and reality PMQs (David Cameron and Edward Miliband / Jeremy Corbyn) Cameron

Miliband

Truth

Fact

Reality

Truth

Fact

Reality

 2

30

0

12

7

24

Cameron ∑ ∑

Corbyn

16

18

5

 2

2

13

18

48

5

14

9

37

71

60

The linguistic contexts of references to the keywords ‘true,’ ‘untrue’ and ‘truth;’ ‘fact’ and ‘factually;’ and ‘real’ and ‘reality’ were examined with regard to pre- and post-modification. They occurred within the following constructions, systematised in Table 2: In the context of PMQs, references to truth and references to fact and reality share patterned co-occurrences, as is reflected in the construction ‘NP + prediction’ the truth / fact / reality is and the anaphoric reference that is the truth / fact / reality. Pluralised references have been identified for the lexemes ‘truth’ and ‘fact’ as in those are the truths / facts. There are further patterned co-occurrences based on truth and / or fact, but not on reality, which may reflect on truth and fact sharing more defining features than truth and reality or fact and reality. References to truth and reality have been modified with emphasising subjuncts, e.g. ‘absolutely’ as in absolutely true, which may imply the scalar nature of the discursive value of truth. The claim that truth is conceived as a gradient concept in the discourse of PMQs may be further supported by the particularisation of its referential domain through postmodification, e.g. ‘of this government’ as in “the truth of this Government. They are unfair, out of touch, and they stand up for the wrong people.” (Edward Miliband 16 May 2012, my emphasis), making explicit the subjectivised nature of truth as the truth of one particularized group only, namely

 Anita Fetzer

that of the government. Both examples show that strategic references to truth in the context of PMQs insinuate its gradient conceptualisation with higher and lower degrees of truthfulness, and with different truths holding for different groups. This is not fully the case with references to reality, which seems to be conceptualised as a unified holistic concept which may, however, be quantified as in the following argumentative sequence “First, (…) Secondly, over the past five years that I have been Prime Minister, we have built more council homes than the previous Labour Government built in 13 years. [Interruption.] That is a bit of reality that the hon. Gentleman might want to digest. The most important point is …” (David Cameron 14 October 2015, my emphasis). As for references to fact, the picture is different as fact is countable and therefore also quantifiable; postmodifications of fact, as for instance in ‘the facts of this government’ could not be identified in the dataset. Table 2.  patterned co-occurrences of truth, fact and reality Truth (32)

Fact (57)

Reality (42)

The (sad) truth is (12)

The (only / simple/ crucial / very) fact is (28)

The reality is (25)

That is the truth (5) There we have the truth (1)

That is the fact (9)

That is a bit of reality (1)

Here is the truth (1)

Here is the reality (5)

Isn’t the truth X (5) Those are the truths (1)

Those are the facts (4)

It is (not) the truth of the matter (1) X has to look at the facts (1) X completely ignores the facts (7) In truth (1)

In fact (7)

(un)true

factually

That was completely untrue (2) That’s not true (1)

X was factually incorrect (1)

The true figure (2)

real

In real terms (5) The real problem is (4) Will X just get real (1)

Based on the discussion, it is argued that in the context of PMQs, references to truth, reality and fact are used strategically to challenge some prior statement by a political opponent, assign it the status of an object of talk and at the same time



“The hon. Gentleman says this is rubbish; it is absolutely true” 

evaluate it and its producer implicitly as not having been fully committed to truthfulness, sincerity and not having represented context as comprehensively as would have been possible when accounting for the success of their political actions and their impact on society. While references to truth signify that the political opponent has not been fully sincere with their conversational contribution at issue, references to fact signify that their conversational contribution has not been fully truthful; references to reality make manifest that the context of the conversational contribution at issue has been represented only selectively in order to background, if not hide unfavourable issues. References to all three concepts in the discourse of PMQs do not count as references to objective concepts, but rather to subjectively coloured ones. If references to truth, fact and reality occur in sequences which follow up on challenged truth, fact and reality, all of them signify that the challenged conversational contribution and its producer have in fact been fully sincere, fully truthful and that the context has been represented as comprehensively as would have been possible. The implications triggered by references to truth, fact and reality allow the speaker to act at face level in accordance with the rules of conduct of the speech event of PMQs, and not call another member a liar, suggest that s/he has false motives, or misrepresent him or her. 4.  Challenges In a discourse-pragmatic framework, the truth and sincerity of a communicative act has been assigned the status of a fundamental pragmatic presupposition, whose validity obtains once participants enter a communication and do not explicitly negotiate a different value for truth or sincerity, or act in other fictional contexts. Against this background, a reference to truth and the respective evaluation of a conversational contribution and/or its producer as true / untrue or sincere / insincere implicate that the participants’ commitment to the validity of this pragmatic presupposition has been at stake, if not challenged. In her analysis of positioning through challenge in the context of news interviews and participant-based rights and obligations, Weizman (2008) conceives of challenge as interdependent on situational context and discourse genre: Adapting this reading to the study of interviews, I contend that while every challenge embeds a conflict varying in degree of aggravation and explicitness, not every conflict is a challenge. In my understanding, forms of disagreement with an opposition to one’s views and opinions would not count as challenges, unless these views and opinions are endorsed by one’s social or interactional authority in his or her role. (Weizman 2008: 36)

 Anita Fetzer

References to truth in the context of PMQs produced by the PM or LO fulfil this condition and therefore may count as challenges. Fetzer (2009/2011) conceives of challenge as a discourse-pragmatic function in and through which one or more of the following constitutive parts of a ­conversational contribution are not accepted: (a) illocutionary force, (b) proposition and (c) presuppositions. From a discursive viewpoint, (d) the sequential status may be not accepted, and from an interpersonal perspective, (e) the degree of positive and negative face-work may be not accepted. For a conversational contribution to count as a challenge, the following three conditions need to be fulfilled: I. The conversational contribution needs to realize a responsive contribution. II. To count as a responsive contribution, the contribution needs to contain one or more linguistic expressions, which realize anaphoric reference to one or more constitutive parts of some prior conversational contribution or to its presuppositions. III. The responsive contribution needs to contain lexical expressions, syntactic constructions, morphemes or phonological configurations with contrastive meaning. (Fetzer 2009/2011: 75)

In the speech event of PMQs, in particular in the question-answer sequences between the PM and LO, the condition of responsive format required by the conditions I., II. and III. is a constitutive part of the language game. In this communicative exchange, references to truth, fact and reality can be utilised to realise a challenge because they express a non-acceptance of (b) the proposition and (c) a presupposition, which are constitutive parts of a contribution. References to truth, fact and reality are also realised in the context of a responsive contribution which may refer to a prior discourse of the PM or LO, or which is a constitutive part of the ongoing discourse, that is the PM’s response to a LO question or a LO followup of a response by the PM and vice versa, thus fulfilling condition I. As will be demonstrated below, the immediate linguistic contexts of references to truth, fact and reality contain linguistic expressions with anaphoric reference to one or more prior conversational contributions, thus fulfilling condition II, and the immediate linguistic context of references to truth and its functional equivalents contains linguistic material with contrastive meaning, thus fulfilling condition III. Responsiveness is also reflected in the sequential organisation of the question-answer exchanges of PMQs. References to truth, fact and reality cluster in moves-5 and moves-6, with a steady increase of references to truth and reality for the LO and a peak in move-6. There is a more balanced distribution for the PM with the highest frequency of references to truth, fact and reality in move-5, as is ­systematised in Table 3:



“The hon. Gentleman says this is rubbish; it is absolutely true” 

Table 3.  Sequential distribution of references to truth, fact and reality LO

PM

LO

PM

LO/PM

Truth

Fact

Reality

Truth

Fact

Reality

∑

∑

∑

1

 1

0

 1

 1

 6

1

 2

 8

 10

2

 1

2

 3

 2

 7

0

 6

 9

 15

3

 0

1

 3

 4

 8

2

 4

14

 18

4

 3

2

 6

 3

 6

0

11

 9

 20

5

 3

2

12

 4

13

1

17

18

 35

6

 4

2

12

 4

 8

1

18

13

 31

∑

12

9

37

18

48

5

58

71

129

Looked upon from an interactional sociolinguistics frame of reference, in which the indexicality of communicative action is a fundamental premise and in which contextualisation is assigned the status of a universal in human communication (Gumperz 1996), references to truth, fact and reality are not of equal standing but express different kinds of challenges with a higher, respectively lower, pragmatic force. This will be demonstrated in a qualitative analysis of the data in the following section. 4.1  The discursive value of references to truth In the keyword-based analysis for references to truth, the lexical item and its adjectival form ‘true’ generally occur in negative contexts, signified by for instance syntactic negation as in that’snottrue or morphological negation as in untrue. The negative contexts in which the references to truth are embedded contain pronouns with anaphoric reference as well as lexical items with anaphoric referencing potential. Truth was also referred to with the adjectival form ‘true’ modifying entities relevant to the politician’s argumentation, such as true figure. Truth was also referred to with truth-headed NPs in both subject and object functions, for instance in that / here is the truth. The NP with the head ‘truth’ was further modified with the evaluative adjective ‘sad,’ supporting the hypothesis that in the context of PMQs, if not in political discourse generally, references to truth occur in the context of challenges with negative evaluations. The NP-based reference the sad truth is does not only implicate that a prior conversational contribution has not been fully truthful, but rather that the speaker had deliberately not provided the full truth as that would have reflected negatively on her / him and on their political agenda. In other words, he or she has not been sincere. In the question-answer sequence between the PM and LO truth has also been quantified, implicating that there is a different, subjectivised kind of truth, as in those are the truths, and it has been found in

 Anita Fetzer

the meta-comment in truth signalling a bald-on-record claim (Brown & Levinson 1987), and in the construction the truth of the matter. The qualitative analysis of the following extracts5 from PMQs examines the linguistic contexts of references to truth and demonstrates their potential in triggering conversational implicatures. Extract (1) – 28 October 2015 Q5: Jeremy Corbyn Mr Sp- Mr Speaker, Mr Speaker, it’s very interesting that the Prime Minister still refuses to answer the fundamental question. This is not a constitutional crisis; this is a crisis for 3 million families in this country (…) Just before the last election, the former Chief Whip, now Justice Secretary, said, in answer to a question on the BBC’s “World at One” are you going to cut tax credits. The answer was: “we are not going to cut them.” Why did he say that? R5: The Prime Minister Wh-wh- What I said in the election is that the basic level of child tax credits would stay the same, and, at £2,780 per child, it stays exactly the same. But the point is this: if we want to get our deficit down, if we want to secure our economy, if we wanna keep on with secure growth, we need to make savings in welfare. Now, if he, even with his deficit-denying, borrow-for-ever plan, presumably he has to make some savings in public spending. If you don’t save any money on welfare, you end up cutting the NHS, you end up cutting even more deeply policing budgets. Those are the truths. When is he going to stop his deficit denial, get off the fence, and tell us what he’d do? Q6: Jeremy Corbyn Mr Speaker, I’ve – [Interruption.] Mr Speaker Order. (…) Q6 (cont.): Jeremy Corbyn Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’ve five times have asked the Prime Minister today whether or not people will be worse off, when they if they receive working tax credits next April. He’s still not been able to answer me, or, indeed, many others. …

.  In the extracts references to truth and its functional equivalents are printed in bold; relevant linguistic cues are printed in italics. Q refers to question and R to response, and the numbers to the sequential position of Q or R in the question and answer sequence, which comprises six moves.



“The hon. Gentleman says this is rubbish; it is absolutely true” 

The PM’s reference to truth in R5 occurs in a context in which the LO in Q5 does not only reformulate the PM’s prior response with the strategy ‘this is not X, but Y,’ and state explicitly that the PM has refused to answer a fundamental question, but it also implies that a member of the government by saying that a conservative government would not cut tax credits has broken that promise. In R5 the PM responds to the challenge of having broken the promise of not cutting tax credits by narrowing down its referential domain to child tax credits. He then recontextualises the LO’s argumentation by referring to savings on welfare. This recontextualised chain of arguments is then evaluated by himself as “Those are the truths,” implicating not only the truth of every single argument used by him and his government, but also that the LO had not been sincere in his argumentation. Building on that argument the PM challenges the LO directly with his question “when is he going to stop his deficit denial” which carries the presupposition that the LO has been denying the deficit before. It is of interest that the PM actually asks a question in the question-answer sequence, a communicative format which is generally attributed to the role of the LO; since the PM knows that the LO will never give up his argumentation, the wh-question may count as a rhetorical question with the indirect force of accusing the LO for not having been sincere in his argumentation. In his question Q6 the LO makes explicit that the PM did not provide any response to his question, which he had asked five times. The LO’s criticism of the PM of not having been accountable for his and his government’s political actions is expanded from the people the PM should have accounted to, the MPs, to that of the British society, which further intensifies the force of the challenge. Extract (2) – 16 May 2012 Q6: Edward Miliband  I’m afraid back to the bunker with that answer, Mr Speaker. There are 3,500 fewer nurses since he became Prime Minister. And he couldn’t even get the figure right the Health Ministers on the radio, they couldn’t even tell us how many nurses, nurses in training who can’t find jobs. And all because he’s diverted billions of pounds from patient care to a top-down reorganisation that nobody voted for and nobody wanted. And I know he doesn’t like being reminded of his words, but that’s because he broke his promise. And Mr Speaker, that’s the problem with this Government: they cut taxes for millionaires and cut services for the rest of us. [Interruption.] I know they don’t like hearing about it, Mr Speaker, I know they don’t like hearing about it. What did the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers [Conservative]) say? “We can’t convince voters we are ‘on their side’ when we give top-earners a tax cut leaving Mr & Mrs Average reeling.” That is the truth of this Government. They are unfair, out of touch, and they stand up for the wrong people.

 Anita Fetzer

R6: The Prime Minister What this Government has done is delivered a tax cut for every single working person in the country. (…) I often wonder whether his problem is whether he’s weak or left-wing – his problem is he’s both.

As has been the case in Excerpt 1, the reference to truth in Q6 also occurs in a negatively loaded context, framed by “back to the bunker with that answer” and “that’s the problem with this Government.” By providing the exact figure (3,500 fewer nurses), the LO recontextualises the PM’s argument, and by saying “I know he doesn’t like being reminded of his words” he does not only implicate that the PM may not have been sincere by having broken a promise, but he explicitly says so: “he broke his promise.” The deconstruction of the credibility of the government is supported with a quotation from a member of the Conservatives. Based on this criticism of the government the LO draws the following evaluative conclusion: “That is the truth of this Government,” implying that there is not one objective truth only, but rather different truths for different ideologies, and one idiosyncratic interpretation of truth put forward by the government. In this context, “the truth of this Government” is functionally synonymous with ‘the truth about this Government.’6 The implications resulting from that kind of truth are spelled out by the LO himself with a list of negative evaluations: ‘unfair,’ ‘out of touch,’ and ‘stand up for the wrong people.’ In R6 the PM refutes the LO’s argumentation and ­mirrors the LO’s negative evaluation of the government by stating the government’s achievement and by evaluating the LO as both weak and left-wing. The PM’s argument is ad hominem and not ad rem, attacking the LO in person. The qualitative analysis of references to truth has shown that they occur in negative contexts coloured by negation and negatively loaded lexemes. References to truth are used strategically to challenge the sincerity and credibility of the political opponent, thereby deconstructing their political agenda while at the same time indirectly praising that of one’s own party. In both excerpts references to truth were used with anaphoric reference in the closing part of an argumentative chain, which was intended to deconstruct the opponent’s policies. 4.2  The discursive value of references to fact The contexts in which references to fact are embedded are also negatively coloured and entail degrees of contrastiveness, as is reflected in their co-occurrence with contrastive discourse connectives, syntactic and morphological negation as well

.  I would like to thank the reviewers for drawing my attention to this interpretation.



“The hon. Gentleman says this is rubbish; it is absolutely true” 

as semantic negation and inherently negative expressions. In the keyword-based analysis for references to fact, the lexical item and its adjectival form ‘factual’ ­co-occurred with emphasisers, as in the very fact is, which does not only realise anaphoric reference with a set of other facts which may have already been made an object of talk, but also challenges them by contrasting them with the singledout ‘very fact’ which is to be made the object of talk. Truth was referred to with truth-headed NPs in both subject and object functions, which is also the case with references to fact and patterned VP-based co-occurrences, such as ‘look at the facts’ (Extract (4), R 6) or ‘accept the simple fact’ (Extract (3), Q5). In the questionanswer sequences of PMQs between the PM and LO, the linguistic realisation of references to fact displays more variation than that of references to truth. Both types can co-occur within a single turn, as is the case in Q 5 in Extract (3): Extract (3) – 27 February 2013 R4: The Prime Minister I’m I’m the one saying this credit rating does matter. And it demonstrates we have to go further and faster on reducing the deficit. But the very fact he won’t answer the question about wanting to borrow more, he will never sit on this side of the House when he won’t answer the questions about what the country needs to know … Q5: Edward Miliband I I think we can take it from that answer, Mister Speaker, that he can’t accept the simple fact that he has failed on the first test he set himself, and it’s his fault – it’s happened on his watch, Mister Speaker. And borrowing is rising under him, even after all the pain of the tax rises, all the spending cuts, borrowing is rising because the part-time Chancellor’s plan is failing, Mister Speaker. And and the truth is that they are the last people left who think their plan is working and the failure is nothing to do with them. We’ve got a million young people – Oh, the the Education Secretary calls out, “That’s not true,” maybe he believes it, too, but (…) the deficit is rising not falling, the economy is flatlining. What further evidence does he need that his plan just isn’t working? R5: The Prime Minister Well, let’s just examine the points he’s just made. (…) He says the deficit is up, the deficit is down by a quarter since the election. He says that we we don’t have support for our plan, the CBI [The Confederation of British Industry] – the biggest business organisation in the country – says we have the right plan for growth. He complains about the level of unemployment, it is down on the election and we have a record number of people in work. Those are the facts. Now let us look at his policy…

 Anita Fetzer

In R4 the PM’s reference to fact occurs in a negative context signified by the contrastive discourse connective ‘but’ and the negated clause “he won’t answer the question about wanting to borrow more.” The reference to fact is intensified with the emphasiser ‘very,’ foregrounding the PM’s claim that his political opponent is not willing to comply with the requested action of providing a response to a yes/ no-question, thus implying that the LO’s contributions have not been fully truthful. In this negatively coloured argumentative context, the linguistic reference to fact is used strategically to imply that the speaker’s assessment of his opponent’s action is not some subjective evaluation but rather is intended to count as objective and truthful – that is as a ‘fact‘ – thus overextending the domain of reference from a single conclusive argument to that of a general conclusion which every rational being would also be able to draw. In Q5, the LO’s reference to fact also occurs in a negative context with ­syntactic negation (‘can’t accept’), semantic negation (‘failed’) and another inherently negative expression (‘fault’). As in R4, the reference to fact and its modification as ‘simple fact’ is used strategically to introduce the speaker’s conclusion drawn from the political opponent’s argument realised in ‘that answer,’ as is reflected in ‘we can take it from that answer (…) that he has failed on the first test he set himself.’ The conclusion drawn by the LO is represented as a ’simple fact,’ that is as something which is so obvious that everyone would be able to draw the conclusion themselves, and thus can be assigned the same discursive value as the linguistic realisation of the reference to fact, ‘the very fact,’ in R4. However, the LO’s argumentative chain built on the conclusive argument signalled with ‘the simple fact’ continues with the deconstruction of the political opponent and culminates in the final verdict introduced with a reference to truth (‘and the truth is’), implying that The LO’s contribution has been sincere and credible while the PM’s c­ ommitment has not been in accordance with that discourse-pragmatic premise. The final verdict is introduced with the argumentative marker ‘and’ and signals that it is intended to count as being objective and thus true. In this particular context, however, the final verdict is based on subjectively coloured arguments and conclusions and thus can only represent a socially constructed and negotiated kind of truth. Embedded in the LO’s argumentation is a comment by the Education Secretary who refutes the LO’s argument with “that is not true” implying that the LO’s contribution has not been fully truthful and that he has not been sincere, which the LO counters by claiming that there has been sufficient evidence for his argument. This is ­challenged by the PM in R5, who juxtaposes his positive achievement with the Opposition’s non-achievements, anaphorically referred to and described as “Those are the facts,” again describing subjectively coloured arguments with the ­objectivity-imbued l­exeme ‘fact,’ and building on that negative evaluation yet another chain of challenges.



“The hon. Gentleman says this is rubbish; it is absolutely true” 

Extract (4) – 2 March 2016 Q6: Jeremy Corbyn  The Prime Minister, Mr Speaker, seems to be in a bit of denial here. Ofsted and Ofsted and the National Audit Office all confirmed there is a shortage and a crisis of teachers. (…) isn’t it time the Government intervened and looked at the real cost of this, which is damage to children’s education, but also £1.3 billion spent last year on agency teachers? We have this agency working situation in the national health service and also in education. Aren’t we moving into an era which we can term “agency Britain”? R6: The Prime Minister I think he’s got to look at the facts, rather than talk down people who’re working so hard to teach children in our schools. And the facts are these: our teachers are better qualified than ever, a record 96.6% of teachers in state-funded schools now have a degree or higher qualification. Those are the facts …

As has been the case with the other excerpts analysed so far, references to fact also occur in a negative context. R6 builds on the negatively imbued context of Q6, in which the LO hedges his reference to his opponent’s response to his previous question as “seems to be in a bit of denial here” and corroborates his negative evaluation with figures from official agencies. In his response to the LO’s question the PM remains evasive and requests the LO to “look at the facts rather than talk down people” implying that the LO had not considered a determinate set of facts and had not provided an argument ad rem, but rather had argued ad hominem by interpreting these facts in an idiosyncratic manner. What is more, the PM spells out ‘the facts’ in his chain of arguments, again introduced with the argumentative marker ‘and,’ with one argument only, whose validity is boosted with the postmodification comment clause – again referring to fact – ‘those are the facts.’ The qualitative analysis of the linguistic realisation of references to fact has shown that they occur in negative contexts coloured by negation and negative and inherently negative lexemes. References to fact are used strategically to challenge the argumentative coherence of the political opponent targeting the truthfulness of their conversational contributions which may also reflect negatively on their credibility, thereby deconstructing the opponent’s political agenda while at the same time describing the merits of one’s own. While references to truth and fact are both used to intensify the force of a challenge, references to truth are primarily used in the closing part of an argumentative chain, and references to fact are used in closing parts of a more local argument. This may indicate that references to truth have a stronger pragmatic force.

 Anita Fetzer

4.3  The discursive value of references to reality All of the references to truth and fact occurred in negative contexts signified with syntactic, morphological and semantic negation as well as with inherently negative expressions and contrastive discourse connectives. In the keyword-based analysis for references to reality, inherently negative expressions, for instance ‘worse,’ ‘low,’ ‘less’ or ‘drag,’ ‘fall’ and ‘suffer,’ could not be identified co-occurring with the lexical item and its adjectival form ‘real,’ but only in their wider linguistic contexts. The linguistic realisation of references to reality with its adjectival form ‘real,’ such as ‘in real terms’ signify that the claims mentioned prior had not been fully correct and that the contexts had not been considered fully for the linguistic representation of the claims as should have been the case. Implicatures of that kind are also triggered by the constructions ‘the reality is’ or ‘bring somebody back to reality;’ both indicate that prior contributions and perspectives expressed with those contributions have not considered their contexts of use in a comprehensive manner and may have deliberately been selective to background, if not hide, nonfavourable issues. For this reason, the claims cannot be in full accordance with the Gricean maxim of quality, as is going to be discussed and analysed with the following extracts. Extract (5) – 14 October 2015 Q4: Jeremy Corbyn  The reality is that 3 million low and in- middle-income families are gonna be worse off as a result of the tax credit changes (…) Does the Prime Minister think it’s fair that he and does he really believe that £450,000 is actually an affordable price for a new home for someone on an average income to try and aspire to? R4: The Prime Minister First of all, the honorable Gentleman is absolutely right to raise the issue of housing, particularly the affordability of housing in London … Q5: Jeremy Corbyn  Could I bring the Prime Minister back to reality? The last past the last the last five years the last five years have seen a low level of house building – less than half the new buildings that are actually needed had seen rapidly rising rents; rising homelessness; therefore also a higher housing benefit bill … R5: The Prime Minister We-well let me deal with all his points in turn. Of course, first of all (…) That’s the first point. The second point on council housing (…) But the most important the most important point that’s a bit of reality for the hon. Gentleman he might want to digest. But the most important point is this: if we want to build homes, we need a strong and stable economy …



“The hon. Gentleman says this is rubbish; it is absolutely true” 

The LO’s reference to reality in Q4, ‘The reality is’ signifies that the PM’s argumentation in R3 has not considered the context in a comprehensive manner as he could have done, and that the argumentation can thus not be fully conclusive. The conventionalised formula ‘the reality is’ signals a forthcoming counter-argument which is going to deconstruct the communication partner’s argumentation. In the context of PMQs this generally means that the effects of a political decision on the society as a whole, or on relevant groups, are made explicit and the political opponent is portrayed as being out of touch with those groups or with ordinary people, as is reflected in the LO’s reference to fair prices and affordable homes. This challenge is followed up by the PM in R4, which does not contain any references to truth, fact or reality. Q5, however, evaluates the PM’s contribution as out of touch with so-called real life with the LO saying “Could I bring the Prime Minister back to reality.” This rhetorical question deconstructs the PM’s argumentation in R4 and supports the LO’s previous argumentation in Q4 contributing to the construal of a negative context with further inherently negative expressions (‘low level,’ ‘less than half,’ ‘rising homelessness’). What is more, it implicates that the PM lived in a socially shared reality before and that he has left it and therefore can no longer consider the contexts of his actions and the contexts of their perlocutionary effects in a comprehensive manner, as would be required for a leading politician. That is to say, his reality is different to that of the others, the electorate. This challenge is countered by the PM in R5, in which he frames his own argument with the contrastive discourse connective introduced metacomment “But the most important the most important point” and another metacomments, which quantifies reality “that’s a bit of reality for the hon. Gentleman he might want to digest” aiming at the deconstruction of the Labour Opposition while at the same time spelling out the merits of a strong economy. Extract (6) contains references to truth, fact and reality: Extract (6) – 19 June 2013 Q6: Edward Miliband The whole House will have noticed he cannot deny the figures I read out to him. He doesn’t even know the facts. Bonuses are up so that people can take advantage of his massive tax cut. Here is the truth. For all h-for all his tough talk, the reality is he’s dragging his feet on banking reform. Business lending is still falling, bonuses are rising, and while ordinary families are suffering, he’s giving a massive tax cut to the bankers. The context of references to fact, truth and reality in extract (6) is heavily coloured with negation, semantic negation (‘deny’) and inherently negative expressions (‘dragging,’ ‘falling’ ‘suffering’). It illustrates the semantic weight of the references to truth, fact and reality as regards their references to felicity conditions and to the maxim of quality. References to fact are used to support the speaker’s a­ rgumentative

 Anita Fetzer

chain in order to demonstrate that the political opponent’s contributions have not been fully truthful. That is since he does not know the facts, he cannot provide fully truthful contributions. The PM’s flawed contributions are corrected by the LO using plain language (‘Bonuses are up so that people can take advantage of his massive tax cuts’) which is qualified as ‘the truth.’ As has been the case above, the linguistic realisation of references to truth does not show much variation and they are used to challenge a prior claim by implying that the opponent’s claim has not been fully true and that he has not been sincere, while at the same time implying that the challenger’s claim is true and that he is sincere. The reference to reality – as the references to reality above – signals that the conversational contributions over which the reference has scope have considered the contexts in a comprehensive manner as should have been the case, and that the speaker represents the social impact of his argument, that is the PM’s non-action on bank reforms, as fully as possible. References to truth, fact and reality are thus important tools for the interactional organisation of the accountability of political action. The qualitative analysis of the linguistic realisation of references to reality has shown that they occur in negative contexts coloured by syntactic, morphological and semantic negation and inherently negative lexemes. Unlike references to truth and fact, they do not co-occur with these negatively loaded items in their immediate linguistic contexts, but like references to truth and fact they are used strategically to challenge the argumentative coherence of political opponents with respect to not having considered the context in a comprehensive manner as they should have done, thereby deconstructing their political agenda while at the same time implying the challenger’s own merits. References to reality are used primarily to demonstrate the impact of political decisions on society. 5.  Conclusion This discourse-pragmatic analysis of the institutional speech event of PMQs supplemented with an interactional-sociolinguistic perspective has provided insights into the strategic use of LO- and PM-specific argumentative practices for the accountability of political action. The focus has been on the strategic use of the linguistic realisation of references to truth, a fundamental premise in rational argumentation, and on the linguistic realisation of references to fact, which is conceived of as a premise for the realisation of truthful contributions, and the linguistic realisation of references to reality, which is conceived of as the conversational contribution’s embedding contexts which need to be considered comprehensively for their linguistic realisations. Truth is conceived of as a commitment of ­participants to their conversational contributions and thus as a kind



“The hon. Gentleman says this is rubbish; it is absolutely true” 

of ­interactional ­achievement. Truth in ordinary language thus does not refer to the theoretical construct of context-independent truth, but rather to socially constructed, context-dependent truth. Conversational contributions which are true reflect on the sincerity of speakers. In line with interactional sociolinguistics, truth – as a social construct – is brought into the discourse of PMQs and it is brought about in the discourse of PMQs by participants acting in accordance with the social constraints and requirements of the speech event. In PMQs references to truth signify that a conversational contribution may not be fully true and thus that its producer may not have been fully sincere. References to fact signify that the conversational contribution may not have been fully truthful, and references to reality signify that the context of a conversational contribution may not have been considered as comprehensively as would have been required and that the contribution represents just partial truthfulness. The analysis of the question-answer sequences between the PM and LO has shown that the social construct of truth does not only allow quantification, that is the lexeme has actually been used in its pluralised form making manifest that there is more than one truth, but also for qualification with pre- and postmodifiers. While premodifiers for truth qualify it with negatively loaded adjectives, postmodifiers narrow down its referential domain by allocating it to a particular group. This interpretation is in line with the quantification of truth through pluralisation. References to fact also show pre- and postmodification. While the premodification of truth has utilised negatively evaluated lexical items, fact has been premodified with focussing and intensifying adverbs, foregrounding fact-based claims. As has been the case with references to truth, postmodification narrows down the referential domain allocating it to a particular group or a particular discourse domain. References to reality are generally only qualified with postmodifiers, also with a restricting function. Both LO and PM use references to truth, fact and reality, which have the function of an inference trigger targeting felicity conditions and Gricean quality, inviting implicatures about non-truths and other kinds of insincerities. In the data at hand, the PM used more references to truth, fact and reality countering challenges on his credibility and that of his government. More specifically, the PM used more references to fact, which scored lowest with the LO, while the LO used more references to reality, which scored lowest with the PM. The argumentative strategies used by the PM allow him to present himself as a fact-based rational leader, while the LO has foregrounded reality-based strategies which spell out the impact of government policies on the members of the British society and thus signal that he is not out of touch with the electorate. References to truth, fact and reality are not very frequent in the discourse of PMQs. This may be due to the constraints of the speech event, in particular to not

 Anita Fetzer

representing a fellow MP as somebody who has not been telling the truth. As has been shown, references to truth and fact serve as inference triggers in that context inviting implicatures about a lack of truthfulness, sincerity and objectivity. It may be of interest to follow up on the results obtained within this small-scale pilot study and compare them with data on the exchanges about Brexit, for instance, or with data from different cultural contexts.

References Blum-Kulka, Shoshana. 1983. “The Dynamics of Political Interviews.” Text 3(2): 131–153. Brown, Penelope, and Stephen Levinson. 1987. Politeness. Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511813085 Clayman, Steven. 1992. “Footing in the Achievement of Neutrality: The Case of News Interview Discourse.” In Talk at Work, ed. by Paul Drew, and John Heritage, 163–198. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. D’Ancona, Matthew. 2017. Post Truth: The New War on Truth and how to Fight Back. London: Ebury Press. Fetzer, Anita. 2000. “Negotiating Validity Claims in Political Interviews.” Text 20 (4): 1–46. https://doi.org/10.1515/text.1.2000.20.4.415 Fetzer, Anita. 2002a. “Communicative Intentions in Context. In Rethinking Sequentiality: ­Linguistics Meets Conversational Interaction, ed. by Anita Fetzer, and Christiane Meierkord, 37–69. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.103.03fet Fetzer, Anita. 2002b. “‘Put Bluntly, You Have Something of a Credibility Problem’: Sincerity and Credibility in Political Interviews.” In Politics as Talk and Text: Analytic Approaches to Political Discourse, ed. by Paul Chilton, and Christina Schäffner, 173–201. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.4.10fet Fetzer, Anita. 2007. “‘Well if That Had Been True that Would Have Been Perfectly Reasonable’: Appeals to Reasonableness in Political Interviews.” Journal of Pragmatics 39(8): 1342–1359. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2007.04.006 Fetzer, Anita. 2009/2011. “Challenges in Contrast.” Languages in Contrast 9 (1): 73–97. https://doi.org/10.1075/lic.9.1.05fet Fetzer, Anita. 2013. “The Multilayered and Multifaceted Nature of Political Discourse.” In The Pragmatics of Political Discourse. Explorations across Cultures, ed. by Anita Fetzer, 1–18. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.228.01fet Fetzer, Anita. 2015. “‘When You Came into Office You Said that Your Government Would Be Different’: Forms and Functions of Quotations in Mediated Political Discourse.” In The Dynamics of Political Discourse: Forms and Functions of Follow-ups, ed. by Anita Fetzer, Elda Weizman, and Lawrence N. Berlin, 245–273. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.259.10fet Garfinkel, Harold. 1994. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity. Greatbatch, David 1988. “A Turn-Taking System for British News Interviews.” Language in ­Society 17: 401–430.  https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500012963 Grice, Herbert Paul. 1975. “Logic and Conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics. Vol. III, ed. by Peter Cole, and Jerry L. Morgan, 41–58. New York: Academic Press.



“The hon. Gentleman says this is rubbish; it is absolutely true” 

Gumperz, John J.1992. “Contextualization and Understanding.” In Rethinking Context: ­Language as an Interactive Phenomenon, ed. by Alessandro Duranti, and Charles Goodwin, 229–252. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gumperz, John J. 1996. “The Linguistic and Cultural Relativity of Inference.” In Rethinking L ­ inguistic Relativity, ed. by John J. Gumperz, and Stephen C. Levinson, 374–406. ­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 1987. Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp. Harris, Sandra. 2001. “Being Politically Impolite: Extending Politeness Theory to Adversarial Political Discourse.” Discourse and Society 12 (4): 451–472. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926501012004003 Mey, Jacob. 2001. Pragmatics. An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. Sarangi, Srikant, and Slembrouck, Steef. 1996. Language, Bureaucracy & Social Control. London: Longman. Recanati, Francois.1989. “The Pragmatics of What is Said.” Mind and Language 4 (4): 295–329. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0017.1989.tb00258.x Sbisà, Marina. 2002. “Speech Acts in Context.” Language and Communication 22 (4): 421–436. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0271-5309(02)00018-6 Searle, John R. 1969. Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139173438 Searle, John R. 1995. The Construction of Social Reality. New York: The Free Press. Searle, John R. 2010. Making the Social World. The Structure of Human Civilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.  https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780195396171.001.0001 Weizman, Elda. 2008. Positioning in Media Dialogue: Negotiating Roles in the News Interview. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/ds.3

 Anita Fetzer

Appendix Table 4.  Word count of the 240 question-response pairs between PM and LO PMQs (David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn) Cameron

Word count (total)

Corbyn

Ntot.

Truth

Fact

Reality

Ntot.

Truth

Fact

Reality

16.09.15

  1219

 0

 0

0

  1076

0

0

 0

  2295

14.10.15

  1108

 0

 1

1

  1086

1

0

 3

  2194

21.10.15

   802

 0

 0

0

   676

0

0

 1

  1478

28.10.15

   718

 1

 1

0

   821

0

1

 0

  1539

04.11.15

  1048

 0

 0

0

   703

0

0

 2

  1751

18.11.15

   970

 0

 1

0

   662

0

0

 0

  1632

25.11.15

   651

 0

 2

0

   579

0

0

 0

  1230

16.12.15

   766

 1

 1

0

   630

0

1

 0

  1396

06.01.16

   986

 0

 0

0

   683

0

0

 1

  1669

13.01.16

   714

 0

 1

0

   555

0

0

 1

  1269

20.01.16

   762

 0

 1

0

   676

0

0

 0

  1438

27.01.16

   860

 1

 1

0

   635

0

0

 0

  1495

03.02.16

  1082

 0

 0

2

   712

0

0

 0

  1794

10.02.16

   931

 0

 1

1

   927

0

0

 1

  1858

24.02.16

   964

 5

 3

0

   718

0

0

 1

  1682

02.03.16

   897

 0

 3

0

   514

0

0

 1

  1411

09.03.16

   881

 0

 1

1

   619

0

0

 1

  1500

16.03.16

   619

 1

 1

0

   407

1

0

 0

  1026

13.04.16

  1011

 1

 1

0

   731

0

0

 0

  1742

20.04.16

   731

 6

 0

0

   574

0

0

 1

  1305

Σ

17,720

16

18

5

13,984

2

2

13

31,704



“The hon. Gentleman says this is rubbish; it is absolutely true” 

Table 5.  Word count of the 240 question-response pairs between PM and LO PMQs (David Cameron and Edward Miliband) Cameron

Word count (total)

Miliband

N_tot.

truth

fact

reality

N_tot.

truth

fact

reality

21.03.12

   998

0

 0

18.04.12

   714

0

 1

0

  724

 0

0

 1

  1722

0

   830

 0

0

 3

  1544

25.04.12

   919

1

 2

0

   735

 0

0

 3

  1654

16.05.12

  1074

23.05.12

   524

0

 1

0

   760

 1

0

 1

  1834

0

 1

0

   513

 0

0

 1

  1037

13.06.12

  1004

1

 2

0

   664

 2

0

 1

  1668

27.06.12

   484

0

 1

0

   624

 0

0

 1

  1108

04.07.12

  1009

0

 0

0

   737

 0

1

 0

  1746

11.07.12

   693

0

 0

0

   610

 1

0

 1

  1303

05.09.12

   693

0

 1

0

   837

 0

0

 2

  1530

27.02.13

   738

0

 2

0

   638

 2

1

 0

  1376

06.03.13

   868

0

 1

0

   769

 0

2

 0

  1637

13.03.13

   771

0

 1

0

   563

 1

0

 1

  1334

24.04.13

   689

0

 6

0

   665

 0

1

 0

  1354

05.06.13

   881

0

 4

0

   596

 0

0

 2

  1477

12.06.13

   924

0

 0

0

   654

 0

0

 1

  1578

19.06.13

   619

0

 3

0

   619

 1

1

 2

  1238

26.06.13

   586

0

 0

0

   524

 1

1

 2

  1110

03.07.13

   654

0

 2

0

   575

 1

0

 1

  1229

10.07.13

   784

0

 2

0

   596

 2

0

 1

  1380

Σ

15,626

2

30

0

13,233

12

7

24

28,859

“Do you condemn?” Negotiating power relations through (in)direct questions and answers design in ethno-political interviews Zohar Kampf

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem This chapter discusses a specific type of interactional ritual in ethno-political interviews, one that hinders their conciliatory potential. The ritual is performed by two types of participants: Jewish-Israeli interviewers demanding the condemnation of transgressions committed by others, and the respective response by Arab-Israeli political representatives in the role of interviewees. Negotiation over condemnations is examined, as this speech act is considered crucial to setting up models for civic behavior. The chapter demonstrates how interviewers’ efforts to exercise interactional and social power through pushing their interviewees to adopt a consensual stance are rejected by resorting to indirect answer designs. It concludes by discussing the extent to which “do you condemn” questions may be perceived as a legitimate professional journalistic practice. Keywords:  broadcast talk, news interviews, condemnations, epideictic rhetoric, positioning

1.  Introduction Political interviews in times of political tension between two nations have drawn special attention in political broadcast talk analysis, mainly due to their impulsive interactional dynamic and the sub-genre’s potential contribution to facilitating better understanding of opponents’ stances and their suggestions for possible solutions to end the crises (Johnstone 1986; Blum-Kulka, Liebes, & Kampf 2003; Weizman, Levi, & Schneebaum 2007; Liebes, Kampf, & Blum-Kulka 2008; ­Rosenberg & Maoz 2012). Studies have found that the dynamic of interviews with dissenting political actors (a representative of the “enemy” or an interviewee who identifies with its cause) tends to be unpredictable, often becoming an adversarial political confrontation in which interviewers move back and forth between

https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.316.10kam © 2020 John Benjamins Publishing Company

 Zohar Kampf

their ­professional and their national identities (Blum-Kulka, Liebes, & Kampf 2003). Such aggressive duels are constructed through a variety of question and answer designs that are linked to both of these identities and manifest a discursive struggle over power relations. The questioning strategies include challenges at the content level (Weizman 1996, 2006), at the structural level (i.e., direct questions; see Clayman & Heritage 2002a), or at the interactional level (i.e., follow-ups; see Bull 2015; Fetzer, Weizman, & Berlin 2015) that are responded to through counter-challenges or various tactics of evasion (Blum-Kulka 1983; Harris 1991; Clayman & Heritage 2002a). Resorting to these strategies increases the level of hostility between the participants and thereby thwarts the conciliatory potential of this sub-genre of ethno-political interviews (Blum-Kulka, Liebes, & Kampf 2003; Liebes, Kampf, & Blum-Kulka 2008). This chapter discusses a specific type of interactional ritual in political interviews, one that hinders their conciliatory potential. The ritual is composed of at least one adjacency pair: the interviewer’s demand to condemn a transgressive act committed by others and the respective response by the interviewee. I will examine the example of dialogic construction and negotiation over condemnations, as this speech act is considered crucial to setting up models for “proper” civic behavior (Hauser 1999). My aim is to demonstrate how interviewers’ efforts to exercise interactional and social power through pushing their interviewees to adopt a consensual stance are rejected by the latter resorting to indirect answer designs. The ethno-political interviews analyzed in this chapter host two types of participants: Jewish-Israeli journalists in the role of interviewers and Arab-Israeli parliament members and mayors in the role of interviewees. Indirect answers will be discussed as an interactional resource that allows refusing the patriotic model suggested by interviewers in the context of political conflict. On the basis of a keyword search of the string “do you condemn” in the database of Ifat Digger (an Israeli database for news platforms) between 2006 and 2016, 103 cases were found in which such a question was formulated. The questions were directed by Jewish-Israeli interviewers to a variety of non-­ mainstream political actors in the Israeli political arena, including Jewish-Israeli settlers, Ultra-Orthodox parliament members, Jewish-Israeli left wingers, and Arab-Israeli representatives. In this chapter I will focus on the answer designs of the latter group. The data for this study is comprised of ten political interviews conducted in the Israeli broadcast-news media with representatives of the ­Arab-Israeli population. In what follows, I will start by explaining the role of condemnations in reinforcing shared social and political values and conceptualize the “do you condemn” question as a pivotal action in rituals of loyalty to the nation, in which



“Do you condemn?” 

­ on-­mainstream actors are called to align with the mainstream’s perspective. I will n then a­ nalyze the journalistic interactional and social self-positioning resulting from such a question and move on to identify types of responses to the call to condemn. In the conclusion I will ask to what extent “do you condemn” questions may be perceived as a legitimate professional journalistic practice. 2.  Political condemnations and moral scripts Condemnations are an integral rhetorical resource of epideictic rhetoric, the rhetoric of praise and blame, that acknowledges and promotes moral values on the one hand, while on the other disparages those social actors who violate them. In assigning nobility or baseness to public actors and their actions, epideictic rhetoric sets models for proper conduct and thereby reinforces shared values and traditions (Hauser 1999). As articulations of an epideictic of blame, political condemnations are speech acts that presuppose the facticity of prior transgressive acts and involve a negative evaluation made by one actor (individual, state, or organization) toward another (Kampf & Katriel 2016). Defined as expressive speech acts (Searle 1976) that give voice to speakers’ critical stance toward violation of a law, a norm, or a code of behavior, condemnations are constructed in terms of normative scripts that inform a moral dissent from the alleged transgression and justify their public performance (Kampf & Katriel 2016). The act of condemnation reconfigures an adversarial relationship between the condemning party and the target of the condemnation (Chouliaraki 2000; Butler 2005), seeking to mobilize the latter’s shame and to induce a deterrent effect, thus establishing a discourse of accountability in political affairs (Keenan 2004). The models for “proper” civic behavior are dramatized through discursive rituals of morality that involve self-distancing and pointed disapproval (Kampf & Katriel 2016). Discursive rituals of condemnations center on a particular pivotal speech act – a condemnation or a demand to condemn – and epitomize the relation of speech acts to societal values. Condemnations and calls for condemnations are thus rhetorical resources in political communication since they are grounded in normative scripts and conventions that inform individual and community conduct (Kampf 2013). Adopting Lakoff ’s argument (2001: 212) according to which concentrating on speech acts “located in a specific cultural and societal time and place, we can come to understand a great deal about who we are, what we want, and the rules and assumptions that bind us together as a society,” the study of condemnation rituals enables us to understand public actors’ scripts of morality and their social and political positioning vis-à-vis acts, events, or other actors within or outside their group.

 Zohar Kampf

3.  Calls to condemn as rituals of loyalty in political interviews During a panel discussion on Channel 2, Jewish-Israeli journalist Sivan ­Rahav-Meir identified a “recurrent ritual” in Israeli news interviews with Arab-Israeli representatives. According to Rahav, following a violent action inflicted by Palestinians against Israelis or provocative statements made by an Arab-Israeli representative, there is “a kind of amusing practice in which an interviewer tells himself he will be the one who is going to educate the (Arab-Israeli) interviewee (by asking) ‘Do you condemn the terrorist attacks?’” (July 19, 2006, Channel 2). The call for condemnation serves in this case as a pivotal action around which a ritual of loyalty to the nation is constructed. The ritual is opened with an assertive yes/no “do you condemn” question (Clayman & Heritage 2002a), which in the context of the ethnic identities of the two participants can be interpreted as a demand to choose between one of the two components of the Arab-Israeli identity: civic affiliation (resulting from citizenship in the State of Israel) or national sentiment (Arab-Israeli affinity to the Palestinian people who are not citizens of Israel) (see Al-Haj 2000). In the second part of the ritual, interviewees face an avoidance dilemma (Bavelas, Black, Chovil, & Mullett 1990) since they must choose between one of two untoward alternatives: to condemn the act and thereby publicly adhere to the normative model of the Jewish-Israeli political community while ignoring national Palestinian sentiment, or conversely, to refuse to condemn and thereby distance themselves from what is constructed as consensual by the interviewers while aligning with the national Palestinian sentiment. As happens in most cases in which interviewees face an avoidance dilemma, a third option, that of equivocation by means of indirect answer design, is also plausible (Bavelas, Black, Chovil, & Mullett 1990; Bull 1998). If the call to condemn is rejected by interviewees, the ritual continues with a negotiation over the non-normative stance taken by them or by discussing the equivocal answer in order to make it less ambiguous (­Blum-Kulka & Weizman 2003). The call to condemn and its respective answer serves as a resource for selfand-other positioning at both the interactional and social levels (Blum-Kulka, Liebes, & Kampf 2003; Harré & Moghaddam 2003; Weizman 2008). At the interactional level, the various options for responding to the direct question – ranging between direct yes/no to indirect answers – represent a struggle over interactional power and a negotiation over the level of freedom allowed in responding to an assertive question (Clayman & Heritage 2002b). At the social level, in calling to condemn a previous act, Jewish-Israeli interviewers pose the threat to discursively exclude their interviewees from their mutual civic community. The call requires interviewees to conform to the political script the interviewers envision as binding so as to regain a moral status and membership rights in the national community.



“Do you condemn?” 

Thus, in responding to the call, Arab-Israeli interviewees have a range of options to position themselves in relative proximity to the Jewish-Israeli political community and the Palestinian one. In what follows I will discuss the interactional and social functions of each turn in the ritual.

4.  Interviewers’ self-positioning through a “do you condemn” question Consider the following two exchanges that were broadcast following a Hamas rocket shelling in 2009 (Example 1) and the murder of Eitam and Na’ama Henkin by Hamas terrorists in the West Bank in 2015 (Example 2). Example 1: “Seven to Nine,” Radio 99, July 22, 2009. Interviewers: Immanuel Rosen and Guy Meroz; Interviewee: Talab Al-Sana, an Arab-Israeli politician, member of the United Arab List.

1. Rosen But do you condemn Hamas terrorism? Do you condemn Hamas terrorism?  Aval haim ata megane et teror Hamas? Haim ata megane et teror Hamas? 2. Al-Sana I don’t want to be seen as coming here today to justify anything. Ani lo rotse leheraot keilu sheba hayom lehitstadek. Example 2: “Orly and Guy,” Channel 2, October 8, 2015. Interviewer: Guy Meroz; Interviewee: Basel Ghattas, Arab-Israeli MK, member of the Arabic National Democratic Assembly Party (56 seconds from the start of the interview) 17. Ghattas I oppose all types of violence Ani neged kol sug shel alimut 18. Meroz So why aren’t you condemning it? Az lama ata lo megane et ze? 19. Ghattas All types of murder Kol sug shel retsah 20. Meroz How much would it cost you to condemn? Kama ya’ale leha leganot et ze? 21. Ghattas Just a second, no. It’s, it is important to me that you’ll understand why I am not using your lexicon and your terminology.  Reg’a. Lo, ze… ze hashuv li shetavin lama ani lo mishtamesh baleksikon shelha ubaterminologia shelha

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As these examples demonstrate, calling on an interviewee to condemn manifests journalistic exercise of power at both the interactional and social levels. At the interactional level, the aggressiveness displayed in the two examples by Rosen and Meroz diverts from the relative tolerance for equivocal answers found in the past in mediated interactions with Jewish-Israeli interviewees (Blum-Kulka & Weizman 2003). In turns 18 and 20 of Example 2, we see how the interviewer is not satisfied with the interviewee’s general objection to violence and insists on explicit performance of condemnation. In Clayman and Heritage’s terms (2002b), Meroz is using a global hostility strategy, which structures the most hostile relations between the interviewer and interviewee. Meroz is using a question cascade (Clayman & Heritage, 2002b: 256) with a growing sense of aggressiveness by designing two accountability questions. The first is negatively formulated (“Why aren’t you condemning it?”(, and the second is hostile in its keying (manifested in the sarcastic question in turn 20: “How much would it cost you to condemn?”). Meroz’ question cascade serves as a tactic for pushing Ghattas for a specific response (Heritage 2002) by way of mounting an escalating frontal attack on him for not acting the way Meroz expects from an Israeli Knesset member (the responses to the questions will be discussed in the next section). On the social level, “do you condemn” questions manifest interviewers’ efforts to exercise power by resorting to their national, professional, and organizational identities and roles. At the national level, the questions explicitly demand the adoption of a suggested model of national conduct and its respective Jewish-Israeli terminology. They encode a blatant demand to reaffirm values and world views (e.g. that a rocket attack is indeed terrorism) that transfer the interviewer from the sphere of legitimate controversy to the sphere of national consensus (Hallin 1986; Schudson 2002; Kampf & Daskal 2013). If the values encoded in the questions are rejected by the interviewees, they are pushed from the sphere of legitimate controversy to that of political deviation, thus becoming an object of condemnation in and of themselves for not adhering to the national decree. The “do you condemn” question also positions interviewers in the role of representatives of the public responsible for clarifying public figures’ stances regarding urgent issues on the public agenda (Montgomery 2007). In formulating such a question, interviewers create an appearance of professionalism, one that embodies the journalistic ideal of demanding accountability, disclosing deviations, and enforcing norms (Lazarsfeld & Merton 1948; Ekström 2001). At the organizational level, “do you condemn” questions have the potential to arouse mini-scandals around the unconfirmed social value and as such to create a melodramatic narrative that sells (Kampf 2011). The refusal to condemn becomes a quotable statement (Clayman 1995) generating cycles of discourse in



“Do you condemn?” 

both ­news-media platforms and political institutions. Interviewers responsible for the public turmoil are credited with generating the quotable news, thus enhancing their own media personae as well as organizational visibility in public discourse.1 5.  Interviewees’ responses to “Do you condemn” questions Responding to a “do you condemn” question poses an avoidance dilemma (­Bavelas, Black, Chovil, & Mullett 1990) to Arab-Israeli interviewees, as any answer they provide may result in a negative uptake by one or more of their attuning audiences. On the one hand, confirming or rejecting the interactional action demanded by the interviewee (by formulating direct yes or no answers) will deviate from the expectations of either the Jewish-Israeli audiences or the Arab-Israeli electorate and the Palestinian people at large. On the other hand, resorting to an indirect, equivocal answer – one that evades the topical or action agenda suggested by the interviewee (Blum-Kulka 1983; Clayman & Heritage 2002b; Harris 1991; Bull 1998) and is considered the most practical way to confront an avoidance dilemma – may result in “pointed follow-up questions from IRs [interviewers], negative inferences about ulterior motives from audience members, and unfavorable publicity” (Clayman 2015: 13). The analysis of the responses to “do you condemn” questions indicates that Arab-Israeli interviewees employed the full gamut of options in their answer designs – from overt resistance or willingness to condemn to a variety of evasion strategies. The diversity of responses found in the corpus may hint at the difficulty inherent in answering such a question, which leads interviewees to try out a variety of alternative responses that on occasion align with the interviewer and the Israeli-Jewish audiences, but on other occasions align with their Arab-Israeli electorate. In what follows, I will demonstrate the responses to “do you condemn” questions that were found, starting with direct refusal to condemn, continuing with direct acceptance of the interviewers’ call to condemn, and ending with the various indirect question designs.

Direct refusal to condemn In refusing to condemn, interviewees overtly reject the interviewers’ effort to push for a particular answer (Heritage 2002). Such a refusal usually opens up a .  For example, Ghattas’ refusal to condemn the murder of the two Jewish-Israeli settlers Eitam and Na’ama Henkin (see Example 2) became a news item in a later news edition of Channel 2 and on other media platforms.

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sequence of adversarial negotiation over the reason for rejection in which both participants are involved in the co-construction of self-and-other positioning (Weizman 1996, 2006, 2008; Ekström 2009). Consider the following exchange between interviewer Guy Meroz and MK Basel Ghattas, part of which was discussed earlier: Example 2 (continuation): 6. Meroz But I didn’t hear any condemnation Aval lo shama’ati, lo ginuy >>7. Ghattas I don’t condemn Ani lo megane 8. Meroz Why not? Lama? 9. Ghattas I’ll tell you why Ani asbir leha lama 10. Meroz Two people have been murdered. Nirtsehu shnei anashim 11. Ghattas I will explain. If you’ll let me Ani asbir leha. Im atem notnim li 12. Meroz Four of their children were in the car Araba’at yaldeyhem baoto 13. Ghattas No, I, I, just a second. First of all, we Lo, ani, ani, shniya. Kodem kol, anahnu 14. Meroz Only by chance the children were not murdered. Because of a technical failure, you know  Bemikre lo nirtsehu gam hayeladim. Biglal eize takala tekhnit, ata yode’a 15. Ghattas First of all, I, as an Arab politician, a Palestinian, a citizen of the State of Israel, where I grew up, in my political culture, and ha.  Alef, ani betor politikai aravi, palestini, ezrah medinat Israel, eifo shegadalti, batarbut hapolitit sheli veha. 16. Meroz Yes Ken 17. Ghattas I oppose all types of violence Ani neged kol sug shel alimut 18. Meroz So why aren’t you condemning it? Az lama ata lo megane et ze? 19. Ghattas All types of murder Kol sug shel retsah 20. Meroz How much would it cost you to condemn? Kama ze ya’ale leha leganot et ze?



“Do you condemn?” 



21. Ghattas Just a second, no. It’s, it is important to me that you’ll understand why I am not using your lexicon and your terminology  Reg’a. Lo, ze… ze hashuv li shetavin lama ani lo mishtamesh baleksikon shelha ubaterminologia shelha 22. Meroz Okay Okei. 23. Ghattas There is the victim’s terminology, of which I am part, and there is the ruler’s terminology, of the occupier, the one that decides, that takes everything. And you want to force your terminology on me?  Yesh terminologia shel korban, sheani shayah elav, veyesh terminologia shel hashalit, shel hakovesh, shel mi shemahlit, shetofes hakol. Veata rotse likhpot alay gam lehishtamesh baterminologia shelha? Meroz and Ghattas overlap each other for several turns.

As this example demonstrates, refusals to condemn, i.e., rejection of interviewers’ preferred answer at the interactional level, are justified on the basis of the interviewees’ social positioning – being part of a group subordinate to the JewishIsraeli majority represented by the interviewers. The direct refusal to condemn in turn 7 (“I don’t condemn”) opens up 15 turns of adversarial exchange in which Meroz demands reasons for the refusal (turn 8: “Why not?”), while Ghattas builds his justification. Interestingly, while Meroz establishes his moral positioning on a universal moral script, one that demands accountability on the basis of non-politically identified human beings (turn 10: “Two people have been murdered”; turn 12 “Four of their children were in the car”), Ghattas establishes his refusal based on specific cultural and political moral scripts. After establishing the identity from which his answer is given (turn 15: “An Arab politician, a Palestinian, citizen of the State of Israel, where I grew up, in my political culture”), he manifests a general oppositional stance against “all types of violence” (turns 17, 19). The substitution of condemnation with only general opposition to violence and murder does not count as a satisfying response, as apparent in Meroz’ sarcastic keying (Goffman 1974) on turn 20: “How much would it cost you to condemn?” By formulating this question, Meroz pushes further to “reinforce the narratives of the dominant ethno-national group while silencing, degrading or ridiculing contesting perspectives” (Yiftachel 2006: 37). In response, Ghattas further explains his stance-taking by resorting to the political power relations between him and the interviewer. In turn 23 he conflates Israeli-Palestinian asymmetrical power relations with those constructed within the interview in justifying his rejection of the word “condemn” (“There is the victim’s terminology, of which I am part... And you want to force

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your terminology on me?”). For Ghattas, refusal to use the political semantic load of the interviewer’s “lexicon and terminology” is a way to protest against the interactional and political asymmetry in the interview.

Direct agreement to condemn In one case out of the ten, an Arab-Israeli representative complied with the ­preferred action suggested by the interviewer by realizing a direct condemnation. As Example 3 suggests, instead of negotiating the reasons for taking this action, evidence is brought by the interviewee to prove the sincerity of his stance-taking. Example 3: “Haboker Haze,” Reshet Bet, August 29, 2008. Interviewer: Arie Golan; Interviewee: Orsan Yassin, Mayor of Shfaram

1. Golan and the head of the Shfaram Council is with us, the place from which those two students who planned dangerous terrorist activity came from. Orsan Yassin, good morning to you.  Veitanu rosh mo’etset Shfar’am oto makom shemimenu yatsu shnei hastudentim halalu shetikhnenu pe’ilut teroristit mesukenet. Orsan Yassin boker tov leha. 2. Yassin Mayor of Shfaram. Good morning to you and to all of the listeners Rosh iryat Shfar’am. Boker tove leha velkhol hamaazinim 3. Golan Yes, indeed, Mayor, my mistake. Do you condemn, first of all, this terrorist activity, this terrorist initiative of two residents from your city?  Ken behley irya ta’ut sheli. Ata megane kodem kol hape’ilut hateroristit hazot, at hayozma hateroristit shel shnayim min haezrahim ba’ir shelha? >>4. Yassin I condemn it but want to say that not all Israeli Arabs are going in this direction. In Shfaram we raise the nation’s flag on Independence Day…  Ani megane aval ani rotse lehagid sheze lo kol arviyei Israel shehem holkhim bakivun haze. BiShfar’am merimim digley hamedina beyom ha’atsmaut…

In the brief exchange presented in Example 3, we see how following a “do you condemn” question, the mayor aligns with the perspective of the interviewer and adopts the “proper” model of behavior suggested in the call to condemn. Yassin emphasizes the Israeli civic identity of his city by both condemning the “terrorist initiative” and proving Shfaram residents’ loyalty to the nation by referring to



“Do you condemn?” 

the ritual of raising the flag on Israeli Independence Day. In turn 1, Golan starts by mistakenly introducing his interviewee as the “head of the Shfaram Council” and moves on by providing the context for the interview, name introduction, and greetings. In turn 2, the interviewee ignores the topical introduction. He ­corrects the interviewer and manifests his awareness of the “situational geography” (­Meyrowitz 1985) of the broadcast talk by greeting both the interviewer and the listeners. In turn 3, Golan apologizes for his mistake and moves on to formulate a “do you condemn” question, while emphasizing the need to condemn by prioritizing the expected action (“First of all”) and twice repeating the term “terrorist” (­terrorist activity, terrorist initiative). Yassin begins his answer in turn 4 with a direct condemnation, thus completing the interviewer’s efforts to push toward a specific action with compliance, while closing the adjacency pair with both interactional and social self-positioning within the sphere of consensus (Hallin 1986). He then moves on to refute Golan’s implication that the two students represent the residents of his city. Yassin repositions his city within the sphere of consensus by using the conjunction “but” and resorting to two image-restoration strategies (Benoit 1995): denying the involvement of “all Israeli Arabs” in such activities and bolstering the patriotic image of his city by stating, “In Shfaram we raise the nation’s flag on Independence Day.” In designing an answer that aligns with the preferred action and terminology of the interviewer, Yassin accepts both the interactional and the social asymmetry in the context of the specific political interview. In contrast to Yassin’s interview, in most cases Arab-Israeli interviewees choose to resist the call for condemnation by resorting to a variety of evasion strategies. The indirect answers ranged in their level of cooperation from partial collaboration with the interviewer’s demand by formulating general opposition to “all types of violence” (see Example 2) to refusal to cooperate by pointing an accusing finger at other political actors who are responsible for the transgressive act. In what follows I will demonstrate the six strategies of indirectness in response to the “do you condemn” question.

“I don’t want to be seen as someone who came here today to justify anything”: Overt resistance to answering The first strategy of evasion was identified by Clayman and Heritage (2002a) in cases where interviewees invest interactional efforts to explain their refusal to answer. In Example 1, two Jewish-Israeli interviewers, Immanuel Rosen and Guy Meroz, host Talab Al-Sana, an Israeli Arab politician, after a Hamas rocket attack in 2009. The interviewee justified his resistance to complying with the interviewers’ call to condemn by refusing to be in an inferior interactional position of defense.

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1. Meroz … the Hamas terrorism, do you condemn? …et teror haHamas, ata megane? 2. Rosen But do you condemn Hamas terrorism? Do condemn Hamas terrorism?  Aval haim ata megane et teror haHamas? Haim ata megane et teror haHamas? >>3. Al-Sana I don’t want to be seen as coming here today to justify anything. Ani lo rotse leheraot keilu sheba hayom lehitstadek. 4. Rosen Come on Azov 5. Meroz God forbid Has vehalila

Following three “do you condemn” questions repeated by the two interviewers (turns 1 and 2), Al-Sana justifies his resistance to answering the question by pointing to what he would not do – provide justification for violence. Al-Sana manifests his awareness of the situation of double articulation of identity (Scannell 1991, Weizman 2008) by rejecting both the asymmetrical interactional positioning posed by the interviewers and the social positioning of aligning with the Israeli national decree. In contrast to other cases of overt resistance to answering, which are “geared to minimizing the negative consequences that might otherwise follow” (Clayman 2015: 14), both interviewers disqualify Al-Sana’s reply, urging him to answer (turn 4: “Come on”) and sanction his evasiveness with sarcasm (turn 5: “God forbid”).

“I wouldn’t do it”: Shifting from the general to the personal The second indirect response strategy rejects the performance of an action suggested by an interviewer but at the same time manifests a personal stance critical of the transgressive, condemnable act. In Example 4, the interviewee, Issawi Frej, avoids the demand to condemn the hoisting of Palestinian flags during an ArabIsraeli protest against the government’s policy of demolishing illegal Arab housing in the Negev and the Galilee. Instead of focusing on what the protesters have done (constructed as a condemnable act by the two interviewers), he focuses on what he would (not) do in the same situation. Example 4: “The Patriots,” Channel 20, April 30, 2015. Interviewers: Sara Beck and Benny Rabinovitch; Interviewee: Issawi Frej, an Arab-Israeli politician, member of the Meretz Party.

1. Frej Now, the second thing, the PLO flag, the Palestinian flag, it is not a legal offense, okay. Whether it serves the goal or does not serve it



“Do you condemn?” 

 Akhshav, hadavar hasheni, degel Ashaf, degel Palestin, hu lo avera hukit, beseder, im ze mesharet et hamatara o lo mesharet et hamatara 2. Beck That is not the question Zot lo hasheela 3. Frej This is what people determined Ze haanashim kav’u 4. Beck That is not the question, do you condemn it? Ata megane? Zot lo hasheela, haim? >>5. Frej I wouldn’t do it myself Ani lo hayiti ose et ze 6. Rabinovitch He wouldn’t do it, what do you say about that? Hu lo haya ose et ze, ma atem omrim

Following Frej’s attempt to justify the hoisting of the “Palestinian” flag during a civic protest by resorting to a legal argument (“is not a legal offense”), the interviewer shifts the discussion from the judicial to civic normative discourse by demanding a condemnation of an act that politically deviates from the accepted values of Channel 20 audiences (considered equivalent to the US Fox channel). Beck twice repeats the interactional sanction (“That is not the question”; turns 2 and 4), explicitly accusing Frej of not adhering to his interactional role – answering whether he condemns the protesters’ actions or not. In the next turn, Frej avoids the performance of condemnation by shifting perspective from the political (condemning what protesters have done) to the personal – “I wouldn’t do it.” The unsatisfying reply is sanctioned once again by the second interviewer, the rightwing Ultra-Orthodox journalist Benny Rabinovitch, who repeats Frej’s answer and turns to the other panelists and implicitly calls on them to comment on Frej’s noncondemnation (“What do you say about that?”). In this case, as in “overt resistance to answer” discussed above, the attempt to control the damage by resorting to a strategy of evasion falls short of minimizing the interviewers’ interactional and social sanctions.

“I express my deep condolences”: Replacing condemnation with a different speech act A third option for evasion resists the specific demand for condemnation by changing the speech act to either regret, denunciation, or condolence. Although some of these replacements may function as condemnation (i.e., denunciation), in changing either the locution (the words used) or the illocutionary force (Austin 1975), interviewees claim their freedom of verbal action, thus resisting the interactional and social positioning pushed forward by interviewers. The use of this strategy is demonstrated in the following example following a terrorist attack in Tel-Aviv.

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Example 5: “The Main News Edition,” Channel 2, January 2, 2016. Interviewer: Dana Weiss; Interviewee: Ayman Odeh, chair of the Arab-Israeli Joint List Party. 1. Weiss The chair of the Joint List Party, hello to you. Yoshev rosh hareshima hameshutefet, shalom leha 2. Odeh Hello Shalom 3. Weiss So a short while ago we saw the prime minister at the scene of the attack and he demands Arab Knesset members condemn the act without stuttering.  Az rainu et rosh hamemshala lifnei zman katsar bezirat hapig’u, vehu doresh mehavrey hakneset ha’aravim leganot, velo legamgem >>4. Odeh Ah, with your permission I would like to start from a place of humanity and express deep condolences to the Shimon and Alon families, and to wish a speedy recovery to all the injured…  Ah, bershutha ani rotse lehathil mehamakom haenoshi velehabi’a tanhumim amukim lemishpahat Shim’on vemishpahat Alon, veleahel hahlama mehira lekol haptsu’im…

After two turns of greetings, the interviewer resorts to a neutral journalistic positioning (Clayman 1992) by citing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s demand for “Arab Knesset members to condemn the act without stuttering.” In response, Odeh begins his answer by “showing deference to the IR [interviewer]” strategy (Clayman and Heritage 2002a), asking Weiss’s permission to perform an agenda shift – condoling instead of condemning in this case. Establishing his evasion on a moral basis (“I would like to start from a place of humanity”) allows Odeh to project an empathetic, moral stance without complying with the interactional (demand to condemn) and social (expressing loyalty to the nation) positions encoded in the question. Moreover, designing the beginning of his answer with a wish “to start from a place of humanity” allows Odeh to frame Netanyahu’s demand as a political ploy and not as a call for adopting a moral stance.

“We have already condemned”: Referring to previous action A fourth strategy for avoiding an explicit condemnation is to realize a non-­ performative speech act that does not consist of an active verb formulated in the present tense (“I condemn”) or at least a confirmation of the action suggested by



“Do you condemn?” 

the interviewer (“I do” or “yes”). This strategy has been identified in cases in which public figures have formulated non-apologies (Kampf 2009) and include an intertextual reference to an apology that was issued in the past. In responding to a “do you condemn” question by pointing to a previous text, the interviewee violates the maxim of manner (Grice 1975). Instead of clearly manifesting a condemnation, s/ he refers to a response made in the past in an effort to avoid the negative consequences attached to the performance of a live, real-time condemnation. Consider the following example. Example 6: “Sharon Gal in the morning,” Radio 102, July 7, 2014. Interviewer: Sharon Gal; Interviewee: Ahmad Tibi, Arab-Israeli MK, chair of the Raam-Taal Party

1. Gal But this is an incitement that you are not condemning, say that they are terrorists and talk about the Palestinian struggle with me.  Aval zot hahasata sheata lo megane veomer shehem teroristim vemedaber iti al hamaavak haPalestini. 2. Tibi We have issued a statement on behalf of Raam-Taal. Follow it Hotsenu hoda’a shel Raam-Taal. Ta’akov ahareha

In responding to the highly aggressive formulations of the “do you condemn” question, the interviewee shifted from the personal “I” suggested by the interviewer to the “limited social we” of their political party (Dori-Hacohen 2014), while utilizing a specific intertextual reference. Tibi specifies that a press release was issued in the recent past by his party, responding to the interviewer’s overt hostile accusation (this is incitement) by instructing him to “follow it.” Resorting to such an evasive solution to the avoidance dilemma places the interviewee in a potentially rewarding position at both the interactional and social levels. It allows creating an appearance of responsiveness and condemnation without actually complying with the interviewers’ demand.

“I oppose violence but the real violence is the occupation”: Shifting the blame Strategy 5 (general rejection of violence) is demonstrated in the next example with strategy 6 (shifting the blame), although the former may appear side by side with all other evasion strategies discussed above (see Example 2 for a similar combination). Whereas general opposition to violence establishes a moral, universal positioning vis-à-vis the transgressive act (and thus may count as an ­appropriate response on

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both the interactional and social levels), by shifting the blame to the interviewer (for using occupier “terminology”; see Example 2) or to the (­Jewish-Israeli) political actors the interviewers represent in their question design (see Example 5), Arab-Israeli interviewees construct a symmetry. They use an image-restoration strategy of provocation (the violence is a response to another’s act; see Benoit, 1995), thus at least partly exonerating those who are responsible for the allegedly transgressive act (Antaki 1994). Example 7: “Maariv,” October 26, 2015. Interviewer: Arik Bender; Interviewee: Mohammad Barakeh Arab-Israeli MK, former chair of the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality Party

1. Bender In the past you clearly condemned the terrorist attack in the Har-Nof synagogue and even participated in the funeral of an Israeli citizen, a victim of the Hamas rocket shelling from Gaza on Sderot. Do you today condemn the latest terror attacks?  Be’avar heshma’ata ginuy barur neged hapigu’a haratshani bishhunat Har-Nof, veaf hishtatatfta behalvayata shel ezrahit israelit, korban shel yeri Qassam miretsu’at Aza al Sderot. Haim ata megane kayom et hapigu’im haahronim? 2. Barakeh I oppose violence, but the real violence is the continuation of the occupation and the blocking of all options for a normal and shared life.  Ani neged alimut, aval haalimut hagdola beyoter hi hemsheh hakibush vestimat kol ofek lehayim meshutafim venormalyim.

The interviewer opens his question design with a preface statement (Clayman & Heritage 2002b) which, at the content level, provides information (in the past the interviewee had condemned similar actions) that pushes toward performance of the same action during the present interview (to condemn “the latest terror attacks”). In response, Barakeh opens his answer with general opposition to violence but continues by pointing an accusing finger toward the “real” condemnable violation, the one that provoked the violence (“but the real violence is the continuation of the occupation”). By claiming a moral position and blaming the other side for being the source of trouble, Barakeh complies with the interactional demand to manifest a negative stance toward a specific transgression while aligning with his Arab-Israeli audience at the social level through shifting the blame for the general conflictual situation to the Jewish-Israeli side.



“Do you condemn?” 

6.  Conclusion In this chapter I have demonstrated how a specific question design – “do you ­condemn” – in ethno-political interviews transforms “routine” accountability interviews into political arguments in which the interviewees’ loyalty to the nation is at stake. “Do you condemn” questions were analyzed as a means for exercising Jewish-Israeli interviewers’ power over their Arab-Israeli interviewees. By formulating such a question, interviewers initiate rituals of loyalty to the nation in which their Arab-Israeli interviewees are called on to adopt a specific interactional and social position that aligns with the majority perspective. At the interactional level, Arab-Israeli interviewees are called on to perform a specific preferred action encoded in the interviewer’s question; at the social level, they are demanded to comply with national norms and values endorsed by Jewish-Israeli audiences. The question and answer designs discussed in this chapter demonstrate the practices of direct journalistic interrogation versus the art of political equivocation. Interviewees’ stances vis-à-vis transgressive actions are negotiated within the ongoing interaction in which normative models are constructed through the dynamic co-construction of self-and-other positions. Whereas the interviewers prioritize their national identity at the expense of their professional one, interviewees have several alternative responses, ranging from directly aligning or misaligning with the positions suggested by the host to the utilization of various indirect, resistance strategies. Overall, I found six strategies of evasion in response to “do you condemn” questions: overt resistance to answer, shifting from the general to the personal, replacing condemnation with a different speech act, referring to previous action, general opposition to violence, and shifting the blame. Resorting to one or several of these strategies opens up a negotiation over interactional and civic rights and duties between interviewer and interviewee. In the course of negotiation, both participants are involved not only in a dialogic construction of a speech act, but also in constructing the normative model the condemnation epitomizes and, as a consequence, are engaging in the redrawing of the boundaries of professional and national identities in a democratic society. The final question to be raised in the context of ethno-political interviews in democratic societies is to what extent can “do you condemn” questions be considered a legitimate professional means of holding non-mainstream actors accountable? I would argue that at times of ethno-political conflicts in which the sensitivity of the viewing audiences to any deviation from the patriotic decree is high, keeping the dynamic of interaction within the sphere of legitimate controversy (Hallin 1986) is crucial to professional conduct during interviewing. Avoiding hostility in

 Zohar Kampf

such interviews may open a window to the rival perspective regarding the roots of the conflict, and perhaps even chart a possible way out. It may also serve as a simulation of civil negotiation with the dissident actors. These efforts, however, tend to fail in ethno-political interviews, mainly because of the interviewers’ insistence on direct answers to highly sensitive questions. Any effort of the out-group interviewees to employ ambiguity in order to minimize the potential negative consequences of a direct response (Clayman 2015) are immediately sanctioned (see examples 1 and 4). Thus, at the practical level, adopting the Israeli interviewing norm of allowing space for ambiguity (­Blum-Kulka & ­Weizman 2003) after formulating a “do you condemn” question could push the loaded discussion away from the spheres of deviation and consensus. Acknowledging the advantages of listening to the subtleties encoded in responses to explosive questions may be one step ahead in recognizing the ­complexity of managing non-mainstream, minority identities in a world of black and white expectations.

Funding This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant No. 987/61).

Acknowledgments I would like to extend my gratitude to Lee Aldar for transcribing the data and to Gonen DoriHacohen for his insightful comments on an earlier version of this chapter.

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Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, and Elda Weizman. 2003. “Misunderstandings in Political Interviews.” In Misunderstanding in Social Life: Discourse Approaches to Problematic Talk, ed. by Juliane House, Gabriele Kasper, and Steven Ross, 107–128. London: Routledge. Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, Zohar Kampf, and Tamar Liebes. 2003 “‘Talking with the Enemy?’: Interviews with Palestinians during the Second Intifada.” In Lamed le ILASH [Studies in modern Hebrew], ed. by Shlesinger Yitzchak, and Malka Muchnik, 61–77. Jerusalem: ­Tzivonim Publishing (in Hebrew). Bull, Peter. 1998. “Equivocation Theory and News Interviews.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 17 (1): 36–51.  https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X980171002 Bull, Peter. 2015. “Follow-ups in Broadcast Political Discourse.” In Follow-ups in Political ­Discourse: Explorations across Contexts and Discourse Domains, ed. by Elda Weizman, and Anita Fetzer, 3–24. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.60.01bul Butler, Judith. 2005. Giving an Account of Oneself. New York: Fordham University Press. https://doi.org/10.5422/fso/9780823225033.001.0001 Chouliaraki, Lilie. 2000. “Political Discourse in the News: Democratizing Responsibility or Aestheticizing Politics?” Discourse and Society 11 (3): 293–314. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926500011003002 Clayman, Steven E. 1992. “Footing in the Achievement of Neutrality: The Case of News Interview Discourse.” In Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings, ed. by Paul Drew, and John Heritage, 163–198. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clayman, Steven E. 1995. “Defining Moments, Presidential Debates, and the Dynamics of Quotability.” Journal of Communication 45 (3): 118–147. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1995.tb00746.x Clayman, Steven E. 2015. “Broadcast News Interviews.” In The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction, ed. by Karen Tracy, Cornelia Ilie, and Todd Sandel. Hobeken, NJ: Wiley and Sons. doi  https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118611463/wbielsi113. Clayman, Steven, and John Heritage. 2002a. The News Interview: Journalists and Public Figures on the Air. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511613623 Clayman, Steven. E., and John Heritage. 2002b. “Questioning Presidents: Journalistic Deference and Adversarialness in the Press Conferences of US Presidents Eisenhower and ­Reagan.” Journal of Communication 52 (4): 749–775.  https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2002.tb02572.x Dori-Hacohen, Gonen. 2014. “Establishing Social Groups in Hebrew: ‘We’ in Political Radio Phone-in Programs.” In Constructing Collectivity: ‘We’ across Languages and Contexts, ed. by Theodossia-Soula Pavlidou, 187–206. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.239.13dor Ekström, Mats. 2001. “Politicians Interviewed on Television News.” Discourse and Society 12 (5): 563–584.  https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926501012005001 Ekström, Mats. 2009. “Announced Refusal to Answer: A Study of Norms and Accountability in Broadcast Political Interviews.” Discourse Studies 11 (6): 681–702. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445609347232 Fetzer, Anita, Elda Weizman, and Lawrence N. Berlin. (eds.). 2015. The Dynamics of Political Discourse: Forms and Functions of Follow-ups. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.259 Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Grice, Herbert P. 1975. “Logic and Conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics, vol. 3. Speech Acts, ed. by Peter Cole, and Jerry L. Morgan, 41–58. New York: Academic Press.

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Searle, John R. 1976. “A Classification of Illocutionary Acts.” Language in Society 5 (1): 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500006837 Weizman, Elda. 1996. “Shifting Roles: A Challenge Strategy in News Interviews on Israeli Television.” In Hadassah Kantor Jubilee Book: Language Research Papers, ed. by Ora Schwarzwald, and Yitzchak Shlezinger, 85–95. Ramat Gan, Israel: Bar Ilan Press. (in Hebrew). Weizman, Elda. 2006. “Roles and Identities in News Interviews: The Israeli Context.” Journal of Pragmatics 38 (2): 154–179.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2005.06.018 Weizman, Elda. 2008. Positioning in Media Dialogue. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/ds.3 Weizman, Elda, Irit Levi, and Isaac Schneebaum. 2007. “Variation in Interviewing Styles: ­Challenge and Support in Al-Jazeera.” Political Discourse in the Media: Cross-cultural ­Perspectives 160: 197.  https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.160.11wei Yiftachel, Oren. 2006. Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Index A Absurd  7, 10, 33, 34, 72, 98, 103, 108–112, 114, 134 see also Paradox, Ridicule Absurd Humor  26, 28, 32 Absurdity  25–26, 31, 109 Ad Absurdum  109 Non-Sense/Nonsense  21, 22, 31, 32, 34, 35, 51, 110, 111 Accountability  233, 236, 239, 247 Accountability of Political Action  204, 224 Accountability of Social Action  207 Accountable  208, 217, 247 Accusation  10, 59–61, 67–69, 74, 76–77, 174, 176, 179, 191–192, 217, 241, 243, 245–246 Adaptability  86, 87 Adaptation  10, 86, 88, 119–124, 127, 130, 132, 139 Graphic Adaptation  10, 120, 121, 134, 136, 138 Indirect Adaptation  87 Addressees  1–8, 10–11, 22, 23, 25, 43, 61, 65n7, 67, 76, 100–103, 106, 123, 146– 147, 159–160, 170–171, 180–182, 184–189, 193, 195–196, 206–207 Addressivity  8, 11, 123, 167, 175, 180–181, 183, 189, 191, 195, 199 Addressivity Strategies  180, 199 Hearer  1, 3, 5, 24–25, 40, 86, 88, 92, 101, 106, 169–170, 208 Recipient  3–4, 73, 85, 100, 112, 145–147, 154n1, 155–158, 160, 170, 179, 185, 188, 196–198, 198n1, 199 Addresser  6–7, 21, 25, 67, 102, 104 Speaker  1–9, 11, 21–22, 24–25, 29, 39–43, 47–48,

52–54, 60–61, 66, 85–86, 88–89, 91–93, 97–101, 101n4, 102–104, 106, 114, 132, 146–151, 155, 157, 160–161, 168–170, 172–180, 182, 185, 188–192, 194, 196, 198–199, 203–205, 207–209, 213, 215–217, 219–221, 223–225, 233 Agency  89, 91, 93, 99, 221 Co-Agency  93 Common Agency  90 Political Agency  90 Aggressive/ness  176, 182, 232, 236, 245 Animate  89 Inanimate/Exanimate  89, 91, 93 Animator  98, 101–102, 107, 112, 114, 123, 132 Argot  31, 35 Argumentation  65, 215, 217–218, 223–224 see also Rhetoric Argument  99, 104, 109, 217–218, 220–221, 223–224, 233, 243, 247 Argumentative  11, 203, 205–206, 212, 218, 220–221, 223–225 Counter-Argument  68, 223 Audience  3, 10–11, 21–22, 41–43, 60, 66, 100–101, 119–120, 122–128, 132, 136, 138, 167, 172–173, 175, 178, 180–181, 183–191, 193–200, 204, 237, 240, 246–247 Author  6, 10, 26, 39, 46–49, 52–56, 90–91, 93, 97–101, 101n3, 102–108, 111–114, 151, 153, 158–161, 168–170, 176, 210 Implied Author  10, 102, 104 Authority  7–8, 62, 88, 157, 161, 213

Authoritative  161 Authoritarian  176 Avoidance dilemma  234, 237, 245 B Blending theory  44–45, 52, 54 Blended space  44–45, 52 Blog see Facebook Broadcast see media C Censorship  10, 121, 129 Challenge  2–4, 8, 11, 53, 63–65, 65n9, 77, 127, 181, 184, 203–206, 212–215, 217–221, 223–225, 232 Chronotope  119, 121, 127–128, 131–132, 136, 138 Clue  4–6, 9, 20–22, 24, 29, 33–34, 40, 46, 54–55, 66, 100, 103, 147, 170, 198, 198n1 Contextual clue  4, 39, 54–55, 147, 198 Coherence  221, 223–224 Co-locution  85, 92 Comment see Facebook, Metacomment, Follow-up Comics  122–124, 126, 134, 136 Commit/ment  101, 138, 175, 177, 179–180, 185, 189, 193, 203, 206, 208–209, 213, 220, 224 Compliment  10, 59–61, 64, 65n7–8, 71, 73–74 see also accusation Condemn/ation  8, 11, 12, 59–60, 70, 231–237, 237n1, 238–248 Condemnable act  242 Condemnable violation  246 Context  1–3, 5–6, 8–12, 19–20, 23, 26, 43–44, 46–55, 64, 73, 85–90, 92, 95, 97–98, 103, 114, 119–120, 138–139, 145, 147–149,

 The Discourse of Indirectness

151–152, 154n1, 156, 160–161, 170–171, 178, 180, 182, 192, 203–206, 208–209, 211–218, 220, 222–226, 232, 241, 247 Context Chain  218, 220–221, 223–224 Context’s Context  95 Context Marker  220–221 Context Sequence  212 Context Strategies/ Practices  224–225 Context Value  206 Contextual  4, 10, 39, 54–55, 85, 90, 103, 147, 181, 198, 206 Contextual Effect  120 Contextual knowledge/ Information  5, 21, 29, 44, 48, 170, 198, 198n1 Organizational Context  145–146, 151 see also under Discourse Recontextualize  64, 217–218 Cooperative Principle/ Conversational Implicature Model  4, 21, 40–41, 92, 98, 103, 106, 114, 207 Flouting of Maxims  4, 5, 21, 24–25, 29–30, 33–35, 39–40, 48, 66, 66n10, 69, 72–74, 77, 98, 103, 106–109, 111 Implicature/ Implicated Message  1–2, 4–5, 11, 21, 23, 29, 41–44, 66, 66n10, 203, 216, 222 Implicate  43, 213, 215, 217–218, 223, 225–226 Maxim/ Supermaxim  2, 207 Maxim of Manner  4, 21, 72–74, 107, 245 Maxim of Quality/ Truthfulness  21, 24–25, 29–30, 33–34, 39, 41–42, 48, 66, 66n10, 69, 72–73, 207, 222–223 Maxim of Quantity  21, 29–30, 34, 72–73, 107–109 Maxim of Relevance  21

Conventions of Poiesis  91 Co-text/ Cotext/ Linguistic Context  6, 64, 69, 71, 77, 85, 87, 211, 214, 216, 222, 224 Co-textual  10, 100, 103 Credibility  8, 11, 105, 205, 218, 221, 225 Criticism  8–9, 12, 24, 26, 30, 33–36, 44–46, 48–50, 52, 61, 66, 68, 70–71, 77, 97–99, 101, 103–104, 106–111, 113–114, 121, 134, 176, 178, 181, 190, 198, 217–218 Social Criticism  45, 106, 108–109 Cue  4–5, 7, 9–10, 19–24, 27–36, 43, 66, 75, 97–98, 100, 102–106, 108–114, 148–149, 170, 198n1, 216n5 Contextual cue/s  4 D Debate  11, 94, 123, 167–175, 178–182, 184–186, 187–199, 204, 210 Default  3, 208–209 Direct/ness  1–3, 8, 11, 43, 61, 64, 65n7, 67, 76, 90–95, 102, 107, 111, 119–120, 145–147, 149–150, 153– 154, 156–161, 167–171, 174–178, 181–185, 187, 189, 191–195, 197–200, 205, 217, 232, 234, 237, 239–241, 247–248 Directness at the meso level  11, 167–168, 173, 182, 197, 199 Directness at the micro level  11, 167–168, 173–174, 180, 182, 197, 199 Indirect/ness  1–5, 7–11, 20–21, 39–40, 43, 48, 50, 60, 66, 78, 85–93, 93n3, 94–95, 98, 103–104, 106, 109, 111, 119–120, 123–124, 126–127, 132, 138, 145–151, 153–154, 154n1, 155–156, 158–161, 167–171, 174–175,

177–179, 181–184, 186, 190–193, 195, 197–200, 217, 231–232, 234, 237, 241–242, 247 Indirection  3, 95, 170, 173, 177, 179, 182, 191 In/direction cline  169, 174, 197 Discourse  6–7, 23, 64, 70–71, 78, 85, 90–95, 146, 161, 167–170, 173–174, 182, 185–186, 188–191, 195–198, 204, 206, 209, 209n3, 211, 213–214, 218, 220, 222–223, 225, 233, 236, 243 Computer-Mediated Discourse  145–146, 148, 150 Critical Discourse Analysis  168 Digital Discourse  11, 151 Discourse Acts/ Actions  173–174, 177, 180, 182, 191, 199 Discourse Analysis  8, 145–146 Discourse Effectiveness  145 Discourse Pragmatics  206, 209, 209n3, 213–214, 220, 224 Discursive Acts/Actions  67 Discursive Devices  157 Discursive Force  209 Discursive Functions  43 Discursive Practices/ Strategies  146, 156 Discursive Rituals  233 Discursive Value  203, 206, 208–211, 215, 218, 220, 222 Habitual Discourse Conventions  198 Institutional Discourse  167 Interpersonal Discourse  167 Media Discourse  64, 167 see also Media Organizational Discourse  146 see also under Context Political Discourse  59, 171, 206, 214 Public Discourse  9, 41, 47, 67, 75, 237

Index 

Quoted Discourse  94 see also Quote E Echo/Echoing  4, 7, 9–10, 22, 24, 30, 33, 35, 47–48, 50, 59–60, 64–67, 69–78, 106–108, 111 Echoic Interpretation  9, 41 Echoic Mention  9, 19, 21–22, 24, 29, 33–35, 47–48, 66, 98, 103, 106–108, 114 Multi Stage Echo/ing  59, 69–70, 77 Egocentric  95 see also Pluricentric Egocentric Acts/ Activities  85–86, 93 Electronic mail  145, 147–148 Emoticon  126 see also Facebook, WhatsApp Entertainment  9, 46 Ethos  10, 59–61, 63–65, 67, 69–72, 74, 76–78 Anti-Ethos comments  59, 63–64, 67, 71–72 Pro-Ethos comments  59, 63–65, 67 Epideictic  233 Epideictic rhetoric  231, 233 Erasure  85, 88 Evaluate/ion  2–9, 8, 24, 26, 35, 44, 60, 168–169, 176, 190–191, 196, 207–209, 209n3, 213, 217–218, 220, 223, 225 Critical Evaluation  45, 46, 54 Evaluative  39, 41, 43, 54–55, 215, 218 Evaluative Act  192 Evaluative Effect  8 Evaluative Judgement  24–25 Evaluative Meaning/ Value  24, 45, 48, 52 Negative Evaluation  26, 35, 43–44, 46, 48, 60–61, 176, 179, 181, 215, 218, 220–221, 233 Evasion/ Evasive  221, 232, 237, 241–245, 247

Explicitation  19, 23, 23n2, 24, 29, 34–35 F Face see Polite/ness Facebook  5, 59, 62, 62n3, 63, 63n5, 64, 66, 68, 125–126, 138 Blog/ger  92, 124–125, 138 Comment/On-line Comment/Readers’ Comment  9, 59, 62n3, 63–64, 65n8, 66–67, 69–74, 75n20, 76, 78 see also Meta-comments, Follow-up Commenter  10, 59–61, 65, 65n8–9, 67, 72 Post  9, 59–60, 62, 62n3, 63–66, 68–69, 71–72, 74, 75n20, 76–78 Felicity Condition see Speech Act Feminism, 134 see also Gender Feminist  129, 134 Figure  40 Figure of Speech  50 Figurative  39, 44–45, 49, 53, 55 Figurative Interpretation/ Reading  42–43, 55 Follow-Up  63–64, 152, 204, 210, 214, 232, 237 see also Facebook Footing  10, 97–98, 101–105, 112, 114 Free indirect Discourse  88 G Gender  150, 161 see also Feminism Graded Salience Hypothesis  44 Graphic Novel  119, 122–123, 126, 128–129, 139 H Hearer see Addressee Het achterhuis  124, 132 Hierarchical Positions  146, 160–161 Humor/ous  5, 7, 9, 19–23, 23n2, 24–36, 46, 48, 52–54, 67,

97–98, 103–106, 108–111, 113, 122, 127, 129, 134 Absurd Humor see Absurd Comic  134 Humorous Irony/Ironic Humor  20, 24–25, 46, 105 see also Irony Joke  23–24, 27, 33, 35, 111, 111 Local-Logic  31, 110–111, 114 Non-Sense see Absurd Punch Line  21, 23, 27, 33, 110–111, 114 Script Opposition  21–22, 31, 33–34, 110–111, 113 Semantic Script Theory  22, 110 Superiority Theory  25 Two-Scripts Humor  52, 54 Verbal Humor  23, 32, 34–35 Violation of Expectations  21, 110, 113 Word Play  21, 32 I Icon/ic  124, 128, 134, 136, 136n6, 158, 162 Image  45, 60, 102, 123, 130, 138, 175 Image Restoration  241, 246 Implication  4, 40, 111, 213, 218, 241 Implied  24–25, 31, 35, 39–40, 49–50, 54, 62n1, 99, 112 Implied Author see Author Implied Meaning see Meaning Implied Reader  97–100 Implicature see Cooperative Principle Incongruity/ Incongruency  22, 22n1, 23, 25, 27–28, 31, 106, 108, 110, 113–114, 205 Indirectness see Directness Interpret/ation  1–7, 9–11, 20–24, 29, 33–36, 40, 40n1, 41–45, 47, 49–51, 53–55, 66, 73, 85, 88, 94, 98, 100, 103–104, 106–109, 113–114, 119–120, 127, 128–130, 132, 136, 147–148,

 The Discourse of Indirectness

149, 151, 169–170, 176, 178–181, 188, 192, 197–199, 206–207, 218, 221, 225, 234 Echoic Interpretation see Echoic Interpretation Process  1, 4–5, 9, 22, 41–44, 55 Interpretive Use of Language  120 Interpretive Utterance  119, 128 Ironic Interpretation see Ironic Metaphorical Interpretation see Metaphor/ic Reinterpreting  124 Visual Interpretation  129, 130, 132 Intertextual/ity  4–7, 10, 128, 245 Ironic/Irony  5, 7–9, 19–30, 32–36, 39–50, 54–55, 59, 64, 65n8, 66–67, 69, 71–73, 75–78, 97–98, 101, 103–105, 107–108, 110–114, 129, 148, 168 Conventionalized Ironic Utterance  25 Echoic Mention Theory of Irony see Echo Humorous Irony see Humor Ironic Echoes/Echoing  4, 7, 9–10, 59–60, 65–67, 71, 75–76 Ironic Gap  43–45, 55 Ironic Humor see Humor Ironic Tension  43, 45, 53 Metaphoric/al Irony  9, 39–42, 45–46, 54–55 Non-Conventionalized Irony  26 Pretense Theory of Irony  22, 44 Sarcastic Irony  25 Situational Irony  28 Surrealistic Irony  19, 25–26, 28, 32, 34–36 Verbal Irony  47 Victim/Target of Irony  8, 29, 48, 50, 54, 66–67, 69, 72, 74–75, 105, 108, 111 J Juxtaposition  31, 108, 112, 114

L Licentia poetica  94 M Maxim see Cooperative principle Meaning Accessible Meaning  49, 51–53 Community Understanding of Meaning  87 Covert/Implicit/Implied Meaning  5, 25, 176 Global Meaning  99–100, 102, 106, 109, 114 Literal Meaning  1, 25, 39, 41–50, 52–55, 169 Polysemic Meaning  6 Sentence Meaning  5 Speaker/Speaker’s Meaning  1, 5, 9, 21, 42, 97–98, 100, 170, 198, 198n1 Utterance Meaning  5, 21, 100, 103, 111 Media  46–47, 54–55, 64, 67–68, 70, 88, 167–168, 171, 199, 204, 232, 237, 237n1 Mass Media  46 Journalistic Practice  231, 233 New Media  119, 121, 126–127, 139 News  75n20, 88, 232, 237, 237n1, 244 News Interviews  66, 204, 213, 231, 234 “Story” of New Media  125– 127, 132, 138 TV/Radio Broadcast  101, 167–168, 172, 231–232, 235, 241 Mental space  44–45, 51–52, 54 Metaphor/ic  5, 9, 39–40, 40n1, 41–54, 70, 91, 106–107, 128, 130, 132, 168 Conceptual Metaphor Model  44 Metaphoric/al Irony see Irony Meta-comment/ Metacomment  208, 216, 223 Meta-linguistic/ Metalinguistic  5, 52,

54, 105, 109, 170, 186, 198, 198n1, 199 Metapragmatic  181, 191 Metarepresentation  40 Meta-textual  7, 104 Mock/ery  43, 52, 54, 66, 108 Modal/ity  7, 119–120, 129, 136, 138, 155 Multimodal  10, 119, 130, 138 N Narrative  10, 87, 97–98, 98n1, 99, 99n2, 100, 102, 104, 236, 239 Narrative Voice  10, 97–99, 102–103, 114 Narrator  10, 27, 29–30, 34, 97–99, 102, 104–106, 109, 112, 114, 132 Unreliable Narrator  100, 105 Non-sense see Absurd O Obligatory/ Non-obligatory Shift  23 Opponent/Rival  8, 11, 59–60, 73n15, 77–78, 86, 176–180, 187, 189–192, 194–197, 199, 204, 212–213, 218, 220–221, 223–224, 231, 248 Ozymandias  91 P Paradox  45, 148 see also Absurd Participation  171–173, 189, 193, 206 Participation Framework  97–99, 101, 103, 106 Participation Indirection/ Indirectness  3, 170, 197 see also directness Pericles  91, 93–94 Plagiarism  7, 94 Pluricentric  86–87, 93 see also Egocentric Pluricentricity  87, 95 Pluricentric Act  10, 85–86 Polite/ness  2–3, 8, 11, 61, 113, 145–151, 156, 158–161, 169 Face  2, 7, 10–11, 60–61, 67, 89, 147, 203, 213

Index 

Face-Threatening/Threat  2, 11, 61, 65, 89–90, 146–149, 158, 205 Face Wants/Needs  206 Face-Work  8, 61, 214 Impolite/ness  2, 182 Negative Face  61, 67, 147, 214 Positive Face  10, 59–61, 64–65, 67, 70–72, 74, 76–78 Polyphony/ic  4–7, 9–10, 73, 73n15, 74, 78–79, 119, 121, 124, 129–131, 136, 138 Position/ing  8, 59–62, 64, 66, 69, 71–72, 74–78, 102, 188, 196, 213, 231, 233–236, 238–239, 242–247 Possible Worlds  43, 100 Presuppose/Presupposition  7, 12, 21–22, 92, 100, 180, 203, 205, 208–209, 213–214, 217, 233 Pretense Theory of Irony see Irony Prime Minister’s Questions  11, 203 Principal  98, 101–102, 109, 111–112, 114, 132 Processing Effort  120, 125, 128, 138 Production Format  101, 211 Prosumers  127 Public Discourse see Discourse Q Questioning  194, 232 Quote/Quotation  7, 51, 63–64, 69–70, 93–95, 136, 218 ‘Janus’-Like Quoting  95 R Reading Paths  127, 130 Recipient see Addressee Register  6–7, 31, 63n4, 75n17, 103, 106, 108, 114 Register Shift/Deviation  74, 106 Relevance Maxim of Relevance see Cooperative Principle

Principle of Relevance  119–120, 138 Relevance Theory  1–2, 24, 39, 41, 119, 151, 170 Retention/Suppression Hypothesis  39, 44 Request  2–3, 11, 61, 69, 75, 89, 145–162, 174, 199, 204, 220–221 Rhetoric/al  8, 11, 60–61, 64, 75–76, 99, 107–108, 168, 185, 203, 205, 231, 233 see also Argumentation Epideictic Rhetoric see Epideictic Pragmatic-Rhetorical Functions  4, 60 Rhetorical Question  74, 177, 217, 223 Ridicule/ous  43, 46, 60, 70, 72, 107, 109, 111–112, 114, 239 see also Absurd, Paradox, Mock Ritual of Loyalty  232, 234, 247 S Scripts of Humor see Humor Secret Annex  121–122, 124, 127–130, 132 Secret Communion  101, 109, 111–112, 114 Self-Censorship  121 Sequence/Sequentiality  190, 203–205, 208–215, 216n5, 217, 219, 225, 238 Speaker see Addresser Speaker’s Meaning see Meaning Speech Act Direct/ Indirect Speech Act  1, 85, 88, 176 Felicity Condition  154–155, 157, 208–209, 223, 225 Quasi-Canonical Speech Act  89 Sincerity Condition  21, 66, 69, 73–74, 77, 109, 111, 207 Speech Act of Compliment see Compliment Speech Act of Condemn see Condemn/ation

Speech Act of Request see Request Style  26–27, 31, 35, 46, 107–108, 110, 114, 127, 130, 132, 136, 148, 161, 169, 177, 188, 189 Surrealistic Irony see Irony T “Talking Heads”  85–86 Thucydides  91–93 Tinge Hypothesis  44 Translation Indirect Translation  10, 23, 119–121, 123–124, 126–127, 138 Intralingual Translation  124 Translator as ‘Traitor’  94 Trope  39 Truth/ truthfulness  11, 22, 26–27, 95, 176, 178, 192, 203–209, 209n3, 210–216, 216n5, 217–226, 228–229 Post-Truth  209n3 Maxim of Truthfulness see Cooperative Principle Twitter  125 V Validity Claim  207, 207n1, 208, 213, 221 Viewpoint Space  45 Voice  3–4, 6–7, 9–12, 24, 73, 73n15, 77–78, 85, 88, 91, 97–98, 100–102, 105, 112, 114, 120–121, 123, 129–130, 132, 136, 138, 179, 188, 233 Discoursants’ Voice  93–94 Narrative Voice see Narrative Speaking Voice  88 Voiceless  103, 114 W What is said  1, 25, 43, 198, 207 WhatsApp  125 Workplace  145, 148, 161 “World at One’s Feet”  92

Indirectness has been a key concept in pragmatic research for over four decades, however the notion as a technical term does not have an agreedupon definition and remains vague and ambiguous. In this collection, indirectness is examined as a way of communicating meaning that is inferred from textual, contextual and intertextual meaning units. Emphasis is placed on the way in which indirectness serves the representation of diverse voices in the text, and this is examined through three main prisms: (1) the inferential view focuses on textual and contextual cues from which pragmatic indirect meanings might be inferred; (2) the dialogicintertextual view focuses on dialogic and intertextual cues according to which different voices (social, ideological, literary etc.) are identified in the text; and (3) the functional view focuses on the pragmatic-rhetorical functions fulfilled by indirectness of both kinds.

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